Baltic Corporatist Arrangements. A Comparative Analysis of Tripartite Arrangements in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (2024)

Estonian Human Development Report

The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies, vol. 7, issue 2, 2015

Most of the contributions gathered in Volume 7, issue no. 2 (2015) of Revista Română pentru Studii Baltice şi Nordice / The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies (RRSBN) were presented at the Sixth International Conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies in Romania held on 22-23 May 2015 and entitled Historical memory, the politics of memory and cultural identity: Romania, Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region in comparison. The conference was organized by the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies in cooperation with the International Summer School of the University of Oslo, Norway and the Faculty of History and Political Sciences of Ovidius University of Constanţa, Romania and in partnership with Nordic and Baltic embassies and consulates in Romania. The conference was funded by EEA and Norway Grants 2009-2014 within the Fund for Bilateral Relations at the National Level. The aim of the conference was to investigate the link between identity, collective memory and history in the above-mentioned areas by trying to find encounters between them and by making comparisons between the memories of the Romanian, Nordic and Baltic nations. After offering a short presentation of the Norse-Byzantine relations before the founding of the Varangian guard, Alexandra Airinei from the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi courageously approaches the importance of the guard for the manifestation of the imperial power in the Byzantine public life. The young scholar Costel Coroban from the Valahia University of Târgovişte makes an investigation of the political power by analyzing some characteristics of royalty in medieval Norway. The case study he chooses for this purpose is Sverris saga, a saga about the Norwegian king Sverre Sigurdsson. The Norwegian translator Steinar Lone authors two important contributions regarding Romanian history in the 19th century, on the one hand, also revealing the relationship between Romania and the famous musical composition The Entry of the Boyars by Johan Halvorsen, and on the other hand the history of the second half of the 20th century when he himself was under the surveillance of the secret police, Securitatea, as a foreign Norwegian student in Romania. Having held a plenary session during the conference, the Norwegian historian Jardar Seim looks at ways in which individuals, social groups and political authorities approach the past and chooses examples from Romania and the Nordic and Baltic states. Rūta Šermukšnytė from Vilnius University and Giuseppe Raudino from Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen further explore the topic of the current issue of the journal with relation to Lithuanian historical documentaries and respectively Baltic cinema. The Finnish historian Kari Alenius from the University of Oulu investigates the representations of World War II in Wikipedia web pages of the Baltic and Nordic states, which are compared so as to show similarities and differences regarding the image of the war. The capital city of the Russian exclave Kaliningrad Oblast and its architexture is then brought into discussion by Paulina Siegień from The University of Gdansk. The issue of security in the Baltic Sea and Black Sea regions is tackled by Mihai Sebastian Chihaia from the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi in order to find similarities and differences in the political and security environment of these areas after the end of the Cold War. Adél Furu from the Babeş-Bolyai University draws a comparison between the Sami communities living in Finland and the Kurds living in Turkey so as to show how the cultural identity of these ethnic groups was affected by historical marginalization. The last article of this issue is dedicated to historical memory in connection with women in the Latvian War of Independence 1918-1920. Thus Inna Gīle from the Institute of Latvian History at the University of Latvia discusses the role of nurses during the above-mentioned military conflict. We hope that, through the new interpretations and the new documentary evidences, the articles published in this issue will further reveal bonds between Romania and the Nordic and Baltic regions and will strengthen the relations between these areas.

The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies, vol. 3, issue 1, 2011

