Suchergebnisse

The second issue of volume 12 of The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies continues to reflect the academic discussions occasioned by the Eleventh Conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies of May 2020. Prof. Radu Carp was one of the keynote speakers of the conference and his address on Combining soft power with the geopolitical approach – how difficult is it for the EU to change its attitude? elicited a great interest among the presenters and attenders of the scientific event. As in any such scholarly event, especially an international gathering with a critical focus on the construction/reconstruction of Europe in vital moments of its past and recent past aspirations, the viewpoints of the participants, including the analysis of Prof. Carp on the current challenges of the EU are passed on to the wider community of fellow researchers, the public and decision-makers. The call for stepping up to a new level of integration and geopolitical power projection is dissected both in its soft and hard power dimension without eschewing the focus on democracy, climate change mitigation measures or cybersecurity.

On 28-29 May 2020 in full Coronavirus pandemic upsurge and lockdown conditions the Eleventh Conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies gathered on Zoom instead of The Palace of Culture and The Middle Age Citadel of Târgu Mureș as initially planned. The meeting was summoned in partnership with Rethinking Europe in order to reflect, from the perspective of the Baltic Sea Region, upon the Old Continent in the context of Brexit and the pandemic. Questions on the impact of the recent evolutions on Baltic and Scandinavian states have been raised, but the perspective was much wider looking on how the countries of this region responded to structural changes or alterations of the international environment over time.
The two plenary sessions on the EU after Brexit: Perspectives on the Future of Europe and Constructions of Christian Identity and the Idea of the Holy Land in the Northern Periphery: The Sawley World Map in Twelfth-Century England appropriately mirrored the sequential diversity of the conference. Panels have been devoted to Encounters, fantasies and perceptions in shaping Europe, Rethinking Europe in Nordic and Baltic cultures, Rethinking the Baltic Sea Region in Europe during the interwar period, Rethinking Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region in Europe during the two world wars, Intercultural relations in the Nordic and Baltic countries, Reception of Nordic literature, New perspectives on Norwegian literature, Teaching and use of Nordic languages. The main theories, concepts and ideas presented are resumed in the Book of Abstracts published before the conference, while the full papers are assembled in volume 12, issues 1 and 2 of our biannual peer review journal.
The Honorary Chair of the Conference, Her Excellency Dr. Violeta Motulaitė, Ambassador of the Republic of Lithuania in Romania and Bulgaria, Honorary President of the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies, has focused in her lecture, published in this issue, on the Lithuanian perspective of the current European Brexit and Covid crisis, professing that:

The core approach of the work deals with postcolonial studies and the geographical reference area of "Western Borderlands", which largely consists of Eastern and East Central Europe. However, the Baltic states stand at the focus of the analysis and as such they are devoted the largest share of the eight chapters of the book. Colonialism, coloniality, and post-colonial are insightfully analyzed in the monograph and the author blends them to concepts such as colonial subject positions and colonial ideology. How to behave properly, what one could speak or do in public and what one instantly felt was forbidden, what could be published and what was rather to be shelved established certain boundaries between the conceivable and the inconceivable. Everything was driven by the colonial ideology which Annus defines as "a system of beliefs and corresponding statements that motivate and guide colonial discourse". Spotlighting both colonial subject positions and colonial ideology and further encompassing the notion of colonization in the meaning of "territorial acquisition" and "system of domination", the book is clearly operating in an innovative conceptual framework which turns it into a vital contribution in colonial/postcolonial studies.

The theme of the 2019 conference of the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies was crafted with our regretted colleague and distinguished academic Leonidas Donskis. In the meanwhile, conformism seems to have pervaded larger categories of public in East-Central Europe and beyond, and new "illiberal democracies" evolved. A composite of authoritarian leader and godfather have taken the reins of power in the area. Populist parties and movements are on the rise. Resurgent nationalisms are again offered as a substitute to solutions. The refugee crisis lingers on and no common decisions have been adopted within the EU to solve it on the basis of the European values. The EU institutions are in need of reform and decisions on the course of the organization and its future enlargement process are still pending.
The conference aimed at analysing two often interrelated phenomena: dissent and conformism. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars nationalism and eventually modern political ideologies became the main competitors for power and control in Europe. Nationalisms unleashed the forces of destruction during the world wars while the clash of ideologies set off ahead of the French Revolution shaped the destiny of Europe during the 20th century. Dictatorships and even more so totalitarian regimes required unwavering conformism and full devotedness from their subjects, while encouraging dissent in the competing camp.
Conformism has shown many faces from the Antiquity to Contemporary Age, from pretence to obedience, and an individual person could evolve during his/her lifetime between the two extremes. Sometimes, as many dystopian novels reveal, the conformist grows into dissident and even becomes a major target of his/her former patrons. Conversely, former dissidents can return to loyalty, and often the prize to be paid is betrayal of former affined spirits. The archives of Scandinavian, Baltic and Black Sea regions preserve numerous documents of such instances. Conformism can also take the form of what Zygmunt Bauman and Leonidas Donskis called "liquid modernity", the situation of an individual who flows from one attitude to another, from one perspective to the other, from a set of values to an opposing one:

