A scholarly journal from the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) Södertörn University, Stockholm.
Issue 2026, 1: Download.
Oksana Shmulyar Gréen is PhD in sociology and senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg. Her research interests include issues of global migration, gender, and care at a distance, with a special focus on child well-being and migrants’ rights.
Andrea Spehar is PhD in political science and senior lecturer at the University of Gothenburg; researcher at the Centre for European Research (CERGU). Her focus is on political and gender equality developments in Central and Eastern Europe and migration policy development in the EU.
The referendum on dissolution of Saeima will be held on 23 July and it seems that the voters might support Zatlers’ motion to dissolve Saeima. According to the internet poll by TNS Latvia, 84 % of the respondents replied that they would vote for dissolution, while only 4 % would vote against. If Saeima is dissolved, the parliamentary elections will be held no later than 23 September 2011.
On 5 June, 2011, Macedonia held its 7th parliamentary election since the post-communist transition began in 1990. The ruling conservative party, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity, scored another victory. Political conflicts in Macedonia has eclipsed tension within the Albanian community, which represents a reversal of long-standing patterns of electoral politics in the country.
Rationality versus irrationality, emotions versus calculations – these were the main issues to be discussed under a seminar in May, organized by the Aleksanteri Institute (Helsinki). Actually, the emotions theme became a starting point for the participants to approach the nature of Russian foreign policy and decision-making inside the post-Soviet bureaucracy.
Alyaksandr Lukashenka arrested all his opponents during the Election Day. Four months after the presidential elections in December 19th last year, one of the mayor oppositional candidates, Andrey Sannikau, has been sentenced to five years in a maximum security prison camp by the court in Minsk.
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.
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.
A number of representatives of the opposition in Belarus participated in a seminar “The Way Forward for Belarus”. The seminar addressed such issues as the difficulties experienced by the opposition in working for democracy and human rights in Belarus and what the outside world can do to support their work.
The Finnish Parliamentary elections of, which were held on April 17, resulted in a dramatic victory for a populist party, the True Finns, which increased its representation from 4 to 39 seats, and a big defeat for the Center Party of Prime Minister Mari Kiviniemi. The leader of the National Coalition Party, which despite losing six seats, Finance Minister Jyrki Katainen is expected to form the new government.
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.
Balkan experts attending the symposium “Memory and Manipulation: Religion as Politics in the Balkans", agree that the war was directed from the top, and that “top-down” is the key to understanding how the war began in the region.