A quarterly scholarly journal and news magazine. From the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) Södertörn University, Stockholm
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Peter Johnsson is a foreign correspondent. Working for Nordic media and based in Warsaw he has covered the countries in East-Central Europe since 1980. He is the author of several books on Poland and polish history.
Peter Johnsson is a foreign correspondent. Working for Nordic media and based in Warsaw he has covered the countries in East-Central Europe since 1980. He is the author of several books on Poland and polish history.
At present, there are probably more than four hundred gated communities in Warsaw and an estimated 75 percent of all new homes on the market in Warsaw are in gated communities. No other European capital has numbers this high. The tendency is the same in other larger Polish cities.
What began in Poland, with the publication of Jan Tomasz Gross’s provocative essays, the most recent historical studies, and the research project initiated by the Polish Center for Holocaust Research, is a new phase in the public debate about the Polish nation’s relationship to the Holocaust. What is totally new is that historians and researchers in Poland are now leading the way and providing the most difficult answers to the most difficult questions.
Alyaksandr Lukashenka arrested all his opponents during the Election Day. Four months after the presidential elections in December 19th last year, one of the mayor oppositional candidates, Andrey Sannikau, has been sentenced to five years in a maximum security prison camp by the court in Minsk.
Kurapaty and Khatyn: two places along the same road, the number three highway from Minsk to Vitebsk. Two places that are about history. But also about how history is used.
The current situation in Ukraine and the country’s economic and political development during President Viktor Ianukovych’s first year in office were discussed at the fifth Europe–Ukraine Forum, held in Kyiv February 23rd to 25th.
Ukraine clearly became a democratic country after the Orange Revolution because all subsequent elections, the parliamentary elections in 2007 and even the presidential elections of 2010, raised no doubts or concerns from the international community, representing a new reality for Ukraine. However, in a mere matter of months, the perception of Ukraine by the international democratic took a turn for the worse after the last presidential election.
In a joint proclamation, signed by ten organizations, the democratic opposition in Belarus now urges the EU not to negotiate on anything with the regime in Minsk other than the immediate release of all political prisoners, including the four presidential candidates who are still imprisoned and threatened with long-term prison sentences.
On Monday the 20th and on Tuesday the 21st Minsk was back to its normal life. The life of fear. The doors that had been opened during the month before had once more, at least for a period, been closed. In an interview the 21th, the independent professor of Political Science, Mr Valery Karbalevich comment the situation.
Last month Baltic Worlds' reporter visited two conferences being held in Poland with the aim of discussing the one and half year of EU’s Eastern Partnership Policy (EaP) and trying to generate new proposals for the future work of the EU towards Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus. The main aim of the EaP is to promote democracy and economic integration with the Union of the six countries involved in the program, which is not an easy task.
Andrey Sannikov is a wellknown Belarusian diplomat. In the 1980s, he served as representative of the Belarusian Soviet Republic at the United Nations. In the beginning of the 1990s, when Belarus declared its independence, he was an active member of the the newly formed independent adminstration and held the post of deputy foreign minister. Here in an interview about dicatorship, the importance of voting and the role of international observers.