The liquid modern variety of adiaphorization is cut after the pattern of the consumer–commodity relation, and its effectiveness relies on the transplantation of that pattern to interhuman relations. As consumers, we do not swear interminable loyalty to the commodity we seek and purchase in order to satisfy our needs or desires, and we continue to use its services as long as but no longer than it delivers on our expectations – or until we come across another commodity that promises to gratify the same desires more thoroughly than the one we purchased before. All consumer goods, including those described as 'durable', are eminently exchangeable and expendable; in consumerist – that is consumption inspired and consumption servicing – culture, the time between purchase and disposal tends to shrink to the degree to which the delights derived from the objects of consumption shift from their use to their appropriation.

When the World War I began Lithuania was on the vanguards of the military operations. Around 60,000 Lithuanians were recruited in the Russian Army and employed on the operational fronts of the war. However, they were not blind performers of Tsarist ambitions, but, as The Amber Declaration showed, nurtured political ambitions of their own. The document issued on 4/17 August 1914 was signed, inter alia, by the patriarch of national credo, Jonas Basanavičius , and clearly affirmed the Lithuanian ideals, i.e. the aim of unifying Lithuania with Lithuania Minor then in German hands and the awarding of an autonomous status to a united Lithuania within the Russian Empire. This article tackles an enticing moment in the process of national rebirth, the Congress of the Representatives of the Lithuanian Military Officers of the Romanian Front held in Bender (Tighina), in southern Bessarabia, on 1-3 November 1917, calling for the creation of a Lithuanian national state. How this congress and the proclamation it issued fitted into the general frame of self-determination movements and Lithuanian national revival of 1917-1918, which led to the rebirth of the Lithuanian state? Who were the conveners and the participants to this congress? What arguments did they put forward in their national-building claims? What role did it play on the pathway to Lithuanian independence? Overlooked in most of the Lithuanian historical treatises, the Congress of the Representatives of the Lithuanian Military Officers of the Romanian Front in Bender City had in fact of greater significance than it allows to be understood when counting solely the relatively lower visibility of its leaders or the direct institutional lineage to the proclamation of independence.

The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies devotes the first half of this issue to novel social analyses and paradigms tailored on societies on the interference of pre-modernity and modernity. A well-known researcher of the phenomenon, especially as it is reflected in an East-Central European setting, Nerijus Babinskas maintains that feudalism, in contrast to the classical Marxist-Leninist interpretation that had become a canon during the Communist regime, "was not an inevitable stage of pre-modern development of all European societies". By breaking apart of this ideological conception, Babinskas investigates the pros and cons of four Marxist alternative notions such as Asiatic mode of production, African mode of production, early Central European model or tributary mode of production, and a non-Marxist approach based on Max Weber's patrimonialism. The author contends that a blending of these interpretations is the way out of the conceptual ossification which over the past decades has led social research in the matter into a deadlock.

This issue ends with a summary of the first ten years of our journal. This shall be regarded as a tribute to the many authors who have brought a consistent contribution to the growth of the periodical of the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies.

The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies marks its tenth anniversary with a special issue devoted mainly to 100 Years since Modern Independence and Unification in Baltic Sea Region and East-Central Europe, which was the theme of the Ninth Annual International Conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies in Romania held at Valahia University of Târgoviște on November 15-16, 2018. The event focused on the historical, cultural, social and economic processes which led to the independence of Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Poland in the Baltic Sea Region, to the unification of Romania and the independence of Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary and Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) in East-Central Europe and the consequences of the reshaping of the entire region from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and Adriatic Sea. Several other political entities created at the end of World War I such as Ukraine, Georgia or Litbel succumbed after barely living for a few months or years of existence. How did the changes of borders and belonging affect the human communities living in the area and what impact did they have beyond the region on the short, medium and long-run? How were war and peace-making experienced in this region and how did they influence the changes of political geography? How did the processes of independence and unification reverberate throughout the region and how did state and non-state actors reflect, echo and react to this structural transformation of the area? How does this metamorphosis resonate in historical memory, the politics of memory and cultural identity, in historical narratives, including competing narratives, and in the use of history in identity politics a century after the guns were silenced? How does literature permeate the changes occurring at the end of the war to end all wars in the region? How do art, architecture, patrimony, in general, capture the message of those tremendous transformations? Places of commemoration, autobiographies, biographies and memoirs, empiric or theoretical research relevant to the conference topic stood also at the core of the conference.

