Andres Kasekamp, A History of the Baltic States, London , Palgrave Macmillan 2010, xi + 251 pages, Andrejs Plakans, A Concise History of the Baltic States, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2011, xvi
+ 474 pages
By
Kristian Gerner
About Estonia’s endeavors to become part of the staid but stable Scandinavia – an effort based on the belief that the country actually has a special affinity with Scandinavia. One sign of this, Pärtel Piirimäe points out, is the use of the word jõul (cognate to English “Yule”). The Estonians, like the Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, and Finns, thus live in Yule Land.
Essay by
Pärtel Piirimäe
The Polish professor in literature, Maria Janion, writes on Polish identity, and its interpretation and reinterpretation, its crisis and the process of shaping a new Polish imagery. There is a ongoing dialog between the past and the present and a constant struggle between the free Poland and the posthumous life of Romanticisim.
Essay by
Maria Janion
Sofi Gerber, Öst är Väst men Väst är bäst: Östtysk identitetsformering i det förenade Tyskland, East is West but West is best: East German identity formation in unified Germany, Stockholm University (Stockholm Studies in Ethnology 5) 2011, 248 pages
By
Michael Rießler
Trying to understand where post-Soviet Russia is going seems to be a matter of understanding how the society is redefining itself: contradictory pictures are circulating of what precisely Russia and “Russianness” are. The official picture of a united and multicultural Russia is being challenged from several directions.
By
Tove Stenqvist
On June 15–17, 2011, the Advanced Cultural Studies Institute of Sweden (ACSIS) organized its biennial conference, this year dedicated to “Current Issues in European Cultural Studies”. This report highlights some of the issues that were discussed at the panel session “East European Cultural Studies: The ‘New’ Europe”, chaired by Professor Irina Sandomirskaya of CBEES.
By
Egle Rindzevičiūtė
Sven Eliaeson & Nadezhda Georgieva (eds.) New Europe: Growth to Limits? Oxford: The Bardwell Press 2010, 454 pages
By
Uffe Østergaard
Is Russia part of Europe? Russians answer this question in different ways. For many of them, Russia is not Europe but Eurasia, which is an alternate unit of civilization. I do not share this opinion, writes Adam Michnik here.
By
Adam Michnik
Today, Pomerania is divided between Germany and Poland, but the German and Polish populations have few factors in common that might serve to unify them. Nevertheless, in some respects the region is gradually becoming more interwoven. To study the development of these cross-border flows, a series of interviews is being conducted as part of a on-going research project
By
Péter Balogh
I.
The 1990s were a golden age for professional historians in Russia. Various “veterans” of the 1960s “thaw” (ottepel’) resurfaced with [...]
By
Lennart Samuelson