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In this volume, seventeen scholars from Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia present their research on the formation and transformation of national literary canons as a practice of nation-building in Central Europe and the Baltics.The articles focus on the shaping of national identities through literature and analyze the establishment of literary canons by means of language, the role of national poets, and similar topics. Case studies of so-called minor literatures reveal common tendencies in the structure of many national canons, as well as specific responses and creative decisions in nation-building processes. This volume rethinks the relations between literature and nationalism (from the 19th century to present times) and contributes to the field of studies of historical development of nationalism.

Contributors are: Olga Bartosiewicz-Nikolaev, Renata Beličová, Ramunė Bleizgienė, Paweł Bukowiec, Anna R. Burzyńska, Judit Dobry, Gergely Fórizs, Katre Kikas, Aistė Kučinskienė, Helena Markowska-Fulara, Radosław Okulicz-Kozaryn, Jurga Sadauskienė, Vaidas Šeferis, Viktorija Šeina, Brigita Speičytė, Jagoda Wierzejska, and Krystyna Zabawa.
Author:
Winner of the Early Slavic Studies Association 2018 Book Prize

Marika Mägi’s book considers the cultural, mercantile and political interaction of the Viking Age (9th-11th century), focusing on the eastern coasts of the Baltic Sea. The majority of research on Viking activity in the East has so far concentrated on the modern-day lands of Russia, while the archaeology and Viking Age history of today’s small nation states along the eastern coasts of the Baltic Sea is little known to a global audience.
This study looks at the area from a trans-regional perspective, combining archaeological evidence with written sources, and offering reflections on the many different factors of climate, topography, logistics, technology, politics and trade that shaped travel in this period. The work offers a nuanced vision of Eastern Viking expansion, in which the Eastern Baltic frequently acted as buffer zone between eastern and western powers.

Winner of the Early Slavic Studies Association 2018 Book Prize for most outstanding recent scholarly monograph on pre-modern Slavdom.
The work was described by the prize committee in the following terms: "The scope of this book is far broader than the title might suggest. It amounts to a substantial rethinking of the history of the eastern Baltic from the tenth to the thirteenth century, based on both archaelogical and written evidence. The author is by training an archaeologist, and she mounts a powerful criticism of historians who prioritise the written sources and then pick and choose from the archaeological evidence to suit their theories. This book foregrounds the archaeology, which is used to question and consider the written evidence. The author is also highly and rightly critical of the archaeological scholarship, for projecting back into the past the narrow concerns of the numerous nation states that now exist across the eastern and northern Baltic, or the Great Russian nationalist-materialist-imperialist interpretations of the Soviet period. The result is a detailed and fascinating account of the interactions of the worlds of Scandinavia and Rusʹ with the various peoples of the Baltic region, both Finno-Ugric and Baltic. The resulting picture of commercial, political, and cultural interaction across several cultures, and based on reading in a wide range of languages, is a tour-de-force."


