Research in Central & East European Studies

2020-21 has been a busy year for GBRU members on many different fronts, despite the continued restrictions arising from the Covid-19 pandemic.

From the summer of 2020 the Unit too an active part in discussions leading to the establishment of the new Baltic Geopolitics Network coordinated from Cambridge (https://www.cfg.polis.cam.ac.uk/programmes/baltic), which was launched in January 2021 and has already held two major events – one marking a hundred years of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Estonia, the second reflecting on the UK’s engagement with the Baltic Region beyond Brexit.

After completing her PhD, Gintare Venzlauskaite was awarded an Associate Research Fellowship (Joseph P. Kazickas Scholarship) under the Baltic studies programme at MacMillan Centre, Yale University. Gintare was able to take up the Fellowship during the autumn, when she presented a paper (‘Identity, Agency, and the Constrains of Political Conditionality: Understanding Lithuanian Diasporas of Displacement Through Narratives of Return’) summarising the findings of her doctoral research.

2021 will see the publication of Defining Latvia: Recent Explorations in History, Culture, and Politics (Budapest: CEU Press), edited by Michael Loader in collaboration with Siobhán Hearne (University of Durham) and Matthew Kott (Uppsala University) and containing two contributions by Michael as well as one from Paula Oppermann. Michael also has further publications on Latvia’s National Communists forthcoming in Olaf Mertelsmann and Kaarel Piirimäe (eds), From Destalinization to the Global Sixties: The Baltic Union Republics in the 1950s–1960s, (New York: Peter Lang) and a new volume on Opposition, Conformism and Survival under Soviet and Nazi Regimes in 1940-1991 in the Baltic States and Ukraine produced by the Research Commission of the Historians of Latvia. Geoffrey Swain also has a chapter (‘Resistance, Collaboration, Adaption in Soviet Context’) in the same volume, which is the output from a conference held in Riga in 2018. During the year Michael also presented an online seminar (‘Exploiting Khrushchev’s Thaw: Power Struggles for Soviet Latvia’) as part of the Work-in-Progress Series convened by CEES’ partner Ilia State University in Tbilisi.

Working with Marharyta Fabrykant (Higher School of Economics / Belarusian State University) and Anastassia Zabrodskaja (Tallinn University), Ammon Cheskin announced a call for a special issue of Journal of Baltic Studies (‘(Beyond) National Identity in the Baltic Countries: Varieties, Correlates, and Takeaways’), scheduled for publication in 2023 (JBS 54: 3). In July 2021 Ammon will also participate in the Narva Summer School organised by our partner University of Tartu as part of the current Erasmus+ Jean Monnet BEAR Research Network.     

Congratulations to David Edwards, who in March 2021 successfully defended his PhD thesis ‘Between Nation Branding and Citizen Diplomacy: Perceptions and Projections of National, Spatial and Regional Identities of Estonia in North-Eastern Europe’ (external examiner Dr Marko Lehti, Tampere University). Also to Paula Christie, whose thesis ‘Who belongs? – An exploration of horizontal citizenship in Latvia through the lens of contemporary “lived” experience’ was submitted and will be examined before the end of the session. GBRU members also served as external examiners for doctoral theses during the year: in November 2020 Geoffrey Swain examined Galina Sedova’s dissertation on ‘The Riga Episcopy, 1944-1964' (the first ever doctoral submission at Daugavpils University) and in December 2020 David Smith was external for Lilija Alijeva’s ‘Realising Minority Rights in Independent Estonia and Latvia: Lessons from Effective Public Participation of the Russian-Speaking Minority’ at School of Advanced Study, University of London.

It has also been a busy year for conference and workshop contributions. Michael Loader is Co-Chair of the Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe (Uppsala, September 2021), while other GBRU members presented or will present at: Association for the Study of Nationalities Annual Convention, May 2021 (Marina Germane, David Smith); the Memory Studies Association Annual Conference, Warsaw July 2021 (Gintare Venzlauskaite); workshop on the Self-Determination of Peoples in Historical Perspective, Tartu, May 2021; workshop “Concepts of Dedication”, University of Geneva, November 2020; the 6th Conference of The European Society for the History of Political Thought, Helsinki, August 2021 (Liisi Veski).

In November 2020 Liisi Veski began working with Michael Loader (Deputy Editor) and Matthew Kott (Uppsala, Chief Editor) as a part-time Editorial Assistant for Journal of Baltic Studies.

In March 2020 the Unit welcomed Dr Michael Loader, who began a three-year Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship for work on a project entitled ‘Centre-Periphery Relations in Flux: National Politics in the Soviet Borderlands’. The project builds upon Michael’s long-standing research on Latvia’s National Communists. Michael came to Glasgow following a two-year post-doctoral fellowship at our partner Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University. He is also Assistant Editor of Journal of Baltic Studies.

