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| 1 |
ID:
161351
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| Summary/Abstract |
Nuclear assets are one of the cornerstones of credible collective deterrence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Paradoxically, the most endangered member states are the ones without nuclear capabilities, left with the hope and expectation that the owners of nuclear assets will defend them and that their potential enemies are deterred by these capabilities. However, the expectations from one side, practical commitment of allies from other side may not go in harmony and synchronisation. Is there a capability gap which needs to be fulfilled? If yes then, is the gap in the side of nuclear powers or is it on the side of those endangered states who need to understand what can or cannot realistically be expected? The current article focuses on the question of how the political and military elite of the Baltic states describes their expectations in terms of using Alliance's nuclear capabilities to deter Russia's regional ambitions.
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| 2 |
ID:
133755
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2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In June 1989, the First Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union established the Commission for Historical and Legal Estimation of the Soviet-German Non-aggression Pact of 1939. In the commission, representatives from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania condemned the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States, prompting heated arguments regarding the invalidity of the related secret protocol of the pact with other members who continued to hold the traditional Soviet ideological view of the pact as something positive. The debate over the secret protocol had the further potential to extend to disputes over 'recovery of lost territory' amongst the Baltic States, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and Russia. This article analyses the arguments used by commission members, considering the interplay of national interests, how they balanced arguments between restoration of 'state sovereignty' and maintenance of borders, and how they finally compromised and concluded the commission's report.
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| 3 |
ID:
128987
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2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
On 1 May 2014, the European Union (EU) celebrated the tenth anniversary of the accession of ten member states-Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Of these ten new members, eight were Central and East European (CEE) countries that had, for most of the twentieth century, been governed by communist regimes either as republics of the Soviet Union (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia), satellite states of the Soviet Union (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia) or as a constituent republic of Yugoslavia (Slovenia). In the subsequent ten years three additional post-communist countries have acceded to the EU (Romania and Bulgaria in 2007 and Croatia in 2013). Commenting on the 2004 EU accession of the first eight former communist countries, the then Irish Prime Minister and President of the European Council, Bertie Ahern, wrote that there was
a particular historical resonance as eight of the former communist countries in the east have emerged from the shadows of the Iron Curtain to join us in working for common goals and for mutual benefit. The artificial divisions, which have blighted our continent's history for so long, are finally being laid to rest.1
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| 4 |
ID:
022400
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Spring 2002.
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| Description |
105-128
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| 5 |
ID:
149622
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| Summary/Abstract |
In their battle to succeed Stalin in 1953, Lavrentii Beria and Nikita Khrushchev temporarily cooperated to launch an indigenising nationality policy in the Soviet Republics to compete for support among the non-Russian nationalities. The impact of this little known collaboration was the ‘New Course’ for the Soviet periphery. This essay examines the ‘New Course’ and its repercussions in Latvia. Moscow struggled to control the programme after it unleashed a wave of anti-Russian sentiment. With encouragement from nationalists in the Latvian leadership, Russian cadres were ousted from leading Party and government positions, sent back to Russia and replaced by ethnic Latvians.
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| 6 |
ID:
106284
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| 7 |
ID:
114095
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2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the historical development of the two different concepts of the Latvian nation: the one that included the equal participation of all ethnic groups residing in Latvia, and the one that put them at the margins of the new state. In 1919, citizenship was granted to all Latvian residents irrespective of their ethnicity, while the Law on Minorities' Schools established a framework for cultural autonomy. National unity was perceived as being crucial to state independence, and remained central to political debates in the first republic. However, similarly to elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, the creation of the political nation faced a number of serious domestic and international challenges. The worldwide economic depression and the parliamentary crisis of the 1930s finally tipped the scale in favour of the ethnic version of the Latvian nation. Nevertheless, even seventy years later, the brave multicultural experiment in this small Baltic country resonates with modern debates on nation-building and minority rights.
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| 8 |
ID:
180489
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This essay establishes a framework for analysing culture wars in the post-communist space. Using Latvia’s debate over the ratification of the Istanbul Convention on violence against women, it outlines the central features of culture wars: moralisation, externalisation of agency, the instrumentalisation of culture and the struggle for power and resources. While existing scholarship conceptualises culture wars as a dichotomous battle between the sacred and the secular, or between liberal and illiberal, our thematic analysis of the Istanbul Convention debate in Latvia finds it was less about culture and more a complex struggle between political and religious actors competing for power and resources.
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| 9 |
ID:
191733
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Scholars have done a great deal to unpack the motivations sitting behind nationalists’ appropriation of Holocaust-related memory laws in several eastern European and Baltic states. While these accounts have shed important light on memory politics, there remains much scope for further study. For example, several Eastern European and Baltic states have passed resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide, as well. Furthermore, the existing literature does not provide any analytical tools to conceptualize the dynamic and complex processes giving rise to memory laws. This article broadens the memory laws scholarship through an original analysis of Latvia's Armenian genocide recognition resolution of 2021. The findings highlight how diverse actors support and pass memory laws through a process of constructivist memory politics. Constructivist memory politics involves the strategies political actors employ to change the salience or meaning of historical events in the creation and promotion of memory laws. Although the analysis focuses on a single case, it provides the analytical tools to reorient how scholars approach memory laws both in Europe and elsewhere.
