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Estonian ambassador August Torma had a protracted and unconventional relationship with the British Foreign Office. Appointed to the Court of St James’s in 1934, Torma lost his government in 1940 when the Soviet Union overran his country, but continued to live at the legation in London and visit the Foreign Office. Gradually, however, his diplomatic standing was eroded because of Soviet demands. For Torma there was the very real fear that Britain might recognise the Soviet occupation of his homeland and he continued to reiterate his faith in international law in the hope that Estonia’s stolen independence would be restored one day. He died in 1971, twenty years before the country regained its lost freedom. This book is a biography of Torma who had a remarkable life: he assisted in the creation of the Estonian state in 1918–20, worked for it during the inter-war period and struggled to keep its cause alive during and after the Second World War; it is also a study of the awkward relationship between the ambassador and the Foreign Office that lasted for more than three decades.
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The studies in East and Central European History Writing in Exile 1939-1989, all written by experts in the history of the region, give answers to the comprehensive question of how the experience of exile during the time of the Nazi and Communist totalitarianism influenced and still influences history writing and the historical consciousness both in the countries hosting exile historians, as well as in the home countries which these historians left. The volume comprises difficult-to-access information about the organization and the work of historians exiled from the Baltic States, including Baltic Germans, Belorusia, Ukraine, and Poland. And it provides reflections on the intellectuals networking between their own national and the foreign traditions in the exile. Contributors are: Olavi Arens, Mirosław Filipowicz, Jörg Hackmann, Volodymyr Kravchenko, Oleg Łatyszonek, Andreas Lawaty, Iveta Leitāne, Artur Mękarski, Andrzej Nowak, Gert von Pistohlkors, Andrejs Plakans, Toivo Raun, Rafał Stobiecki, Mirosław A. Supruniuk, Jaan Undusk, and Maria Zadencka.
While the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 was a pivotal moment in European history and precipitated the outbreak of the Second World War western historiography has largely neglected Northern Europe. Two questions dominated the course of events, the Anglo-German contest for control of the access to the Atlantic Ocean and the Soviet-German contest for control of their former territories as a precursor to the future Total War they expected to wage against each other. This anthology of 23 essays considers both these issues collectively and provides a new international perspective on the region’s transition from the relative peace of the interwar era to the all out war following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Contributors are Azar Gat, Michael Epkenhans, Andrew Lambert, Tom Kristiansen, Rolf Hobson, Gunnar Åselius, Jörg Hillmann, Werner Rahn, Sławomir Dębski, Ole Kristian Grimnes, Česlovas Laurinavičius, Alfred Erich Senn, Lars Ericson Wolke, Karl Erik Haug, Boris Vadimovich Sokolov, Toomas Hiio, Magnus Ilmjärv, Palle Roslyng-Jensen ,Hans Christian Bjerg, Valters Ščerbinskis, Michael H. Clemmesen, and Marcus Faulkner.
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Über die NS-Prozesse in Osteuropa in den 1960er Jahren und den Stellenwert des Holocaust darin. Etwa 15 Jahre nach Kriegsende kam es in vielen Staaten des Ostblocks zu einer zweiten Welle von Gerichtsverfahren gegen NS-Verbrecher, die anderen Logiken folgte als die Prozesse unmittelbar nach Kriegsende. Auf dem Höhepunkt des Kalten Krieges in den 1960er Jahren verpflichteten die Prozesse einerseits zu einer Zusammenarbeit zwischen Ost und West, andererseits waren sie bestimmt durch die Abwehrhaltung gegenüber dem jeweiligen Gegner im Systemkonflikt. Innerhalb des Ostblocks sollte durch ein abgestimmtes Vorgehen auf der internationalen Bühne Einigkeit demonstriert werden, gleichzeitig füh...
This volume aims to offer a fresh perspective towards the evaluation of Soviet war crimes trials of Holocaust perpetrators, their representation through various means of media, and their reception in the context of the Cold War. By examining the 1964 Klaipėda war crimes trial in Soviet Lithuania through a microhistorical perspective, the book explores the history of the “second wave” of Soviet justice in the 1960s. It attempts to offer insight not only into how this Soviet war crimes trial was initiated and investigated, but also into how it was presented in the courtroom and channeled through the media for publicity. The book argues that the war crimes trials conducted by the Soviet Lithuanian judiciary can be on one hand perceived as an intrinsic element of Soviet ideological propaganda and, on the other, viewed as an alternative space for disclosing memories of the mass murder of Jews, offering an opposing perspective to the official Soviet politics of memory. Intended for both an academic audience and the general public, this volume unveils an intertwined compilation of Soviet legal history, politics of retribution, memory, and media during the Thaw period.
This edited volume presents a comprehensive analysis of the ‘Baltic question’, which arose within the context of the Cold War, and which has previously received little attention. This volume brings together a group of international specialists on the international history of northern Europe. It combines country-based chapters with more thematic approaches, highlighting above all the political dimension of the Baltic question, locating it firmly in the context of international politics. It explores the policy decision-making mechanisms which sustained the Western non-recognition of Soviet sovereignty over the Baltic States after 1940 and which eventually led to the legal restoration of the three countries’ statehood in 1991. The wider international ramifications of this doctrine of legal continuity are also examined, within the context both of the Cold War and of relations between post-soviet Russia and the enlarging ‘Euro-Atlantic area’. The book ends with an examination of how this Cold War legacy continues to shape relations between Russia and the West.
This eagerly-awaited sequel shares the characteristics of its distinguished predecessor -- wide geographical and chronological span; expert mingling of political, social and economic history; and Dr Kirby's ability to keep the separate national threads of his account from tangling as he weaves them into the broad regional picture that is his main concern. Here he tackles the contrasting experiences of Europe's northern periphery -- affluence and democracy in the north, stagnation and authoritarianism in the south -- from the French Revolution to the collapse of the USSR and beyond. This is a masterly study of a region that is far from peripheral politically to the post-Soviet world.