SIAJ´s Russian Trip 2010

26 Mar 2010 | Posted By: Maria Markenroth

By: Martin Hill, Treasurer, Society of International Affairs in Jönköping

Last week (15-22 of March) Society of International Affairs in Jönköping (SIAJ) in corporation with UF Linköping arranged a trip to Russia. The idea with the trip was to learn more about the country and remove all previous prejudices about Russia.

The trip started 01:45 the night between Sunday and Monday when we took the night buss from Jönköping up to Arlanda where we met up with the people from Linköping. We checked in and took a flight directly to Moscow and arrived to our enormous Hotel Cosmos close to the center of town. This first day of the trip most of us just went for a meal and then back to the hotel and went to bed.

The second day started with a meeting at the EU delegation where we had the pleasure to listen to four different speakers. The first one talked about how they are trying to make EU more popular in Russia and how they are using different methods to achieve this goal. The second speaker talked about the Relation between EU and Russia. The third one had a presentation of Russia’s future energy plans and the last speaker had a presentation of about what EU is doing in Russia concerning Human Rights and democracy.

After our meeting at the EU delegation we carried on to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs. Here we had the honor of meeting two officials from the Nordic department. They talked about the relation between Sweden and Russia and that many different Swedish companies have been established in their country and these companies are very satisfied with the cooperation with Russia. They also brought up the different problems and issues there have been between our countries, for example the Wallenberg case during the 1940’s. The main point the two Russian officials tried to make was that “Russia just wants to be friends with Sweden�.

The third day we went to the radio station Echo Moscow where we met the most legendary radio profile in Russia, Aleksey Venediktov (he can be compared with K-G. Bergström).  When we got there we had a tour through the corridors were we could see pictures of hundreds of famous politicians who had visited them. Big names like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair had been there and the very next day Ban Ki-moon was coming there for an interview. After our tour we sat down in Aleksey Venediktov office and he explained what they did at their radio station and how they worked in such a way so the government in Russia would not be angry with them.

After this visit we walked over to the Swedish radio’s correspondent Fredrik Wadström’s office. He is the only Swedish correspondent in Russia. He talked about his work tasks and that he is not only responsible for reporting from Russia but for almost the whole former Soviet Union. He explained what it is like to work as a journalist in Russia and told us about all different works he has been working with and the projects he is working with right now.
The fourth day we went to the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) and met two students from the MGIMO’s Swedish group. They explained how it was to live as a student in Russia and told us about their view of Russia and the world. This discussion was really interesting and gave us (at least me) a new and better view of the Russian society.

We spent Friday and Saturday sightseeing the beautiful town St. Petersburg and some of us went in to the famous State Hermitage Museum. After this wonderful weekend in St. Petersburg we went back to the capital with the Saturday night train and ended our trip at a big market in Moscow where we bought souvenirs before we took the flight back to Sweden on Monday morning.

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