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.18 articles tagged with communism were found.
Maria Janion is Poland’s undisputed intellectual authority – but she is relatively unknown abroad. Maria Janion is a professor emeritus of literature. Her studies of Romanticism led Janion to see the specificity in Poland’s cultural development. As a public intellectual, Janion has always intervened in the political discourse. In recent years, she has put her authority to use to support the feminist movement and the reawakened new Left.
The authors here argues that the total picture of what the Scandinavian countries really received and what it meant can only be established when the “Rosenholz”-files are generally available. Fundamental questions however still remain to be answered, like who did the HV A register and on which grounds? How was the HV A networks constituted over time? And how did they develop over time? How did they communicate? And how did the secret logistic function work? The answers to these questions would certainly reveal new insights of how foreign intelligence functioned on the operative level in a not so distant past.
The new virtual Gulag museum in Paris appears in many languages and transcends national boundaries.
János Kornai certainly has been taking risks, and he definitely got his chance to develop in a most unusual way. He started out as a very young journalist in communist Hungary, and he eventually became a professor at Harvard.
ICCEES’ (International Council for Central and Eastern European Studies) Eight World Congress “Eurasia: Prospects for Wider Communication” took place in Stockholm, Sweden in July 2010. Host was the Swedish Society for the Study of Russia, Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (Sällskapet ). Here you may read Mikhail Gorbachev´s speech, presented at the Opening Ceremony by Pavel Palazhchenko, advisor and interpreter to Mikhail Gorbachev. Also available is an essay based on Professor Archie Browns key note lecture “Gorbachev and Perestroika: a 25th Anniversary Perspective”. The Opening Ceremony and a discussion between Archie Brown, Jack Matlock, author and US ambassador in Moscow 1987‐1991 and Pavel Palazhchenko is published as video films here.
Gorbachev here emphasize that the essence of glasnost was a real dialogue between authorities and society. The dialogue, he argues here, required a rejection of all forms of censorship and pressure on the mass media, the existence of rights for freedom of assembly, meetings and demonstrations, freedom of conscience, and the creation of public organisations. All this was done in the perestroika years according to Gorbachev.
Professor Archie Brown argues that Gorbachev was not selected as General Secretary because he was a reformer. He did at the time he became party leader believe both that the system was reformable and that it must be reformed. But he did not, however, reveal the full extent of his existing reformism on the eve of perestroika.
The development of a system for producing Russian fashion clothing, along with the discussion surrounding this venture into fashion, is described here. The GUM department store established a studio and hired designers. The quality and wealth of ideas was often poor, but demand grew steadily.
A close reading of Zinoviev and his view of the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a tragedy. Zinoviev helps us to understand how it feels to have your world dismantled and how that experience forms many of the attitudes that lie behind Putin’s policies.
In this interview professor Birgitta Almgren discusses her study on Nazi-German infiltration in Sweden and the offshoots, in Cold War Sweden, of the GDR’s policies. She is now requesting that the Swedish law courts make it possible for her to continue her research by granting her access to the so-called Rosenholz files. In a comment professor Åmark argues for a release of the Stasi-material.