Essays are selected scholarly articles published without prior peer-review process.
One out of four, and 1941 are two numbers everyone who went through the Soviet and post-Soviet schools in Belarus is familiar with. The former stands for the statistics of the Belarusians who died in the Great Patriotic War, the latter marks the year this war began. However, when I first came to Europe as a teenager, I was amazed to discover that no one actually knew either of my people’s heroism or our great victory. The war, as I found out then, did not even start in 1941 — nor was it defined as “patriotic”. Rather it was everyone’s — “world war” — with patriotism not attributed to nationalities.
Essay by
Olga Bubich
June 20, 2023
February 2023 will be remembered for a lavish propaganda event of the Russian government in Luzhniki stadium in Moscow dedicated to the anniversary of the second Russian invasion of Ukraine. This year it was combined with a celebration of the most significant regular ideological commemoration — a day of “The Defender of Otechestvo
[the Fatherland]. Using the propaganda transfer technique, Russia frames the invasion as a fight against the “Ukrainian
Nazis”, providing parallels with winning WWII, thys inheriting Soviet traditions intended to increase feelings of patriotism and national pride.
One of the key narratives promoted by Russian propaganda is the “protection of the people of Donbas”, in particular using propaganda materials with children, especially those deported from Ukraine.
Essay by
Alyona Hurkivska
June 20, 2023
Is radical Ukrainian nationalism disappearing? However marginal but playing a decisive role in the resistance against
Russian aggression, along with the rest of Ukrainian society, this political movement has suffered terrible losses that raise questions about its ability to maintain itself in the post-war political arena. This forward-looking essay examines the multiple challenges posed by this issue, arguing that the Far-right in Ukraine could perhaps find in the war an undeniable opportunity for a renaissance
Essay by
Adrien Nonjon
June 20, 2023
Street artists have demonstrated their condemnation of Russia’s invasion of a neighbor with murals, both in Ukraine and abroad. The most famous of these artists is Banksy. On a wall of what was once a kindergarten, he has sprayed the image of a child in a judo match overcoming a seemingly far more powerful opponent (an adult with some resemblance to the Russian leader). Although such works of street artists in Ukraine sometimes also show Putin, children are a common theme – often a girl with two stiff braids. Some of these works are presented in this essay, considering the role of the child in them, seeking to understand the role of art in protest as an appropriation and reconfiguration of public space.
Essay by
Lisa Källström
June 20, 2023
The war against Ukraine sank the civil society of Russia into despair. The dreams of turning the country with a centuries long tradition of despotic power and imperialist foreign policy into a peaceful postmodern liberal democracy were brutally crushed. Alongside the tragedy of thousand Ukrainians, this full-scale invasion has meant a defeat of the Russian intellectuals, liberals, and political dissidents who had been trying for many years to persuade themselves and the outside world that the strange reality they inhabited was an inevitable part of being a transitional society. This defeat forced them out of their country. Cursed by their compatriots as “traitors” and by some public abroad1 unwilling to stand up to the criminal regime, the new Russian émigré are now trying to construct a new “Civitas Solis” in exile, a different future for themselves and their country which is supposed to rise in place of the apocalyptic darkness of the present.
Essay by
Alexander Generalov
June 20, 2023
Since the beginning of Russia‘s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the repression of civil society has gradually intensified in Russia. During recent years political activism has been under threat and pressure, and in the last year activism has largely gone underground due to the escalating level of repression; therefore one sees few mass protests. The Russian authorities have consistently taken restrictive measures against any street protest, and the last permissible form (a single-person action) in the end also turns out to be almost impossible.
Essay by
Inga Koroleva (pseudonym)
June 20, 2023
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and during the ongoing war, questions about Russian civil society — its resistance (or the insufficiency of such), its defeat, its very existence — have been on many people’s minds. I suggest that we take a step back and look into something that has existed and, while on the brink of extinction today, has played an important role in forming societal discourse on a regional level: independent media in the republic of Dagestan.
Essay by
Elena Rodina
June 20, 2023
The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of state territorial regulations and restrictions against the spread of Covid-19 on the life of the population of the twin cities of Tornio and Haparanda, on the border between Finland and Sweden. To the inhabitants, the pandemic restrictions meant an oscillating “life world” of opportunities and containments, affecting them differently, often depending on decisions taken by distant authorities and for reasons irrelevant to the local borderland.
Essay by
Thomas Lundén
January 18, 2023
With more than 260 000 islands, Sweden is one of the countries with most islands in the world. Its islands are located along the coasts and in the larger lakes. For the municipalities and regions where they are located, the islands are places for recreation and symbols in tourism marketing. A rough overview over the impact of the pandemic on rural and remote areas indicates that Swedish tourism in 2020 and 2021 mainly consisted of “staycations” and that Swedish countryside attracted many people. However, our knowledge about the impact of Covid-19 on everyday life on islands, and on livelihoods and the tourism industry on islands, is still scarce. This article therefore answers the following questions: How has the pandemic influenced island communities, local livelihoods, and the tourism industry on islands?
Essay by
Paulina Rytkönen, Marcus Box, Tommy Larsson Segerlind. Youssouf Merouani
January 18, 2023
One cannot go back in time and cannot experience it as it was. Yet this collection of memoirs is an attempt at the restoration of the immaterial culture of the 1990s in St. Petersburg. It was written with the awareness of the integrated failure of the project by all its participants.
Essay by
Anna Kharkina
January 18, 2023
Issue 2025, 3: 
Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, CentralAsia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.