Features

Features offer in-depth accounts of issues related to the region without prior peer-review process.

The Baltic Berlusconi Recovery takes place in silence

After a fall in GDP of 25 percent and two and a half years of hard budget slashing, Latvia’s economy is growing again. In this moment of hope, the country is suddenly thrown into political turmoil. Corruption has grown out of hand, and the Latvian president has decided that enough is enough.

By Arne Bengtsson June 30, 2011

new meaning to urban space

While negotiations and controversies about the future of Linnahall in Talinn continue, people, not only traceurs but also beer-drinking youths and lovers, are mounting an opposition to the visions of investors and planners of remaking the space into an attractive enclave for the affluent.

By Beate Feldmann June 30, 2011

A European Russia or a Russian Europe

Is Russia part of Europe? Russians answer this question in different ways. For many of them, Russia is not Europe but Eurasia, which is an alternate unit of civilization. I do not share this opinion, writes Adam Michnik here.

By Adam Michnik May 13, 2011

A few “easy” steps towards reconciliation

Drakulić claims that top-down governance, which - she argues - started the war, is also the path to reconciliation in the region: Without the whipping up of nationalist emotions, purposefully and with the political will to do so, it would not be possible to start wars. It is only logical, then, that addressing people’s emotions is equally important as a way out of nationalism.

By Slavenka Drakulic May 13, 2011

Ragnvald Blix. the cartoonist who challenged Hitler

Ragnvald Blix was both a cartoonist and author. Blix declared his manifesto: “To be a good cartoonist, you have to be cold as ice in the face of all ideas and all persons. Sympathies and antipathies do not exist. First and foremost, you must have no respect for authority, tradition, or anything else in Heaven or on Earth, or even for anything in Hell.” Blix continued ridiculing fascism, Nazism, and communism in his satirical cartoons.

By Rikke Petersson May 2, 2011

Minsk. Kurapaty. Khatyn.

Kurapaty and Khatyn: two places along the same road, the number three highway from Minsk to Vitebsk. Two places that are about history. But also about how history is used.

By Peter Johnsson April 8, 2011

The Steklov Legacy

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.

By Ulf Persson April 8, 2011

BALTIC SEA REGIONALIZATION: THE SECOND COMING

Region-building around the Baltic Rim is not simply proceeding along a continuous path: it has entered a new phase. The region’s agenda has become increasingly outwardly oriented, argues the author.

By Pertti Joenniemi April 7, 2011

The Baltic ghost. Selling out or keeping the Russians out?

A specter is haunting the Baltic States. It appears in different forms and with different names: Air Baltic, Mažeikių Nafta, Lattelecom, Ventspils Nafta, Latvenergo, Estonian Air. With their independence in 1991, the Baltic nations inherited enormous state enterprises, built to serve large parts of the Soviet Union, and thus too big for small republics like Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

By Arne Bengtsson January 11, 2011

The Baltics A sea too tranquil?

There was a time, only a few decades ago, when Northern Europe was the object of intensified strategic attention. Today, by comparison, the Baltic area seems a fairly tranquil place. Is it in fact too tranquil? That is worrisome for the once-again independent three republics on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea.

By Björn Kumm January 10, 2011