A quarterly scholarly journal and news magazine. From the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) Södertörn University, Stockholm
Looking for back issues of Baltic Worlds? Download as PDF here.The diverse mosaic of urban experiences in Prague, Riga, Belgrade, and Tirana is related to major drivers of change in the economic, social, and institutional environment. In mapping an analytical terrain for this comparative study, the “socialist city” is taken as the primary point of departure. One set of influences represents the outcomes associated with the transition to markets, democracy, and decentralized government.
For the celebrations of the First of May, 1917, all the buildings on the Palace Square, including the Winter Palace, were decorated for the first time with white drapes with red edgings and revolutionary slogans. Under the Bolsheviks, avant-garde artists assumed the right to develop art for the newly formed communist state, and the commission to decorate Petrograd for May Day 1918, was awarded to futurists.
Grass’s Flounder contributes to our work of locating, dislocating, and relocating literature in the Baltic Sea region by challenging us to give attention to the lost or hidden stories that are ignored or played off against each other in the official versions of history that would fix our position in space. While Grass counters the seduction of the big story — universal history — he also reveals himself by getting caught in the contradiction of his own storytelling.
Linnaeus’s ideas and the acts of his apostles coincide with a general definition of economy as the doctrine of wise stewardship of scarce resources, which could be applied to both nature and human society. But beyond this, the philosophical, economic, and scientific thinking of Linnaeus and his contemporaries was historically distinguished by the belief that resources, as for example the number of species, could normally increase in one place simply by shrinking in another.
Here it is suggested that the greatest crisis of social consensus that the Pussy Riot action produced, and the deepest collective anxiety that surfaced in the discussion, was the fear of the active and politically conscious woman, a woman who does not hesitate to use violence in claiming her subjectivity from the authority of the church, the family, the establishment, or the state. Concerning one principal issue, the public opinion was especially dramatically polarized, and that is what the three authors want to look closer at, namely, Pussy Riot’s feminist agenda.
As the topic of tolerance became more and more “politically correct” and fashionable in the wake of postmodern relativism, its contours began to blur argues the author.
In the first post-revolutionary years the Bolshevik government saw Tatar and Bashkir women as important allies. Muslim women from the Volga-Ural region were to be educated and taught about their rights, and this educational campaign was seen as contributing to the development of the new socialist society. Women’s ignorance was seen by the Soviet authorities as an obstacle to progress which had to be overcome with the help of the new institutions like Commissions for the Improvement of the Work and Everyday Life of Women.
This article focus on how the Gdańsk shipyard strike and the formation of Solidarity have been remembered and observed afterwards, especially in connection with the 30th anniversary in August 2010. The author explores how people create meaning in past events in relation to current interests, and how the depiction of a shared history is constantly recast and used.
A young geographer by the name of Sten De Geer mapped the cities around the Baltic Sea in an article published in 1912. As an attempt to capture the urban structure of Baltic region cities, his paper is unique. In this article, we comment on his meticulous descriptions of these cities, with a century-long perspective.
As an EU-member, Lithuania has to a large extent set up institutional mechanisms to combat homophobia. It has implemented anti-discrimination laws that are roughly in line with EU norms. At the same time, the country does not allow same-sex marriage, fails to recognize same-sex partnership (or indeed any form of civil partnership), and does not allow homosexual couples to adopt children. A still greater problem, note the authors, is that the political and cultural climate remains deeply hostile towards homosexuality and towards recognizing the rights of individuals of a minority sexual orientation.