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| 10 |
ID:
130893
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2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
AFTER THE USSR'S COLLAPSE, the Baltic states came under the political influence of the US and the economic influence of the European Union. This influence was used by their new geopolitical "curators" to initiate an anti-Russian line in both the foreign and domestic policies of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, as well as to break their economic ties with Russia. At present, the only significant economic ties that Russia still has with the Baltic countries are in the energy sector. It's the supply of natural gas through the pipeline and distribution systems with the use of the Incukalns underground storage facility. It's also the supply of Russian electricity and rail deliveries of hydrocarbons via the Ventspils and Klaipeda ports.
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| 11 |
ID:
064921
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| 12 |
ID:
099838
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2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Sammy Smooha's "ethnic democracy" model challenged the notion of the uniqueness of Israel by setting it as the archetype of a special type of democracy: "ethnic democracy". But contrary to what Smooha suggests, Israel's national identity is indeed unique. In each of Smooha's East European examples, besides the concept of a core ethnic nation, exists the notion of a civic territorial nation, which makes possible the integration or 'assimilation' into the dominant culture of those who are not members of the core ethnic nation. Yet, Israel's national identity does not recognise the existence of a civic territorial nation and makes no provisions for the integration or assimilation of non-Jews, especially Arabs, into the dominant Hebrew culture. Setting Israel as an archetype for his model prevents Smooha from exploring the possibility that, unlike Israel, East European "ethnic democracy" could be a transitional phase towards a liberal democracy.
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| 13 |
ID:
052185
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| 14 |
ID:
172240
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Within the context of the debates on the worldwide rise of populism, this article aims to uncover factors that may reduce the vulnerability of a system to populist challenges. Based on existing theories, Hungary, Latvia and Romania are all susceptible to populism but authoritarian populism has emerged only in Hungary. This puzzle is addressed through examining the process of financial crisis management in the three cases and its impact on the political system. Comparative analysis shows that paternalistic expectations of the state and the government’s willingness to accept Russian support distinguish Hungary from Latvia and Romania.
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| 15 |
ID:
109004
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| 16 |
ID:
068708
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| 17 |
ID:
124325
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The structural funds were designed to give the European Commission supranational control over where regional aid was spent. In this article, we argue that domestic 'pork-barrel' politics determine which regions are awarded regional aid in the new member states of Eastern Europe. Support for our argument comes from a dataset that includes 1,688 European Regional Development Fund grants to Latvia's 118 regions and 1,533 pre-accession Phare awards to Bulgaria's 264 municipalities. In both Bulgaria and Latvia, we find that regional aid projects went to wealthier not poorer localities, and to those that supported coalition parties in the previous election.
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| 18 |
ID:
106037
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2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article seeks to understand why attitudes towards homosexuality in Latvia appear to be more intolerant than in all other EU member states. It argues that, while the impact of religion, the legacy of communism and post-communist transition have all played a role in shaping attitudes towards homosexuality in Central and Eastern Europe, these factors do not explain sufficiently the divergence among post-communist states and, in particular, do not account for Latvia's extreme position. While acknowledging that intolerance towards non-heteronormative sexuality cannot be explained by a single factor but is the cumulative effect of a range of social influences, this study argues that homosexuality is particularly reviled in Latvia because it has been constructed discursively as a threat to the continued existence of the nation in its desired ethnic form and to the core values defining Latvian national identity.
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| 19 |
ID:
110980
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2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
NATO announced on 8 February that it would be indefinitely extending the duration of the air-policing mission it maintains over the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. The NATO air-policing mission over the Baltic states was first established in 2004 and involves the alliance's member states operating a small deployment of aircraft on a rotating four-month basis. These aircraft, and their supporting ground crews, operate from the Siauliai airbase in Lithuania. At the time of the mission's inception, it was intended that it would run until 2011, by which time it was expected that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would have the capability to defend their íairspace against any potential Russian incursions. However, in 2009 it became clear that these countries were some way off fielding a viable air-defence capability and so NATO extended the mission to 2014. This date was subsequently further extended to 2018 and is expected to be pushed back again to 2024.
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| 20 |
ID:
141273
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article discusses the presidential historical commissions of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that were established in 1998 to research the crimes of the Nazi and Soviet totalitarian regimes and to overcome interpretive disputes that had begun to overshadow the new democracies' politics. Conceptually framed as a state tool of historical conflict resolution and reconciliation, the Baltic commissions' structure, operative work and results all reveal many of the pitfalls, but also the opportunities of such official bodies of historical truth-seeking. The article concludes that even though all three commissions had a clear reconciliatory aim, their operative processes and final output differed remarkably. Their contribution to actual reconciliation was also very limited.
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