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.27 articles tagged with soviet were found.
Soviet Design 1950–1980 was shown for two busy winter months and enjoyed great public success. Even if Soviet design was often — but far from always — based on originals borrowed from the West, the individual objects exude a personal charm, variation, and quirkiness that makes them well worth preserving, exhibiting, and discussing.
Wendy Z. Goldman, Inventing the Enemy, Denunciation and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, Cambridge et al.Cambridge University Press 2011, 320 pages
The history and sociology of the telephone in Russian society have only slowly become the object of serious study. The scope of this essay is limited to the following two topics: first, the forms of use, in pre-revolutionary Russia and the Soviet Union, of the telephone as a means of communication, potentially universally available and “horizontal” but actually restricted by “vertical” forces; and second, the symbolism that accumulated around this means of communication in Russian and Soviet culture.
Though once very controversial in the context of the Cold War, Fitzpatrick’s view of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union as something complex, full of contradictions and of different kinds of agency, has now become a commonplace in Russian studies.
Baltic Worlds was one of the organizers of the seminar on the breakup of the Soviet Union during the “Global Week” at the University of Gothenburg in November. Here a report from the seminar 2Armageddon Averted: Insiders’ Reports from the Dissolution of the Soviet Union".
This fall, it was Helsinki’s turn to host this year's Yuri Lotman Symposium, whose theme was “The Writer and Power.” About forty Slavists from seven countries – Finland, Estonia, Russia, Sweden, Germany, the United States, and Israel – met over the space of three days to discuss this utterly inexhaustible topic. A number of fascinating cross-pollinations were among the most interesting outcomes.
Professor of mathematics, Ulf Persson, visits the legandary Steklov Institute, the flagship of pure mathematics in the Soviet Union. Russian mathematicians have long inspired awe among their Western colleagues. A second-rate Soviet mathematician was usually considered first-rate by Western standards.
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.