This issue of Revista Română pentru Studii Baltice şi Nordice [The Romanian Journal of Baltic and Nordic Studies, RRSBN] carries selected papers presented in approximately half of the panels of the second international conference for Baltic and Nordic Studies in Romania entitled Black Sea and Baltic Sea Regions: Confluences, influences and crosscurrents in the modern and contemporary ages. The general aim of this conference was to investigate the encounters between the Baltic and the Black Sea regions’ societies since the Middle Ages. The goal was to unearth the complexity of these bonds not only at state level (political, diplomatic, military, trade relations), but also the encounters, forms of syncretism or networks of a commercial, social, cultural, religious nature which are beyond or beneath the state relations and are presumably not only richer, but more interesting and challenging for a researcher as well. Additionally, parallels between the two regions as two buffer zones situated in-between the great empires or great powers of modernity were also assessed. Papers dealing with the effects of world wars, totalitarianism and the Cold War either as comparative approach or in terms of relations, confluences and influences were also invited. Furthermore, the conference also welcomed research results dealing with diasporas, émigré communities or individual destinies in the frame of the general theme of the conference. As such, this conference constituted a real change of research paradigm, relatively little having been previously achieved in this respect. The results of the conference as the two issues of our review will prove were notable. A number of twenty-eight speakers belonging to twenty-three institutions from nine European countries approached these issues from various angles, the largest number of participants being constituted of historians, alongside whom stood specialists in international relations, minority studies, political sciences, etc. In the editing of this issue, we have focused on the panels dealing with “Settlements, transfers, encounters and clashes in the Modern Age” and “Baltic, Nordic and Black Sea regions in the international relations: intersections, meetings, crosscurrents” to which the papers signed by Stefan Donecker, Klaus Richter, Mihaela Mehedinţi, Costel Coroban, Veniamin Ciobanu and Claudiu-Lucian Topor belonged. Let us take a closer look at each of these papers individually. Stefan Donecker and Klaus Richter’s papers approached their subjects from the perspective of histoire croisée, the former researcher studying the humanist hypothesis of a Wallachian origin of Lithuanians and Latvians, while the latter considering the cultural transfers and the role of rumors as manifesting between Kišinyev and Lithuania in a charged climate marked by the wave of anti-Jewish pogroms occurring in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. The scholarly fantasy circulated by University of Wittenberg’s scholars regarding a Wallachian migration to the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea endured for about one century and half. This prompts Donecker conclude that on the mental maps of Central European scholars, “Dacia respectively Wallachia were not too civilized […], but still civilized enough to provide a reputable and very prestigious ancestry. A Wallachian origin was, indeed, an honorable genealogy.“ The outbreak of a pogrom in 1903 in the Russian guberniya of Bessarabia spread the fear among Jews within the Russian Empire. The expression to be treated “as in Kišinev” was tantamount to pogroms and was enough reason to create panic among the members of this community. The implications were manifold, not the less important of which was the determination of the Jews to defend themselves if such attacks happened or were supposed to take place. Richter also compares the disruptions caused by anti-Semitism in two very different areas of the Russian Empire, the growing industrial city of Kišinev, on the one hand, and the still rural northern part of Lithuania “in order to contextualize anti-Jewish violence in Lithuania on the larger scale of the Russian pogroms.” Mihaela Mehedinţi approaches in her contribution the relations between Transylvania and the Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland) in the 19th century as seen in Romanian periodicals from Transylvania, especially in Foaie pentru minte, inimă şi literatură, Familia and Gazeta de Transilvania. The article challenge the assumptions that because of distance the Nordic states were perceived as remote areas and little was known about them. Mehedinţi concludes that “in the 19th century, Transylvanians’ image of the Nordic countries is well shaped and has mainly positive connotations” and “the amount of information they had at their disposal was rather large and capable of preserving their representations of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland”. The papers of the panel “Baltic, Nordic and Black Sea regions in the international relations: intersections, meetings, crosscurrents” provide interesting insights into three important events unfolded in the Black and Baltic seas rim areas: Swedish King Charles XII’s Stay in the Ottoman Empire, the outbreak of the Lithuanian insurrection (25 March 1831), and the discussion regarding a Romanian-Swedish pro-German alliance going on in the first part of World War I. The first topic is assessed in the light of British documents, the second from the perspective of Swedish documents and the third is based on Romanian diplomatic documents. Costel Coroban investigates the mixture of superhero and tyrant British perception of King Charles XII. The balance was however tilted towards the negative image which spread into Britain mostly as a result of his largely overestimated cooperation with the Jacobites, the archenemies of the Royal House of Hanover, which led to the arrest of Count Gyllenborg, the Swedish envoy in London. Veniamin Ciobanu approaches the Swedish outlook of the Lithuanian insurrection of March 1831 in the light of the anxiety manifesting in the Stockholm political and diplomatic circles that the severance of the ties between Lithuania and Russia may influence the attitude of the Norwegians who were likewise unhappy with the Swedish rule upon their country imposed at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. No wonder that the Swedish paid increased attention to the events unfolding at the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea and that they unreservedly condemned the Lithuanian aspirations. Finally, Claudiu-Lucian Topor brings new evidence to a topic which still reserves many new avenues of interpretation to the interested researcher: the Romanian foreign policy in the first two years of World War I. Masterminded in Berlin in summer 1915 among the interested military circles and promoted by the pro-German Romanian envoy to Germany, the project of a Romanian-Swedish alliance to act under the umbrella of German strategic policy, aimed at winning the final victory on the Eastern Front and possibly on the Western Front, too. Utopian as it may seem today, the plan enjoyed the support of certain circles, but finally died out because of the Swedish clinging to their neutrality and of the Bratianu Government understanding of national interest. Two articles have been selected for this issue from two other panels of the conference. The first article signed by Ioana-Ecaterina Cazacu discusses the role of the Nansen Commission and the Romanian Prisoners of War’s repatriation from the Russian territories, a topic on which the author has already achieved two other notable recent contributions. In order to understand the stakes ahead this Commission, one may recall that the Nansen Commission was capable of repatriating no less than 427,885 POWs, 19,188 of whom, as Cazacu provides evidence of, were Romanians. Ēriks Jēkabsons of the University of Latvia studies the relations between Romania and Latvia at the beginning of World War II when a permanent Latvian Legation was set up in Bucharest under envoy Ludvigs Ēķis.

