Editorial Foreword

Silviu-Marian Miloiu

Editorial Foreword

2013, The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies

A large part of the articles published in the current issue of Revista Română de Studii Baltice şi Nordice / The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies have been initially presented at the Fourth International Conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies in Romania: Empire-Building and Region-Building in the Baltic, North and Black Sea areas held at Ovidius University Of Constanța in May 2013. The conference approached the North in the wider perspective of regional cooperation intra- and extra-Nordic muros. The North is regarded as a springboard of regional cooperation which has a strong though faltering historical and cultural background and an obvious European dimension. The downfall of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the process of European integration (whether some of the Nordic countries belong to the EU or not, they are all part and parcel of the process and deeply affected by it) have encouraged the development of regional cooperation in Northern Europe. Belonging to the Northern dimension of the EU meant not only maintaining a regional identity with deep roots in history and culture and making the others acknowledge it, but also strengthening the influence of Nordic countries within and outside the EU and fostering other regional cooperation initiatives in the Baltic Sea area and outside it. Patterned on the Nordic regional cooperation, the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia strengthened their regional cooperation and envisaged deepening their ties to surrounding areas, especially with the Nordic countries. Alongside the Nordic countries, they also gradually turned into a model for the Danubian and Black Sea countries. In this respect, the conference addressed themes such as: the empire building, region-building, national/nationalist, cultural construction discourses present in these regions; the historic development of these regional initiatives and/or organizations and the relations between them; political, cultural and diplomatic relations between Baltic and/or Nordic states, on the one hand, and the Black Sea countries, on the other hand; the relations between the EU integration and different Baltic, North and Black Sea regional structures; education and leadership in the context of regionalization in the Baltic Sea and Black Sea areas; linguistic unity and diversity in Scandinavia and the Baltic states; Nordic and Baltic identity through cultural diversity; water protection in the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea Region and the role of agriculture; inter- and intra-regional comparisons. Stefan Ewert and Kari Alenius address in their contributions the topic of region-building. The former scholar explains why in the Baltic Sea are no spill-over effects in the area of agricultural cooperation as they are to be found in other areas such as education. The latter studies the creation of the image of Balkans in Finnish schoolbooks from late 19th century to early 21st century. Darius Žiemelis discusses the social economic history of Lithuania from the 16th-19th centuries from the perspective of non-Marxist (Karl Bücher, Max Weber) and neo-Marxists (Witold Kula, Immanuel Wallerstein) scholars. Aelita Ambrulevičiūtė looks at peasant habits while researching the modernization of Vilnius, Kaunas and Grodno provinces society in the period of 1861—1914. Costel Coroban rightly acknowledges the state of Viking studies in Romania and devotes his analysis to Romanian language terminology with regard to “Viking historical characters, rituals, artefacts.” Mihaela Mehedințí looks at Nordic and Russian diplomats as interconnectors between their countries and the Romanian area during the Modern Age (17th – 19th centuries) and discovers a net of bonds linking them to the Romanian rulers. Finally, Giedrius Kviklys sketches out the EU-Russia relations from the perspective of EU – Northern Dimension and Black Sea Synergy. One of the plenary sessions organized during the conference brought together diplomats from the Nordic and Baltic areas who were looking to Baltic Sea region-building process from the perspective of their countries. The address of Her Excellency Ms. Ulla Väistö, the Ambassador of Finland, is included in this issue as well as the address of Dr. Vladimir Jarmolenko, at the time the Ambassador of Lithuania in Romania. We hope that the diversity of themes and insightfulness of analyses will capture the interest of public, decision-makers and academic community alike.

