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Category: Issue 4 2025

The fight for a letter: how Ukraine is removing Russia’s imperial legacy

For decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, remnants of the Soviet and Russian imperial legacy, such as symbols, street names and the names of cities and villages, remained visible in Ukraine’s public spaces. Russia’s 2014 invasion, followed by the full-scale assault in 2022, accelerated efforts to purge this legacy, though not always without controversy.

For years, Dmytro Karpiy has been on a mission to erase Soviet and Russian imperial symbols from Ukraine’s streets, advocating for the renaming of places and the removal of monuments that glorify a past empire. His latest battle is over a single letter in the name of Brovary, a city in Kyiv Oblast, where he has lived for 16 years.

July 8, 2025 - Olena Makarenko

Dancing with the dictator: how Belarusian propaganda took over TikTok

In September 2020, following the August protests and mass state media layoffs, Russia Today sent a team to Belarus. Their mission was to help reboot state media and to teach social media strategies. Since then, Belarusian institutions have leaned heavily on the Russian experience. One of their key platforms for cheap and effective propaganda distribution has been TikTok.

On the left, a young man is picking outfits for his visit to the military office. On the right, a man in uniform rates each look with sarcastic flair. Just another quirky TikTok? Not quite. The TikTok clip, created in the platform’s popular “stitch” format, has gained over seven million views. What seems like harmless fun is actually part of something much bigger – a surge of pro-Lukashenka TikTok creators aiming to promote regime narratives. The campaign makes authoritarianism look relatable, even charming. Welcome to Lukashenka’s TikTok, where propaganda comes complete with trendy beats and filters. Is there any chance for pro-democratic forces to fight back?

July 8, 2025 - Kseniya Tarasevich

Thirty years after the Srebrenica genocide, Bosnia and Herzegovina remains a land suspended between memory and oblivion

Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a battleground, where nationalism and ethnic divisions are highly visible. Thirty years after the war, more than 50 schools in the country are “schools under one roof”, where students are divided not only by curriculum but also physically. In one of these schools, a history teacher presents her lessons according to two different curricula.

July 8, 2025 - Joshua Evangelista Tatjana Dordevic

Belarusian literature: wandering through a swamp

It cannot be said that today’s Belarusian literature has inherited the tradition of its perished predecessors naturally, through the continuation of stylistic choices or rediscovered forms. Rather, this tradition is now displayed through allusions, reminiscences, quotes, inclusions of images or metaphors developed by former poets that are now included in the fabric of modern and postmodern verse. At the same time, today’s Belarusian literature continues to "clear the path" of the generation from the late Soviet period.

Belarusian writers, who try to convey the dramatic history of Belarusian literature through, for example, public speeches, show that there are two approaches that can be described as optimistic and pessimistic perspectives. In the optimistic one, Belarusian literature is presented as a phoenix burnt to black ashes only to rise again. Indeed, over the past century alone, Belarusian writers twice had to reinvent the historical novel, the science fiction story, the school of translation, literary criticism and free verse.

July 8, 2025 - Vera Beika

The Vatican and the Eastern Bloc: what the Vatican archives can reveal about Cold War Europe

Five years after the Vatican unsealed its archives on the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, historians are only beginning to uncover the depth of insight they offer into the post-war transformation of Eastern Europe. Far beyond matters of church history, these documents reveal how the Holy See navigated the rise of communism, supported persecuted Catholics behind the Iron Curtain, and responded to the upheaval of millions across the continent.

In March 2020, the Vatican Apostolic Archives opened to consultation a long-awaited treasure trove of documents spanning the neuralgic years of 1939–1958. Named the Vatican Secret Archive until 2019, its extensive holdings are housed in a „bunker” — an underground storage facility in Vatican City. While scholars around the world braced for revelations concerning the Holy See’s wartime diplomacy and the Holocaust, another equally compelling and underexplored story lies within: the history of Eastern Europe during one of its most turbulent transformations from the ruins of World War II to life under state socialism, as seen by the lens of the Vatican.

July 8, 2025 - Katarzyna Nowak

Putin’s gift to NATO: the rise of the “New Nordic Shield”

When former Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said, “You caused this. Look in the mirror” in 2022, he really hit the nail on the head. That simple statement perfectly sums up the massive shake-up in European security. Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine was meant to fracture the Alliance and stop NATO from growing.

July 5, 2025 - Inga Samoškaitė

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