This paper explores the scope, causes, flourishing, and decline of squatting in Lithuanian society during the period of 1990-2002. Drawing on 16 in-depth interviews conducted with squatters in Vilnius, newspaper articles and legal documents, this paper shows that squatters made contributions to the city with their cultural capital, creating local subcultures and making the urban space more attractive. Squatters promoted an alternative way of life, contributed to the preservation of the city and fostered counter-cultural activities. They offered spaces for performances, exhibits, and concerts. These activities are still present up to this day in the Užupis neighborhood that hosted the most long-lived squat, which in turn was transformed into Art Incubator.

Orphanage No. 7 in Taganrog was one of the former Soviet orphanages that came into contact with the new charity early on, in the form of summer vacation exchanges with Swedish host families. The reality Swedish visitors encountered in Taganrog and elsewhere, however, was not always of the dreaded kind — a destitute shelter for desperate children abandoned by the world — although such a description was at times apt, especially in reference to homes for the mentally disabled. What they found instead were tangible traces and elements of entirely different plans and ambitions.

In response to the contemporary globalization ofthe economy, food markets are shifting toward differentiation of services and products based on theunique qualities and attributes of the products. Aparadigm called the “quality turn” corresponds to the increasing variety of food services. “Alternative foods”,including organic products or products qualified bytheir origin, and new methods of marketing the sefoods (farmer’s markets, local contracts, etc.) are developingthrough the mainstreaming of innovation. Protected designation of origin (PDO) is a certificationscheme that certifies products by their origin, and is one of several important tools to strengthen the competitiveness of rural areas, especially for smallscalefood processing in rural and less-developed areas in Europe. A PDO provides groups of producers with protection against unfair competition for products whose unique sensory characteristics essentially depend on the local geographic and cultural conditions as well as the local know-how of the productionsite. A PDO certification informs consumers that the product quality and its value depend on the geographic origin of the product. Despite the potential value of PDOs for producers, their use is unevenly distributed throughout the EU. The organization of the qualitycertification systems and corresponding legal provisions vary between countries. France, Italy, and Spainare models for the development of the PDO schemeand have more than 800 PDO-certified products. However, countries such as Sweden, Finland, andDenmark have a much smaller number of products that are certified. In Sweden, several products have applied for a PDO, but only one, Kalix Löjrom, has been certified under the scheme. The reason for this failure is mainly that Sweden’s current customs do not correspond to the rules and traditions used to createthe PDO scheme. To increase the likelihood of successfully obtaining PDOs, Sweden should work to reinvent local knowledge and local food and to recover its traditional food culture.

The concepts of social realism and new realism are developed in relation to the artworks of Lena Svedberg and Olle Kåks. A comparison between the artists’ uses of the concepts of social realism and function is presented. How the realist approach during the years around 1970 played out in the force field of society and the psyche, the collective realm and the individual, is exemplified by our two very different case studies. Svedberg’s political narratives compose mon-tages in which fictional, metaphorical figures are inserted side by side with political leaders drawn from newspaper clips. Kåks’s allegory-like oil painting shows a stone worker working in the face of his imminent disappearance. They both reveal myths as opposed to historically manifested commodity relations.

This article examines the policies on drug control and regulation in Russia. We demonstrate that, although agencies involved in drug con-trol and regulation are important for the reproduction of differentiated practices of drug use, they formulate a rather homogeneous image of a drug user as an unhealthy deviant and criminal, and an unequivocal threat to society. At the same time, in the process of policy realization, the most vulnerable groups of users become the main target of public intervention. As a result, stigmatization and violence against these groups becomes institutionalized and legitimized. Moreover, drug control and regulation resonate with a broader range of public policies and spill over into parts of society not associated with illicit drug use.

Two distinct cases of kin-state relations are examined: that of Russians living in states neighboring Russia and that of Magyars living in states around Hungary. The role of kin-state relations in Europe is studied from a historical perspective and, with reference to Rogers Brubaker's concept of a triadic nexus between nationalizing states, a national minority, and an external homeland. It is argued that the fall of communism – and the fall of several multi-ethnic federations, in particular – revived old territorial conflicts and hostility among national groups both within and between states. The question of kin-state relations is put at the forefront of European minority issues.

