contributors

Katri Pynnöniemi

PhD in international relations; researcher at the Finnish Institute of Foreign Affairs, Helsinki. One of her ongoing research projects is “Russia’s Foreign Policy and the Quest for Leadership in the Eurasian Economic Space (2011–2013)”.

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Articles by Katri Pynnöniemi

  1. Remixing nationalism. Gender and sexuality in Russian popular music and its reception on TikTok and Instagram

    The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022 has exacerbated Russian nationalism, as reflected in popular music and its reception on digital media. This article explores the role of gender and sexuality in formulating and negotiating ideas about the Russian nation since the start of the full-scale invasion, focusing on the circulation and reception of the songs and music videos by the Russian singers Shaman and Tatiana Kurtukova. Both performers occupy a significant place within a broader landscape of Russian popular music and are popular on social media platforms, where users generate content that features their songs. The analysis focuses on the ways (dis)identifications with Russianness in and through popular music are performed and highlights popular music’s symbolic capacity to naturalize normative ideas about gender and sexuality as well as the war in Ukraine.

  2. Performing homeland and the de-/legitimation of war. A multimodal analysis of music videos

    How is war legitimated and delegitimated in music videos? We seek to answer this question using the example of depictions of Russia as a homeland in contemporary music videos. Advancing a multimodal, sound-oriented method to analyze music videos, we engage with the interplay of sound, moving images, and lyrics. How is homeland performed in music videos? Analyzing music videos and performances by Sobor (Ukrainian pro-separatist), Shaman (Russian), and Zemfira (in exile), we find that violence remains hidden in pro-war performances, while emphasizing a Russian-Soviet way of life. Depictions of traditional food and binary gender roles play a central role in pro-war, imperialnationalist renderings of homeland while performances mixing Russian food with hand grenades and questioning traditional femininity subvert such romanticization.

  3. The ethos of resistance in Belarusian rock. The 2020 protests and Russia’s war on Ukraine

    This article, based on the analysis of media, video production and songs, as well as semi-structured interviews, pursues three objectives. First, it analyses Belarusian rock musicians’ modes of protest engagement in the context of the 2020 Belarusian post-electoral protests and the 2022 Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Second, it situates their engagement within the Belarusian underground rock artistic tradition that took root in the 1980s, but which was updated in waves as new impulses were given to protest. Finally, it provides an overview of four types of social logics that have historically contributed to the protest politicization of Belarusian rock music.

  4. Slushai Bat’ku! Popular music, politics and the legacy of Belarusian Vokal’no- Instrumental’nyi Ansambls (VIAs)

    Being once a central component of Soviet popular culture, the Vokal’no-Instrumental’nyi Ansambls [Vocal-Instrumental Ensemble] (VIA) repertoire has become a shared heritage across today’s former Soviet republics. While portrayed in the media as a depoliticized historical phenomenon, some music groups still active today like the Soviet Belarusian VIAs Pesniary, Siabry, Verasy and Charaunitsy have in part also become entwined with domestic politics. Focusing on Belarus, this article explores through virtual ethnography and a multimodal critical discourse analysis the intersection between popular music and politics. It especially focuses on how Belarusian president Aliaksandr Lukashenka, drawing on populist strategies, champions artists like the mentioned VIAs that support his ideology. Over his 30-year rule Lukashenka has promoted a national identity based in part on Soviet nostalgia. The mentioned VIAs are not only important drivers of contemporary Belarusian national identity, but they also provide a bridge to the Soviet past. Not only are they (in) directly supported by Lukashenka and the Belarusian state, they in different ways also support Lukashenka and were thus notably absent in the protests following the contested presidential elections in 2020.

  5. Doctoral Thesis. Review Series 2025:1 ”Digital spaces are often the only venues where dissent and mobilization can take place”

    Alesia Rudnik is a political scientist based in Sweden, originally from Belarus. Her research has been published in journals such as Europe-Asia Studies, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Media, War & Conflict and Internet Policy Review. She is also a regular contributor to Baltic Worlds (see for example the co-authored article with Malin Rönnblom in BW, vol. 17, no. 4, 2024). She currently serves as the Director of the Center for New Ideas, an independent Belarusian think tank operating in exile. She previously led a Belarusian diaspora organization in Sweden and was awarded “European of the Year 2022” in Sweden for her civic engagement. Rudnik’s academic work focuses on the relationship between people and technology in the context of political protests under authoritarian regimes. On September 12, 2025, she defended her doctoral dissertation in political science at Karlstad University, titled Machinery of Dissent: People and Technology in Political Protests in Autocracies. In conversation with Baltic Worlds, Dr. Rudnik reflects on research in Sweden concerning Belarus, the 2020 Belarusian protests, and the role of digital platforms in mobilizing protest movements within authoritarian contexts.

  6. The concerns of historians

    Network of Concerned Historians Annual Report 2025, contains news about the domain where history and human rights intersect, in particular about the censorship of history and the persecution of historians.

  7. Tracing developments in 14 East European states since 1989 until today.

    East Central Europe since 1989. Politics, Culture and Society, Sabrina P. Ramet and Lavinia Stan, (Routledge: London and New York, 2025), 388 pages.

  8. Åland’s autonomy. A particular case

    Reflexioner från landet som icke är – Sju essäer om oss människor och vårt samhälle [Thoughts from the land that is not – Seven essays about us human beings and our society] Bjarne Lindström, Hangö, Libraria, 2024, 172 pages.

  9. NARRATING THE CHILD Childhood and the Baltic Sea

    arrating the Child and the Baltic Sea, the 2nd International Conference of The Graphic World of Children Date and location: May 19–21, 2025, Södertörn Univeristy, Stockholm, Sweden. Organizer: Lisa Källström (Södertörn University). Advisory board: Maheen Ahmed (Ghent University), Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (University of Tübingen), Birgitte Beck Pristed (Aarhus University)/ The Graphic World of Children).

  10. SOLIDARITY ISLANDS IN A SEA OF VIOLENCE Reflections on memory, genocide, and the summer of 2025

    The interdisciplinary research centre Places, Identities and Memories’ (PIMs) Annual Conference “Spaces of Victimhood in Eastern Europe” Date and location: June 18–19, 2025, the University College London (UCL). Organizer: Jessie Barton Hronešov. and Paweł Bukowski, School of Slavonic & East European Studies (SSEES) UCL. Memory Studies Association’s (MSA)Annual Conference “Beyond Crises:Resilience and (In)Stability” Date: July 14–18, 2025. Organizers: Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague.

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