The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies, Vol. 11, Issue 1, 2019

The theme of the 2019 conference of the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies was crafted with our regretted colleague and distinguished academic Leonidas Donskis. In the meanwhile, conformism seems to have pervaded larger categories of public in East-Central Europe and beyond, and new “illiberal democracies” evolved. A composite of authoritarian leader and godfather have taken the reins of power in the area. Populist parties and movements are on the rise. Resurgent nationalisms are again offered as a substitute to solutions. The refugee crisis lingers on and no common decisions have been adopted within the EU to solve it on the basis of the European values. The EU institutions are in need of reform and decisions on the course of the organization and its future enlargement process are still pending. The conference aimed at analysing two often interrelated phenomena: dissent and conformism. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars nationalism and eventually modern political ideologies became the main competitors for power and control in Europe. Nationalisms unleashed the forces of destruction during the world wars while the clash of ideologies set off ahead of the French Revolution shaped the destiny of Europe during the 20th century. Dictatorships and even more so totalitarian regimes required unwavering conformism and full devotedness from their subjects, while encouraging dissent in the competing camp. Conformism has shown many faces from the Antiquity to Contemporary Age, from pretence to obedience, and an individual person could evolve during his/her lifetime between the two extremes. Sometimes, as many dystopian novels reveal, the conformist grows into dissident and even becomes a major target of his/her former patrons. Conversely, former dissidents can return to loyalty, and often the prize to be paid is betrayal of former affined spirits. The archives of Scandinavian, Baltic and Black Sea regions preserve numerous documents of such instances. Conformism can also take the form of what Zygmunt Bauman and Leonidas Donskis called “liquid modernity”, the situation of an individual who flows from one attitude to another, from one perspective to the other, from a set of values to an opposing one: The liquid modern variety of adiaphorization is cut after the pattern of the consumer–commodity relation, and its effectiveness relies on the transplantation of that pattern to interhuman relations. As consumers, we do not swear interminable loyalty to the commodity we seek and purchase in order to satisfy our needs or desires, and we continue to use its services as long as but no longer than it delivers on our expectations - or until we come across another commodity that promises to gratify the same desires more thoroughly than the one we purchased before. All consumer goods, including those described as ‘durable’, are eminently exchangeable and expendable; in consumerist – that is consumption inspired and consumption servicing – culture, the time between purchase and disposal tends to shrink to the degree to which the delights derived from the objects of consumption shift from their use to their appropriation. Dissidence also embraces a great spectre of attitudes from simple acts of disloyalty to open resistance as it happened in Norway or Denmark during World War II, in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland and the Black Sea region during the dictatorial, totalitarian and occupational regimes, etc. Again, the boundary between these extremes is narrow and simple disloyalty can grow into acts of armed resistance. The archives in the region are filled with documents regarding dissident movements, samizdat literature and transborder cooperation of dissidents, which can offer fresh empirical, methodological and conceptual perspectives to this issue. The first issue published in 2019 of Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies embraces some aspects of dissent and conformist tackled during the conference from how these attitudes had manifested back in the 13th century Iceland to the issue of contemporary migrants and their interaction with their new home societies in Scandinavia, while also paying tribute to key manifestation of dissent and conformism during World War II, the Cold War and Iron Curtain. The second issue of the journal will continue to offer our readers access to new approaches on dissent and conformism in modern and contemporary Northern and Baltic regions.

