Essays are selected scholarly articles published without prior peer-review process.
This essay takes the novel The Museum of Unconditional Surrender by Dubravka Ugrešić as a starting point for a discussion of why the notion of a post-Yugoslav or post-communist cultural memory seems to be a contradiction in terms. The manifest impossibility of forming a collective post-Yugoslav memory provokes a reflection on how cultural and collective memory has been used in post-communist Eastern Europe to historify the communist past, which further has served the revival of a nationalist agenda. Ugrešić offers a counter memory, if we understand the term from Foucault as something that escapes the forming of identities. Finally, I suggest the notion of negative memory, as introduced by Reinhardt Koselleck, as a more apposite term for approaching memory in the post-communist sphere and in the unfolding catastrophes of the modern world.
Essay by
Tora Lane
December 11, 2023
What concepts can we apply to understand the current wave of new monuments? In this article I suggest labeling them post-monuments, related to the commissioning body’s implied interest in what is commemorated, on the one hand, and the possibility of making amends, on the other. The concept builds on the one suggested by James Young in the early 1990’s “counter-monuments” regarding the German memorial culture of the time. I address how post-monuments can be seen as a future-oriented rectification, repair, and response.
Essay by
Rebecka Katz Thor
December 11, 2023
Partisan and decolonial ecology is a notion addressed by Andreas Malm and Malcom Ferdinand respectively, in their texts on the Caribbean maroon partisans – the emancipated slaves – who moved to the more mountainous parts of the islands that were still covered by dense vegetation. This concept is here taken to another historical context, that of Yugoslav partisans’ fight against the fascist occupation in the Second World War. I engage in reading an array of partisan artworks that point to fascist domination/war over nature juxtaposed to emerging solidarity among humans and animals/nature. From poems and short stories to drawings and graphic art material, the subject matter of forest as a site of resistance and political subjectivity emerges. Diverse animals, pack of wolves, birds that continue to sing despite the thorny branches, the figure of the snail as the affect and attitude of resilience – these become “comrades” in the struggle, mobilizing nature in their fight against fascism.
Essay by
Gal Kirn
December 11, 2023
The study of monuments tends to focus on human agency, in the form of political history, war history, antagonism, trauma and so on. Aesthetic qualities are often seen as superficial and fetishized qualities that belie the impact of the monument in a regional context. The rurally situated monuments of former Yugoslavia, however, must be seen through their extraordinary qualities as works of art, carrying an agency of their own. Rather than restricting the meaning of their impact, their aesthetic qualities and impact in the environment allow them to speak to us today from a new horizon.
Essay by
Cecilia Sjöholm
December 11, 2023
A sketch for the cover of the second East German edition to Pippi Langstrumpf (1988) showing a girl standing on her head on horseback is the starting point for this article. It was drawn by Cornelia Ellinger, only one year before the fall of the Berlin wall. The sketch becomes a starting point for a discussion of humor and materiality in the reception of Pippi in the GDR.
Essay by
Lisa Källström
December 11, 2023
This essay presents the little-known story of the first western package tour to the postwar Soviet Union along with neverbefore-seen photographs from the journey. It also introduces the digitized Oddner archive, which contains an abundance of visual sources on the Soviet Union of 1955.
Essay by
Sune Bechmann Pedersen
December 11, 2023
The material landscape of the Baltic states has dramatically changed with the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine: the Ukrainian flag, or its distinctive blue-yellow, has saturated the public space. In places once reserved only for the national flag, the Ukrainian flag flies right next to it. Building facades, windows, and walls serve as new surfaces for the display of the yellow and blue. The periodic, holiday-driven appearance of national flags has given way to the constant show of Ukrainian flags.
Essay by
Kara D. Brown & Aimee Herring
December 11, 2023
The paper examines Russia’s cultural expansionism that extends beyond the military invasion in Ukraine since 2014. In the first part, I trace Russia’s systematic efforts to seize and manipulate Ukrainian heritage, often under the guise of protection. I also touch on the role of museums in this expansion, where they are used to preserve collections through coercive acquisition and to promote a Russian-centric narrative. The second part of the article delves into the historical relationships between Russia and Ukraine, especially in the context of the Soviet era’s museum infrastructure. Overall, the text calls for new concepts and international efforts to critique Russia’s actions and protect Ukrainian culture.
Essay by
Maria Silina
December 11, 2023
Nearly three decades after the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, thousands of people are missing and mass graves are regularly found. Relatives still search for knowledge about their loved ones in the midst of secrets, rumors and ethnonationalist denial. As the country struggles to come to terms with this dark legacy of the war, art has emerged as a space for recognition of the lingering presence of absence of the missing.
Essay by
Johanna Mannergren Selimovic
December 11, 2023
Building mutual trust was for years one of the desired aims of international cooperation in the Nordic region; the existence of trust was intended to contribute to the reduction of political tensions and lead to more sustainable and peaceful region. In practice, working with international cooperation in the Nordic region, where Russia was one of the actors until 2022, has never been easy. One of the main obstacles on the way was the deficit of trust.
Essay by
Ekaterina Kalinina
August 23, 2023
Issue 2024, 4: 
Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, CentralAsia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.