Download or read book The Baltic States and the End of the Cold War written by Kaarel Piirimäe and published by Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania at the end of the Cold War - Politics of history in Russia - Gorbachev, Perestroika and Glasnost - Atheism, and informal social networks - Soviet cultural diplomacy - Danish diplomacy and the Baltic question - Normalization regime in Czechoslovakia - Baltic diasporas - Use of force and the coup d'état in the USSR in 1991 - Security narratives in the 1990s

Download or read book The Baltic Question During the Cold War written by John Hiden and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-03-07 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume presents a comprehensive analysis of the ‘Baltic question’, which arose within the context of the Cold War, and which has previously received little attention. This volume brings together a group of international specialists on the international history of northern Europe. It combines country-based chapters with more thematic approaches, highlighting above all the political dimension of the Baltic question, locating it firmly in the context of international politics. It explores the policy decision-making mechanisms which sustained the Western non-recognition of Soviet sovereignty over the Baltic States after 1940 and which eventually led to the legal restoration of the three countries’ statehood in 1991. The wider international ramifications of this doctrine of legal continuity are also examined, within the context both of the Cold War and of relations between post-soviet Russia and the enlarging ‘Euro-Atlantic area’. The book ends with an examination of how this Cold War legacy continues to shape relations between Russia and the West.

Download or read book The Baltic States written by Thomas Lane and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the end of the Cold War there has been an increased interest in the Baltics. The Baltic States brings together three titles, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, to provide a comprehensive and analytical guide integrating history, political science, economic development and contemporary events into one account. Since gaining their independence, each country has developed at its own pace with its own agenda and facing its own obstacles. The authors examine the tensions accompanying a post-communist return to Europe after the long years of separation and how each country has responded to the demands of becoming a modern European state. Estonia was the first of the former Soviet republics to enter membership negotiations with the European Union in 1988 and is a potential candidate for the next round of EU expansion in 2004. Lithuania and Latvia have also expressed their desire for future membership of NATO and the EU.

Download or read book The Baltic States and the End of the Soviet Empire written by Kristian Gerner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1993. How is it possible for the three tiny Baltic republics to gain their freedom from the Soviet Union, without a single shot being fired or a single stone thrown at the oppressor? The topic of this book is the implosion of the Soviet empire. It tells the parallel stories of how the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania struggled successfully to gain their freedom, and how the policies pursued by Mikhail Gorbachev served to mobilize and politicize Baltic demands. Particular emphasis is placed on unintended consequences that resulted from repeated interventions by Moscow. The authors develop a loose theoretic framework for the examination of this critical struggle. The study starts by developing the analytical tools and then proceeds to outline, as background, the most salient features of Gorbachev's reform programme and of the history of the Baltic States. The core of the analysis is then presented in three chapters, devoted to three consecutive stages in the game. The first shows how strategies on both sides were initially formulated in consensus. In the second it is shown how consensus transformed into pure conflict, and in the third all actors are seeking to escape general collapse. The main conclusion points at the absence of ‘politics’ in the Soviet System as a main cause of its self-destruction.

Download or read book Travel Guide written by Johannes Bach Rasmussen and published by Nordic Council of Ministers. This book was released on 2010 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This travel guide describes selected important historical relics,sites and museums in the Baltic Sea region telling the history ofthe Cold War period. There is public access to nearly all the sites included in the book. It covers places such as missile bases, large artillery batteries, secret police prisons, closed military towns, partisan bunkers, execution and burial sites, nuclear bunker complexes, secret printing houses, former Soviet sculptures and architecture along with many of the sites where important events took place, such as demonstrations, freedom struggles etc. The museums described recount the histories of the Berlin Wall, the military build-up in both East and West, the military crises, the terror of Stalin and the Communist secret police, the armed and unarmed resistance in former Soviet countries and its satellite states, the deportations of slave labourers to remote parts of the Soviet Union, the deportations to the GULAG camps and the struggles for freedom from Communist regimes in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, East Germany and Russia.