The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies, vol. 6, issue 1, 2014

The current issue of Revista Română de Studii Baltice şi Nordice / The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies gathers in its first part the syllabi of the courses taught during the Romanian summer school of Nordic and Baltic studies entitled “A piece of culture, a culture of peace” (CoolPeace), 2014 session. This summer school is an educational programme supported by a grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Financed under the measure “inter-institutional cooperation projects” of the EEA grants, the summer school is meant to strengthen the institutional cooperation at the level of higher education sector between all the partners involved: Valahia University of Târgovişte as the Project Promoter, the University of Agder, the University of Oslo, the Embassy of Lithuania in Romania, Peace Action Training and Research Institute of Romania and the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies. The Programme Operator of the EEA Scholarship Programme in Romania is ANPCDEFP (the National Agency for Community Programmes in the Field of Education and Vocational Training). This educational programme in form of a multiannual summer school includes activities divided into two modules: one on Scandinavian, Finnic and Baltic languages (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian taught in 2014), and the other one on culture, history, geography, law and economy courses related to the North. It also includes workshops both for the students and the staff with a focus on the exchange of good practices and transfer of expertise between the Romanian trainers and the Norwegian partners. The educational programme will be followed by an international conference which will approach some of the topics debated during the summer school from the perspective of scholarly research. The second part of the current issue continues the publication of the proceedings of the Fourth international conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies in Romania related especially to cultural studies. The conference entitled Empire-building and Region-building in the Baltic, North and Black Sea areas was hosted by the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies and Ovidius University of Constanţa, on 24-26 May 2013 and encouraged among others linguistic unity and diversity in Scandinavia and the Baltic states, Nordic and Baltic identity through cultural diversity and intra- and interregional comparisons involving the Nordic and Baltic states. Thus, the contributions published in this issue approach linguistic diversity in Finland and Turkey, in Norway and in Swedish literature (the articles written by Adél Furu, Crina Leon and Roxana-Ema Dreve), the reception of Scandinavian poetry and literature in Romania (Raluca-Daniela Răduţ and Diana Lăţug), Norwegian and Finnish language teaching and cross-cultural encounters (Raluca Petruş, Sanda Tomescu-Baciu and Ildikó Varga), ethnic minorities and regional identities with a focus on the Meänkieli speaking community (Enikő Molnár Bodrogi), as well as images of region-building in the Baltic sea region (Michael North and Marta Grzechnik). The present issue also includes an interview from October 2013 with Professor Arne Halvorsen, a central figure in the field of Romanian-Norwegian cultural relations. Most regrettably, Professor Halvorsen passed away in March 2014, but we would like that this interview to be regarded as a small part of our gratitude shown for his efforts of promoting the Romanian language and culture in Norway. It is our hope that the publication for the first time in Romania of course syllabi for all the Nordic and Baltic languages will be of help for other language trainers in the future, and that the syllabi of the other courses on Nordic culture and civilization could serve as a model and inspiration for trainers interested in the same field. Moreover, the scientific articles related to the Nordic, Baltic and Black Sea areas will render a more complete image of the cultures taken into consideration. It is our aim to target not only the direct beneficiaries of the summer school and the community of scholars with an interest in Nordic and Baltic areas, but also to facilitate a transfer of expertise regarding teaching methods and to answer the interest of the general public in Nordic and Baltic studies.