Volume Editors: , , and
In Identity Formation and Diversity in the Early Medieval Baltic and Beyond, the Viking World in the East is made more heterogeneous. Baltic Finnic groups, Balts and Sami are integrated into the history dominated by Scandinavians and Slavs.
Interaction in the region between Eastern Middle Sweden, Finland, Estonia and North Western Russia is set against varied cultural expressions of identities. Ten scholars approach the topic from different angles, with case studies on the roots of diversity, burials with horses, Staraya Ladoga as a nodal point of long-distance routes, Rus’ warrior identities, early Eastern Christianity, interaction between the Baltic Finns and the Svear, the first phases of ar-Rus dominion, the distribution of Carolingian swords, and Dirhams in the Baltic region.
Contributors are Johan Callmer, Ingrid Gustin, Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, Valter Lang, John Howard Lind, Marika Mägi, Mats Roslund, Søren Sindbaek, Anne Stalsberg, and Tuukka Talvio.
Fourteen Hard Questions and Straight Answers about a Baltic Country - Expanded Second Edition
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What do we know about Latvia and the Latvians? A Baltic (not Balkan) nation that emerged from fifty years under the Soviet Union – interrupted by a brief but brutal Nazi-German occupation and a devastating war – now a member of the European Union and NATO. Yes, but what else? Relentless accusations keep appearing, especially in Russian media, often repeated in the West: “Latvian soldiers single-handedly saved Lenin’s revolution in 1917”, “Latvians killed Tsar Nikolai II and the Royal family”, “Latvia was a thoroughly anti-Semitic country and Latvians started killing Jews even before the Germans arrived in 1941”, “Nazi revival is rampant in today's Latvia”, “The Russian minority is persecuted in Latvia...”
True, false or in-between? The Finnish journalist and author Jukka Rislakki examines charges like these and provides an outline of Latvia's recent history while attempting to separate documented historical fact from misinformation and deliberate disinformation. His analysis helps to explain why the Baltic States (population 7 million) consistently top the enemy lists in public opinion polls of Russia (143 million). His knowledge of the Baltic languages allows him to make use of local sources and up-to-date historical research. He is a former Baltic States correspondent for Finland's largest daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat and the author of several books on Finnish and Latvian history. As a neutral, experienced and often critical observer, Rislakki is uniquely qualified for the task of separating truth from fiction.
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“At last, Russia has begun to speak in a truly original voice.” So said Anatoly Vaneev, a Soviet dissident who became Karsavin’s disciple in the Siberian gulag where the philosopher spent his last two years. The book traces the unusual trajectory of this inspiring voice: Karsavin started his career as Russia’s brightest historian of Catholic mysticism; however, his radical methods – which were far ahead of their time – shocked his conservative colleagues. The shock continued when Karsavin turned to philosophy, writing flamboyant and dense essays in a polyphonic style, which both Marxists and religious traditionalists found provocative. There was no let-up after he was expelled by Lenin from Soviet Russia: in exile, he became a leading theorist in the Eurasian political movement, combining Orthodox theology with a left-wing political orientation. Finally, Karsavin found stability when he was invited to teach history in Lithuania: there he spent twenty years reworking his philosophy, before suffering the German and Soviet invasions of his new homeland, and then deportation and death. Clearing away misunderstandings and putting the work and life in context, this book shows how Karsavin made an original contribution to European philosophy, inter-religious dialogue, Orthodox and Catholic theology, and the understanding of history.
Lithuanian Literature in the Post-Soviet Period
Volume Editor:
In 1990, Lithuania was the first of fifteen Soviet Republics to proclaim its independence from the USSR and, in doing so, dealt a fatal blow to this superpower. Overnight, this small country, whose very existence had been erased from the world map for 50 years, became Post-Soviet and proclaimed its return to a multicultural Europe. So, what happened then in the lives of Lithuanians? How did they survive the collapse of a planned economy and the crisis of values? How does Lithuania, together with the other Baltic countries, which had once been the most prosperous Republics in the USSR, come to terms with the fact that they are now among the poorest member nations in another transnational configuration – the European Union? These issues are actively addressed in the works of contemporary Lithuanian writers, whose texts are analyzed in the collection of articles, Transitions of Lithuanian Postmodernism: Lithuanian Literature in the Post-Soviet Period. Utilizing various perspectives, leading Lithuanian literary scholars discuss identity transformations and the discourse of reinterpretations of the past in contemporary Lithuanian prose, poetry, essay writing, and memoir. This book reveals both existentially universal dramas and specific experiences that arise from this unique double-post (Post-Soviet and postmodern) condition.
Life Stories of Lithuanian Women, 1945 – 1970
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For millions of people, the Soviet experience meant not only living through the torment of Stalinism and the GULAG, the unbelievable destiny of men and women during the 1917 Revolution, civil war, and the Second World War, or those breathtaking, gigantic Socialist construction projects. Many citizens of the former Soviet Union lived “ordinary lives in ordinary times”, where the fate of men and women depended not on armed coercion, but Soviet ideology and propaganda. Adopting and Remembering Soviet Reality contains the stories of ten women, talking about their lives in Soviet Lithuania, one of the annexed Baltic republics. The book gives a compelling account of how, in the last years of Stalin’s rule, after 1945, during the so-called “Khrushchev Thaw”, and in the beginning of the “Stagnation Era”, Soviet ideology transfused the everyday life of women and dictated just about every major aspect of their lives. Based on interviews, the journalistic press of that era, as well as other material, the book reveals how propaganda shaped women’s understanding of family and work responsibilities, child care, interpersonal relationships, romantic love, and friendship.
Democratisation and minority communities in the post-Soviet Baltic
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The research on Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania has pointed out some controversial social and political developments since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Crucially, there is a discrepancy between the governments’ commitment to creating democratic political regimes, to ensuring harmonious social relations and to accommodating the ethno-cultural diversity of the resident communities. In reflecting on the legacies of the Soviet past, the book addresses the role non-titular populations have played in the process of democratisation and the relation between the states, societies and minorities in the post-Soviet Baltic states. The argument proceeds along three lines. Firstly, the book examines the institutional dimension of democratisation in the region, thereby addressing the processes of state- and nation-building as reflected in various policy-developments. Secondly, it compares the impact of ethno-cultural diversity on the development of the respective Baltic nation-states. The discussion makes clear that the framework of Baltic political communities was designed to suit the interests of the titular groups and thus resulted in the marginalisation of the minority communities. Thirdly, the book assesses the participation of minority communities in the development, criticism and improvement of state institutions and policies since independence. The analysis points out that, two decades after independence, the post-Soviet Baltic states and societies are seen by many members of the majority groups as primarily serving the interests of their ethnic community. In this situation, the members of the non-titular communities need to adapt to the majorities’ perceptions in order to benefit from the achievements of democratisation.
For 20 years Soviet psychiatric abuse dominated the agenda of the World Psychiatric Association. It ended only after the Soviet Foreign Ministry intervened. Cold War in Psychiatry tells the full story for the first time and from inside, among others on basis of extensive reports by Stasi and KGB – who were the secret actors, what were the hidden factors?
Based on a wealth of new evidence and documentation as well as interviews with many of the main actors, including leading Western psychiatrists, Soviet dissidents and Soviet and East German key figures, the book describes the issue in all its complexity and puts it in a broader context. In the book opposite sides find common ground and a common understanding of what actually happened.
Volume Editors: and
The book presents a timely examination on a range of issues present in the discussions on the integration of ethnic minorities in Central Eastern Europe: norm setting, equality promotion, multiculturalism, nation-building, social cohesion, and ethnic diversity. It insightfully illustrates these debates by assessing them diachronically rather than cross-nationally from the legal, political and anthropological perspective. The contributors unpack concepts related to minority integration, discuss progress in policy-implementation and scrutinize the outcomes of minority integration in seven countries from the region. The volume is divided into three sections taking a multi-variant perspective on minority integration and equality. The volume starts with an analysis of international organizations setting standards and promoting minority rights norms on ethnic diversity and equal treatment. The second and third sections address state policies that provide fora for minority groups to participate in policy-making as well as the role of society and its various actors their development and enactment of integration concepts. The volume aims to assess the future of ethnic diversity and equality in societies across Central Eastern European states.