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Please Download Issue 4 2014 Here A scholarly journal and news magazine. December 2014. Vol. VII:4. From the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES), Södertörn University. Report from Kaliningrad BALTIC WORLDSbalticworlds.com The EU enlargement in retrospect: – Shattered memories – Female migration – Minorities united European asymmetry Visible and invisible borders in the new Europe also in this issue Illustration: Karin Sunvisson TESTIMONIES FROM AUSCHWITZ / RETORT TO COMMUNISM / SOVIET REFUGEES / CZECH FatHERS’ MOVEMENT Sponsored by the Foundation contents 3 BALTIC for Baltic and East European Studies WORLDSbalticworlds.com colophon in this issue Baltic Worlds is a scholarly journal and news magazine editorial published by Södertörn University and sponsored by the Foundation for Baltic and Stratified relations in Europe East European Studies. Editor-in-chief omen from the Eastern part of In our first article in this issue, the philoso- Ninna Mörner Europe travel to the Western part pher Edward Kanterian states that instead of Publisher to work in households, to clean, to adapting to reality, the Communists set out to Joakim Ekman take care of children and the elder- adapt reality to their doctrine. The Party was Editorial advisory board Wly. They perform the domestic work that Western always the most worthy of protection: “There Sari Autio-Sarasmo, Aleksanteri women no longer want to do. We might say Eu- is no room in communism for a confrontation Institute, Helsinki, Li Bennich- ropean relations have tilted; the vertical dividing between the rights of the individual and the Hungarian Jewish Björkman, Uppsala University, line running along the Iron Curtain has become actions of the ideological police and hence no witness accounts Joakim Ekman, CBEES, a horizontal line dividing citizens — the second- room for the possibility of a wrongdoing by the While numerous survivors Monica Hammer, CBEES, Lars class citizens below are often from the East, and, ideological police against the individual”. Thus described their own Johannsen, University of Aarhus, as Oksana Shmulyar Gréen and Andrea Spehar communism was based on an extreme kind of condition in Buchenwald as being Ann-Cathrine Jungar, CBEES, write in a peer-reviewed essay, are often women. asymmetric relation. close to death and no longer fully Thomas Lundén, Chair, CBEES, Today, ten years after the enlargement of the EU, “alive, others compared it favor- Jens E. Olesen, University of there is a hidden side of the enlargement process, SOME WOULD CONTEND that there is still an ably with other camps, particu- Greifswald, Barbara Törnquist- they argue: the feminization of migration. asymmetric relation between East and West in larly Auschwitz-Birkenau, or with lecture reviews Plewa, Lund University This flow from East to West had many impli- Europe, although the dividing line now seems to their horrific train journeys.” 4 The retort to communism. In the shadows 56 Cross-border contacts in Szczecin. Copyediting, proofreading cations. One of the most significant has been be shifting, placing some citizens in EU member page 12 of a lost dream, Edward Kanterian. Shifting identities in a borderland, James Tony Crawford/Semantix, that East European women leave their home countries in less favorable positions, such as Wesley Scott. Krysia Lear/Proper English features countries to work in households in the richer female domestic workers, the Roma people, and 57 Soviet refugees in Sweden. Shifting Layout 12 The recognition of the Holocaust. The very parts of Europe — so that women in the West can all those who nowadays could be considered policies during the Cold War, Ann-Marie Sara Bergfors, Lena Fredriksson/ first testimonies of Hungarian Jews, Ferenc L. leave the domestic sphere. Meanwhile, life for members of the precariat. Yet others would Ekengren. Serpentin Media Laczó. the men goes on as before. argue that the EU is a protector of minorities. Illustrators 51 Kaliningrad, the exclave. Borderland on the report Thus, it appears that an asymmetry still ex- With ten years’ hindsight, one can conclude that Karin Sunvisson, Ragni frontline, Påhl Ruin. 60 Parental movements. Traditionalism ists between “East” and “West”, a hierarchy of membership in the EU has given an additional Svensson, Moa Thelander versus new norms, Dominika V. Polanska. EU citizens based on the old divisions in Europe, benefit to citizens of the post-socialist countries: peer-reviewed essays Subscription transformed from vertical to horizontal divi- a second identity as European. If you belong to a 19 The EU and the politics of memory. The Sofia Barlind sions. But some divisions have always been hori- minority in your own country, being a European remembrance of communism and Nazism, Printed by zontal: the memory of communism for instance. could be a way to transcend and escape discrim- Anne Wæhrens. Elanders Sverige AB In another peer-reviewed essay, Anne Wæhrens ination. Moreover, the EU may bring minorities 27 The