From the 20th - 26th of October 2014, the OEIs third international Autumn School at the University of Helsinki took place. Among the current developments in Ukraine and Russia’s external behaviour, participants discussed various topics, like the role of the civil society in Russia or the way how the political regime has changed within the last decades. 23 students from four different Universities - the University of Tartu, the University of Latvia, the University of Tampere and the Freie Universität Berlin, had the possibility to participate in the school. This years’ school has been organized around the 14th Annual Aleksanteri Conference dealing with the very actual topic “Restructuring State and Society in Russia”. Students visited the different panels from Wednesday to Friday and jointly worked on a topic within a group of five, which they presented to each other in a conference panel format on Saturday.

The school is a joint endeavor of the University of Tartu, the University of Helsinki and the Freie Universität Berlin. The next school in September 2015 will be hosted by the East European Studies Institute in Berlin.