Historians from the Baltic States like to say that the Lithuanians, Poles and Byelorussians are historical brothers, since they lived in one state for many centuries, whereas the Latvians are only ethnic brothers of the Lithuanians because they lived in German-founded Livonia for some 300 years. In reality however, we lived with our Latvian brothers in one state for an equally long period of time as we did with the neighbouring Slavs, although that experience has not been actualised yet as the case with the Poles, Byelorussians or Ukrainians has. Furthermore, in Latvian historiography this period is traditionally called the Polish times (poļu laiki). This is also because the annexation of Latvian (and southern Estonian) lands to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania went on just before the Union of Lublin; in Polish sources the annexed lands are called Inflanty (a distorted version of Livland), and after the war with the Swedes (1600–1629), Latgale left to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ...

The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies, vol. 4, issue 2, 2012

The political changes of 1989 stimulated a new perception and perspective of the Baltic Sea Region. And this gained momentum with the Eastern Enlargement of the EU. The new situation encouraged research as well. In this context the “Baltic Sea” is not an unchangeable physical setting, but also a construction of different actors or protagonists. People and powers continuously reinvent the Baltic Sea Region. That is why; the following paper focuses on the different notions of the Baltic Sea Region from the Middle Ages up to now and also examines the recent EU-Strategy of this region.

The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies, Vol. 8, issue 1 , 2016

Volume 8, issue no. 1 (2016) of Revista Română de Studii Baltice şi Nordice/ The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies (RRSBN) gathers articles dealing with history, literary history and literary studies. The first group of articles engaged with topics related to Nordic and Baltic history from the early Middle Ages to the Modern Age. Such is the article which opens the journal signed by Costel Coroban. His thesis is that Konungs skuggsjá (King’s Mirror or Speculum Regale), the piece of work elaborated in 1250 under King Hákon Hákonarson (1217-1263) for his son, future King Magnús lagabœtir (1263-1280), emphasizes piety as one of the essential features of a good Christian. Cases of arrogance and individualism have to be chastened and that was one of the essential attributes and duties of a sovereign. Roxana-Ema Dreve tackles the national identity building in Norway following the separation from Denmark and the creation of a union with Sweden. The article addresses the 1830s’ developments especially with regard to the puzzling debate on the spoken and written national languages and the polemics of Henrik Wergeland and Johan Sebastian Welhaven. Henrik Ibsen continues to inspire inquiries in fields such as literature, social sciences, culture, philosophy as he did when he lived. Gianina Druță studies Ibsen’s masterpiece Hedda Gabler inspired by Gilles Deleuze’s concepts such as deterritorialisation, antigenealogy, rhizome or alliance. Dalia Bukelevičiūtė opens new perspectives in the field of social and welfare of Lithuanian population in Latvia during the interwar period and points out to the unbalanced situation between the two neighboring states of Latvia and Lithuania. While the number of Latvians in Lithuania who needed social protection was meagre, the number of Lithuanians in Latvia was considerable. This posed difficulties to the Lithuanian Government confronted, on one hand, with the needs of Lithuanians, the higher expenses of social services in Latvia and the desire to keep up the Lithuanian identity of the population across the border. This resulted into a wavering policy of the Lithuanian Governments which, however, always returned to the Convention on social assistance concluded with the Latvian counterparts in 1924. This issue of our journal continues to tackle the perceptions of Nordic peoples on Romania, in this case Mihaela Mehedinţi-Beiean depicting the Nordic and Russian travellers’ recollections of corruption and political instability imbedded into the Phanariot system of the 18th century Romania. Finally, this issue brings to the fore a Norwegian personality with a significant role in the Romanian-Norwegian relations, author of chapters, articles and books dealing with this topic: Jardar Seim. Crina Leon successfully sails through the memories of Professor Seim’s first encounters of Romania and the developments of this interest into a research topic.

