Abstract
For many centuries, the lands near the Baltic Sea have been a place of intensive contact between various groups of people, each with their unique social compositions, lifestyles, cultural traditions, and linguistic practices. From the Hanseatic League to European integration, trade, migration, and cultural exchange have shaped the region’s identity by bringing together individuals from very diverse backgrounds and facilitating communication among them.
The thematicv issue titled “Baltic Region as a Place of Contacts” aims to explore the rich history, cultural dynamics, and socioeconomic interactions within the Baltic region. It seeks to shed light on the multifaceted nature of the Baltic countries and their role as a vibrant meeting point for diverse communities, ideas, and influences. By combining diverse perspectives and interdisciplinary approaches, by examining historical, cultural, linguistic, and socio-political dimensions, this collection of articles will contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the Baltic region as a place for contacts, exchanges, and cross-cultural fertilization.
One may ask whether the Baltic region really exists or whether it is just a colonial notion introduced by Baltic German (das Baltikum) that corresponds to the so-called Baltic Sea provinces (die Ostseeprovinzen) and that gradually has become an umbrella term covering the modern Baltic states. To an extent, any notion like “Baltic region,” “Eastern Europe,” “Nordic countries,” and so on is based on outsiders’ projection, be it colonizing powers or neighbors. As an opposite, a stereotype exists that all Baltic countries are more or less the same.
The matter becomes more complex if we take into account ever changing borders (for instance, Estland is not equivalent to Estonia nor congruent to the territory where varieties of Estonian are spoken). The military, economic, cultural and linguistic impact on the indigenous populations depended on different neighbors and colonizers. For instance, Estonian (Uralic, Finnic) and Latvian (Indo-European, Baltic) belong to different language families, but due to the long history of political dominance by speakers of Germanic varieties (Danes, Germans, Swedes), a considerable trace of mostly Low German (later also High German) is present in the lexicon and grammar. However, Lithuanian that is closely related to Latvian does not exhibit such an impact because of a different political history: first, a full-fledged state of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania existed prior to the crusaders (Swordbrothers Order) attempts to conquer it; second, the Order never succeeded to subjugate these lands and was defeated in 1410 at the famous battle of Grünwald (known also as Tannenberg, or Žalgiris in Lithuanian). On the other hand, Polish cultural and political influence on Lithuania (both in political and ethnolinguistic sense) cannot be underestimated.
However, despite obvious differences, some of which are mentioned above, one may speak about the Baltic region as a whole. The later political history, starting from the point when all the territories of contemporary Baltic states became a part of the Russian Empire (Latvia and Estonia as a result of the Northern War, 1700–1721; Lithuania as a result of the partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793, and 1795) was pretty much similar: so-called late modernization and national awakening in the 19th century, strive for independence and struggle against Russification; first period of independence 1918–1940, followed by the Soviet (1940–1941, 1944–1991) and Nazi (1941–1944) occupations and, finally, the restoration of independence in 1991. Whether one wishes that or not, there is a common, both popular and scholarly, conceptualization of the Baltic region as a whole. For instance, nobody argues against the title of the well-established Association of the Advancement of Baltic Studies in Maryland (USA) in 1968 (https://aabs-balticstudies.org/about-aabs/) and the Journal of Baltic Studies founded by the association. Some now classical studies, for instance, by Misiunas and Taagepera (1993) on the period of the Soviet occupation, or newer concise historical accounts (i.e., Kasekamp, 2010; Plakans, 2011) refer to the whole region, trying to address its complexity, including also historical and colonizing minorities and their cultural intricacies.
When collecting this special issue, we tried to embrace this complexity, and to bring together scholars from different disciplines and research fields, working on topics, some of which go far beyond the stereotypical perception of the Baltic region, focusing, for instance, on migration from the area or comparison between neighboring cultures. At the same time, the same leitmotifs appear in the articles dealing with very distant topics: linguistic and cultural diversity and resulting challenges and conflicts; trans-border movements and influences; connections between the present and the past; individual and group attitudes and reactions to changes.
The order of the articles in the special issue reflects, rather than discipline division, connections between different phenomena in the Baltic context. The authors also represent different research institutions, both within and outside of the studied region.
The first article, “In the shadow of war: public opinion in the Baltic States, 2014; 2021” by Joakim Ekman (Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES), Södertörn University, Stockholm), is the only one dealing with all three Baltic countries, and it provides an important background for understanding the current socio-political situation in the region. By comparing data from several opinion surveys, Ekman shows the differences in geopolitical attitudes of ethnic majorities and Russian-speaking minorities, existing, but not on the same level, in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Confirming and updating findings familiar from previous studies, this article also notes that the population groups in the three Baltic States were growing more or less accustomed to the domestic situation, up until the escalation of the Russo–Ukrainian war in 2022.
The second article, “The curious case of Aistija: sidelights on Latvian-Lithuanian rapprochement during the 20th century” by James Montgomery Baxenfield (Tallinn University) introduces a largely overlooked historical phenomenon, the obscure Aistijan movement which arose from the idea to establish a Latvian–Lithuanian state. After the Second World War and Soviet occupation of the Baltic States, small hubs of Aistijan activity appeared in a variety of locations around the globe where Lithuanian and Latvian exiles and emigres resided. Those involved in the movement, following their political aspirations, actively cultivated a shared Baltic heritage as a common (largely fantastical and imagined) history, and also tried to overcome evident linguistic differences through language learning and promoting the idea of the initial multilingualism of “Aestii people.”