At the start of the year, GBRU staff and CEES students participated in the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Creative Scotland-sponsored ‘Through the Eyes of LISA’ project coordinated by the Civic Room Gallery in Glasgow (https://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/crcees/research/callforapplicantsthroughtheeyesoflisa/). Dedicated to rediscovering the History and Heritage of Scotland’s Lithuanian community, the programme included a lecture by Geoffrey Swain on oral history research and a public event at the Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life in Coatbridge that was attended by many local descendants of Lithuanians who had settled in Scotland during the early 20^th century.

The year also saw the publication of the third part of the multi-volume German-language history of the Baltic Sea Region (Das Baltikum: Geschichte einer europäischer Region) sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation and coordinated by our partner the NordOst Institut in Lüneberg. The volume includes contributions by David Smith, Geoffrey Swain and our late Honorary Fellow and GBRU co-founder Professor John Hiden. A further article by David on Estonia also appeared as part of his guest-edited special issue of Nationalities Papers on ‘National Cultural Autonomy in Diverse Political Communities: Practices, Challenges, and Perspectives’. Geoffrey’s chapter "Starting the World Revolution: Latvia's Soviet Republic of 1919" appeared in A Marshall, J Steinberg and S Sabol eds. The Global Impact of Russia's Great War and Revolution. Book 1: The Arc of Revolution, 1917-24. (Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica, 2019).

Congratulations to Gintare Venzlauskaite, who successfully defended her PhD thesis From post-war West to post-soviet East: manifestations of displacement, collective memory, and Lithuanian diasporic experience revisited in December 2019 (external examiner Dr Violeta Davoliūtė, Department of History, Vilnius University).

Marina Germane took up a three-year postdoctoral research position at the University of Vienna under the ERC-funded project "Non-Territorial Autonomy. History of a Travelling Idea", to work on NTA elements in international minority protection during the 20^th century. From November 2019 to July 2020 Paula Oppermann was a Visiting Fellow at the Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies in Vienna, also submitting further successful applications for fellowships with the Institute for Contemporary History, Munich and the Saul Kagan programme of the Claims Conference.

Ammon Cheskin was external examiner for Alina Jašina-Schäfer’s PhD thesis ‘Spatial Belonging. Meanings and Practices of Russian speakers in contemporary Estonia And Kazakhstan’ at Justus Liebig University, Giessen.

GBRU members were also active on the conference circuit during the academic year. David Smith and Marina Germane presented at the conference ‘A Century of Internationalisms. The Promise and Legacies of the League of Nations’ organised by the National Library of Portugal and the University of Lisbon in September 2019 and were invited participants at the workshop ‘Sovereignty, Nationalism And Homogeneity In Europe Between The Two World Wars’ organised by The Graduate Institute, Geneva in February 2020. A volume based on the workshop will be published by Bloomsbury Academic Press in 2022. Paula Oppermann presented at a Workshop at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C. and at the Convention of Fascism Studies at Uppsala University, while Gintare Venzlauskaite presented an outline of her PhD research at the University of Stirling.

GBRU continued with its programme of events to mark the centenaries of the independence of the Baltic States. In November 2018, H.E. Ms Tiina Intelmann, Ambassador of the Republic of Estonia to the UK gave a public lecture and Q&A session at the University, followed by a screening of the 2018 documentary ‘Rodeo- Taming a Wild Country’ by Raimo Jõerand and Kiur Aarma, which gives a portrait of Mart Laar, the first Prime Minister of Estonia to be elected following the regaining of its independence in 1991.

The year also saw the resumption of Estonian language teaching at the University, after Liisi Veski was able to secure an Archimedes Foundation grant to teach a 20-credit beginner’s course through Central and East European Studies during the spring of 2019. As well as continuing work on her PhD, Liisi was also appointed as an Editorial Assistant for the Estonian Historical Journal based in Tartu. In the early spring, Ammon Cheskin and David Smith also led a student research methods field trip to Latvia and Estonia (https://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/crcees/newsevents/headline_675753_en.html). As well as Glasgow undergraduates, the trip also included students from participating institutions in the Erasmus+ Jean Monnet BEAR Network (http://www.bearnetwork.ca/). David later presented a session on ‘Strategies and instruments of European and Russian influence on state-minority relations’ at BEAR’s Montreal Summer School in June 2019.

