Lecturer in Politics and International Relations Salyga Jokubas

116600 €

The Enigma of Baltic Post-Communist Transformations

Tieteellinen tutkimus / siihen pohjautuva työ | Kolmivuotinen

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.