After several decades wherein the Viking studies seemed to allow little ground for new discoveries the past decades have shown the tremendous research potential they still offer to scholars. Gradually, the classical image of Viking warlords which permeated the historical writing starting already with – and often based on – the medieval chronicles has been nuanced and other hypostases of the Norseman have been discussed: the Viking as a trader, explorer, state crafter, etc. New study programmes of Viking studies have been established at universities in Scandinavia, but also in Britain, United States and Western Europe. Fresh historical sources have been discovered and old sources have been reinterpreted. In correlation with ethnographical studies, recent archaeological excavations and new insights into mythology, they greatly expanded our knowledge of the Viking Age and its continental and global role.

This article analyses the beginnings, development and prospect of Baltic studies in Romania. The article stands on three pillars. It starts with an investigation on the main sources of Romanian knowledge of the Baltic region and sorts out the way they have been represented in the Romanian mental images. Throughout the analysis, knowledge of each other is bonded to the concepts of memory and history based on the assumption that the largest part of our knowledge derives from remembering, this being applicable even in the high sphere of international relations. This theoretical framework is sampled to the case-study of Romania's knowledge of Baltic area assessing the medieval, modern and 20th century legacy of the Romanian encounters with the Baltic States discovering that, although the distance between Suceava, the medieval capital of Moldova, and Vilnius is less than 1,000 km. (or 600 miles) and the Principality of Moldova of Stephen the Great neighbored the state of Jagiellonians, in most cases, the legacy of the relations between Romanians and Baltic nations played little role in feeding a sense of solidarity or complementarity between these nations. This pattern is now challenged by courses on Baltic and Nordic studies taught at Valahia University of Târgoviște and the activity of the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies, which joins the efforts of scholars from various Romanian institutes and universities, especially from Iași, Cluj-Napoca, Bucharest, Constanța and Târgoviște. The analysis of these endeavors, the other two pillars of this article, brings forth educational, scholarly, editorial and dissemination efforts designed to change the perspective of the Romanian public in this respect.

Volume 9, issue no. 1 (2017) of Revista Română pentru Studii Baltice şi Nordice / The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies (RRSBN) is divided into three main parts. The first part deals with the Swedish perception of East-Central European 20th Century developments. The article bearing the signature of Paweł Jaworski of the University of Wrocław tackles the first two months Solidarność as seen from the perspective of the Swedish press. A very innovative article it details the imagology of the set up and evolution of the syndicate and investigates how the relations between this emerging independent civil society and the Communist Party evolved. The article corroborates press analysis with international relations and bilateral relations between Poland and Sweden and shows their impact on the rather privileged status enjoyed by Swedish journalists in the Communist country. The second article by Alin-Marian Dudoi focuses on Gustav Bolinder and Arvid Fredborg's accounts of Transylvania at the end of World War II. Although the original Swedish books and their significance have already been investigated by some authors, the article looks at their perspectives in relation to the Romanian national credo and adopts the stand of the former which supported the claim that Transylvania should belong to Romania mostly based on ethnography.

The current volume (8, issue 2 of 2016) of Revista Română pentru Studii Baltice şi Nordice / The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies (RRSBN) publishes mostly the papers presented at the Seventh International Conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies in Romania, Good governance in Romania and the Nordic and Baltic countries, hosted by the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies and Nicolae Iorga Institute of History of the Romanian Academy, București, 24-25 November, 2016, with the support of the embassies of Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Norway, the Consulate of Latvia to Bucharest and sponsored by Niro Investment Group.
The meeting focused on good governance in Romania and the Nordic and Baltic countries as seen from a variety of angles and from the perspective of various disciplines, institutions and practices related to accountability, transparency, the rule of law, responsibility, equity, inclusiveness, participation, efficiency, human rights protection, tangible, intangible and natural heritage conservation, etc. The conference tackled concepts, issues and good practices in terms of good governance, accountability, welfare, efficiency, gender equality in the public and private sectors in Scandinavia, the Baltic States and Romania as well as the institutions called upon to fight against corruption in these countries. Historical examples of good versus bad governance were also brought forth.

