Aatteiden Venäjä: Finnish volume maps a century of Russian political ideas

According to ePressi, publisher Gaudeamus has announced a 2026 release for Aatteiden Venäjä (Ideas of Russia), a Finnish-language volume edited by Sanna Turoma, Vesa Oittinen and Mika Perkiömäki that traces a century of Russian political and social thought.

The essays range from studies of nationalism and fascism to pieces on anarchism and environmentalism. Together they argue that Russia's political landscape has swung like an ideological pendulum, not remained a single, immutable entity.

Contributors examine how ideas moved between elites and grassroots movements, and how exile, imprisonment and state institutions shaped those currents.

Several chapters place the work in the changed security context since Russia's attack on Ukraine and argue renewed attention to Russian ideology is essential to understanding current geopolitics.

The book also brings to light lesser-known episodes in Russian intellectual and scientific history and traces continuities between Stalin-era and Putin-era approaches to history.

As the editors note, "Sometimes the ideas presented in the book developed within the social elite and sometimes they were produced by grassroots activism. Some of the book’s ideas and theories took shape in exile or in prison camps during the Soviet era, in the Gulag." These threads, they say, show Russia has contained many competing ideas that have influenced Europe and beyond.

Aatteiden Venäjä is presented as the first Finnish-language non-fiction book to survey Russia’s history of ideas so broadly. The editors are based at Tampere University and the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki. Gaudeamus lists full contents and author biographies on its website.