Publication highlights during the year included the special issue of Europe-Asia Studies on ‘The Russian-speaking Populations in the Post-Soviet Space: Language, Politics and Identity’, co-edited by Ammon Cheskin and Angela Kachuyevski (Arcadia University).

Congratulations to Kerstin Mahlapuu, who successfully defended her PhD thesis Returned to ‘normality’? Estonian national identity constructions after EU and NATO accession in March 2019 (external examiner Dr Richard Mole, University College London).

In November 2018 the Unit also welcomed Sophie Qiaoyun Peng, who began work on her PhD thesis ‘Knitted National Identities: A cultural semiotic study of traditions of knitted textiles in Estonia and Shetland’

Marina Germane, David Smith and Liisi Veski all presented at the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism conference on Nationalism and Self-Determination held at the University of Edinburgh in April 2019. David was later an invited participant in a panel convened at the Association for the Study of Nationalities Annual Convention to discuss Jennie Schulze’s book Strategic Frames: Europe, Russia and Minority Inclusion in Estonia and Latvia. Liisi also presented at the Seminar Series in Intellectual History, University of Tartu in May 2019 and at the Workshop ‘Estonia in the 1930s: Politics and Society at a Time of Impending Crisis’ held at University College London. Paula Oppermann presented at the 13th Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe (CBSE) held in Gdansk in June 2019, as well as at the international conference “Lessons and Legacies of the Holocaust” in St. Louis.

During this session, Unit members participated in the first round of a series of events to mark the centenaries of the independence of the Baltic States. Geoffrey Swain is on the organising committee of the annual Scientific Readings of the Humanities Faculty at our partner Daugavpils University, and was invited to give the keynote address at the 2018 conference on "Britain and the Emergence of Independent Latvia, January 1918 - January 1921". In Scotland, David Smith was invited by Estonia’s Honorary Consul to give a talk at an event organised by the Estonian Student Society at Edinburgh University on the anniversary of Estonia’s independence in February, while he and David Edwards also spoke at a special event organised by the University of Glasgow’s CEES Society.

GBRU was also well represented at the June 2018 Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies conference dedicated to the centennial of the Baltic states held at Stanford University, where Paula Oppermann, Gintare Venzlauskaite and Liisi Veski all presented papers. Further papers were presented at: a Postgraduate Workshop on the History of Nationalism, University of Tartu, January 2018 (Liisi Veski); and conferences in Riga (organised by the United States Holocaust Museum USHMM) and CEU Budapest (Paula Oppermann). In November 2017 David Smith was an invited speaker at two events in Tokyo – a conference on state and nation-building in the Baltic States (at Waseda University) and the annual meeting of the Japanese branch of the Commission of International Historians. In September, David also served as external examiner for Agne Cepinskyte’s PhD thesis ‘The Socio-political Factor in Great Power Politics: An Analysis of the Weimar Republic and Post-Soviet Russia’s Political Discourse towards the Baltic States’ presented at King’s College London.

Spring 2017 saw the publication of Latvia – A Work in Progress? One Hundred Years of State and Nation-Building (Ibidem/Columbia University Press). Edited by David Smith and containing further contributions by Geoffrey Swain and Marina Germane, the volume was the output of a December 2013 conference in Uppsala jointly organised and funded by CRCEES Glasgow, IRES Uppsala and the Swedish Social Science Foundation (Ammon Cheskin’s 2015 article ‘Identity and integration of Russian speakers in the Baltic states: a framework for analysis’ in Ethnopolitics is a further output from the conference).

At the start of 2017 the Unit also welcomed two new PhD researchers - Paula Oppermann, who obtained an ESRC scholarship for her thesis ‘Changing Context, One Agenda. A History of the Latvian Fascist Pērkonkrusts Party’ and Liisi Veski, who is researching the "The Concept of National Unity in the Interwar Estonian Nationalist Discourse". Liisi first came to Glasgow as a visiting student from Tartu, supported by grants from the Estonian National Committee in the United States and the Estonian Students Fund in the USA. She was subsequently awarded a College of Social Sciences scholarship to research her PhD at Glasgow.

Congratulations to Lea Kreinin, who successfully defended her PhD thesis ‘Estonians in Scotland. From isolation to transnational ways of living?’ (external examiner Prof. Raimo Raag, Uppsala University).

Events during the year included a visit to the University in April 2017 by the Ambassador of Latvia to the UK, H.E. Ms Baiba Braže and a delegation of deputies from the Saiema for a roundtable discussion with staff and students. From September-November 2016 Gintare Venzlauskaite worked as an Intern at the Embassy of Lithuania in London, conducting a project on mapping Lithuanian cultural heritage in the UK. The internship came in the midst of a busy year of PhD fieldwork for Gintare, which took her to Lithuania (Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda), the United States (New York, Washington DC, Chicago), the Russian Federation (Irkutsk, Listvyanka, Meget Ulan Ude, Olkhon island, Krasnoyarsk, Barnaul, Sibirskaya Dolina, Tomsk, Kaliningrad) and Latvia (Riga).