The current issue of Revista Română pentru Studii Baltice şi Nordice / The Romanian Journal of Baltic and Nordic Studies (RRSBN) continues the publication of selected papers presented at the second international conference for Baltic and Nordic Studies in Romania entitled Black Sea and Baltic Sea Regions: Confluences, influences and crosscurrents in the modern and contemporary ages, an event which was organized under the aegis of the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies with the support of the embassies of Finland, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden in Romania, of the Consulate of Latvia, of Valahia University of Târgovişte, of the City Hall of Târgovişte, of the The Princely Court National Museum Complex of Târgovişte and of Cetatea de Scaun Publishing House and of the respected companies Niro Investment Group and Arvi Agro SRL. One of the most inspiring papers presented at the conference authored by Stefan Ewert from Greifswald University in Germany approaches comparatively the development of regional integration and identity by the means of regional higher education in the Baltic Sea and Black Sea regions. The author finds out that the two regions resemble each other only in terms of challenges they are facing, but when it comes to regional identity, regional co-operation and political institutionalization the Baltic Sea Region is well ahead its South-Eastern European counterpart. Instead of conclusions, the author chooses to suggest the steps to be taken by future comparative researches in the field of regional academic cooperation within the two regions, such a comparison allowing evaluating “the empirical background for an appropriate EU-strategy in the Black Sea Region.” The Finnish respected historian Vesa Vares of University of Turku continues his analyses on the perception of „otherness“ in the European political culture, approaching the way Finland regarded Eastern Europe’s political systems and national characteristics during the interwar period. While Finland was regarded in Western Europe or in Scandinavia as part of the periphery and consequently her elite strove to prove how committed the country was to Western values, her perceptions of Eastern Europe grew negative during the interwar period and she often accused the peoples of this area of the same sins others were attributing to herself. The Greek historian Dimitris Michalopoulos of Historical Institute for Studies on Eleutherios Veniselos and his Era undertakes an analysis of the Romanian-Polish relations and of their regional implications. The author approaches the rationality behind the concluding of the Romanian-Polish alliance and underlines the importance of this coalition for East Central Europe in the complex geopolitical and ideological circumstances of the interwar period. Despite the rock-hard foundation on which these relations were established and the common security threats the two nations were facing, the bonds between them started to dwindle in mid-1930s as a result of the changing balance of power in Europe and of the raising influence of totalitarian great powers. Dalia Bukelevičiūtė of Vilnius University brings a fresh air from the Lithuanian and Czech archives on the issue of the Little Entente and of Romania’s foreign policy and the way they were interpreted in Kaunas. According to the author, Lithuania showed some interest in the developments in Central and South-Eastern Europe only by mid-1930s, but even that was short-lived and shallow. A recent Ph.D. of the University of Iaşi and an associate researcher at the University of Oslo, Vasilica Sîrbu discusses in her paper the failure of Romanian personalities to be proposed or accepted as candidates for winning the Nobel Peace Prize as well as their advocacy on behalf of various personalities to be awarded this highly respected recognition. Ana-Maria Despa, in her debut article, reconstitutes the history of diplomatic relations between Romania and Norway during the interwar period and the international and domestic environments which affected their development. The conclusion of the author is that “the diplomatic relations between Romania and Norway in the interwar period can be considered peripheral, but by no means can they be regarded as irrelevant both in the context of their foreign policy and in relation to the system of international relations”. We hope that the diversity of topics, methods and approaches from this issue of the journal will engender a good reception from our public and that they will be a catalyst for further researches aimed at deepening our knowledge and understanding of the past and current encounters between the Black Sea and Baltic Sea rim peoples. To achieve such goals, a great support was provided by the Niro Investment Group, a company that generously sponsored this publication and to which we extend our full gratitude.

