Last week’s Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe, hosted by Centre for Geopolitics at University of Cambridge, was by all means an extraordinary event. Rarely can one immerse oneself in so many in-depth discussions about a variety of matters related to the Baltic Sea – its history, present and future.
For three days, I had the honour of interacting with outstanding scholars and practitioners who proved that the ongoing tensions in the Baltic region require even more acute analysis and critical approach. For that reason, CBSE has become a byword for highest-level academic endeavours pertaining to the Baltic Sea and its surroundings.
Collective memory is part of security in a growing number of ways. Although this realisation is now widespread, our efforts to grasp disturbing narratives of the past presented by the Russian authorities are still at an initial stage. I am thus grateful to Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies for the opportunity to present my recent paper on Kaliningrad Oblast, EU enlargement and memory politics in today’s Russia. It was a project on the sidelines on my book dedicated to collective memory in post-Soviet Kaliningrad Oblast, which will be published in mid-June by Routledge.