GBRU was also represented at the 22nd ASN World Convention, University of Columbia (New York) in May 2017 (David Smith and Liisi Veski) and the 27th ASEN conference “Anthony D. Smith and the Future of Nationalism: Ethnicity, Religion and Culture”, London School of Economics, March 2017 (Liisi Veski). David Smith and David Edwards both participated in the annual conference of the Estonian Integration Foundation held in Tallinn in November 2016.

This academic year marked Geoffrey Swain’s retirement as Alec Nove Chair in Russian and East European Studies. Geoffrey’s distinguished and multifaceted contribution to the field was celebrated with a conference hosted by Glasgow in May 2015, papers from which were later published as a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies (Volume 68, Issue 10 (2016)) entitled ‘Against the Grain: Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Swain’. This included contributions by Marina Germane and Michael Loader reflecting specifically on Geoffrey’s contribution to Baltic Studies. As Professor Emeritus, Geoffrey continues his work as a researcher and PhD supervisor. He is also an accredited expert of the Latvian Academy of Sciences.

The year also saw the culmination of a long-standing joint initiative with Latvia’s Ministry of Culture, Riga City Council and a range of civil society activists to produce Latvian- and Russian-language translations of Professor John Hiden’s award-winning 2004 biography of the inter-war Latvian politician, editor and international minority rights activist Paul Schiemann. The translations were launched at an event held at the Saiema in February 2016, where copies of the book were presented to all 100 MPs. This was followed by a public symposium at Riga City Council attended by 200 people, where David Smith was among the speakers who reflected on the continued relevance of Schiemann’s ideas for Latvia more than 70 years after his death. Also in February, Ammon Cheskin, who was leading the CEES Student Research Methods fieldtrip to Latvia, presented his newly-published book Russian-Speakers in Post-Soviet Latvia: Discursive Identity Strategies (Edinburgh University Press) at a public event held at the Museum of Occupation in Riga. The event attracted widespread interest in the local media. Earlier, in October 2015, Ammon organised and led a CRCEES-funded international conference in Tartu on Russian-speaking Populations in the Post-Soviet Space, part of a collaborative project that will give rise to a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies.

David Smith, Ammon Cheskin, Marina Germane (who was a Visiting Fellow at the Remarque Institute, New York University during January-June 2016), David Edwards and Gintare Venzlauskaite all presented papers at the Association for the Study of Nationalities Annual Convention at Columbia University, New York in April 2016. Gintare Venzlauskaite also presented at the 14th Annual International Postgraduate Conference on ‘Transnationalism(s): contexts, patterns and connections’ University College London and the CBEES Annual Conference on ‘Places and Non-Places of Modernity: movement, memory and imagination in contemporary Europe’ at Södertörn University.

In March 2015 GBRU was pleased to welcome to the University Latvia's Ambassador to the UK, HE Mr Andris Teikmanis, who gave a public lecture on Latvia’s Presidency of the European Union.

At the start of the year, David Smith led a team including Marina Germane and former GBRU Fellow Vytautas Petronis that organised the international conference at Uppsala University entitled ‘Transethnic Coalition-Building within and across States’ (https://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/crcees/newsevents/eventsarchive/eventsarchive2015/headline_333775_en.html?testing). The conference was jointly funded by CRCEES Glasgow, IRES Uppsala and the Swedish Social Science Funding Council, with additional support from the European Centre for Minority Issues and the Lithuanian Institute of History. The conference was global in scope, but included a number of papers dealing with historical and contemporary issues in the Baltic States.  

Earlier, in December 2014, David Smith spoke at a conference on ‘Empires and Nationalisms in the Great War: Interactions in East-Central Europe’ organised by the Lithuanian Institute of History in Vilnius. Papers from the conference were published Open Access in a special issue of Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis (http://briai.ku.lt/en/publications/acta-historica-universitatis-klaipedensis/volumes/volume-31/)