Having been set up on November 27, 2008, the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies (ARSBN) has established as its fundamental goals the promotion of research activities in the field of Baltic and Nordic studies, the encouragement of knowledge in public benefit regarding this geographical area, including by the means of education, especially of higher education, the cooperation with similar institutions and associations from Romania and abroad, the promotion of the dialogue and cooperation on the axis the Baltic Sea – the Black Sea. In this regard, the establishing of a scientific publication to further our knowledge of Baltic and Nordic societies and to spread information about the Romanian society to Baltic and Northern Europe was essential. The magazine was also regarded as a springboard for the mutual acknowledgment of the bonds and relations between Romanians and the Baltic and Nordic peoples throughout their history and in contemporary times. It was our understanding and hope that the magazine will become a multidisciplinary publication hosting articles in fields such as history, history of international relations, international relations, literature and philology, economics and business, and various other sciences. When established, the editorial college also considered that it will be in the advantage of the magazine to include also book and article reviews, assessments of scientific conferences or notes of doctoral studies in the fields covered by the publication which will promote the dialogue between the two peripheries of the European continent. A year after the project was decided upon, the first issue of Revista Română de Studii Baltice şi Nordice (RRSBN) comes out bringing forth articles published by scientists from Estonia, Finland, Lithuania and Romania. Although as it was expected to happen the articles included in the first issue are mostly dealing with historical developments, it must be pointed out that the themes and the approaches differ significantly. Chronologically, the articles cover the interwar period, the Cold War, and larger time periods as it happens with Alexandru Popescu’s notes. Thematically, two articles focus on processes taking place in one particular country, but with larger regional or international connotations. Thus, at a time when the scholarly research focuses on the transition to market economy, Olaf Mertelsmann goes back in time and shows how the opposite process happened. The large scale of changes in the structure of property and the gradual loss of private entrepreneurial skills as well as the human and economic costs should be remembered when dealing with post-1989 transition. In terms of outcomes, Mertelsmann concludes that “transition to command economy was something like the worst possible scenario”. Instead, Elena Dragomir approaches the Cold War from a different perspective. With the Soviet Union collapsing and the self-censure gradually being renounced at, the recent past started to be reinterpreted in order to fit the new Finnish foreign and domestic policy aims. The debate over the legacy of Finlandization was passionate, but the mainstream political opinion tended to practice a sort of “protochronism” by inventing roots and traits to developments that have emanated in the post-Cold War environment. This kind of ideology rapidly acquired some sort of legitimacy and pass through to younger generation which could not be judged as pursuing a hidden political agenda. Two articles carried in this issue of RRSBN approach, based on new archival findings, the intersections between the populations from Romania and those in Baltic area and Scandinavia. Cezar Stanciu’s article focuses on the state relations between a Communist totalitarian regime and the democratic states of Northern Europe at a time when a rapprochement was contemplated. Desirous to reconnect to the words trade flow and acquire a more autonomous profile in the international relations, Romania was nevertheless wavering in the relations with Scandinavia and was more astute in relation to Finland, a country trusted in Moscow to a larger extent. On contrary, Vasile Ciobanu has approached the “transnational” approach between German minorities in Transylvania and the Baltic states. By sharing numerous common concerns and facing common challenges and nurturing common projects, the communities of Sibiu Saxons and Estonia and Latvia’s Balts have developed networks and contacts of mutual benefit. Ciobanu’s discoveries thus add to the recent publications by John Hiden and Martyn Housden on this topic. The role of perceptions and the Danish travelers mindsets about Romanians are approached in Oana Lăculiceanu’s contribution. Although the article may be fitted into the same category of transnational history, it brings forth no new conceptual interpretations, but contributes with interesting and sometimes hilarious facts to the encounters between Romanians and Danes. Citizens of Denmark, a developed agrarian country according to the European standards, were sometimes shocked when they encountered the Romanian realities, especially as they looked in some rural or town periphery areas. Their descriptions of Bucharest, of the Romanian peasant and of the dynamics of development in a “third world country” – to put it so – are rude expressions of the differences between Northern and South Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 20th century and a reminder of the reasons for which the relations between those societies were so limited. Alexandru Popescu’s contribution enriches the chronology and bibliography of the Romanian-Finnish relations with new facts and is a testimony of the recent developments to which the author himself, a former diplomatic counselor in the Romanian Embassy in Helsinki, has contributed. Nerijus Babinskas’ theoretical contribution compares the approaches to the concept of tributalism of Samir Amin, Hohn Haldon and H.H. Stahl., a Romanian sociologist and historian from Dimitrie Gusti’s school of thought. The author discovers a gap between the Western and Eastern historiography traditions by the importance the concept has acquired in West and emphasizes why the debate is still important and topical. In the end, I hope that the novelty of interpretation and the new findings behind the articles included in the first issue of RRSBN will attract scholarly and public interest and give birth to fresh academic debates on the exchange of cultural values between the Romanian space and Baltic and Nordic Europe in the past and – as this new magazine shows – in the present. The new networks created between Romanian and Baltic and Nordic scholars can open new avenues of cooperation and contribute to the progress of our scholarly and public agendas and the magazine is ready to become a mirror of those developments.

Revista Română pentru Studii Baltice şi Nordice / The Romanian Journal of Baltic and Nordic Studies (RRSBN) continues the publication in this issue of a series of studies which have been presented at the annual conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies in Romania. These articles approach topics related to the relations and encounters between Black Sea and the Baltic Sea areas or various developments in the Baltic Sea region during the 20th century. Kari Alenius contributes to this issue with an analysis of the way Romania was presented in the Finnish schoolbooks. As correctly emphasized by the author, this image reflects the perception and attitude of the authors of „ the outside world and diversity”. Alenius identifies four stages in this respect: end of 1800s until the end of the First World War; early years of the 1920s to the 1950s; the 1960s to the 1980s and the last decades since the 1990s. Although each stage emphasized different characteristics of Romania, the author finds also continues among them. Saulius Kaubrys deals with the Jewish faction at the Third Seimas of Lithuania in 1926-1927. This was a time when the Jewish faction entered the government. Although it showed solidarity with its coalition partners and hoped that by doing so its aims would be dealt with, the fact that progress in this regard was slow and the coup d’état of December 1926 marked a change of attitude of the Jewish faction from pro-active to passive. Dalia Bukelevičiūtė approaches the project of the Eastern Pact of 1934–1935 from the perspective of two regional cooperation structures, the Baltic Entente and the Little Entente. The author concludes that in the process of negotiations, it became apparent that countries were more concerned with their narrow national interests than with the common security of the whole bloc. Kalervo Hovi highlights the rationalities behind Finnish decision to go to war against the Soviet Union alongside, although not in alliance, with Germany. The decision was a result of the way the Finnish elites assessed the national interest in the aftermath of the Winter War. Dragana Kovacevic approaches the condition of Bosnians and Herzegovinans residing in Norway who moved to Norway as children and war refugees in the 1990s. It discusses the way they relate to their identity and heritage and also how the receiving society perceives their integration in the Norwegian society. Kovacevic brings into light concepts such as transnational belongings and long-distance nationalism. An outcome of ample investigations in Sveriges Riksarkivet, Veniamin Ciobanu contributes with new documents revealing the international dimension of the Russian brutal suppression of the Polish insurrection (November 1830). Countries such as Great Britain and France tried to soften the attitude of Russia towards Polish insurgents. We hope that the variety of themes tackled in this issue and their importance to the enrichment of our knowledge of past and current developments affecting the Black Sea and Baltic Sea areas will foster academic and public debates

