Stefan Donecker,” An Itinerant Sheep, and The Origins of The Livonians: Friedrich Menius’s Syntagma De Origine Livonorum (1635)”
During the 1630s, Friedrich Menius, professor of history at the University of Dorpat, was the first scholar to investigate the ethnic origins and the ancestry of Estonians and Latvians at an academic level. His treatise, entitled Syntagma de origine Livonorum, has nevertheless been largely ignored by later generations. This is mainly due to Menius’s bad reputation as an academic adventurer and notorious troublemaker. The present paper intends to examine Menius’s theories, place them in the context of early modern intellectual history, and interpret them as an expression of the worldview and mindset of a seventeenth-century Livonian scholar.
Epp Annus, “The Problem of Soviet Colonialism in the Baltics”
This essay works through some of the necessary preliminary questions in thinking about Soviet colonialism in the Baltics. It opens by tracing the prehistory of critical thinking about Soviet colonialism in the 1960s and considers why the topic of Soviet colonialism has not (or not yet) become a dominant way to understand Soviet history. The central question posed by the article is whether one can speak about the Soviet invasions of the Baltic States as ‘colonization’. It proposes that, initially, communist Russia did not in fact seek to colonize the Baltic States and instead ‘occupied’ them; however, this initial period of occupation later developed into a period of a colonial rule.
Li Bennich- Bjőrkman and Branka Likić-Brborić, “Successful But Different: Deliberative Identity and the Consensus-Driven Transition to Capitalism in Estonia and Slovenia”
Praised by international organizations, Estonia and Slovenia have long been considered among the most successful post-communist states. Estonia quickly transformed itself into one of the most liberal economies in the world, whereas Slovenia opted for a social justice-oriented market economy. Still, the roots of their success coincide in that consensus played a crucial role. We argue that the public sphere was never as repressed in Estonia and Slovenia during the communist period as it was elsewhere. Distinct national identities continued to be formed and re-formed by intellectuals during the decades of communist rule, who assumed roles as political leaders when the transition started. Consensus based on these national identities legitimized reform policies for the entire decade of the 1990s.
Cecilia Mőller, “Gendered Entrepreneurship in Rural Latvia: Exploring Femininities, Work, and Livelihood Within Rural Tourism”
This article explores different geographies of tourism, femininities and livelihood in post-socialist rural Latvia, with a focus on women’s entrepreneurship within rural tourism. Based on a case study in the Cēsis district, its aim is to analyze women’s livelihood strategies, including both economic and lifestyle-oriented motives behind entrepreneurship within tourism. The study illustrates women’s day-to-day livelihood practices and how they organize their lives in time and space. The article reveals how women negotiate their ‘livelihood action space’, which includes a number of paradoxes between the quest for independence while facing both economic and social restrictions.
Stefan Ewert, Higher Education Cooperation and Networks in the Baltic Sea Region: A Basis for Regionalization and Region Building?
This article examines academic cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region. Academic networks are being discussed as indicators of regionalization, but research on the empirical basis is scarce. In the article, the regional networks of 70 higher education institutions in the Baltic States and the German federal state Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are analyzed. The analysis shows a heterogeneous pattern for the regional higher education area. Regional embedding depends on the focus of an academy and its participation in regional networks. The article concludes with a discussion of options to be considered by regional organizations in order to strengthen regional academic cooperation.
Anu Toots and Tõnu Idnurm, “Does the Context Matter? Attitudes Towards Cosmopolitanism Among Russian-Speaking Students in Estonia, Latvia and the Russian Federation”
The increase of multiculturalism in European societies poses challenges to citizenship education, which, in formal education, relies on national values and neglects the emergence of cosmopolitanism. This article compares the patriotic and cosmopolitan values of Russian-speaking students in Estonia, Latvia and the Russian Federation using the data of two large surveys. The analysis revealed that Russian-speaking adolescents in Estonia and Latvia demonstrate higher support of cosmopolitan values than the Estonians, Latvians, and students in the Russian Federation. A worrisome finding is that students in the cosmopolitan cluster do not firmly favor democratic values and are not interested in improving their civic knowledge.