The year saw numerous published outputs from GBRU initiatives. These included a collection entitled From Recognition to Restoration, Latvia’s History as a Nation-State (Rodopi) from the Nov 2008 Glasgow conference on the 90^th anniversary of Latvia’s original declaration of independence. The book is co-edited by David Smith, Geoffrey Swain (Glasgow) and David Galbreath (Aberdeen). All three editors contributed chapters, as did GBRU PhD student Marina Germane. The book disseminated further insights from Smith and Hiden’s research on cultural autonomy and Swain’s research on Latvia during the Second World War. Swain’s research partner Irena Salaniece from Daugavpils University, Latvia, collaborating on his current oral history project, also contributed a chapter. Martyn Housden (University of Bradford) and David Smith also submitted the manuscript of a Festschrift for John Hiden entitled ‘The Forgotten Pages of Baltic History: Diversity and Inclusion’ which includes contributions from a range of prominent European and North American contributors.. Two further book chapters by Smith on cultural autonomy appeared during the year. Hiden, Smith and Swain are also contributing to the jointly-authored History of the Baltic Sea Region being prepared by the Nord-Ost Institut, Lueneburg and sponsored by the Volkswagen Stiftung. The first fruits of Swain’s oral history project on the post-war sovietisation of Latvia were published in the proceedings of the “Scientific Readings” of Daugavpils University. GBRU PhD student Tina Tamman successfully defended her thesis on Baltic diplomatic history and had this accepted for publication.

A new departure in research was Lea Kreinin’s grant from the Estonian government to collect life stories of Estonian immigrants in the UK and make these publicly available through a new web-based repository. This work dovetails with the emerging Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network as well as with the work of CRCEES EU Marie Curie Postdoc Judit Molnar on CEE migrant integration in the UK and the USA. ESRC Postdoc Vytautas Petronis completed his year at CRCEES in February 2010 before moving on to a similar position at the Herder Institute, Marburg. He has maintained close links with Glasgow and the outcome of a joint AHRC application with Smith on the mapping of ethnic territories in CEE is still pending. Both have also joined a new Leibnitz Foundation project to create a Digital Atlas of Eastern Europe. A further CRCEES visiting postdoc, Keiji Sato (Hokkaido), arrived with Japanese state funding for comparative research on late- and post-Soviet ethnic mobilization in Lithuania, Estonia, Moldova and Georgia. The research area was also widely showcased at international conferences, notably the 2010 ICCEES World Congress in Stockholm. Two of the seven CRCEES-sponsored panels at ICCEES had Baltic themes and included network participants from Glasgow, Tartu, Turku, Daugavpils and Nottingham Trent. GBRU and UCL-SSEES also co-organised the May 2010 meeting of the UK Baltic Study Group in Glasgow. This brought speakers from the UK (Ian Thomson, UCL), Germany (Mark Hatlie, Tuebingen) and Sweden (Matthew Kott, Uppsala) and was attended by Latvia’s Ambassador to the UK. In March 2011 Smith was an invited speaker at a conference in Uppsala on comparative state and nation-building in the Baltic States, organized by the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies. 

The year also saw significant instances of non-academic user engagement and research ‘impact’. Swain’s path-breaking research on Latvia’s WW2 democratic resistance saw him invited by Latvia’s Ministry of Defence to discuss how to develop new, more constructive approaches to the fraught politics of history in contemporary Latvia. Hiden continued his long-standing advisory work with the Estonian Foreign Ministry, attending two joint academic-practitioner conferences in Tallinn. In February 2011 Hiden, Smith and Swain were all invited speakers at a London seminar funded by the Latvian Embassy to commemorate the 90^th anniversary of Britain’s recognition of Estonia and Latvia. In early 2010, GBRU’s ESRC PhD student Paul Jordan also undertook an internship with the external affairs directorate of the Scottish Government, bringing to bear his expertise on small nation-branding in a Baltic context. Finally, the Baltic Way exhibition at Glasgow, opened by the Latvian Ambassador in January 2011, attracted large numbers of visitors, some of whom drew comparisons with recent events in Egypt and other Arab World states.

The CRCEES Baltic Studies group also commenced a new research training initiative with Justus Liebig University, Giessen and the Herder Institut. A joint ‘Giessen meets Glasgow’ seminar on language, culture and politics (Nov 2010) brought Hiden, Sato, Smith and CEES PhD students Ammon Cheskin, Marina Germane and Ada Regelmann together with staff and students from the Giessen’s PG Centre of Excellence for the Study of Culture and its East European Studies Centre. Smith and Hiden concluded the day with a joint keynote lecture entitled ‘Nation-State or State Community? Alternatives from Inter-war Europe’. An ERASMUS staff and postgraduate student exchange has been established and a follow-up seminar will be held as part of the May 2011 CRCEES Research Forum in Glasgow. Also present at the Forum will be Valters Scerbinskis from Riga Stradins University, who comes to Glasgow as the first visitor under the new Erasmus staff exchange agreement between the two institutions. Valters Scerbinskis will also give a paper at the 2011 meeting of the UK Baltic Study Group in Swansea on 9 May.