This issue of Revista Română pentru Studii Baltice şi Nordice [The Romanian Journal of Baltic and Nordic Studies, RRSBN] crowns a year of steady progress in terms of number and quality of the programs and actions run by The Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies (ARSBN). The highlights of this year have been the first international conference for Baltic and Nordic Studies in Romania entitled Romania and Lithuania in the Interwar International Relations: Bonds, Intersections and Encounters, the opening of the exhibition dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the establishment of the Romanian-Finnish diplomatic relations (exhibition which has travelled since its first opening about 850 miles) and of the first Lithuanian exhibition displayed in a Romanian art gallery and the awarding of the title of Doctor Honoris Causa of Valahia University to Dr. Vladimir Jarmolenko, the Ambassador of Lithuania to Bucharest and Honorary Chairman of our Association. Besides, the members of the Association have been involved in research whose results have been disseminated in books, international and national conferences, thus contributing to the spreading of knowledge and the encouragement of debates on subjects close to its aims. The second issue of RRSBN also brings a novelty in the meaning that 2010 is the first year when the journal is published biannually as it will appear henceforth. Having been projected at the end of 2008, its first volume was published in November 2009. The articles published in this issue bring forth new documentary evidences and fresh interpretations upon a variety of topics regarding the history, the history of international relations or the history of commercial bonds of Baltic and Nordic European nations, in some cases in connection to the developments in the Black Sea area. In spite of the array of topics, some sections can be however distinguished. The first one encompasses the two articles signed by Costel Coroban and Veniamin Ciobanu regarding the role of Sweden in the international relations at the beginning of the 18th and of the 19th centuries when this power had to cope with its declining role in the international relations. After its defeat in the Battle of Poltava, Sweden gradually came to be regarded as the minor actor in the international diplomatic game in comparison with its more powerful neighbors of Britain, Russia or Napoleon’s France. The first article describes how Sweden tried to rise again to the status of Great Power with the financial support of the Jacobites and what were the international implications of the plot in which Swedish emissaries have allowed themselves to be engaged in Britain. Integrating a number of nine important archival documents, the second article proves the wide interest of Sweden regarding the international circumstances leading to the downfall of Imperial France in its attempt to adopt a wise foreign policy to compensate through the annexation of Norway for the loss of Finland to Tsarist Russia in 1809. Thus, Sweden was also looking to the developments of the Eastern Question and to the policies of Britain, France and Russia with regard to the Ottoman Empire. If the Napoleonic Wars caused havoc in Europe and finally ended in the defeat of France and in the setting up of a new European order, the First World War had an even bigger impact on the European states system. Big empires vanished overnight and new states emerged or were re-established. The consequences have been momentous and the researchers are still discussing them today. As a regenerated state in Central Europe, the Polish elites wanted to wipe out the history of more than a century when it was divided between the neighboring Great Powers and to regain its place among Europe’s major actors. The memory of Polish drive towards the Black Sea was not forgotten. Taking into account also its 1921 alliance with Romania and the attempts to widen out the outlets of its merchandises, Poland pondered about the possibilities to ease its access to the Black Sea area. In the end, these projects had to be abandoned, as Florin Anghel proves, mainly due to the similarity of the export merchandises of Poland and Romania and to the low living standard of the Poles and Romanians which restricted their purchasing power. It must not be overlooked the Soviet threat which was deeply felt by the two countries. At their eastern borders tens of millions of people were engaged in one of the most gigantic restructuring of a country’s geography, economy and mentality that the history has ever witnessed: “the construction of Socialism” in an agrarian backward empire. The life experiences of one of the most intriguing groups of people engaged in this challenging strive, the 6,000 Finns emigrating from North America to Soviet Union, is described in Kitty Lam’s article. Skilled workers initially welcomed as the vanguard of proletariat in the newly established Karelian Autonomous Republic, they will soon find themselves condemned as enemies of the people. Basing her analysis on the letters and memoirs of those living through these experiences, the author discusses the extent to which the immigrants have integrated in a new ideological setting and how their rapidly deteriorating status has affected their life experiences and their identity. Olaf Mertelsmann also brings forth a research topic regarding a largely obscured subject when one thinks of Stalinism: the leisure in Estonian SSR. Following his archival, oral history and life stories research, the author argues that leisure was however “an important aspect of everyday life in Estonia under Stalin’s reign”. He identifies traits of continuity with the interwar patterns and concludes that the Leviathan’s attempts to control leisure and re-educate the population have failed to bear the expected fruits. Another section of the journal covers international developments circumscribed to World War II. Silviu Miloiu studies the relations between Romania and Finland in the aftermath of the launching of the Barbarossa Campaign. In 1940 both states had been subjected to Soviet military or political aggression and lost territories in the east in favor of Soviet Union. Subsequently, Moscow continued to be regarded as menacing and therefore they were happy to use the opportunity of the German attack in order to recapture the lost territories and to remove the Russian threat. This new situation occasioned a steady progress in the Romanian-Finnish relations which grew as a result of a combination of balance of power and joint action. The main promoter of this progress was Romania, a country which was searching for more influence on the international arena in expectance of the peace conference to be open in the aftermath of the predictable Soviet debacle. Despite its huge losses, the Red Army survived to the German Blitzkrieg in 1941 and Stalin continued to hope that the spheres of influence that Hitler had recognized him in 1939 will be also acceded to by the Western Allies. Yet, the British-Soviet treaty of May 1942 contains no clause to this end and the discussions on this issue will linger on for two years. As Emanuel Plopeanu proves in his article, Germany was however interested in spreading the rumors through some Swedish newspapers that such a secret agreement was incorporated in the treaty, thus hoping to influence not only the public opinion in the neutral countries, but perhaps also to give its smaller allies new incentives to continue sending troops and resources to the eastern front. Ironically, the German propaganda half-lies seemed to be confirmed by the post-war realities when the Baltic States, for instance, were re-annexed to Soviet Union. When they regained their independence in the early 1990s, the Baltic nations oriented themselves towards the West in which many of them saw a shield against the menacing eastern neighbor and a path towards prosperity. Lithuania is a case in point. Elena Dragomir’s article approaches Lithuania’s EU membership by comparing the “return to Europe” speech of the politicians with the views of the public opinion as they resulted from a series of opinion polls. The conclusion of the author is that when compared, the two images almost overlap so that it can be said that the Lithuanian drive towards the EU integration has enjoyed the support of the public opinion. The last section of the journal is dedicated to the awarding of the title of Doctor Honoris Causa to the Ambassador of Lithuania, one of signatories of the Act of Restoration of Independence of his country on March 11, 1990, has constituted not only a solemn recognition of a politician, diplomat and researcher’s outstanding qualities, but has also marked a new step in the progress of the cultural relations between Romanian and Lithuanian higher education and research institutions. Consequently, we have chosen to integrate in this issue the speeches of the Rector of Valahia University of Targoviste, the laudatio and the other speeches of the commission established in order to grant the title and the reception speech of Dr. Vladimir Jarmolenko. It is our hope that this issue of RRSBN will generate new academic debates with regard to the topics approached herein. It is also our aim to target not only the community of scholars with an interest in these topics in the light of their research interest, but also to answer the public interest not only in Romania but also abroad. In order to achieve these goals and to spread this journal throughout Romanian, European and North American libraries and institutions, an essential support came from the Romanian National Cultural Fund Administration [Administraţia Fondului Cultural Naţional] to which we extend our gratitude.

