contributors

Articles by Oksana Shmulyar Gréen & Andrea Spehar

1. Survival Kit festival in Riga art against crisis

   When the shops in the center of Riga emptied out in the wake of the economic crisis, the artists were given free reign over the spaces – the result was an art festival.

2. Report from Aurora Fashion Week Russia russian glamour in competition

   The fact that Moscow and St. Petersburg house in total five fashion events every season makes one think that the fashion business is considered attractive and economically sound in Russia. However, despite the growth of the Russian fashion market since the 1990s, the fashion industry is losing ground to other promising fashion hubs.

3. russia, infrastructure, and the baltic

   Infrastructure forms a link between the open global economic space and the non-public Russian political space. The question of how to manage the most important trade flows and understand their social importance is not, of course, solely seen as a matter of Russian politics. The research on Russia is also connected to the recent debate on the importance of increasing globalization and the mutual dependence of societies.

4. Baltic Worlds Annual Round Table Russian market reforms. Lack of trust and institutions

   “Market Reform and Socio-Economic Change in Russia” was the subject of an ambitious full-day seminar held October 6, focusing on the period since the fall of the Soviet Union.

5. maria janion. a tree spreading seeds

   Maria Janion is Poland’s undisputed intellectual authority – but she is relatively unknown abroad. Maria Janion is a professor emeritus of literature. Her studies of Romanticism led Janion to see the specificity in Poland’s cultural development. As a public intellectual, Janion has always intervened in the political discourse. In recent years, she has put her authority to use to support the feminist movement and the reawakened new Left.

6. Farewell to Poland? The uprising of a nation

   The Polish professor in literature, Maria Janion, writes on Polish identity, and its interpretation and reinterpretation, its crisis and the process of shaping a new Polish imagery. There is a ongoing dialog between the past and the present and a constant struggle between the free Poland and the posthumous life of Romanticisim.

7. The Early National Elections in Slovenia, 2011

   On 4 December, Slovenian citizens went to the polls to elect their representatives in the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia, after the President of the Republic, Danilo Türk, had signed an order dissolving the Assembly on 21 October 2011. The Republic’s first snap elections were called after a vote of no confidence on 20 September had brought down the left-wing government led by Borut Pahor (Social Democrats). Here the author notes that several long-term implications may arise from the election results and post-festum reactions.

8. Revisiting Kaliningrad and Its Region

   The city of Kaliningrad itself with its 450,000 inhabitants has acquired a European face. New buildings and shops have appeared all over the center, and the modern shopping malls are packed with both imported and Russian products, marked and sold with electronic bar codes.

9. The “Rosenholz-Archives” Myth and Reality

   The authors here argues that the total picture of the Scandinavian can only be established when the “Rosenholz”-files are generally available. The Rosenholz files consist of three different kinds of records, originally created by the HVA. The major part of the files is 293,000 filing cards of the person index of the HVA. The part of Rosenholz which today is kept in the Stasi files lists 133,000 West Germans, 24,000 West Berliners, 112,000 East Germans, and 121 citizens of other states.

10. Duma elections in Russia

    In the short term it seems reasonable to assume that Putin wants to win the presidential elections in early March by an absolute majority in the first round. The election campaign will be a first pointer to where Russia is heading.

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