In September 2006 the Unit was pleased to welcome Lea Kreinin, who was appointed to a new Estonian government-funded Lectureship in Estonian Language and Culture. Lea has begun teaching Estonian language, society and culture to both undergraduate honours and postgraduate students within the Department of Central and East European Studies and wider faculties of Law, Business and Social Sciences and Arts. In December 2006 Dace Praulins was appointed to a new four-year part-time Lectorship in Latvian, created under the auspices of the new Centre for Russian, Central and East European Studies (CRCEES). Dace ran a beginner's class in Latvian language for departmental staff and students during the spring of 2007, and will start to offer full Honours and postgraduate options in Latvian language, history and culture from 2007-08.

In May 2007 Swain, Kreinin and Tamman all presented papers at the inaugural CRCEES Research Forum, which also welcomed Professor Marju Lauristin of the University of Tartu as a plenary speaker. CRCEES also provided additional financial support for a further joint academic-practitioner round table organised by Smith in January 2007 as part of the additional non-academic user dissemination agenda of the AHRC project. Smith and Hiden both spoke at the event, which incorporated representatives from the Hungarian and Armenian governments and the OSCE. This was followed up in May 2007 with a Council of Europe UniDem Seminar in Zagreb on the participation of minorities in public life, organised jointly by GBRU, the AHRC, the Venice Commission, the Government of Croatia and the University of Zagreb. The Unit was also pleased to welcome H.E. Mr Vygaudas Ušačkas, Lithuanian Ambassador to the UK, who visited the University on 6-7 March 2007. In addition to giving a public lecture on the challenges facing Lithuania in the 21st century, Mr Ušačkas attended the official launch of the Centre for Russian, Central and East European Studies, met with the Principal of the University of Glasgow Sir Muir Russell and the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament Mr George Reid, and viewed a display of documents and materials relating to the life and work of Adam Smith, specially arranged by the University Library and Archival Services.   

The year was a busy one for research and conference visits. In June 2007 Smith, Burch and Swain all presented papers at the Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe, held in Luneburg, Germany. Smith and Burch spent a week in Stockholm during March, conducting further work towards their joint British Academy project. In June 2007 Burch hosted the third annual meeting of the UK Baltic Study Group at Nottingham Trent University. Smith and Hiden also visited the Herder Institute in Marburg in October 2006 and the Nord-Ost Institut in Luneburg in February 2007 to collect the final archival material towards their AHRC project and to make use of the excellent libraries at both institutions. Last, but not least, congratulations are due to Dirk Crols and Eero Mikenberg, both of whom successfully defended their PhD theses during the year.

The year saw the retirement of Professor James White after a long and distinguished academic career at the University of Glasgow covering many different aspects of Soviet, Baltic and East European History. James retains the status of Emeritus Professor at the Department and is continuing to play an active part in the work of the Unit through his continued research on Baltic history. The work of GBRU was bolstered in April 2006 by the appointment of Professor Geoffrey Swain to the Alec Nove Chair at the Department of Central and East European Studies. The Unit was also pleased to welcome as a new member Tina Tamman, who began a part-time study towards a PhD at the Department of Central and East European Studies on the life and work of August Torma, Estonia's Ambassador to the UK from 1934-1971. Tina previously worked as a Senior Editor at BBC Monitoring in Reading.

In March 2006 Smith and Burch conducted the first round of fieldwork for their joint project on public monuments in Estonia, gathering written materials and conducting a series of interviews with key decision-makers in the north-east Estonian city of Narva. Smith and Hiden continued work on their AHRC project during the year, visiting the League of Nations Archive in Geneva, The Estonian State Archive in Tallinn and the Russian State Military Archive in Moscow, and presenting papers at the AABS Conference on Baltic Studies in Washington DC in June 2006. At the conference Hiden was presented with the AABS Book Prize for his 2004 biography of Paul Schiemann. Shortly afterwards, Smith and Hiden gave a short presentation of their work to the second annual meeting of the UK Baltic Study Group, hosted by Dr Richard Mole at UCL-SSEES in London. They were joined by Tamman, who presented some preliminary findings from her Estonian archive work on August Torma. A joint article summarising initial findings from the AHRC project appeared in Journal of Contemporary History volume 41, no 3 during July 2006. In the same month Smith organised a workshop in Glasgow on 'The Theory and Practice of Cultural Autonomy in Central and Eastern Europe: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives'. This incorporated leading academic speakers (including Professor Will Kymlicka) from seven countries, as well as policymakers from the Romanian government and the Council of Europe Venice Commission. The findings of the workshop will be published in a special issue of Ethnopolitics in September 2007 (and subsequently reproduced in the form an edited book by Routledge). In February 2006 Smith obtained a further £10,500 from AHRC for the purpose of disseminating project findings to non-academic users, through a series of workshops and an additional published volume of documents .