This issue of Revista Română pentru Studii Baltice şi Nordice [The Romanian Journal of Baltic and Nordic Studies, RRSBN] carries selected papers presented in approximately half of the panels of the second international conference for Baltic and Nordic Studies in Romania entitled Black Sea and Baltic Sea Regions: Confluences, influences and crosscurrents in the modern and contemporary ages. The general aim of this conference was to investigate the encounters between the Baltic and the Black Sea regions’ societies since the Middle Ages. The goal was to unearth the complexity of these bonds not only at state level (political, diplomatic, military, trade relations), but also the encounters, forms of syncretism or networks of a commercial, social, cultural, religious nature which are beyond or beneath the state relations and are presumably not only richer, but more interesting and challenging for a researcher as well. Additionally, parallels between the two regions as two buffer zones situated in-between the great empires or great powers of modernity were also assessed. Papers dealing with the effects of world wars, totalitarianism and the Cold War either as comparative approach or in terms of relations, confluences and influences were also invited. Furthermore, the conference also welcomed research results dealing with diasporas, émigré communities or individual destinies in the frame of the general theme of the conference. As such, this conference constituted a real change of research paradigm, relatively little having been previously achieved in this respect. The results of the conference as the two issues of our review will prove were notable. A number of twenty-eight speakers belonging to twenty-three institutions from nine European countries approached these issues from various angles, the largest number of participants being constituted of historians, alongside whom stood specialists in international relations, minority studies, political sciences, etc. In the editing of this issue, we have focused on the panels dealing with “Settlements, transfers, encounters and clashes in the Modern Age” and “Baltic, Nordic and Black Sea regions in the international relations: intersections, meetings, crosscurrents” to which the papers signed by Stefan Donecker, Klaus Richter, Mihaela Mehedinţi, Costel Coroban, Veniamin Ciobanu and Claudiu-Lucian Topor belonged. Let us take a closer look at each of these papers individually. Stefan Donecker and Klaus Richter’s papers approached their subjects from the perspective of histoire croisée, the former researcher studying the humanist hypothesis of a Wallachian origin of Lithuanians and Latvians, while the latter considering the cultural transfers and the role of rumors as manifesting between Kišinyev and Lithuania in a charged climate marked by the wave of anti-Jewish pogroms occurring in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. The scholarly fantasy circulated by University of Wittenberg’s scholars regarding a Wallachian migration to the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea endured for about one century and half. This prompts Donecker conclude that on the mental maps of Central European scholars, “Dacia respectively Wallachia were not too civilized […], but still civilized enough to provide a reputable and very prestigious ancestry. A Wallachian origin was, indeed, an honorable genealogy.“ The outbreak of a pogrom in 1903 in the Russian guberniya of Bessarabia spread the fear among Jews within the Russian Empire. The expression to be treated “as in Kišinev” was tantamount to pogroms and was enough reason to create panic among the members of this community. The implications were manifold, not the less important of which was the determination of the Jews to defend themselves if such attacks happened or were supposed to take place. Richter also compares the disruptions caused by anti-Semitism in two very different areas of the Russian Empire, the growing industrial city of Kišinev, on the one hand, and the still rural northern part of Lithuania “in order to contextualize anti-Jewish violence in Lithuania on the larger scale of the Russian pogroms.” Mihaela Mehedinţi approaches in her contribution the relations between Transylvania and the Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland) in the 19th century as seen in Romanian periodicals from Transylvania, especially in Foaie pentru minte, inimă şi literatură, Familia and Gazeta de Transilvania. The article challenge the assumptions that because of distance the Nordic states were perceived as remote areas and little was known about them. Mehedinţi concludes that “in the 19th century, Transylvanians’ image of the Nordic countries is well shaped and has mainly positive connotations” and “the amount of information they had at their disposal was rather large and capable of preserving their representations of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland”. The papers of the panel “Baltic, Nordic and Black Sea regions in the international relations: intersections, meetings, crosscurrents” provide interesting insights into three important events unfolded in the Black and Baltic seas rim areas: Swedish King Charles XII’s Stay in the Ottoman Empire, the outbreak of the Lithuanian insurrection (25 March 1831), and the discussion regarding a Romanian-Swedish pro-German alliance going on in the first part of World War I. The first topic is assessed in the light of British documents, the second from the perspective of Swedish documents and the third is based on Romanian diplomatic documents. Costel Coroban investigates the mixture of superhero and tyrant British perception of King Charles XII. The balance was however tilted towards the negative image which spread into Britain mostly as a result of his largely overestimated cooperation with the Jacobites, the archenemies of the Royal House of Hanover, which led to the arrest of Count Gyllenborg, the Swedish envoy in London. Veniamin Ciobanu approaches the Swedish outlook of the Lithuanian insurrection of March 1831 in the light of the anxiety manifesting in the Stockholm political and diplomatic circles that the severance of the ties between Lithuania and Russia may influence the attitude of the Norwegians who were likewise unhappy with the Swedish rule upon their country imposed at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. No wonder that the Swedish paid increased attention to the events unfolding at the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea and that they unreservedly condemned the Lithuanian aspirations. Finally, Claudiu-Lucian Topor brings new evidence to a topic which still reserves many new avenues of interpretation to the interested researcher: the Romanian foreign policy in the first two years of World War I. Masterminded in Berlin in summer 1915 among the interested military circles and promoted by the pro-German Romanian envoy to Germany, the project of a Romanian-Swedish alliance to act under the umbrella of German strategic policy, aimed at winning the final victory on the Eastern Front and possibly on the Western Front, too. Utopian as it may seem today, the plan enjoyed the support of certain circles, but finally died out because of the Swedish clinging to their neutrality and of the Bratianu Government understanding of national interest. Two articles have been selected for this issue from two other panels of the conference. The first article signed by Ioana-Ecaterina Cazacu discusses the role of the Nansen Commission and the Romanian Prisoners of War’s repatriation from the Russian territories, a topic on which the author has already achieved two other notable recent contributions. In order to understand the stakes ahead this Commission, one may recall that the Nansen Commission was capable of repatriating no less than 427,885 POWs, 19,188 of whom, as Cazacu provides evidence of, were Romanians. Ēriks Jēkabsons of the University of Latvia studies the relations between Romania and Latvia at the beginning of World War II when a permanent Latvian Legation was set up in Bucharest under envoy Ludvigs Ēķis.