Representation of the past and its usage for current political purposes is also the subject of the third article, “Neighbours of the Empire: images of Russia in Lithuanian and Polish textbooks” by Tomasz Błaszczak (Vytautas Magnus University), Małgorzata Głowacka-Grajper (University of Warsaw), Rūstis Kamuntavičius (Vytautas Magnus University) and Agnieszka Nowakowska (University of Warsaw). It analyses textbooks for social sciences and recent history published in Poland and Lithuania beginning from the gaining independence of both countries after the First World War until Russia’s aggression on Ukraine in 2014, to reveal the image of the Soviet Union and Russia presented by the Lithuanian and Polish states to the youngest generation. The article shows how textbooks present the Russian state as irrational and dangerous and how the longue durée of imperial thinking is seen as the leitmotif of the narratives on Russian history.
The next article, “Latinization projects in Karaite and Jewish linguistic environment in the 20th century Poland and Lithuania” by Dovilė Troskovaitė (Vilnius University), studies another transnational influence—the idea of Latinization that came from Turkey—on minority groups of the same two countries, Poland and Lithuania, closely connected through the centuries. It shows how the emergence of nationalism and modernization encouraged language reforms within different ethnic groups, and how these processes were a part of a bigger movement, amplified by Jewish migration to other countries.
This migration and its impact on transnational ties between emigrant communities and young Lithuanian state in the interwar period are the topics of the fifth article, “‘‘I go where they go’: Emigration and Jewish connections with Lithuania 1918-1940” by Dovilė Čypaitė-Gilė (Vilnius University). In fact, emigration was part of the daily life for many Eastern Europeans starting from the second half of the 19th century, especially for Jews; however, emigration did not necessarily mean the breaking of all ties with the abandoned country, as the article clearly shows. It focuses on the existence of extended networks of emigrants and the attempts of the Lithuanian government to instrumentalize them for financial and political benefits. Most importantly, it helps to understand the transnational and diverse nature of what could be seen from the distance in time as a monolithic national state.
Emigration was an important factor for all three Baltic States through the whole 20th century, and it remains important nowadays. One of the form of connection between emigrant communities and their homeland is heritage language maintenance, the topic pursued in the next article of the special issue, “Motivation of Lithuanian Saturday school heritage language teachers” by Kristina Jakaitė-Bulbukienė (Vilnius University) and Akvilė Matulionytė (Vilnius University). Despite the fact that Lithuanian is not a language with a high pragmatic and symbolic value outside the country, the growing number of Lithuanian Saturday schools teaching the language to heritage speakers in different countries means that keeping it a symbolic resource is considered crucial by many emigrants. The article puts in the focus the teachers working or volunteering in these schools and seeks to find out what brings and keeps them there, or, in other words, what is their motivation for maintaining Lithuanian as a transnational language.
Another interesting case of transnational cultural connections against the background of political events and the role of individuals in this process is presented by the seventh article in the volume, “Translating Ukrainian poetry into Estonian: the acts of identity” by Anna Verschik (Tallinn University). After the start of the full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, interest towards Ukraine and its language and culture increased in the Baltic countries, including Estonia, where, until recently, the general public knew little about these subjects. The study based on the interviews with people translating Ukrainian poetry into Estonian seeks to explore the translators’ motives, their history of discovering Ukrainian poetry and language, and the impact of their own multilingualism and language attitudes.
Multilingualism and language contact as a result of immigration and foreign cultural influences historically were an indispensable part of life in the Baltic region. The article “Multilingual Tallinn: people and languages in the urban space” by Kapitolina Fedorova (Tallinn University) and Natalia Tšuikina (Tallinn University) focuses on the linguistic scene of the Estonian capital and the distribution of different languages in the city space, both in visual and aural landscapes. The study shows a mismatch between visual linguistic representation and actual linguistic diversity and tries to contemplate it in a broader historical context of multilingualism and language contacts in the Baltic region.
The topic of connections between historical past and modern urban environment becomes central in the last article of the special issue, “Noblessner district in Tallinn: recycling the pasts to discover the futures” by Irina Seits (Södertörn University, Stockholm). It analyses strategies for the revitalization of industrial heritage in Tallinn and reflects on the reuses of history from the late Russian Empire to the Soviet occupation, using the example of the Noblessner district, one of Estonia’s most vibrant and rapidly developing seafront quarters. The article shows how the revitalization of the Noblessner district avoids citing controversial episodes from its history, developing a space in which the past is presented selectively. Noblessner’s biography is fragmented to be used as recycled material for appealing wrapping that can attract investors, visitors, and residents. In this sense, it is an attempt to create an idealistic image, overcoming the gaps and conflicts between different views on the past attested by the opinion surveys discussed in Ekman’s opening article.
Thus, we hope that the current special issue will provide new reflections on various aspects of culture, history, languages, and societies of the Baltic region, and will be useful both for specialists in the field and newcomers.
