Risto Alapuro is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and the head of the Helsinki Research Group for Political Sociology. His recent publications include the co-edited volumes Beyond Post-Soviet Transition: Micro Perspectives on Challenge and Survival in Russia and Estonia (2004), Nordic Associations in a European Perspective (2010), and Political Theory and Community Building in Post-Soviet Russia (2011). Arto Mustajoki is Professor of Russian Language and Literature at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His research interests include functional syntax, features of contemporary Russian, corpus based research, intercultural communication, and identities. He has published seven books and over eighty related research articles. Pekka Pesonen is Professor Emeritus of Russian Literature at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and the head of several international research projects including Modernism and Postmodernism in Russian Literature and Culture, and St. Petersburg/Leningrad: History--Narration--Present. Among his research interests are Russian literature and culture (especially modernism and postmodernism), and cultural semiotics. He has published three monographs, eighteen edited books, and about one hundred research articles.