The current volume (8, issue 2 of 2016) of Revista Română pentru Studii Baltice şi Nordice / The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies (RRSBN) publishes mostly the papers presented at the Seventh International Conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies in Romania, Good governance in Romania and the Nordic and Baltic countries, hosted by the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies and Nicolae Iorga Institute of History of the Romanian Academy, București, 24-25 November, 2016, with the support of the embassies of Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Norway, the Consulate of Latvia to Bucharest and sponsored by Niro Investment Group. The meeting focused on good governance in Romania and the Nordic and Baltic countries as seen from a variety of angles and from the perspective of various disciplines, institutions and practices related to accountability, transparency, the rule of law, responsibility, equity, inclusiveness, participation, efficiency, human rights protection, tangible, intangible and natural heritage conservation, etc. The conference tackled concepts, issues and good practices in terms of good governance, accountability, welfare, efficiency, gender equality in the public and private sectors in Scandinavia, the Baltic States and Romania as well as the institutions called upon to fight against corruption in these countries. Historical examples of good versus bad governance were also brought forth. In this issue we included two articles looking at good governance from a historical perspective. Costel Coroban investigates a key source of High Medieval Iceland, the Íslendingabók, in order to capture the images that mirror the ideology of power. The author contrasts the Icelandic and Norwegian sources and finds out that in Iceland the rulers customarily tried to legitimate their power position or to illustrate their weak situation in competition with larger and stronger neighbors. Much had changed in the intermediate six centuries separating the Icelandic stories and the Estonian ones, but the situation of a weaker fellow subdued by a stronger nation remained. Kari Alenius brings a fresh air in the debate concerning good governance by showing that even during foreign occupations and dramatic historical events such as world wars people still need to enjoy some kind of welfare, attention to their needs, competence. Alenius discovers from the primary sources he uses that leadership cannot be offered without cultivating mutual trust and communication between the governing and the governed. Peace and security have been chosen to illustrate the conceptual approaches of Nordic states and their contribution to global stability, which is, of course, still more of a desire than a state of affairs. Security, stability, peace are, naturally, core aspects of good governance and safety of human being. Luiza-Maria Filimon tackles the Copenhagen School’s securitization theory, its conceptual strengths and applications while Mihai Sebastian Chihaia blends peace and security to the Nordic states’ endeavor to develop the security environment at European level and beyond. The situation of minorities in a given country offers a hint to the level of democracy and welfare that state grants to its citizens. The capacity to integrate people of various personal histories, cultures, languages, religions, preferences who are locals or incomers cultivates openness and enlarges the prospects of development and general welfare. Adél Furu tackles this issue in a comparative study of Finland’s policy towards the Sami population and Turkey’s policy with regard to the Kurdish minority. The journal ends with a speech of Former Ambassador of Lithuania to Bucharest, who recollects the time of Russian withdrawal of occupational troops from Lithuania and the responsibility of the Russian Federation as the heir of the Soviet state in respect to the occupation regime imposed upon Lithuania in 1940 and 1944. Historical memory is the arch which governs the architecture of Vladimir Jarmolenko’s essay. The journal will continue to integrate aspects of good governance in its future issues, as it is a need, a desire, a right and an obligation of our modern world to grant and guarantee that it is offered and spread.

