Essays are selected scholarly articles published without prior peer-review process.
In literature, the opposition between Russian Christians and Muslims was established early on in the folk epics, in the “historical songs” told by the bards in the oral tradition. Several of them deal with the capturing of the khanate of Kazan, the northernmost Tatar realm. From the “Tatars” conquered by Ivan the Terrible in Kazan and depicted in Russian folk songs to Tolstoy’s thistle called “the Tatar” (tatarin) there is a winding line of literary works.
Essay by
Barbara Lönnqvist
August 1, 2011
On March 11, 1990, Lithuania declared its independence. The Soviet Union reacted by threatening economic sanctions. Lithuania needed support. Its hopes were directed at the West, and particularly at France. How did France react? What was its foreign policy regarding the “Baltic question”, that is, the demands of the Baltic States for the restoration of their sovereignty, which they had lost in their forced annexation by the Soviet Union in 1940?
Essay by
Tilo Schabert
August 1, 2011
The new organization “NSZZ Solidarity” had to be registered by a court in order to act. This registration process was the subject of lively debate at the CPSU Politburo meeting on October 29. The minutes of this Politburo meeting are included in one of the most extraordinary collections of documents from the Soviet era that have yet been made public by the Russian State Archives. It covers the period between the outbreak of strikes in 1980 and the imposition of martial law on December 13, 1981, a period known as the “Polish Crisis”. As a whole, the material shows that it was a rather clear message that the Soviet leadership conveyed to their Polish Party comrades.
Essay by
Karl Molin
June 30, 2011
Peter Weiss' descriptions of the agony and torture associated with the genocide against the Jews, of the survivors’ experiences of violence, death and war, contribute substantially to breaching the taboo of the Shoah, and hence to coming to terms with the past. By invoking the dead through memory, making them speak and thus overcome death in his works, the author confronts his guilt complex and mortal fear.
Essay by
Anja Schnabel
April 8, 2011
The author suggests that Platonov’s Chevengur is an attempt to describe the relationships between utopia and ideology, as seen through the eyes of a participant observer.
Essay by
Natalia Poltavtseva
April 8, 2011
Is it possible to imagine a disused nuclear power plant as a monument or memory site, a trace in the landscape that tells of days gone by? Have our notions of what constitutes history and cultural heritage expanded to the degree that we can also include a physical setting whose meaning is so controversial, especially considering the current political relevance of nuclear power technology?
Essay by
Anna Storm
January 31, 2011
If one wants to understand the arguments for institutional and ideological change propagated today, a closer study of the developments during the “long 19th century” is crucial, simply because this particular period in the history of higher learning continues to play a central role in the ongoing discussions on the future of the European university — Wilhelm Freiherr von Humboldt certainly casts a very long shadow.
Essay by
Thorsten Nybom
September 22, 2010
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.
Essay by
Archie Brown
August 25, 2010
A close reading of Ginzburg’s diaries shows how a fight against a shrinking living space is conducted on two levels: the purely physical fight for survival during the famine in Leningrad and the intellectual fight in a cultural environment increasingly dictated.
Essay by
Irina Sandomirskaja
August 1, 2010
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.
Essay by
Sergey Zhuravlev & Jukka Gronow
July 1, 2010
Issue 2026, 1: 
Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, CentralAsia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.