In July 2006 Smith and Hiden were also invited to meet the President of Estonia, Arnold Rüütel at a dinner at the Scottish Parliament, hosted by Presiding Officer George Reid. This followed a visit to the University in November 2005 by the Estonian Minister of Culture Raivo Palmaru and Mr Ilmar Raag, Head of the Boards of Estonian Television. Both joined Mr Mart Meri, Chairman of the Council of Estonian Language and Culture Abroad, in a round table discussion on Culture, Communication and Media in the New Europe, organised as part of the 'Estonian Days in Scotland' festival.

Perhaps the most notable event of the year was a visit to GBRU and the University of Glasgow on the 18th October by the Prime Minister of Estonia, Mr Juhan Parts who gave a public lecture entitled, 'Estonia in the EU: Does it change anything?'

A busy year for the Unit saw a number of new developments and the appointment of two visiting fellows. Dr Helen Morris, previously a fellow of CERPS, Brussels, was attached to GBRU for the entire academic year, when she continued to work on ethnic politics in Latvia while developing new research in the field of migration studies. Dr Sylviu Miloiu, an expert on Baltic History at the University of Targoviste, Romania, spent three months in Glasgow during the autumn on a Romanian government grant, pursuing comparative research on British foreign policy towards Estonia, Finland and Romania during the year 1939-40.

John Hiden received further recognition of his extensive work on Baltic history during the year, when he was awarded the Cross of St Mary by the President of Estonia (photo right). This is the second such honour that he has received, having earlier been made a corresponding award by the President of Lithuania. In November 2004, Smith was appointed to the Editorship of Journal of Baltic Studies, the academic publication of the US-based Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS).

Smith and Hiden continued work on their AHRC project during the year, conducting further archival research in Tallinn, Riga and the former Soviet 'trophy archive' now housed in the Russian State Military Archive, which contains the papers of the inter-war Estonian German minority rights activist Dr Ewald Ammende. Conference papers on the theme of cultural autonomy were given at: the ICCEES World Congress in Berlin (July 2005); a special joint symposium with the Nord-Ost Institut, Luneburg (November 2004); and at an international conference on regional identity in the Baltic Sea Area (Klaipeda, May 2005), which GBRU organised jointly with the University of Klaipeda using funds granted by the MacFie Bequest of the University of Glasgow. A joint article outlining some of the preliminary findings of the project was accepted for publication in Journal of Contemporary History. In February 2005 Smith and Hiden were invited to Bucharest to brief members of the Romanian government and parliament on the Estonian model of cultural autonomy for national minorities, as part of the process of elaborating a new minorities law for Romania. The discussions formed part of a project organised by the European Centre for Minority Issues and funded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Smith and Hiden continued their long-standing work with FCO in April 2005, when both attended a briefing lunch in London for the new UK Ambassador to Latvia.

Work was also ongoing on the project 'The Baltic Question during the Cold War', which is jointly convened by Smith and Hiden in collaboration with Dr Vahur Made of the Estonian School of Diplomacy. First drafts of articles for an edited volume on the project theme were submitted by contributors during the year.

In December 2004 Smith obtained £7500 from the British Academy for a new two-year (2005-07) joint project with Dr Stuart Burch of the Department of Heritage Studies at Nottingham Trent University. Entitled 'Commemoration, Public Monuments and the Renegotiation of Collective Identities in the "Baltic World"', the project is a detailed interdisciplinary case study of the local politics surrounding the reestablishment of a 'Swedish Lion' monument in the heavily Russian-speaking city of Narva in 2000. It combines Smith's expertise on identity politics and nationalism in Estonia with Burch's extensive work on heritage and public monuments in Northern Europe, and builds on a research partnership first established in Finland back in 1994-95.

The year also saw the inaugural meeting of the UK Baltic Study Group, established by GBRU and colleagues from UCL-SSEES (London) following the meeting with Charles Clarke in July 2004. Smith organised and chaired the first meeting of the group at Glasgow in June 2005, and the meeting agreed that he should act as secretary of the group. A total of 25 people attended the meeting, including representatives of the FCO and the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian embassies.