The current issue of Revista Română de Studii Baltice şi Nordice / The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies gathers in its first part the syllabi of the courses taught during the Romanian summer school of Nordic and Baltic studies entitled “A piece of culture, a culture of peace” (CoolPeace), 2014 session. This summer school is an educational programme supported by a grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Financed under the measure “inter-institutional cooperation projects” of the EEA grants, the summer school is meant to strengthen the institutional cooperation at the level of higher education sector between all the partners involved: Valahia University of Târgovişte as the Project Promoter, the University of Agder, the University of Oslo, the Embassy of Lithuania in Romania, Peace Action Training and Research Institute of Romania and the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies. The Programme Operator of the EEA Scholarship Programme in Romania is ANPCDEFP (the National Agency for Community Programmes in the Field of Education and Vocational Training). This educational programme in form of a multiannual summer school includes activities divided into two modules: one on Scandinavian, Finnic and Baltic languages (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian taught in 2014), and the other one on culture, history, geography, law and economy courses related to the North. It also includes workshops both for the students and the staff with a focus on the exchange of good practices and transfer of expertise between the Romanian trainers and the Norwegian partners. The educational programme will be followed by an international conference which will approach some of the topics debated during the summer school from the perspective of scholarly research. The second part of the current issue continues the publication of the proceedings of the Fourth international conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies in Romania related especially to cultural studies. The conference entitled Empire-building and Region-building in the Baltic, North and Black Sea areas was hosted by the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies and Ovidius University of Constanţa, on 24-26 May 2013 and encouraged among others linguistic unity and diversity in Scandinavia and the Baltic states, Nordic and Baltic identity through cultural diversity and intra- and interregional comparisons involving the Nordic and Baltic states. Thus, the contributions published in this issue approach linguistic diversity in Finland and Turkey, in Norway and in Swedish literature (the articles written by Adél Furu, Crina Leon and Roxana-Ema Dreve), the reception of Scandinavian poetry and literature in Romania (Raluca-Daniela Răduţ and Diana Lăţug), Norwegian and Finnish language teaching and cross-cultural encounters (Raluca Petruş, Sanda Tomescu-Baciu and Ildikó Varga), ethnic minorities and regional identities with a focus on the Meänkieli speaking community (Enikő Molnár Bodrogi), as well as images of region-building in the Baltic sea region (Michael North and Marta Grzechnik). The present issue also includes an interview from October 2013 with Professor Arne Halvorsen, a central figure in the field of Romanian-Norwegian cultural relations. Most regrettably, Professor Halvorsen passed away in March 2014, but we would like that this interview to be regarded as a small part of our gratitude shown for his efforts of promoting the Romanian language and culture in Norway. It is our hope that the publication for the first time in Romania of course syllabi for all the Nordic and Baltic languages will be of help for other language trainers in the future, and that the syllabi of the other courses on Nordic culture and civilization could serve as a model and inspiration for trainers interested in the same field. Moreover, the scientific articles related to the Nordic, Baltic and Black Sea areas will render a more complete image of the cultures taken into consideration. It is our aim to target not only the direct beneficiaries of the summer school and the community of scholars with an interest in Nordic and Baltic areas, but also to facilitate a transfer of expertise regarding teaching methods and to answer the interest of the general public in Nordic and Baltic studies.

