Strategic orientation of finnish investors in Russia

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the introduction of a market based economic system in Russia, Finnish companies have been interested not only in increased trade with Russian companies but also in direct investments in the country. During the Soviet era bilateral trade relations between the two countries were mostly in the hands of relatively large organizations, large Finnish companies on the one hand and Soviet foreign trade organizations, which had monopoly rights over the range of goods that they were trading, on the other hand. The 1990s saw the entry of medium sized and small Finnish companies first as exporters and later also as direct investors in Russia.