The diaspora of Armenians in Eastern Europe dates back to the Middle Ages. The text describes the medieval settlements. Then it reviews a new book by the Romanian-Armenian writer Varujan Vosganian, Book of Whispers.

This paper deals with the dilemmas scholars can run into when they encounter the conflict between political activists and what can be proven by evidence. The disputewith historians revolves around what the anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot terms “Silencing the past”. This is certainly true in the case of the Roma and genocide.What complicates the case is that a long-standing memory is part of a still ongoing political activist campaign to build a recognized memory for all of Europe’s Roma.

The article addresses the issue of the business climate in Russia from the Swedish investors' perspective and relates its to a general theoretical debate in the field. Statistical tests suggests that the majority of variables relating to the business climate has deteriorated between 2012 and 2014. The findings support several mainstream theories regarding the business climate but also demonstrate some contradictions that would require further investigation. These include the reaction of Swedish business to the escalation of political tensions between Russia and the West and the factor of corruption, which is not viewed as serious enough to fully discourage foreign investors from staying in Russia.

This article engages with political region building by examining the diverging conceptions of the Baltic Sea region since the 1970s. Itmaps the fuzzy geography arising from the enmeshment of territory with a multitude of frameworks for regional action. After 1989, the region became the object of interregional and neighborhood policies established by the European Union, with shifting territorial delimitations according to various internal and geopolitical needs of the day. Drawing on functional, relational, and administrative perspectives, it is shown how spatial definitions surrounding the Baltic Sea region have varied over the past fifty years, revealing those transnational connections that have been valued as worthwhile political investments.

The specific of Russian media model called as Statist Commercial model is a combination of Western market economy elements with considerable influence from the political elite. It is also characterized by state control of media, lack of legal protection for journalists, restriction of professional journalistic autonomy, and censorship/self-censorship. However, the media market is represented not only by propagandistic national TV channels but also by press disloyal to the Kremlin, indicating a degree of diversity and pluralism.

The Russian media is targeting different audiences: the larger group serves the wide audience who passively absorbing the propaganda; the smaller (“liberal”) media group enables a small stratum of intellectuals to let off steam and as a facade of democracy for the worldwide public. Both groups are functioning diachronically, being directly or indirectly managed by the state.

The development of social media created new conditions for Russian journalists. LiveJournal is the most popular and relatively non-controlled blog platform in Russia. The core of political/public discourse is mainly held there and potentially can be useful for Russian journalists. This research is based on analysis of 100 journalist’s blogs in the period of the last presidential election 2012; the findings show how they use LiveJournal for professional goals. This paper is discussing to what extend journalists’ blogging works as a compensatory means and a tool for self-expression outside the media companies in conditions of press freedom restriction.  

Thousands of Roma were killed in Ukraine between 1941 and 1944 by Nazi einsatzgruppen and local collaborators. The Romani victims were practically never deported to extermination camps but instead their bodies were left where they had been murdered. Babi Yar (Babyn Yar in Ukrainian) in Kyiv is considered a single largest Holocaust massacre in Europe. The place is a chine of seven deep ravines in the north-western part of the city. There on September 29-30, 1941, more than 33,000 Jews were exterminated by Nazis in a single mass killing. In 1941-43 hundreds of Ukrainian Roma were also murdered there. The total number of victims (Jews, Roma, underground fighters, mentally ill people, Ukrainian nationalists) killed in Babi Yar is estimated to 100,000 people. However in the postwar report published by the Extraordinary Commission for Investigation of War Crimes (ChGK), the Roma were not specified, they were rather counted as ”murdered civil citizens”. The Soviet leadership discouraged placing any emphasis on the ethnic aspects of this genocide. In April 1945 the leading Soviet newspaper Pravda informed their readers that according to the party decision a memorial and a museum will be built in Babi Yar. Nothing was done. The Nazi policy of extermination of Roma was neglected; the war was depicted as a tragedy for all Soviet peoples.  Until 1966 the site of mass killing in Babi Yar was unmarked and the first monument was built only in 1976 after a number of protest actions.Despite the silence on the Jewish and Roma genocides, the 1976 Soviet memorial legalized practices of memory. Every year September 29 the monument was visited not only by Jews but also Roma. It was then that the Romani tradition was born to bring to the monument the photos of relatives murdered by the Nazis. This practice continues to this day. By this ceremony the Roma are trying to overcome the problem of de-personalization of the genocide victims.