On March 24, I visited the military hospital in Kyiv together with my colleagues from one Kyiv publishing house. That was very important for me as I saw the “inner” world of the war of young soldiers injured. Many of them suffer in terrible pain after surgery as there is a shortage of painkiller medication.
By
Dmytro Drozdovskyi
June 22, 2022
During the first month of the war, more than half of the children in Ukraine left their homes. Many of those who came out of hell arrived in the relatively calmer west of Ukraine as well as to neighboring European countries. Some were displaced after weeks of hiding in basements, dilapidated houses, in cars or even lines of vehicles under the enemy fire.
By
Lyudmyla Pavlyuk
June 22, 2022
The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 violated the territorial integrity of the independent Ukrainian state and is causing extreme suffering to the Ukrainian people. Baltic Worlds deplores and condemns this violation of international law and the cruelty of the war against the people of Ukraine.
For many years, the political, economic, social and cultural development of Eastern Europe has been the principal focus of the scholarly research published in the journal. Baltic Worlds has extensive networks of readers, contributors and colleagues at educational and cultural institutions in the larger region of Easter Europe, including Ukraine and Russia. The current war threatens and concerns us all.
With this statement Baltic Worlds declares its solidarity with the Ukrainian people, who are the innocent victims of Russian aggression, and demand that all Russian troops be withdrawn from Ukrainian territory with immediate effect and an immediate end to the Russian army’s attack on the civilians.
Baltic Worlds condemns in the strongest terms the violent destruction of Ukraine’s cultural heritage, cities, and educational facilities as a result of Russia's full-scale invasion.
Stop the war immediately!
By
Ninna Mörner
March 11, 2022
There has been open conflict between Russia and Ukraine since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. On 24 February 2022, we woke to the news that Russia had begun a military invasion targeting all of Ukraine, following a period of increased aggression.
Baltic Worlds has a specific focus on research into the Baltic Sea region and Eastern Europe and many contributors and colleagues come from Ukraine – as well as from Russia. And, for that matter, from Poland, Germany, the Baltic States and south-eastern Europe. In these uncertain times in Europe and the wider world, it is important to differentiate between a political regime and the researchers at the various universities. Baltic Worlds wants to continue to work with researchers and higher education institutions in Ukraine, as well as with researchers in Russia.
Baltic Worlds as a scholarly journal will follow the development closely and will publish on the situation from a scholarly approach here at the website and/or in the printed journal.
Baltic Worlds, as well as the publishing Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) and the whole Södertörn University, is deeply concerned about the consequences of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in terms of human suffering, academic freedom, and Ukraine’s sovereignty. We wish to support our colleagues in Ukraine in every way we can. The political regime led by Vladimir Putin must immediately cease its military aggression and respect international law.
Ninna Mörner, Editor-in-Chief, Baltic Worlds
Joakim Ekman, Director of the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES)
By
Ninna Mörner
February 24, 2022
Ukrainian Neo-pagan groups, known as Ridnoviry, since the 1950s, sought to develop an archaic cosmic piety around nature and primordial traditions, to providing an alternative to the disillusions of Soviet materialist atheism and give meaning to an uprooted nation, Mainly influenced by an environmentalist and Hinduist imaginary, the landscape constitutes the main element of inertia structuring this belief. Indeed, the emotions embedded in the Brahmin knowledge and the aesthetic permanence of territory are the foundations of what could be called a pagan “geopoetics”. This concept, based on environmentalism and poetry, was part of the deployment of a new understanding of nature, and the claim of a Ukrainian ascendance linked with the Vedic and Aryan origins myth. Focusing on the main Neo-pagan groups Ridna Ukrayins’ka Natsional’na Víra (RUN-Vira) and Ob’iednannia Ridnoviriv Ukraïny (ORU), I propose in this article to return to the genealogy of this belief and show the role of geopoetics in the construction of Ukrainian Neo-paganism.
By
Adrien Nonjon
January 24, 2022
Discussions about the assessment of historic events have always had their place in the public discourse in democratic societies, whereas totalitarian regimes such as the Communist one preferred an official version of history that is not up for debate. This is why a conflict-prone memory boom in the CEE was to be expected after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The only recently intensified trend is to fight memory wars with the means of memory laws, i.e. by using laws prescribing and proscribing certain representations of historic events as a weapon to protect one’s national collective memory from divergent interpretation by others. Such approach to governing memory wars are detrimental to the neighborly relations, i.e. turning them into un-neighborly ones.
By
Anna Grinberg
October 25, 2021
Taras Kuzio, Crisis in Russian Studies? Nationalism (Imperialism), Racism and War (Bristol: E-International Relations Publishing, 2020).
By
Simo Mannila
June 10, 2021
The economic development in four Post-Soviet countries; Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan were compared and discussed during this Roundtable. From the late 1990s new opportunities for growth emerged, but this growth was both temporarily and unstable is here argued. The role of the state is also elaborated.
By
Alexandra Allard
April 15, 2021
When we were beginning to think about what we as artists and also the third generation of survivors can tell about the Holodomor we fully realized that visual representation of mass starvation in the arts is not easy. Depiction of violent events and historical traumas is already hard enough because it demands from the artist not only talent but also a deep understanding of historical context and an ethical approach to the sensitive topic. Famine is an invisible enemy. How to show the total lack of something? How to visualize very slow death, extended in time?
Essay by
Lia Dostlieva and Andrii Dostliev
February 12, 2021
Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (UGCC) is only one of several Eastern-Christian communities which actively take part in the Ukrainian social life. Moreover, statistical data and results of the social surveys show that the members of UGCC are not numerous and that structures of this church are strongly geographically limited. However, during the events related to the Euromaidan, it turned out that UGCC was able to make an important influence on the social developments referred to as the all-Ukrainian social level. This was possible due to the relevant social and symbolic capital which UGCC has on its disposal. This article aims to characterize the elements of the social and symbolic capital that enabled UGCC to become such important agent in the contemporary social transformations in Ukraine.
By
Michał Wawrzonek
October 8, 2020