Search results

Abstract: Distress and Death. The Russian Occupation in the North 1809Jens Petter Nielsen (UiT The Arctic University of Norway) reviews Nöd och död. Den ryska ockupationen i norr 1809 (Distress and Death. The Russian Occupation in the North 1809) by K.-G. Bergström.

Dahlia Lenairte's Family and the State in Soviet Lithuania: Gender, Law and Society (2021) offers an account of the changing role and position of women in the family and in society under the Communist reign in Lithuania. Beginning with the first Soviet occupation before the Second World War, Lenairte details the massive changes from Catholicism to Communism with respect to gender policy, family, divorce, childcare, maternity leave, and finally housing, up until the 1980s. Importantly, she shows that, contrary to common belief about Communist policy, gender equality was in fact never achieved in Soviet Lithuania.
Dahlia Lenairtes bog Familie og stat i Sovjet Litauen: Køn, lov og samfund (2021) er en gennemgang af kvinders ændrede roller og position i samfundet og familien under det kommunistisk styre i Litauen. Med et afsæt fra den første sovjetiske besættelse før 2. Verdenskrig viser Lenairte de enorme ændringer der skete fra katolicisme til kommunisme med hensyn til ligestilling, familie, skilsmisse, børnepasning og barselsorlov, og endelig boligsituationen op til begyndelsen af 1980'erne. I modsætning til den almindelige forståelse af kommunistisk ligestillingspolitik bliver det tydeligt, at kvinder aldrig opnåede at blive ligestillet med mænd.

Per Anders Rudling, Wallenberg Academy Fellow at Lund University, reviews Between Lenin and Bandera: Decommunisation and Multivocality in (post)Euromaidan Ukraine written by Anna Kutina.

Abstract: A tragedy of the Galician diversity: Murder and commemoration of Polish professors killed in Lviv during WWIIIn popular imagery, the former Habsburg province of Galicia and its capital city Lemberg/Lwów/Lviv have been acclaimed for their unique mixture of religions, cultures and nationalities. However, there are also darker sides of this Galician diversity, as became evident during the wars and crises of the first half of the twentieth century. It is instructive to explore how the entanglements between collective and individual choices, cultural genealogies and political aspirations looked in practice in this part of Europe, and how historical events of the twentieth century have reflected this complexity. This article explores one such event: the murder of a group of eminent Polish academics during the Nazi occupation of Lviv/Lwów. After the war, this tragic episode was commemorated quite independently in the two parts of Galicia now divided by the redrawn Polish–(Soviet)Ukrainian border. The episode remains controversial due to the contradictory interpretative frameworks and agenda-setting of various actors involved into the memorialization. The author draws on Michael Rothberg's concept of multidirectional memory to highlight how reverberations of Galician diversity can be approached from an anthropological perspective, focusing on meaning-making and agency.

Mens journalister har lett for å ty til adjektiver for å beskrive et økologisk katastrofeområde, er det vanskeligere å se og formidle årsakssammenhenger. Hvorfor fikk ikke sovjetiske, senere russiske, myndigheter i samarbeid med sine nordiske naboland stanset de grenseoverskridende svovelskyene fra østsiden av Pasvikelven? Det er disse spørsmålene Lars Rowe på en systematisk og beundringsverdig godt dokumentert måte gir svar på i boken Pollution and Atmosphere in Post-Soviet Russia: The Arctic and the Environment.
Journalists easily find adjectives to describe environmental catastrophes; it is more difficult, however, to ascertain and convey their causes. Why, for example, didn't Soviet, and later Russian, authorities collaborate with Nordic neighbors and manage to put a stop to the sulphur clouds emanating from the eastern side of the Pasvik River? Lars Rowe looks at this question in a systematic and admirably well-documented way and provides answers in his book, Pollution and Atmosphere in Post-Soviet Russia: The Arctic and the Environment.

Niels Bo Poulsen, director of the Department of Military History and War Studies at the Royal Danish Defence College, reviews Industry, War and Stalin's Battle for Resources: The Arctic and the Environment by Lars Rowe.

Abstract: Armenia and Europe: Foreign Aid and Environmental Politics in the Post-Soviet Caucasus Lene Wetteland (Norwegian Helsinki Committee) reviews Armenia and Europe: Foreign Aid and Environmental Politics in the Post-Soviet Caucasus by Dr. Pål Wilter Skedsmo. The book is a revised version of his 2017 PhD thesis in Social Anthropology. Skedsmo uses his personal experience from a project on environmental rights in Armenia in the early 2010s and Armenian civil society's application of the Aarhus Convention as case studies to discuss the issue of Europeanization of Armenia in this context.

Abstract: Religion, Expression, and Patriotism in Russia: Essays on Post-Soviet Society and the StateYuliya Yurchuk (postdoctoral researcher, Historical and Contemporary Studies, Södertörn University) reviews Religion, Expression, and Patriotism in Russia: Essays on Post-Soviet Society and the State, edited by Sanna Turoma, Kaarina Aitamurto and Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover.

Helge Blakkisrud (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs) reviews the anthology Nationhood and Politization of History in School Textbooks: Identity, the Curriculum and Educational Media, edited by Gorana Ognjenović and Jasna Joselić.

Abstract: Narrating Otherness in Poland and Sweden – European Heritage as a Discourse of Inclusion and ExclusionJørn Holm-Hansen reviews the anthology Narrating Otherness in Poland and Sweden – European Heritage as a Discourse of Inclusion and Exclusion edited by Krzysztof Kowalski, Łucja Piekarska-Duraj & Barbara Törnquist-Plewa.

Svein Mønnesland, professor emeritus at the University of Oslo, reviews Yugoslavia and Political Assassinations: The History and Legacy of Tito's Campaign against the Émigrés, by Christian Axboe Nielsen, published in 2020 by I.B. Tauris.

Abstract: Commemorating the Red Army Liberation in Kirkenes, Norway, 1954–1994This study traces the development over fifty years of the joint Norwegian–Soviet/Russian commemorations of the Red Army liberation of the eastern part of Finnmark County, Norway, in October 1944. The first commemorative events were held in October 1954 in the town of Kirkenes close to the Norwegian–Soviet border. Throughout the Cold War and into the post-Soviet period, such events have been arranged in Kirkenes every five years, with representatives of the Norwegian state authorities acting as hosts to a Soviet/Russian delegation. The focal point of these events has been a ceremony held by the Liberation Monument, unveiled in 1952 to honour the Red Army soldiers who liberated Norwegian territory by driving back the Nazi occupation forces. This article documents how the tradition of joint commemorations developed across the Iron Curtain divide as part of a predominantly diplomatic struggle over the events of October 1944, between Norway, a small state and NATO-member, and the superpower that was the Soviet Union. Our study concludes that, despite the struggle, which stemmed from Cold War tensions and competing security perceptions and interests, these joint commemorations have served as a stabilizing element in bilateral relations, producing a narrative not only about the Red Army liberation of eastern Finnmark, but also of friendship and mutual respect between the peoples of Norway and Russia, and of a long tradition of peaceful relations between the two states.