A scholarly journal from the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) Södertörn University, Stockholm.
Issue 2026, 1: Download.
The Polish art historian, critic, and curator Piotr Piotrowski passed away May 2015. He was the chair of the Modern Art History Department at Adam Mickiewicz University, in Poznań, where he was also the director of the Institute of Art History from 1999 to 2008.
Read Charlotte Bydler’s In Memoriam here>>
In 2004, eight Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) and two Mediterranean countries entered the European Union (EU). Hailed by some as the “New Europe”, the CEECs seemed to have finally affirmed their European identity. Ten years later, one is naturally tempted to examine whether the CEECs’ EU membership has indeed made them more “European”.
The European Parliament elections in Lithuania this year were held jointly with the second round of the presidential elections which were won by a landslide majority (57.9%) by the incumbent president Dalia Grybauskaitė supported by the conservative and liberal parties in opposition. The dual-track election campaign have been used by the opposition parties to leverage the popularity of President Grybauskaitė and make gains at the EP elections.
During the May 25 presidential election, the leaders of Svoboda and the Right sector had only 1, 7 percent of support. This is, according to Lyudmyla Pavlyuk, professor in journalism in Ukraine, an argument that the Russian official propaganda about Ukraine’s “fascism” is a way to legitimize Russian policies of occupation and aggression.
The ambiguity of the 1920s Ukrainianization is well known among its scholars. A curious fact is that was becoming less intense and effective where the initial positions of the Ukrainian were weaker. Donbas was specifically one such region. If Ukraine is a borderland, Donbas is a borderland multiplied by itself, notes the author and further claims that "Donbas will retain its hybridity no matter the outcome of the current unrest. Still, the volatile situation brings not only risks but also yet another chance for belated modernisation."
+ Beate Feldmann Eellend: Visionära planer och vardagliga praktiker: Postmilitära landskap i Östersjö-området (Visionary plans and everyday practices: post-military landscapes in the Baltic Sea region). Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis. Stockholm Studies in Ethnology 7, 2013. 157 pages, ill.
Many postcommunist countries have large numbers of stray dogs. In several localitites in Russia poisoned meat has been put out to keep the number of strays down. Before major events, such as the Winter olympics in Sochi, mass culling has been announced. Dog rights activists rather suggest sterilization programs and animal shelters.
Huntington’s theory is more relevant now than ever in Russian discourse. The background for this is the growing religious awareness among Muslims and the growth of Russian nationalism, which fills the void left after the collapse of communism; the strengthening of the Orthodox Church; and President Putin’s recent anti-West campaign.
The shift from a primary focus on Shalamov’s prose to a more comprehensive approach which includes his poetic, biographic, and dramatic works informed the conference throughout its three days.
In her book on the East German experiment, The People’s State, Fulbrook launched a concept that owes a lot to her life-long preoccupation with Max Weber’s theories of Herrschaft. She calls it “participatory dictatorship”. An unbelievably large proportion of the population — roughly one in six, she calculated — took an active part in activities that had to be carried out to uphold the political system as such.
The only functioning system for transactions in the Soviet Union was in fact blat, the system of corruption and tacit agreement and alliances among all parties involved in a given transaction, is here argued. The “knowing smile” was a shared signal for those in the system.