“ReThinking Europe in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region” The 11th annual international conference on Nordic and Baltic Studies , 2020

The slides are accessible here : https://www.academia.edu/43189430/While the self-determination of all the three Baltic countries stresses Nordic links, even in Lithuania – the landscape and the historical past, also the recent spiritual surrounding, too, are different. However, all cities in the Baltic countries seek to became “European”, which is reflected e.g. by the glass-sculptures in each of them; let’s see the glass-monument of poet Kudirka and his poem (the recent national anthem) in Vilnius: very national but very postmodern at the same time, next to the edge of the historical downtown. – Latvia and Estonia belongs to the “Baltic” region in the narrow sense: former Hansa-towns with their typical architecture; the visitor faces stores under the roofs of old houses from the Middle Ages at every corner, especially in Riga – which is the largest and most postmodern capital city, too. – Riga has the most chances to be named an “European” metropolis; with some other phenomena in Latvian cities, as well: the seaport town Liepaja was the first one in the region, in which a “public house” was established just at the very time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. – The neighbouring Estonia has its most ancient capital; Tallinn remained in a more Middle-Age-character; however, the large shopping-complex around the modern Hotel Viru at the downtown, or, at the very edge of the downtown, may symbolize the very postmodern character of the Estonians: the visual art and performance, also the movie in Estonia are leading members of the European postmodern art; and their capital combines the Middle ages with the very recent time, as well. – Vilnius is different with its baroque heritage and its couleur locale, too: the old and new quarters are built cyclically, as the onion, not to confuse nor combine each other. (Cf. Thomas Venclovas’ views about it.) Thus, function and the tradition are divided into different quarters in Vilnius, while in Riga and Tallinn the historical quarters are multifunctional. – Tartu and Kaunas are to be com-pared: the kissing couple of students as a sculpture in the very downtown (of Tartu) symbolises the main profile of the “university-town”; while the grand promenade in the downtown of Kaunas is an allegory of the former capital and recent university-city also the centre of a county. — Four determining factors are to be taken into account, if we try to describe and define, “What is Baltic?” and “What is Nordic?” and “Which countries of the Baltic region belong to the Nordic or Baltic or Central European cultural region?” and “Are the Baltic cites and cultures European and if so, to what extent?” A special emphasis must be given to Kaunas, due to its very special role: the former Tsarist military garrison-city became the capital of the independent Lithuania; then in the Soviet-occupied Lithuania Kaunas played the role of the “very, real” Lithuanian city; and recently in the re-independent Lithuania it plays a competitive role, parallel to Vilnius; which is very similar to the role of Tartu as a competitive scientific and cultural centre in parallel to Tallinn.

NETSOL: New Trends in Social and Liberal Sciences, 2020

The three Baltic republics-Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania-are the only units of the former Soviet Union to deal effectively with the complex challenges of transitioning to free market democracy with advancing levels of human development. These countries have developed high levels of societal fitness-defined in complexity science as the ability to cope with multifaceted challenges and opportunities. What are the sources of these achievements? Many factors intertwined to produce what some call the "Baltic miracle." One key element has been the three revolutions stemming from the Protestant mandate to read and discuss the Bible: mass literacy, free thought and repression, and respect for individual dignity. Protestant influences were strongest in what is now Estonia and Latvia, but they reached Lithuania as well. Religiosity in now low in the Baltic republics, as in the Sweden that once nurtured both Christianity and literacy in its Baltic provinces. But the sparks it ignited in centuries past have shaped the rationalist and humanistic ethos of the region. Religion, of course, is just one of the European influences that conditioned economic and other cultural development in the region. But the dates when the Bible reached all of Europe in the vernacular are strong predictors of human development today. Balts also gained from not being occupied by the Golden Horde. On the other hand, they had to overcome several centuries of Russian and then Soviet domination. Fifty years of Communist rule dimmed but did not extinguish the positive qualities that reemerged with great vitality in the late 20 th and early 21 st centuries. The Baltic transformations were not "managed" from above or from outside-not from Brussels, not from Washington. They were encouraged and supported by Sweden and other European powers, but each transformation emerged from the bottom-up rather than from the top-down or from outside-in. Balts acted synergistically to contribute to the self-organization that is crucial to meeting complex challenges.

