Peer-reviewed articles have all been through a peer-review process. We practice double-blind peer-review. All material is reviewed by two independent specialists at least at post-doc level. A prerequisite for publishing scientific articles in Baltic Worlds is that the article has not already been published in English elsewhere. If an article is simultaneously being considered by another publication, this should be indicated when submitting.
This article examines how cultural policy initiatives in two Nordic and two Baltic countries have addressed the idea of cultural and creative industries and artistic autonomy in relation to artists’ work. Drawing on a thematic analysis of national cultural policy documents in Finland, Sweden, Estonia and Lithuania, the study explores the long durée of cultural policy shifts from a welfare perspective safeguarding artistic work from political and commercial influences toward increasingly market-oriented and entrepreneurial approaches. Despite differing historical trajectories, the Nordic and Baltic countries exhibit similar patterns in integrating arts and culture into the cultural and creative industries sector and adopting a market logic for artistic work. The document analysis reveals a more turbulent transition towards viewing artists as entrepreneurial market actors in the Baltic states, whereas the Nordic countries have incorporated these ideas more incrementally, partially because of the earlier adoption of neoliberal principles. In all countries the political goal of merging cultural and economic policies was transformative of the artistic sector, provoking both resistance and pragmatic approaches from the stakeholders.
By
Ann-Sofie Köping Olsson, Miikka Pyykkönen, Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, Ulrike Rohn, and Katri Talaskivi
November 6, 2026
This article examines the remigration of second-generation Latvian exiles who relocated from the United Kingdom to Latvia in the 1990s after the restoration of independence. Drawing on life-story interviews, the study approaches return not as a purely demographic or economic phenomenon, but as a biographical and identity-shaping process. It analyzes how Latvian identity maintained within exile families, participation in diaspora youth organizations, political socialization, and accumulated professional capital shaped both the decision to return and subsequent settlement trajectories. The findings suggest that remigration emerged through a multidimensional constellation of factors: structural opportunities in post-socialist Latvia, language competence and Western-acquired skills, family considerations, and a consciously articulated wish to “be Latvian in Latvia.” At the same time, return involved negotiating tensions between an ideologically constructed homeland and post- Soviet realities. The study highlights remigration as the transformation of inherited belonging into lived social participation.
By
Maija Krūmiņa and Ginta Elksne
November 6, 2026
This article examines the transformation of civic engagement in Russia after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Drawing on more than a hundred interviews with civic and political activists across several Russian regions, the article traces how anti-war and oppositional initiatives transformed under conditions of escalating repression. Using a micro-sociological approach, the article foregrounds emotions and strategic dilemmas as key (dis)enables of civic engagement alongside with the political opportunity structures. It argues that Russian civil society has not collapsed, but has moved through several stages of the initial moral shock and immediate mobilization, towards fragmentation and cautious re-mobilization. By 2026 civic engagement persists primarily through informal and low-visibility forms, using strategic depolitization as a tactic to survive.
By
Ekaterina Kalinina
May 29, 2026
This article examines the transformation of Russian civil society since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Drawing on empirical research—including case studies, interviews with civic actors, and digital ethnography—it identifies divergent trajectories across civil society’s institutional and grassroots segments. While politicized and formalized organizations have experienced sharp repression and decline, grassroots initiatives have expanded, often adopting informal, decentralized, and digital forms. These shifts do not indicate the death of civil society but rather its adaptation to an increasingly authoritarian context. The article argues that the war has acted as an accelerant to long-standing trends: the erosion of institutional influence, the growing dominance of state-controlled funding, and the rise of localized, informal civic engagement. At the same time, the article critiques the limitations of normative, democracy-centered models of civil society, which tend to equate civic vitality with political opposition and formal organization and proposes a more pluralistic and context-sensitive approach to analyzing civil society in non-democratic regimes.
By
Irina Meyer Olimpieva
May 29, 2026
This article introduces the concept of media realism to theorize the political sensibility that emerges from feminists’ engagement with digital media in contemporary Russia and beyond. Drawing on empirical data and insights from the FEMCORUS research project, the article explores how activists and media professionals navigate the contradictory affordances of digital media ecosystems that simultaneously enable oppositional political expression and practices and impose significant structural constraints. In this context, media realism refers to the experience of digital media as flawed, yet without alternatives. Thus, the concept captures the affective and ethical (dis)orientation of activists who recognize the problematic underpinnings of existing ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) architectures yet continue to rely on them for visibility, mobilization, and resistance. Through empirical case studies, the article demonstrates how feminist actors adapt their tactical repertoires and renegotiate their ethics due to a media environment shaped by both authoritarian repression and neoliberal media logic. Ultimately, media realism offers a grounded, non-reductionist framework for understanding the ambivalences of digital activism under constraints and invites further inquiry into how political subjectivities are shaped by the ICTs infrastructures they inhabit.