EU and female migration. Domestic Print edition: ISSN 2000-2955 examines the perspective that exists in the EU in one country closer to their kin in other coun- workers from East to West, Oksana Shmulyar Online edition: ISSN 2001-7308 on the Holocaust and on Soviet communism: tries, as shown in a peer-reviewed essay in this Gréen & Andrea Spehar. Contact Baltic Worlds issue. Barbara Törnquist-Plewa and Magdalena 39 The EU and minorities. Shattered in their at [email protected] The Holocaust was seen as a trans-Eu- Góra argue that the EU is a powerful normative home countries but protected in Europe, ropean experience that could unite all force for the betterment of national minorities: Barbara Törnquist-Plewa & Magdalena Góra. the citizens of the EU by functioning as “The pressure that the EU put on the candidates Kaliningrad in their constitutive Other. However, after for membership to adapt to norms on minority transformation subscription the eastward enlargement of the EU in protection and to solve their potential border The search for a regional 2004, this master narrative came un- conflicts had a positive effect.” identity has also to do ESSAYS have undergone a double-blind peer review by at least two independent specialists. A peer- der pressure. EU politicians started to Stratified relations in Europe — sometimes with the large turnover of the reviewed article published in BW will generate one publication point for the authors and their institutions Subscribe at www.balticworlds.com. reshape it to include the new members asymmetric, sometimes transcending borders — population: very few families have using the Norwegian bibliometric register (DHB). All scholarly essays in BW can be found in EBSCO as well Please send an e-mail to from Eastern Europe, and in particular continue to change. ≈ “lived in Kaliningrad for more than as DOAJ. More information about the peer review system is available at the website and in the Style Guide [email protected] if you change their memory of Soviet Communism. Ninna Mörner a generation or two.” page 51 for Contributors and Reviewers’ Guidelines. your address. What you read in the footers is the voice of the editor. Not that of the authors. Ten scholars from six countries have contributed to this issue. Among them are seven women. 4 lecture lecture 5 COMMUNISM THE SHADOWS OF A UTOPIA Illustration: moa thelander by Edward Kanterian wenty-five years ago, communism, the political system remembering communism in Europe, almost two disjoint cul- in front of me is a poster displaying the hammer and sickle, a The Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski once wrote, “Marx- dominant in Eastern Europe, collapsed. Two years tures, with no relation to each other. The first way is commemo- hand raising a rifle, and a Red Army soldier with a pistol. At my ism has been the greatest fantasy of our century”.3 Marxism later, in 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved. The rative and retributive — it is backward looking. The second way own university, I have seen students wearing T-shirts portraying was of course the underlying ideology of all communist states, a People’s Republic of China remained the sole commu- is affirmative and reconstructive — it is forward looking. More communist leaders such as Stalin and Mao, two of the greatest comprehensive theory of human society, history, and economics, nist power, but throughout the 1990s its anti-capitalist party line precisely, the first way looks at the past of communist utopia as a mass murderers in history, as cool party guests. In Lyon you can purporting not only to explain our past, but also to predict and was watered down through the introduction of market-oriented past utopia, a utopia that has been here, has left its mark, and is visit a restaurant called À KGB, which describes itself as “un lieu determine that the future will bring a classless, egalitarian com- reforms. Today, only one country can be said to be truly commu- now gone for good. This way is concerned with the burdens and authentique et mythique, entre tradition et modernité, avec un munist society. This perfect society, in which the exploitation of nist: North Korea. Communism, in the 1980s a mighty geopolitical liabilities that the passing of communism through the world has dépaysement garanti” (“an authentic, mythical place, both tra- man by his fellow men would cease to exist, was to be achieved, force holding half of Europe and roughly one third of the world’s bequeathed us. The second way looks at the past of communist ditional and modern, guaranteed to whisk you away from your according to Marx, by the proletariat, the driving force of the population in its grip, is today confined to an internationally iso- utopia as a failure to realize the utopia’s full potential, as some- familiar surroundings”. This is particularly thoughtless if we re- redemption of humanity, and essentially through the abolition of lated prison state, one of the poorest countries on the planet.
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