This volume offers the insights of Baltic and Western European scholars into present
socioeconomic migration identity gender race media and historical memory issues in the
Baltic States. The book attempts to show the intensity and depth of social economic and
cultural change in the Baltic region. It throws light on why and how three small countries have
become a litmus test case of modernity and its sensibilities stretching from authoritarian and
totalitarian past to liberal-democratic present. An historic jump from the Soviet Union to the
European Union was accompanied by a dramatic struggle of the Baltic States for their
inalienable right to return to the political map of the world. The Baltic States allow us a
glimpse of the twentieth century history better than anything else. This interdisciplinary
volume by virtue of different perspectives employed by political scientists gender and race
scholars communication and journalism researchers linguists and anthropologists will enable
a readership to get the first-hand knowledge about an unprecedented social and political change
that took place in the Baltic States over the past nineteen years. In addition the book allows
a point of departure into some historical memory clashes controversies and moral and
political debates over the past and its impact on the present.
