Venue

Petrozavodsk is the capital of the Republic of Karelia, a region of the Russian Federation, biogeographically located on the eastern outskirts of Fennoscandia. The city was founded in 1703 by Tsar Peter I, as a village at a metallurgical plant, originally named "Shuyskaya Sloboda" by the name of the neighboring Shuya River, later "Petrovskaya Sloboda" by the name of its founder. The Karelian name of the city Petroskoi originates from the distorted Russian expression of “Petrovskiy Zavod”, meaning "the Plant of Peter".

Petrozavodsk received the status of the city and the modern name in 1777, by decree of the Russian Tsarina Catherine II. In 1781, Petrozavodsk became the center of the Olonets governorship. From the XVIII century, the city got a clear rectangular layout of the center, visible until now.

The main development of the city occurred in the XX century. Despite the status of the governorship center, Petrozavodsk was quite small. On the eve of the 1917 revolution, its population was only 17,000 people. In 1920, the city became the center of the newly founded Karelian Labour Commune, the first Karelian state, which included the lands of the Olonets and Arkhangelsk governorships. The city began to develop infrastructure quickly, however, by the beginning of World War II, the city’s development was still mostly low-rise and wooden, thus during the war, Petrozavodsk was almost completely destroyed. The modern center of Petrozavodsk was built mainly in the post-war years, and its architectural appearance bears obvious features of the so-called "Stalin Empire" architectural style.

By 2020, over 280,000 people live in Petrozavodsk, over a hundred years the city has grown more than 16 times. Modern Petrozavodsk is one of the main economic and cultural centers of North-Western Russia.

The formation of a national republic in the 20th century presupposed the intensified the development of science and culture. The first scientific institution in Petrozavodsk was the Karelian Research Institute (currently the Institute of Language, History, and Literature of the Karelian Research Center), providing linguistic and ethnographic research which was founded in 1937. The university was organized in Petrozavodsk before the war, in 1940, and in 1946 the Karelian-Finnish Research Base of the USSR Academy of Sciences was founded in the city, soon in 1949 it was transformed into the Karelian-Finnish Branch of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Initially, the institution consisted of ten research sectors covering various fields of knowledge.

In 1950, the The sector of Mire Science and Land Reclamation was founded as a part of the branch. Such important persons of Soviet mire science as Leon Lepin and Ekaterina Galkina were involved in its organization. In 1953, the Institute of Biology, which exists until now, was established as part of the Branch. It included also the sector of Mire Science and Land Reclamation, from which the existing Laboratory of Mire Ecosystems developed.

For more than 70 years of its history, both the entire Karelian Branch of the academic institution and the mire science laboratory underwent several reorganizations. Currently, the Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences is one of the largest scientific institutions in the North-West of Russia, which employs over 700 researchers. The center is located in several buildings within the city. The symposium venue is based on the main building of the Karelian Scientific Center, opened in 1967. The building is situated on Pushkinskaya street close to the park on the coast of Onega lake.

The main venue of the symposium will be an assembly hall with the capacity of up to 200 people. Conducting individual sections is possible based on other rooms, the hall of the library and the hall of the Institute of Language, History and Literature. The halls are equipped with everything necessary for holding conferences, including multimedia and sound equipment, as well as a parallel translation system.

We look forward to both to meet our old friends who have already been to our city and new guests and we hope for a successful conference and positive feelings from it and from our city.