The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies, vol. 13 (1): 2021., 2021

The 13th volume of The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies reflects some of the research presented at the 12th International conference on Baltic and Nordic studies titled "Rethinking multiculturalism, multilingualism, and cultural diplomacy in Scandinavia and The Baltic Sea Region," which will be held on May 27-28, 2021, under the auspices of the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies. RethinkMulti-Kulti2021 was called to reflect on multiculturalism, multilingualism, and cultural diplomacy in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region 10 years after German Chancellor Angela Merkel predicted the end of German multicultural society. Many politicians with Conservative leanings praised the confirmation that the half-century-cherished multi-kulti "utterly failed," and far-right gurus interpreted it as an omen. Furthermore, Merkel's track record as a committed democratic-minded politician, EU leader, and proponent of migrant integration has garnered near-universal support for this argument. Furthermore, in academia, Merkel's assertion has never been adequately questioned, but rather taken for granted. Meanwhile, policies governing multiculturalism and multilingualism in the EU and EEA have been stuck in a rut, particularly in what Fareed Zakaria properly refers to as illiberal democracies.The purpose of the conference was not to resurrect the political objective behind multi-kulti, but rather to critically reassess the role of multiculturalism, multilinguism, and cultural diplomacy from the viewpoint of Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region. We see Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region as interrelated and partially overlapping by a plethora of historical, cultural, and social channels, hence papers dealing with multiculturalism, multilinguism, and cultural diplomacy as reflected in these regions and wider Europe were planned. Papers on connections, liaisons, affiliations, divergences, animosity, legal or de facto statuses of cultures and languages in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region were also presented during the conference. How multilingualism, multiculturalism, and cultural diplomacy prospered or muddled through transitions from liberal nations to far-right or far-left governments and back were also addressed.The volume's first issue focuses on lingualism, bilingualism, and multilingualism as a path to diversity and how individuals reflected on it. Kari Alenius looks at the telling case of the Sámi minority in northern Finland and the disputes over whether or not to grant it wide autonomy, which was ultimately determined in favor of opponents of the proposal. Johanna Domokos examines the case studies of two contemporary multilingual writers, Sabira Stahlberg from Finland and Tzveta Sofronieva from Bulgaria, to demonstrate how they aspire to address cross-culturally to readers of all languages, backgrounds, and locations, concluding that "the reader is empowered to take part in not only piecing together but creating a better 'new' world." Sabira Stahlberg is the author and coauthor of two articles that address multiculturalism in a very solid and original manner. The first follows the partly mythical and partly tourist-tracking journey of international traveller and well-known Swedish-language author Göran Schildt, who sailed on his yacht Daphne in the Black Sea and the Danube Delta in the summer of 1963 as one of the first cracks in the curtain separating the two opposing ideological blocs. The latter, co-signed with Dorijan Hajdu, focuses on the relationships between family members, as expressed particularly in Swedish and Serbian language, allowing for a highly comprehensive knowledge of diversity from inside. Finally, Adél Furu's most recent article in our journal examines educational trends in the context of Russian and Estonian second language training in Finland, observing the shift from language loss to language maintenance.We hope that all of these pieces will spark new thought on the subject and help our readers better comprehend multiculturalism and multilinguism as they were perceived and implemented in Europe, particularly in our and the previous century.