Editorial Foreword Silviu Miloiu President of the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies, E-mail: silviu.miloiu@arsbn.ro Most of the articles published in the current issue of Revista Română de Studii Baltice şi Nordice / The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies have been initially presented at the Fourth International Conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies in Romania: Empire-Building and Region-Building in the Baltic, North and Black Sea areas held at Ovidius University Of Constanța in May 2013. The conference approached the North in the wider perspective of regional cooperation intra- and extra-Nordic muros. The North is regarded as a springboard of regional cooperation which has a strong though faltering historical and cultural background and an obvious European dimension. The downfall of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the process of European integration (whether some of the Nordic countries belong to the EU or not, they are all part and parcel of the process and deeply affected by it) have encouraged the development of regional cooperation in Northern Europe. Belonging to the Northern dimension of the EU meant not only maintaining a regional identity with deep roots in history and culture and making the others acknowledge it, but also strengthening the influence of Nordic countries within and outside the EU and fostering other regional cooperation initiatives in the Baltic Sea area and outside it. Patterned on the Nordic regional cooperation, the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia strengthened their regional cooperation and envisaged deepening their ties to surrounding areas, especially with the Nordic countries. Alongside the Nordic countries, they also gradually turned into a model for the Danubian and Black Sea countries. In this respect, the conference addressed themes such as: the empire building, region-building, national/nationalist, cultural construction discourses present in these regions; the historic development of these regional initiatives and/or organizations and the relations between them; political, cultural and diplomatic relations between Baltic and/or Nordic states, on the one hand, and the Black Sea countries, on the other hand; the relations between the EU integration and different Baltic, North and Black Sea regional structures; Revista Română de Studii Baltice şi Nordice, Vol. 5, Issue 2 (2013): pp. 5-6 education and leadership in the context of regionalization in the Baltic Sea and Black Sea areas; linguistic unity and diversity in Scandinavia and the Baltic states; Nordic and Baltic identity through cultural diversity; water protection in the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea Region and the role of agriculture; inter- and intra-regional comparisons. Stefan Ewert and Kari Alenius address in their contributions the topic of region-building. The former scholar explains why in the Baltic Sea are no spill-over effects in the area of agricultural cooperation as they are to be found in other areas such as education. The latter studies the creation of the image of Balkans in Finnish schoolbooks from late 19th century to early 21st century. Darius Žiemelis discusses the social economic history of Lithuania from the 16th-19th centuries from the perspective of non-Marxist (Karl Bücher, Max Weber) and neo-Marxists (Witold Kula, Immanuel Wallerstein) scholars. Aelita Ambrulevičiūtė looks at peasant habits while researching the modernization of Vilnius, Kaunas and Grodno provinces society in the period of 1861—1914. Costel Coroban rightly acknowledges the state of Viking studies in Romania and devotes his analysis to Romanian language terminology with regard to “Viking historical characters, rituals, artefacts.” Mihaela Mehediní looks at Nordic and Russian diplomats as interconnectors between their countries and the Romanian area during the Modern Age (17th – 19th centuries) and discovers a net of bonds linking them to the Romanian rulers. Finally, Giedrius Kviklys sketches out the EU-Russia relations from the perspective of EU – Northern Dimension and Black Sea Synergy. One of the plenary sessions organized during the conference brought together diplomats from the Nordic and Baltic areas who were looking to Baltic Sea region-building process from the perspective of their countries. The address of Her Excellency Ms. Ulla Väistö, the Ambassador of Finland, is included in this issue as well as the address of Dr. Vladimir Jarmolenko, at the time the Ambassador of Lithuania in Romania. We hope that the diversity of themes and insightfulness of analyses will capture the interest of public, decision-makers and academic community alike. 6

Log In

Editorial Foreword

Related papers

Related papers