Music, Art and Diplomacy: East-West Cultural Interactions and the Cold War

Simo Mikkonen is Research Fellow of the Academy of Finland and an adjunct professor of Russian history at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His primary research interests include the cultural, international and transnational relations of the Soviet Union, especially with the West. He has previously published State Composers and the Red Courtiers. Music, Ideology and Politics in the Soviet 1930s, and a number of articles in journals such as Kritika, Journal of Cold War Studies, and Journal of Scandinavian History, as well as in several edited volumes. Pekka Suutari is Professor of Cultural Studies and the Director of the Karelian Institute at the University of Eastern Finland (Joensuu). He has studied musicology (ethnomusicology) at the Universities of Helsinki and Gothenburg and he has acted as a visiting professor at the Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Petrozavodsk, Russia. His main research interests are on the music of the borderland between Finnish and Russian Karelia and the ethnic activities of these areas. His is currently leading a joint research project 'Flexible Ethnicities' that host researchers from UEF, Joensuu, and KRC, Petrozavodsk.