Volume 8, issue no. 1 (2016) of Revista Română de Studii Baltice şi Nordice/ The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies (RRSBN) gathers articles dealing with history, literary history and literary studies. The first group of articles engaged with topics related to Nordic and Baltic history from the early Middle Ages to the Modern Age. Such is the article which opens the journal signed by Costel Coroban. His thesis is that Konungs skuggsjá (King's Mirror or Speculum Regale), the piece of work elaborated in 1250 under King Hákon Hákonarson (1217-1263) for his son, future King Magnús lagabœtir (1263-1280), emphasizes piety as one of the essential features of a good Christian. Cases of arrogance and individualism have to be chastened and that was one of the essential attributes and duties of a sovereign. Roxana-Ema Dreve tackles the national identity building in Norway following the separation from Denmark and the creation of a union with Sweden. The article addresses the 1830s' developments especially with regard to the puzzling debate on the spoken and written national languages and the polemics of Henrik Wergeland and Johan Sebastian Welhaven. Henrik Ibsen continues to inspire inquiries in fields such as literature, social sciences, culture, philosophy as he did when he lived. Gianina Druță studies Ibsen's masterpiece Hedda Gabler inspired by Gilles Deleuze's concepts such as deterritorialisation, antigenealogy, rhizome or alliance. Dalia Bukelevičiūtė opens new perspectives in the field of social and welfare of Lithuanian population in Latvia during the interwar period and points out to the unbalanced situation between the two neighboring states of Latvia and Lithuania. While the number of Latvians in Lithuania who needed social protection was meagre, the number of Lithuanians in Latvia was considerable. This posed difficulties to the Lithuanian Government confronted, on one hand, with the needs of Lithuanians, the higher expenses of social services in Latvia and the desire to keep up the Lithuanian identity of the population across the border. This resulted into a wavering policy of the Lithuanian Governments which, however, always returned to the Convention on social assistance concluded with the Latvian counterparts in 1924.
This issue of our journal continues to tackle the perceptions of Nordic peoples on Romania, in this case Mihaela Mehedinţi-Beiean depicting the Nordic and Russian travellers' recollections of corruption and political instability imbedded into the Phanariot system of the 18th century Romania.
Finally, this issue brings to the fore a Norwegian personality with a significant role in the Romanian-Norwegian relations, author of chapters, articles and books dealing with this topic: Jardar Seim. Crina Leon successfully sails through the memories of Professor Seim's first encounters of Romania and the developments of this interest into a research topic.

The current issue of Revista Română de Studii Baltice și Nordice / The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies combines the publication of scientific articles highlighting issues of identity, memory, culture, translation and economy of the Nordic and Baltic area with an educational section featuring the innovative syllabi of disciplines to be taught at the summer school of Nordic and Baltic Studies, which is the core of the project "A piece of culture, a culture of peace" (CoolPeace), and a corpus of scientific articles. The project is financed under the measure "inter-institutional cooperation projects" of the EEA grants and is intended to strengthen the institutional cooperation at the level of higher education sector between all the partners involved: Valahia University of Târgoviște as the Project Promoter, the University of Agder, the University of Oslo, the Embassy of Lithuania in Romania, Peace Action Training and Research Institute of Romania and the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies. The Programme Operator of the EEA Scholarship Programme in Romania is ANPCDEFP (the National Agency for Community Programmes in the Field of Education and Vocational Training). The embassies of Finland, Norway and Sweden in Romania are cultural partners in this endeavour. Two of the articles published in this issue were presented at the Sixth international conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies in Romania entitled Historical memory, the politics of memory and cultural identity: Romania, Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region in comparison, hosted by the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies, Faculty of History and Political Sciences of Ovidius University of Constanța and International Summer School of The University of Oslo, Norway, in Constanța, Romania, on May 22-23, 2015, and financed within the Fund for Bilateral Relations at National Level. The 2015 conference focused on historical memory, the politics of memory and cultural identity, on historical narratives, including competing narratives, and on the use of history in identity politics. Places of commemoration, autobiographies, biographies and memoirs, empiric or theoretical research relevant to the conference's topic stood also at the heart of the meeting. While concentrating on the three subjects underlined in the title of the conference, it also sought to approach other topics of interconnection between Romania, the Black Sea region and Scandinavia and Baltic Sea Region such as the role of women in shaping the society, energy, geography and environment, economics and trade, international relations.