Download or read book Politics of Uncertainty written by Una Bergmane and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "30 years after the Soviet collapse this book aims to tackle the interplay between international and domestic dynamics in the Soviet disintegration process. Based on extensive archival research, it investigates the triangular relations between the US government, Baltic independence movements and Moscow during the Perestroika years. Occupied and illegally annexed by the USSR in 1940 Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were the first Soviet republics to push the limits of Perestroika and demand independence from the Soviet Union. The Baltic problem, minor at first glance, started to gain more and more international visibility and by 1990 risked derailing issues that mattered in the eyes of both Soviet and American leaders -- the transformation of the Soviet state and transformation of the European order. Both Washington and Moscow wanted to diffuse the Baltic crisis, but none of them were certain how to do it. The United States had never recognized the annexation of the Baltic states and thus tried to perform a highly challenging balancing act of supporting Baltic independence without jeopardizing their relations with Kremlin. Meanwhile Gorbachev faced an increasingly pressing choice between democratization and preservation of the Soviet empire. In other words this book studies the relations between those at the top of international and domestic power hierarchies with those situated at their margins. It shows how at the time of deep historical change the disruption of existing power structures causes uncertainty that limits the agency of the powerful and opens widows of opportunity for those seen as marginal"--

Download or read book The End of the Cold War 1985 1991 written by Robert Service and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 26 December, 1991, the hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time. Yet, just six years earlier, when Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and chose Eduard Shevardnadze as his foreign minister, the Cold War seemed like a permanent fixture in world politics. Until its denouement, no Western or Soviet politician foresaw that the standoff between the two superpowers -- after decades of struggle over every aspect of security, politics, economics, and ideas -- would end within the lifetime of the current generation. Nor was it at all obvious that that the Soviet political leadership would undertake a huge internal reform of the USSR, or that the threat of a nuclear Armageddon could or would be peacefully wound down. Drawing on pioneering archival research, Robert Service's gripping investigation of the final years of the Cold War pinpoints the extraordinary relationships between Ronald Reagan, Gorbachev, George Shultz, and Shevardnadze, who found ways to cooperate during times of exceptional change around the world. A story of American pressure and Soviet long-term decline and overstretch, The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991 shows how a small but skillful group of statesmen grew determined to end the Cold War on their watch and transformed the global political landscape irreversibly.

Download or read book Bridging the Baltic Sea written by Lars Fredrik Stöcker and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-12-20 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the origins, evolution, and goals of Polish and Estonian émigré politics in Cold War Sweden and its linkages with both the host and homeland societies, this book investigates the transnational dimension of resistance and opposition to the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. The analysis of the constantly shifting, at times conspiratorial, and even subversive networks that transcended the Iron Curtain draws a line from World War II to the collapse of the Soviet Union, framing half a century of transnationally concerted political activism in a geographical context that has not received much scholarly attention. Challenging the image of the Baltic Sea Region as a periphery of the European Cold War theater, the topography of the multilayered and complex linkages between neutral Sweden and her opposite coasts suggests that the small inland sea was a particularly vibrant setting for processes that efficiently defied the rigid border regimes of the Cold War era. This book relates both to ongoing historiographical debates about the scope and extent of East-West contacts that developed underneath the radar of international diplomacy and to the question of the role, significance, and impact of émigré politics during the Cold War. Embedding the dynamics of transnationally framed opposition in the wider context of political, economic, and cultural relations at the northeastern peripheries of divided Europe, the study not only sheds new light on so far still unexplored facets of interaction and cooperation between societies in East and West, but also offers a first comprehensive synthesis of the Baltic Sea Region’s post-war history.

Download or read book Post Cold War Identity Politics written by Marko Lehti and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-11-23 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the past decade northern Europe has started to assume an identity of its own. Categories of East and West have become blurred, challenging as well the idea of what it means to be Nordic. Post-Cold War Identity Politics maps this process in Scandinavia. Looking at projects designed to help regional development in the Nordic countires, it assesses whether a new way of defining 'Northern-ness' is emerging. The book highlights the existence of co-existing and - to some extent - competing region-building projects in northern Europe. It demonstrates how they are all efforts by existing nations to redefine their role in Europe at a time of change, and points to how they might develop in the future.

Download or read book US Policy in the Nordic Baltic Region written by Ann-Sofie Dahl and published by Santerus Forlag / Santerus Academic Press Sweden. This book was released on 2008 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dahl analyzes the role that the Nordic-Baltic region has played in U.S. strategy in the 60 years since the end of World War II.

Download or read book Europe and the End of the Cold War written by Frederic Bozo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-06 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to reassess the role of Europe in the end of the Cold War and the process of German unification. Much of the existing literature on the end of the Cold War has focused primarily on the role of the superpowers and on that of the US in particular. This edited volume seeks to re-direct the focus towards the role of European actors and the importance of European processes, most notably that of integration. Written by leading experts in the field, and making use of newly available source material, the book explores "Europe" in all its various dimensions, bringing to the forefront of historical research previously neglected actors and processes. These include key European nations, endemic evolutions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, European integration, and the pan-European process. The volume serves therefore to rediscover the transformation of 1989-90 as a European event, deeply influenced by European actors, and of great significance for the subsequent evolution of the continent.

