ABSTRACT
The University of Helsinki is an old university, founded in 1640 in Turku, then the capital of Finland, as the Academy of Turku, to educate clerks. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Sweden lost Finland to Russia; Finland became an autonomous grand duchy of the Russian Empire, and Helsinki was made its capital. The university was transferred from Turku to Helsinki and renamed Imperial Alexander University, in honor of Tsar Alexander I, who granted Finland its autonomy and decreed Helsinki as the capital. One reason for moving the university away from Sweden and closer to the Russian capital of St. Petersburg was the tsar’s desire to control the radical movements that had become popular in European universities (Suolahti 1950). A fire in Turku in 1827 provided the official excuse.
