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Argues that the Baltic states, mainly Estonia and Latvia, represent examples of the complicated sequence of endogenously derived transition and exogenously influenced consolidation. These democratic transitions set certain parameters for their subsequent democratic consolidation. In particular, Estonia and Latvia opted for a nationalist, ‘legal restorationist’ view of independence. This interpretation of transition represented a somewhat problematic combination of two paths towards redemocratization—‘society‐led regime termination’ and ‘internal restoration after external reconquest’. The first section of this chapter examines this apparent contradiction. The second part examines the Estonian and Latvian cases, focusing on the major international actors involved in these transitions and the mechanisms of their engagement up to early 2000. In conclusion, it is argued that international influences (mainly from the European Union) have increased as the two countries have integrated more closely with the West. Overall, this case study of Estonia and Latvia argues that the specific path a country chooses towards democratic transition is likely to create certain path‐dependent problems that it (and the rest of the democratic community) will ultimately have to face during democratic consolidation.

The unique case of the Baltic States as EU and NATO members is discussed in this chapter. The implications of Russia’s compatriot policies in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are assessed, particularly how these policies are evolving beyond soft power tools toward passportization and information warfare. The chapter evaluates the successes and failures of Russia’s policies and the likelihood of future conflict by drawing on past and current developments and comparisons with the conflicts in eastern Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and beyond.

The study focuses on the behavior of mortality rates of fourteen countries in Eastern and Central Europe during the transition period. Mortality rates differ from country to country: the Czech Republic has the most improved life expectancy rate while Russia and the Baltic States having the highest mortality rates and hence lower life expectancy. Different factors are considered by the study which affects the mortality rates of these countries. However, the study also considers the increased mortality rates in these countries as either a continuation of the unhealthy lifestyle under the USSR or an effect of other events like the World War II or the famine in the early 1920's that affected the USSR. Numerous factors are also cited by the study. The study finally proposes solutions to this unexplainable rise in the mortality rates of these countries.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the advent of Cartesianism. It then covers Cartesianism in Central Europe, New Philosophy's conquest of Scandinavia and the Baltic, philosophy and royal absolutism in France, and the dilemmas created by the New Philosophy in the Italian states.

This introduction examines the ‘identity crisis’ facing Russians and Russian speakers in post-Soviet Latvia following the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union. It provides a scholarly literature review of previously-conducted research into Russian-speaking identities in Latvia, and in the Baltic states more broadly. This helps to set out some of the key, conceptual frameworks that are employed in the research such as Brubaker’s triadic nexus model, collective memory, and social integration. The chapter contextualises these frameworks within the post-Soviet developments of the Latvian state.

This chapter examines the escalation of violence across the former Russian Empire as the First World War drew to a close, analysing the origins and early operations of the anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army (and that force's relations with the Don and Kuban Cossacks), the victory of Rightist forces in the Finnish Civil War, the emergence of the Baltic States, and the impact of Austro-German (and Ottoman) intervention in Ukraine and Transcaucasia. The chapter then shifts its focus to the opposition to Soviet rule that was raised by non-Bolshevik socialists in eastern Russia and elsewhere (the Democratic Counter-Revolution) in alliance with a peculiar outlier of the Allied intervention in Russia — the Czechoslovak Legion. It concludes with an account of the origins of the Red Army, noting the impact upon that process of events on the Volga Front in 1918 and the innovative solutions that the Red command introduced — especially the deployment of voenspetsy (former tsarist officers) and the ire this practise raised among Leftist elements of the Bolshevik party (and, during the so-called “Tsaritsyn Affair”, J.V. Stalin), as well as Trotsky's efforts to overcome problems of the recruitment and desertion of Red troops and officers.

This chapter focuses on refugees in the region that later became the Baltic States and that in the Russian Empire formed the Baltic provinces and parts of Russia’s northwest. It addresses how the refugee crisis was perceived by diverse groups including Russian officials, Baltic Germans, Jews, local peasants, and the emerging national elites, and considers the impact of ethnic belonging on the treatment of refugees and the changes in ethnic policies over the course of the war and the first years of independent statehood. It examines how refugees were resettled against the background of state-building and continuing warfare. Lastly it points out that repatriation was not merely a reaction to expulsions, but a policy with its own strategic purpose, with aims that went far beyond a return to the status quo ante 1914.

