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Research

The Enigma of Baltic Post-Communist Transformations

Application summary

The purpose of this project is to provide a first comprehensive and comparative account of the provenances, actualities and postscripts of post-communist transformation in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. By developing an innovative historical materialist approach, the project will adopt extended analytical timeframe (from the 1940s to the present). It will advance a research agenda generative of new empirical findings. At the centre of this agenda will be an engagement with the themes ranging from the assessment of economic impacts of the Soviet occupation, the nature of the 1991 revolutions and the origins of Baltic neoliberalisms to the intricacies of class re-composition in moments of property restructuring, the instances of forgotten labour struggles, as well as the recent rise of the far-right in the environ of authoritarian neoliberal statecraft. Combining insights from International Political Economy, Historical Sociology, Industrial Relations and Area Studies, this project will transform the doctoral dissertation into a first research monograph. Its publication is currently negotiated with Stanford University Press. In addition, the concepts and themes addressed in the first monograph will form the basis for two additional projects (on historical materialist concepts and labour resistance in Eastern Europe) during the three years for which the funding from Kone Foundation is sought.

The purpose of this project was to provide the first comprehensive and comparative account of the origins, trajectories and legacies of post-communist transformation in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Through the development of an innovative critical political economy framework, the project adopted an extended analytical timeframe spanning from the 1940s to the present. In doing so, it advanced a research agenda designed to generate new empirical findings and reinterpret established narratives of post-socialist change.

At the centre of this agenda was sustained engagement with a range of interrelated themes, including the economic consequences of Soviet incorporation, the character of the revolutions of 1991, the intellectual and political origins of Baltic neoliberalisms, processes of class recomposition during property restructuring, overlooked episodes of labour resistance and the recent rise of the far right within the broader context of authoritarian neoliberal statecraft.

The project integrated insights from International Political Economy, Historical Sociology, Industrial Relations and Area Studies. It culminated in the transformation of the doctoral dissertation into a first research monograph, the manuscript of which has been submitted to Manchester University Press and is scheduled for publication in the second half of 2027. Apart from the book, two scholarly articles were published as outcomes of this grant.

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