Diacronie: Studi di Storia Contemporanea, 2022

Ideas to unite the Latvian and Lithuanian nations within a single state are little-known episodes of the twentieth century. This idea is generally traced back to the closing decades of the nineteenth century. At the end of the First World War, it briefly achieved enthusiastic endorsem*nt from prominent figures from among the Lithuanian émigrés before vanishing into obscurity. Although it did not find wide-spread support, it attracted the interest of numerous individuals and non-governmental societies, re-emerging decades later as an ideal among a small contingent of the Latvian exile community. Transitions between generations and political landscapes resulted in the transformation and reinvention of the imagined state, partially concealing the longevity of the idea.

Dissent versus Conformism: Tenth Intern. Conf. of Nordic and Baltic Studies of Romania: Book of Abstracts, 2019

The 10 Tenth Intern Conf Nordic and Baltic in Romania under the title "Dissent versus Conformism": The theme of the 2019 conference was crafted several years ago with our regretted colleague and distinguished academic Leonidas Donskis. In the meanwhile, conformism seems to have pervaded even larger categories of public in East-Central Europe and beyond and new “illiberal democracies” and illiberal parties evolved. Webpage of the conference: https://balticnordic.hypotheses.org/conference2019 Venue: Ovidius University of Constanța. My topic was: The journal “Svio-Estonica” was founded in Tartu, Estonia in 1934 and had been running until 1940 when it stopped with the beginning of war and the Soviet occupation. It was devoted to the study of Swedish-Estonian relations in the realm of history, minorities, language contacts and cultural influences. The keynote person was young scholar Julius Mägiste (1900-1978), who eventually moved to Sweden and organized the Estonian cultural and science life in Lund where he continued his research activity up to his passing away.Thus, since 1943 the journal ran until 1971 in Lund, and changed its profile slightly: the life and culture of Estonians in the emigration became a topic of the articles as well. The Swedish minority was deported from the Estonian islands to Sweden by the Soviet regime, thus the studies of historical and recent cultural contacts turned into studies of “sovietology”, too.paper is to be focused on the life stories of a Dissident living abroad and his match who had decided to remain at home: Paul Ariste. Indeed, while Mägiste immigrated to Sweden, another very talented linguist, Ariste stayed in Soviet-Estonia and later became the chair of the Department of Finno-Ugristics. He spoke more than forty languages, and made researches on language contacts and cultural ties. His solid book entitled “Keelekontaktid” (Language contacts, in Estonian) made a great impact for the linguistics at that time. What was Ariste able to achieve in his country, disconnected from contacts with foreign colleagues; and what could Mägiste do in Sweden, living in the free western world but separated from the homeland? The paper gives a comparison of these two outstandingly gifted Estonian scholars.

As the Baltic states commemorated the centenary of their first appearance as independent states in 2018, their celebrations were mixed with feelings of ambiguity about the road travelled since then. Although today we often see Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as 'post-communist' countries, their experience with communism was actually much harsher than in Central Europe, since, for nearly fifty years, the three countries were forcibly a part of the Soviet Union. This has made their journey back into the European community all that more remarkable, and it has also served to keep these countries somewhat more resistant to the dangers of democratic backsliding. After all, their continued independence and well-being are intricately dependent on keeping the European liberal order intact. Nevertheless, the winds of populism have also begun to buffet these three countries, meaning that they have been struggling to keep their balancing act going. This article reviews the development of the Baltic states over the last 20 years, both in terms of domestic politics and EU accession and membership. It profiles the way in which the three countries have been trying to keep their faith in democracy and liberalism alive amidst ever more turbulent political and economic times.

Journal of Baltic Studies, 2015

Annals of Language and Literature, 2019

Based on my readings about the Baltic world as well as on my own experience there some years ago, this article addresses literary and cultural issues concerning Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Freed from Soviet yoke for almost three decades now, the Baltic countries do not play any important political role in our socalled globalized world. Worthy of being recorded is that politics is not everything, and that there will always be space for thriving human activities, no matter how oppressing the environment is – and that is exactly the case of the Baltic countries. Last but not least, I must express my gratitude to my colleagues and friends Professor Mikhail Uvarov and Professor Júlio Tadeu Carvalho da Silveira, without whose generous collaboration, etc.