This chapter puts cultural constructions informed by Orientalism in the context of the contemporary “memory war” over the meaning and legacy of World War II in Eastern Europe. Drawing on the concept of nesting Orientalisms, the chapter demonstrates how Russia and its former satellites in Eastern Europe (e.g., the Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine) try to depict each other as “less European” in the face of “the West” in order to gain the latter’s recognition of one’s own comparatively “more European” nature. Western readings of these East European memory wars of World War II add another interesting layer of Orientalism to the study, as due to the constitutive role of “the East” for “the West”, these conflicts over memory are culturally and socially productive for Western European identities as well.

This chapter examines the process of EU expansion into the former Soviet Union since 1989, identifying the different criteria that have been used to judge candidates for EU membership. The Central European and Baltic states successfully made arguments about their “intrinsic Europeanness” and “belonging” to Europe and the EU, while the Balkan states have had a harder time proving their suitability for Europe. Unlike the Baltic states, the other ex-Soviet republics, like Ukraine and Georgia, have had a harder time convincing the EU of their fitness for membership, that is, their “intrinsic Europeanness,” and have had to settle for being made “Eastern Partners” of the EU and signers of Association Agreements with the EU. Russia has sought a form of partnership with the EU, while rejecting any idea of conditionality. Finally, the EU shows little concern for the ex-Soviet states of Central Asia, not seeing them as fundamentally European in any way.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, Latvia — as well as its neighbouring countries of Estonia and Lithuania forming the Baltic States — enjoyed a remarkable healthcare system resulting in a life expectancy of ten years longer than that of Russia’s. It’s life expectancy even exceeded the life expectancies of Italy, Germany and Austria. When Latvia was politically independent, its life expectancy further increased by two years. However, events like World War II, repression against civil population, collapse of the USSR, the persistent mismanagement of the USSR and the subsequent transition from command economy to market economy strongly influenced the population of Latvia. The chapter particularly studies the factors affecting the mortality rate of Latvia during the transition period which shall base its findings from statistical data.

Describing the transition to a market economy in the 1990s and recovery from the financial crisis after 2008 in the Baltic states, particularly in Latvia, we explore the various roles that international organizations (IOs) can assume in order to influence market organization. IOs see states as independent decision makers in control of markets through organization. Paradoxically, however, the practice of IOs and the advice they offer undermine the independent decisions of states, because states are expected to reform in accordance with the IOs’ ideas—ideas that further build on decontextualized notions that may not fit the situation of individual states. Recovering from crises, the Baltic states succeeded in regaining control over markets by not conforming to IO ideas.

Chapter 4 is the last of three chapters analysing Russia’s post-Soviet state practice with regard to the right to self-determination. It shows how Russia (ab)used the right of peoples to self-determination as a pretext to justify territorial acquisitions by the threat and use of force, in particular in the context of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, but also in its retrospect evaluation of the Soviet Union’s annexation of the Baltic states in 1940. Apart from a ‘referendum’, Russia’s main legal argument for the legality of Crimea’s incorporation into the Russian Federation was based on the reading that the Ukrainian Revolution had created an ‘extreme situation’ in which Crimea’s right to self-determination could not be exercised any longer in the constitutional framework of Ukraine. As in the cases of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the claim of a right of secession had however no sufficient factual basis, although the underlying legal view—that the right of peoples to self-determination may confer a right of secession in ‘extreme situations’—was consistent with earlier state practice. ‘Crimea’ arguably marked a shift away from legal argumentation towards recourse to eclectic historical claims and restoration of hegemonic power, in which the right of peoples to self-determination continues to function as a central legal argument, but legal reasoning more generally loses its dominant position in the official justification of Russia’s state practice in the post-Soviet space.

