CEU Press Awarded AABS Book Publication Subvention for Ethnic Relations in the Baltic Reconsidered

Jan 9, 2025

AABS is pleased to announce that Central European University Press has been awarded the AABS Book Publication Subvention for publishing “Ethnic relations in the Baltic Reconsidered” (forthcoming).

The volume, edited by Violeta Davoliūtė, Darius Staliūnas, and Bradley Woodworth, re-examines the role of ethnic identity and nationality policy in the conflicts and crises of the Baltic states during the 19th and 20th centuries.

 

Editor Bios:

A black and white photo of a smiling woman

Violeta Davoliūtė is Senior Researcher at the Lithuanian Institute of History and Project Leader of Facing the Past: Public History for a Stronger Europe (Horizon Europe, 2022-2025). She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Toronto and has recently held research fellowships from Northwestern University, Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, Yale University, and École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris. She has published extensively on the topics of population displacement and Soviet nationalities policy, historical trauma, identity, the politics of memory and nationalism in the aftermath of World War II in the Baltics and Europe. She is a co-editor of the CEU Press book series Memory, Heritage and Public History in Central and Eastern Europe (with Barbara Torquist-Plewa and Lavinia Stan).

A headshot of a man with glasses

Darius Staliūnas is Chief Researcher at the Lithuanian Institute of History and also teaches at Vilnius University. His academic interests include Russia’s nationality policy in the so-called Northwestern Region (Lithuania and Belarus), ethnic conflicts, problems of historiography, and places of memory in Lithuania. He is the author of Making Russians: Meaning and Practice of Russification in Lithuania and Belarus after 1863 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), Enemies for a Day: Antisemitism and Anti-Jewish Violence in Lithuania under the Tsars (Budapest: CEU Press, 2015), and, with Dangiras Mačiulis, Lithuanian Nationalism and the Vilnius Question, 1883–1940 (Marburg: Herder-Institut, 2015), among numerous other academic publications.

A smiling man with glasses

Bradley D. Woodworth is Professor of History at the University of New Haven and Baltic Studies Program Manager at Yale University. He is co-editor with Karsten Brüggemann of Russland an der Ostsee: Imperiale Strategien der Macht und kulturelle Wahrnehmungsmuster (16. bis 20. Jahrhundert) (Cologne: Böhlau, 2012) and with Tõnu Tannberg of Vene impeerium ja Baltikum: venestus, rahvuslus ja moderniseerimine 19. sajandi teisel poolel ja 20. sajandi alguses [The Russian Empire and the Baltic: Russification, nationality and modernization in the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century] (Tartu: Eesti Ajalooarhiiv, 2009). His primary research interest is the multiethnic lands around the Baltic Sea.

A 19th century lithograph depicting a festival.

Eve of the Midsummer Festivity in Riga. 1842. Lithograph by Theodor Heinrich Rickmann.

Book Summary

This book re-examines the role of ethnic identity and nationality policy in the conflicts and crises of the Baltic states during the 19th and 20th centuries. The nearly constant re-drawing of geographic borders and boundaries among collectivities during this period destabilized fixed identities, generating novel, hybrid ways of self-identification along with a hardening of oppositions. Innovative forms of co-existence came with violent, sometimes genocidal conflicts. Based on significantly new sources and approaches (political history, nationalism and memory studies, cultural anthropology and sociology), by scholars deeply invested in the region, the studies in this volume provide a timely update to traditional perspectives on nations and nationalism. It not only highlights the most important episodes of ethnic coexistence and conflict in the Baltic in the 19th and 20th centuries, but also draws attention to issues that have received less scholarly attention.

 

Ethnic relations in the Baltic region are a particularly interesting topic of study, not only because of the region’s great ethnic diversity, but also because of its sensitive geopolitical situation, and because the titular Baltic peoples, have in modern history been surrounded by larger, more powerful polities. From the perspective not only of the titular nations, but also of minorities of the region, the entire history of the 19th and 20th centuries has been a permanent crisis, forcing a struggle for status, security, or survival. Such a combination of factors not only established favorable conditions for the emergence of various hybrid identities and national indifference, but also made possible innovative coexistence (the personal autonomy between the two world wars), as well as for sharp conflicts, sometimes taking genocidal forms (during World War II, the percentage of Jews killed in Lithuania was one of the highest in Europe). This collection of articles not only highlights the most important episodes of ethnic coexistence and conflict in the Baltic in the 19th and 20th centuries, but also draws attention to issues that have received less scholarly attention.

 

It is divided into four thematic blocks: the first discusses ethnic boundary drawing and ethnic consolidation; the second part of the book is devoted to ethnic conflicts; the third part of the book is about nationality policy; and the last part of the book is devoted to a discussion of recent decades of research on contemporary ethnic relations in Latvia and Estonia.

What is the AABS Book Publication Subvention?

The AABS awards its Book Publication Subvention of up to $5,000 for individually authored books, edited volumes, and multiple-authored books in English that make a substantial scholarly contribution to Baltic Studies. The applications must be submitted by publishers, not authors. Priority will be given to single author’s first monographs.

AABS awards two Book Publication Subventions each year. Applications may be submitted for review anytime, on a rolling basis.

Learn more

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