Sawt Falasteen - Revamped Finnish museum says 'Good Bye, Lenin!'

On display is a pink bicycle used by an asylum seeker to cross the northern Russian-Finnish border in 2023, symbolising how relations changed after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The state-funded Finnish Lenin Museum in Tampere -- a city 180 kilometres (112 miles) north of Helsinki -- was among the very last of a handful of museums dedicated to former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin that were established across Europe in the 20th century.

It was also a venue for diplomatic meetings between Finnish and Russian political leaders and several Soviet leaders visited it during during the Cold War.

It closed for good in November last year and re-opened this month, rebranded to focus on Finnish–Russian political relations under the name "Nootti"(Finnish for "diplomatic note").

Housed in the same building where Lenin and Stalin first met during a secret Bolshevik gathering in 1905, the museum shifted its focus from Lenin's life story to Soviet history in 2016.

But museum director Kalle Kallio, 47, told AFP the name led to misunderstandings.

"So we decided to close the Lenin Museum forever and start with the new one," he said on opening day.

"It was the last one in the West," he said. "The one before that to close was in France but that was already a long time ago."

According to Kallio, the new name, Nootti, has not been entirely trouble-free either, fuelling conspiracy theories in Russia that the rebranding was an unfriendly act orchestrated by Washington.

- Closed border -

Visitors can now gaze at pictures, texts, videos and historical items depicting how ties between Finland and its giant neighbour evolved over the 20th and 21st century.

The new collection spans the time from when Finland became an independent state in 1917, after more than hundred years under Russian rule, until the present day.

The sweeping approach shows that interspersed between "periods of extreme anger and hate" there were also "periods of very good friendship", Kallio said.

A section of the display focuses on the fate of Soviet Finns during Stalin's reign.

Others cover the Winter War of 1939–1940, which began when the Soviet Union attacked Finland, and the later Cold War.

"I think this opens up issues and provides background to events," said 63-year-old visitor Terhi Kallonen.

Finland dropped decades of military non-alignment and joined the western military alliance NATO in April 2023.

In December that year, it closed its 1,340-kilometre (830-mile) eastern border with Russia after it was crossed by around 1,000 migrants without visas.

Finland accused Russia of deliberately orchestrating the surge and called it act of "hybrid warfare" -- a charge the Kremlin has denied.

By providing a historical context based on academic research, the new museum aims to counter what Kallio said was Russia's use of "history as a tool of influence".

B.Khalifa--SF-PST