It was supposed to be China’s coming-out party, a moment in the global spotlight affirming its arrival as an economic superpower. But hours before the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, news of a war in the Caucasus flashed across the world’s TV screens. On the southern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains, the state of Georgia launched a military offensive against South Ossetia, a small breakaway territory beyond its control since the Soviet collapse. Georgia’s offensive quickly brought Russia to the defense of its local Ossetian allies. As Soviet-era tanks rolled through the Roki tunnel, the only land connection between South Ossetia and Russia, Russian aircraft bombed Georgian targets in the region and beyond. For the first time since the Cold War ended, Russia was invading a neighboring state. Instead of glowing stories about China, speculation about a new Cold War filled the front pages of the Western press. Yet within a week the war was over and a ceasefire agreed. Thereafter a rapidly moving global financial crisis displaced what seemed a harbinger of geopolitical rupture to an afterthought. As quickly as it had flared, the Russo-Georgian war disappeared, and with it talk of a return to geopolitics past. Six years later Russia was in the global spotlight as host of the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, located on the shores of the Black Sea at the western end of the Caucasus Mountains. Despite well-grounded fears of terrorism, the Olympics were a triumph for Russia and its leadership. Yet a few days later, the world recoiled in shock as Russia once again invaded a neighboring state. Responding to a perceived “fascist coup” in Kyiv, unmarked Russian military personnel seized control of the Ukrainian province of Crimea, once part of Soviet Russia and home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. A hastily organized referendum followed, creating the appearance of legitimacy for Russia to formally annex the province, and the city of Sevastopol, in late March 2014.

On April 25, 2005, President Vladimir Putin addressed the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. In his lengthy speech Putin laid out a series of priorities for the Russian state in the coming decade. These priorities were not new—he had spoken about them in a similar address the year before—and their central aim was well known, “to build,” as he put it in his address, “an effective state system within the current national borders.” However, it was not Putin’s discussion of democracy and corruption in state institutions that generated headlines in the Western media. Instead it was Putin’s prologue for his reform agenda: . . . Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself. Individual savings were depreciated, and old ideals destroyed. Many institutions were disbanded or reformed carelessly. Terrorist intervention and the Khasavyurt capitulation [the agreement that ended the first Chechen war] that followed damaged the country’s integrity. Oligarchic groups—possessing absolute control over information channels— served exclusively their own corporate interests. Mass poverty began to be seen as the norm. And all this was happening against the backdrop of a dramatic economic downturn, unstable finances, and the paralysis of the social sphere. Many thought or seemed to think at the time that our young democracy was not a continuation of Russian statehood, but its ultimate collapse, the prolonged agony of the Soviet system. But they were mistaken. . . . Putin’s rhetorical device was a conventional decline-and-renewal trope, describing the era of national decline and humiliation that set the stage for his heroic mission of restoring Russia’s strength and capacity. However, Associated Press and BBC news service reports on the speech focused only on one phrase, to which they gave a different translation from that released by the Kremlin (cited above).

The Atlantic Gets Ever Wider. Not just in a physical sense, as oceans rise and coastlines recede, but also in ideological terms. Europe and America appear to be pitted against each other as never before. On one shore, capitalist markets, untempered by proper social policies, allow unbridled competition, poverty, pollution, violence, class divides, and social anomie. On the other side, Europe nurtures a social approach, a regulated labor market, and elaborate welfare networks. Possibly it has a less dynamic economy, but it is a more solidaristic and harmonious society. “Our social model,” as the voice of British left liberalism, the Guardian, describes the European way, “feral capitalism,” in the United States. With the collapse of communism, the European approach has been promoted from being the Third Way to the Second Way. The UK fl oats ambiguously between these two shores: “Janus Britain” in the phrase of the dean of transatlanticist observers, Timothy Garton Ash. It is part of Europe, says the British Left ; an Anglo-Saxon coconspirator, answer its continental counterparts. That major differences separate the United States from Europe is scarcely a new idea. But it has become more menacingly Manichaean over the last decade. Foreign policy disagreements fuel it: Iraq, Iran, Israel, North Korea. So does the more general question of what role the one remaining superpower should play while it still remains unchallenged. Robert Kagan has famously suggested that, when it comes to foreign policy, Americans and Europeans call different planets home. Americans wield hard power and face the nasty choices that follow in its wake. Europeans, sheltered from most geopolitical strife, enjoy the luxury of approaching conflict in a more conciliatory way: Martian unilateralism confronts Venusian multilateralism. But the dispute goes beyond diplomatic and military strategy. It touches on the nature of these two societies. Does having the strongest battalions change the country that possesses them? After all, America is not just militarily strong. It is also—compared to Europe—harsh, dominated by the market, crime-ridden, violent, unsolidaristic, and sharp-elbowed. Competition is an official part of the national ideology and violence the way it spills over into everyday life. Or so goes the argument: a major battle of worldviews and social practices separates America from Europe.