A scholarly journal from the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) Södertörn University, Stockholm.
Issue 2025, 4: Download.
Essays are selected scholarly articles published without prior peer-review process.
This article exposes the extent of Russian cultural aggression: the looting of museums and appropriation of items of the Ukrainian museum foundation, the damage to and demolition of archaeological sites of Ukraine, the explosion of the Kakhovka dam and the consequences of this disaster for Ukrainian cultural heritage, and the cultural erasure of Crimean Tatars.
In this article the authors seek to analyze the difficult situation in which Orthodoxy finds itself in Ukraine. It shows that as a result of the Russian Federation’s military attack on sovereign Ukraine, inter-Orthodox relations, already complicated, have been further challenged. The authors investigate the factors that aggravate inter-Orthodox relations, their influence on world Orthodoxy, the reaction of Ukrainian citizens to confrontation in the religious sphere, and possible ways of overcoming inter- Orthodox confrontation.
The article discusses the portrayal of hippies in The Pink Elephant (Rozā zilonis, 1976), a story by the Latvian SSR writer and physician, Miervaldis Birze (1921–2000). The author’s attitude towards this counterculture is mostly critical, even patronizing; however, it is through the portrayal of the hippies, Broņislavs and Baiba, that the author indulges in a conversation about young adulthood, revives the story, and even trifles with the questionable or inadmissible aspects of life. The Pink Elephant, when read through the lens of renewed interest about Soviet hippies, reveals their living conditions, attitude towards power, their parents, and themselves. As opposed to their Western counterparts, the impoverished Soviet hippies (who had experienced the system of blats and the shadow economy) did not condemn consumerism; in fact, they sought out material goods, especially those originating from the other side of the ocean.
If the grand narrative of German reunification in the autumn of 1989 in media discourse used to be a more or less coherent story of successful reconciliation, recent political developments have made it necessary to question some of the nuances of this seemingly flawless narrative. One way of doing this is to present personal memories in narrative form for consideration as more or less autobiographical accounts from the inside, so to speak. A growing number of writers who were children and young people 35 years ago, at the time of reunification, are now starting to write about their childhood and memories of the reunification process. These stories display more or less biographical features, albeit composite and contrived. In this paper, two novels, both dealing with the past, are compared: Grit Lemke’s affirmative oral history Kinder von Hoy (2021) and David Blum’s more critical Dantesque underworld narrative Kollektorgang (2023). Lemke’s depiction of a happy childhood is rather nostalgic, if not downright ostalgic (“East-nostalgic”), while Blum’s is much more discerning. Generational considerations may explain this difference in approach. What they have in common is that they ascribe significance to the big city with its high-rise buildings as a symbol of a collapsed system, based on their own memories of reunification.
In this essay, the author is engaging with the transforming presence of Stepan Bandera (1909-1959) in the Ukrainian social media space between 2014 and 2024. Building along and against the mainstream discussions on collective memory, The author argues that with the presence of war, the Ukrainian social media users memefied Bandera, making him a useful tool for politically-driven activities and an emptied signifier to be used in ironic contexts. The author also shows that in war-torn Ukraine, the meme and the myth of Bandera are intertwined with the commemorations of those who died on the frontline, which requires a nuanced understanding of the country’s changing memory landscape.
This essay is an attempt to describe my thoughts from the CBEES summer school in Sigtuna. The author attempts to articulate the complexities of working with memory and heritage through his topic related to the heritage of the Soviet Gulag, as well as the more general problems of the industry of preserving and reinterpreting the past.
This essay reflects on the issues of the past, memory practices, decolonisation, and reconciliation, as discussed during the 2024 CBEES Summer School. The author applies these reflections to think of her own research on LGBTQ+ Ukrainians’ wartime embodied relationalities, and how the discussed issues might manifest for her studied group. She further reflects on importance of positionality in discussions on postwar memory.
This essay explores the intersection of personal reflection and Ukraine’s collective journey towards reconciliation amid the ongoing war with Russia. Set against the peaceful backdrop of a CBEES Summer School, the author delves into the challenges of memory construction, highlighting Ukraine’s historical complexities and the importance of inclusive memorialization in shaping a unified postwar identity. The essay draws comparisons with Eastern Europe’s post-communist memory work, emphasizing reconciliation and social cohesion.
August 24, 2023, Helsinki Music Centre, Finland. In the concert hall, the last sounds of the orchestra gradually fade away, and only the fragile, almost unheard echoes of music linger through several minutes of silence. Then — long standing ovations. At the same time, how-ever, many of the audience members in the full house of 1 600 seats are openly crying. The audience had just heard HUSH (2023), a concerto for trumpet and orchestra, the last work of the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. She had passed away at the age of 70 only a couple of weeks before this performance The essay is based on several interviews with the composer, and on reviews of her works that I have made while working as a music journalist and critic between 1997 and 2003. After my transition to an academic career in musicology, I continued working with Saariaho’s music but in the scientific context. In 2008, I wrote my doctoral thesis on her first opera, L’amour de loin (Love from Afar, 2000). Since then, I have continued to explore Saariaho’s music, and above anything else focused on her operas; for instance, I have written the program book texts of her works for the Finnish National Opera. That is why this essay, after introducing Saariaho’s early years and development towards a full career as an opera composer, concentrates on her operatic works.
This year, HELCOM celebrates its 50th anniversary. Rüdiger Strempel, the Executive Secretary of HELCOM, is here presenting the close cooperation and alignment between HELCOM and the European Union in working against a backdrop of increasing environmental threats due to the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution on the one hand and geopolitical instability on the other hand.
Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, CentralAsia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.