Download or read book Exiting the Cold War Entering a New World written by Daniel S. Hamilton and published by Foreign Policy Institute. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how and why the dangerous yet seemingly durable and stable world order forged during the Cold War collapsed in 1989, and how a new order was improvised out of its ruins. It is an unusual blend of memoir and scholarship that takes us back to the years when the East-West conflict came to a sudden end and a new world was born. In this book, senior officials and opinion leaders from the United States, Russia, Western and Eastern Europe who were directly involved in the decisions of that time describe their considerations, concerns, and pressures. They are joined by scholars who have been able to draw on newly declassified archival sources to revisit this challenging period.

Download or read book Russian Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War written by Mike Bowker and published by Dartmouth Publishing Company. This book was released on 1997 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cold war dominated international politics in the second half of the twentieth century. Before Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, few could ever have imagined a world without the East-West divide. Yet, six years later, the cold war was over. The Berlin Wall was down, Germany was reunited and Marxism-Leninism had been abandoned throughout Europe. How this happened is the main focus of the first half of this book. The author looks in detail at both internal and external factors precipitating change in Russia. Monocausal explanations are rejected. Instead, it is argued that the reason for change varied over time and across issue areas. However, the book does emphasize the importance of Gorbachev and his reformist colleagues in initiating reform in the USSR and bringing the cold war to a peaceful end.The second half of the book looks at the post-soviet period when the initial euphoria over the end of communism gave way to growing unease both inside and outside Russia. Russian diplomacy in Yugoslavia and the war in Chechnya were just two of the most important prominent actions which led many Western commentators to accuse Moscow of adopting a more nationalist and aggressive foreign policy. However, the author argues that this shift in policy is easy to exaggerate. The brutal war in Chechnya was certainly a terrible warning of what could happen, but it remained untypical of policy during the Yeltsin period. A return to hostile relations with the West is not impossible, but it remains highly unlikely. For in contrast to the cold war period, both sides now agree on the principles of a liberal international order and this, rather than the current weakness of Russia, would seem to offer the best hope in the coming years for a co-operative, less antagonistic Russian policy towards it neighbours and the West

Download or read book Rethinking Security in Post Cold War Europe written by William Park and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-11 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a survey of the principal items on the agenda following the end of the Cold War, focusing upon the institutions and regions where the reconsideration of security issues has been particularly profound. The book is organised into three main sections: the first examines the changed roles of the main security institutions which have survived the Cold War; NATO, the European Union/Western European Union and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The second analyses the Central European countries, Russia and States of the former Soviet Union in terms of their ideologies, political structures and relationships of the Cold War period. Lastly the text examines the northern and southern regions of Europe where quite different perspectives and agendas are concerned.

Download or read book The Baltic Sea Region and the Cold War written by Olaf Mertelsmann and published by Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume focuses on the Baltic Sea region during the Cold War. Recent research conducted in several countries has sought to revise a number of long-established assumptions about the Cold-War conflict, as they do not seem to fit into the context of the Baltic world. The bipolar perspective on the Cold War is more and more being replaced by the idea of multiple players being active on different levels. Thus it is now recognised that the so called Iron Curtain was not insurmountable and a variety of contacts in such fields as economics, culture, media or tourism could take place. In addition, neutral countries also participated vividly in Cold War interaction. Thus, not only high politics, security or military issues were at stake.

Download or read book The Baltic States written by Luke Coffey and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have proven to be staunch American allies since they regained their independence in the early 1990s. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, each has made huge progress in implementing democracy, rule of law, economic freedom, and developing a strong national defense. They accomplished this by aligning themselves with the West, particularly the United States, while rejecting Russian calls to remain neutral or inside the Russian sphere of influence after the end of the Cold War. While small in size and population, the Baltic states represent something much bigger geopolitically: They are staunch defenders of economic freedom, liberal democracy, and human rights. The U.S. should deepen the U.S.- Baltic defense and security relationship by proactively seeking new areas of cooperation and building on old ties. It is in America's as well as NATO's interests to do so.

Download or read book The Baltic States and Their Region written by David James Smith and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2005 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With EU and NATO membership for the Baltic States now a reality, this volume examines the relationship of the three countries, their constituent peoples and their surrounding region to the wider Europe, both historically and in the period since 1991. In particular, the contributors seek to locate the Baltic area within the manifold debates surrounding the concepts of "new" and "old" Europe, including those occasioned by the current conflict in Iraq. Covering issues of identity, sovereignty, minority rights, security and relations with Russia the work assesses the likely contribution of this region to an enlarged Euro-Atlantic community. It will appeal to specialists and students in the fields of area studies, history, politics and international relations.