Much of the Unit's activity during the autumn and early winter was devoted to preparations for the GBRU inaugural conference, held in January 2004 on the eve of NATO and EU enlargement to the Baltic States. Given the working title 'The Baltic States: New Europe or Old?', the call for papers invited participants to reflect on all aspects of the three countries' relationship to Europe, past and present. The two-day event attracted 45 speakers and 120 participants from 11 countries, including representatives of national and local government, NGOs and business. GBRU contributors included Hiden, Hope, Jakobson-Obolenski, Mikenberg, Smith, White and Woolfson. Keynote plenary addresses were given by the Estonian and Latvian Ministers for Ethnic Affairs, Paul-Eerik Rummo and Nils Muiznieks, and the Lithuanian Ambassador to the UK. Funding for the conference was provided by the British Academy, the MacFie Bequest of the University of Glasgow and Glasgow City Council, which organised a reception for participants at the City Chambers. A selection of papers from the conference was subsequently published as part of Rodopi publisher's Baltic Studies series.

The year saw the publication of Hiden's biography of the inter-war Baltic German politician and European minority rights activist Paul Schiemann (1876-1944) (book). Smith and Hiden also began archival work for their AHRC project during the year, making visits to the Estonian State Archive in Tallinn and the Latvian State Historical Archive in Riga. As well as presenting papers on the theme of cultural autonomy at the inaugural GBRU conference, they organised a panel on this theme at the Association for the Study of Nationalities Conference at Columbia University, New York on 15-17 April. Earlier that month, Smith was invited to give a paper on Baltic-Russian relations at the SSEES symposium on The Baltic States on the Eve of EU Accession (2 April 2004). The following day he addressed the Plenary Session of the BASEES Annual Conference at the University of Cambridge, giving a talk on the theme of 'The Baltic States: Looking Forward and Looking Back.'

Work with non-academic user groups included Smith and Hiden's participation in an FCO briefing meeting for the new UK Ambassador to Lithuania. In the context of the government's emerging Language-Based Area Studies Initiative, both were also invited to a meeting with Charles Clarke in July to discuss a strategy for the development of Baltic studies within the UK. Another notable event at Glasgow during the year was a visit by the Estonian Ambassador to the UK Dr Kaja Tael, who gave a lecture entitled 'Taking stock of the accession process: Estonia and the future of the European Union' and met with staff and students at a reception and dinner hosted by the Department of Central and East European Studies.

Themes of nationhood, nationalism and minority rights constituted a key focus of GBRU's activities during the initial year of its existence. In May 2003 Smith and Hiden were successful in their bid for £44,000 of funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Board for a four-year (September 2003-August 2007) project entitled 'Ending Nationalism? The Quest for Cultural Autonomy in Inter-war Europe'. This application drew upon and developed existing work by both applicants in the area of nationhood and minorities in the inter-war Baltic States.
In June 2003, Crols, Hiden and Smith organised a joint panel on issues of multiculturalism and minority rights at the Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe, held at the University of Turku, Finland. Hiden was a keynote plenary speaker at the conference, while Smith acted as the Division Chair for Social Sciences. Hiden and Smith were subsequently invited to submit their papers for inclusion in a published volume of conference contributions, under the editorship of the conference convenor Marko Lehti. The findings of Smith and Lehti's previous collaboration on the British Academy/CIMO/Nordic Council-funded project 'Mapping the Baltic Sea Area' (1999-2001) were published in the form of the jointly edited volume Post-Cold War Identity Politics: Northern and Baltic Experiences, to which Hiden also contributed a chapter.

Smith also gave a paper on Europeanisation and minority rights at the ECPR General Conference, Marburg, in September. An article on this same theme was published in the ECMI Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe. In the summer, Smith was invited to participate in the work of the Estonian Integration Foundation. His reflections on the ongoing integration process subsequently appeared in an edited collection of articles on this topic, and were also published in the country's Estonian and Russian-language media.

The resources of the Unit were bolstered in Summer 2003, when Hiden kindly donated the archive of the now-defunct Baltic Unit at the University of Bradford. Built up since 1988, this extensive collection includes materials on the early phases of post-Soviet transition, as well as copies of original British Foreign and Commonwealth documents on the Baltic States and Scandinavia from the 1920s and 1930s. These are housed as a dedicated resource within the Glasgow University Library.

The year also saw several events connected with Hope's project on Churches and European Integration, including a seminar in late August attended by speakers from Estonia, Finland and Germany.

In Mid-September, White hosted a visit to the University by Professor Ene Ergma, Speaker of the Estonian Riigikogu. Professor Ergma met with students and staff of the department, which hosted a lunch attended by the Estonian Ambassador and members of the local business community, including a representative of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry (SCDI). Earlier in the year, Smith had briefed members of this organisation on economic and political development in Estonia ahead of the SCDI's trade mission to the country in June.