By
Daniil Zhaivoronok
May 29, 2026
Since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, various ethnic protest and anti-war movements from Russia’s national republics have called for decolonization. While the focus of these initiatives lies in regional politics and ethnic and Indigenous rights, the movements also address women’s and LGBTQ rights. Based on content analysis of seven ethnic anti-war initiatives, this article examines the themes and frameworks through which questions related to gender and sexuality are addressed within the activist agendas of these initiatives. The analysis shows that while these questions play only a minor role in the ethnic anti-war activism, they are used to articulate systemic oppression and the harmful impact of Russian state policies on people in the national republics. Taken together, the ways in which gender and sexuality are discussed bring out the activists’ search for a discursive position between Russian and Western political and discursive regimes.
By
Eeva Kuikka
May 29, 2026
This paper aims to analyze how health professionals in Russia perceive their profession as a political issue and how the war has shaped this perception. The study focuses on healthcare providers whose narratives express explicit dissatisfaction with the Russian healthcare system, sustained criticism of it, and efforts to bring about change. Drawing on the strategic action field approach, we define these actors as challengers – that is, professionals who seek to alter the organizational field of healthcare and broader societal power relations. Medical professionals are generally considered as a politically neutral group and typically do not identify them selves as challengers of the social system. However, we reveal that at critical moments of war and migration, they explicitly connect their professional positions with issues of political power and political engagement. The paper draws on in-depth interviews with healthcare providers who left Russia shortly after February 2022. The analysis suggests that in the context of an authoritarian state, healthcare professionals challenge not only the organizational field but also the political order itself, thereby relinquishing claims to political neutrality in pursuit of systemic change.
By
Varvara Adrianova, Ivan Ivanov, and Miroslava Borisova
May 29, 2026
This article analyses how environmental activism in Russia has been reshaped under wartime authoritarianism following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Drawing on 34 semi-structured interviews with representatives of environmental organizations and initiatives conducted between 2022 and 2025, it examines how repression, co-optation, and nationalist politicization have transformed the field of environmental engagement. The article argues that the Russian state has reorganized the environmental field through the expansion of government-organized non-governmental organizations (GONGOs) and the promotion of sovereignty-centered narratives such as sovereign ecology” and green patriotism. While repression remains the main driver of depoliticization, GONGOs redefine the boundaries of legitimate environmental engagement by embedding ecological discourse within narratives of national sovereignty. Independent NGOs and grassroots initiatives have responded differently. These dynamics reveal how wartime authoritarianism restructures environmental activism.
By
Doriana Althier, Maria Tysiachniouk and Juha Kotilainen
May 29, 2026
Based on a holistic case study of a climate movement in Russia that emerged several years before and dissolved shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this article explores the war’s impact on civil society activism. Drawing on in-depth interviews with key participants conducted both before and after the war, the study identifies three typical activist career paths which shape engagement with and disengagement from the movement.
The analysis of these career paths shows that the war did not introduce entirely new conditions but rather intensified problems the movement had already been struggling with. Moreover, it further raised the risks of protest participation and shifted activists’ attention from climate change to more urgent wartime concerns. The article contributes to understanding the Russo- Ukrainian war’s effect on Russian civil society. It also contributes to the literature on disengagement and demobilization in social movements by promoting a career approach and addressing the broader question of how a large-scale political event can lead to the demobilization of a social movement.
By
Svetlana Erpyleva
May 29, 2026
This article delves into the folk music community of Latvia and its reaction to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Rooted in the 20th-century folklore revival movement, during which Latvians revitalized their cultural heritage as a form of opposition to Soviet ideology, the community of Latvian folklore ensembles, musicians and enthusiasts has joined the broader civic initiative of giving aid to Ukraine and expressing solidarity with the Ukrainian people. Since February 2022, at least 80 initiatives linked to folklore (concerts, dance events, protests etc.) have been carried out that are directly connected to gathering support for or expressing solidarity with Ukraine. The analysis of these events reveals how the folklore community engages with political issues, using folklore as a medium to express its views in the contemporary political context.
By
Ilga Vālodze Abelkina
April 23, 2026
Issue 2026, 3-4: 
Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, CentralAsia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.