A scholarly journal from the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) Södertörn University, Stockholm.
Issue 2026, 1: Download.
Dominika v. Polanska, Institute for Housing and Urban Research (IBF) at Uppsala University and Södertörn University. Leader of a project started in 2015 at Södertörn University, financed by the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies, called “Challenging the Myths of Weak Civil Society in Post-socialist Settings: ‘Unexpected’ Alliances and Mobilizations in the Field of Housing Activism in Poland”.
Grzegorz Piotrowski is currently a CBEES Fellow; previously involved in three research projects at Södertörn University. PhD in social and political sciences at the European University Institute in 2011. Research interests: issues of anarchism, alterglobalism, squatting, social movements, postsocialism, and urban movements.
The case of late Soviet and early post-Soviet squatting helps to elucidate how squatting is structured in regard to public-private relations and what the political component of squatting can be in a society not based on private property. The self-help occupying of vacant flats was not restricted to subcultures.
Two Polish cities, Warsaw and Poznań, are studied in the article to examine how external structures are handled and used by squatters in these two settings. The aim is to analyze opportunity structures that condition the emergence and development of squatting and how squatters respond to and utilize these opportunities.
The predominantly unfavorable and restrictive socio-spatial conditions of squatting in Prague, have been shaped by the socialist past and post-socialist transformation. Temporarily facilitated by the fluid and liberalized nature of the early post-1989 era, the emergence of the first squats in Prague was inspired by the international squatters’ movement, and alienated from the enthusiastic acceptance of capitalism by Czech society.
Social dumping is a concept with negative connotations that appeared in public debate shortly after the 2004 accession.
This article examines the construction of Narva and local spatial identity formation from the perspective of Russian-speaking Estonians in Narva, as elucidated in their own discourses and perceptions.
This article explores how several key museums discuss the Holocaust in the wider context of Estonian history, including Estonia’s traumatic past under Soviet occupation. It is argued that the Estonian narrative of victimhood still dominates collective memory as displayed in museums, and Jewish suffering in the Holocaust takes a much less prominent place despite an increase in Holocaust awareness among the Estonian political elite since the country’s “return to the West”.
Abstract: The purpose of this article is to test an explanation for the atypical nature of the development of demesne lordship in western Estonia1 in early modern times. My proposed hypothesis concerning the development of early modern demesne lordship in the Baltic Sea region takes as its starting point the impact on private land ownership in Europe caused by governments’ extension of their political powers and increasing conflicts. The twenty-first-century discourse about raison d’état has here been broadened with additional arguments about the role of the early modern military state in the development of demesne lordship in the Baltic Sea region, following the reasoning behind Braudel’s and Wallerstein’s center–periphery models.
With the democratic opposition from the early 1990’s decimated, the return of right wing nationalism as a political force, and a third pro-reform party entering Parliament, it is obvious that the opposition is divided.
In Communist Poland, women had the right to abortion on request since 1956, while in Sweden, access to abortion was limited. The ”Polish solution” received ample attention in Swedish media. In the 2000’s, Polish abortion policies were once again referred to as a reason for changing the Swedish abortion law, but the situation was now a very different one.
Mass mobilization against the ban on abortion is just another example of a new wave of grassroots mobilization in citizens protesting against the changes introduced by the conservative populist Law and Justice in Poland. Polish society becomes extremely polarized but also much more engaged and politically active.