The image of North-Eastern Europe appears composite and complex. While its geographical conglomeration is cut across by the Baltic Sea, it is not a coherent area at a cultural and political level. Yet, the numerous investments made by local and international actors in attempting to define this space call for a closer scrutiny of the processes of imagining and re-imagining spaces. 

Den 9 maj 1958 invigdes Moderna Museet i marinens gamla Exercishall på Skeppsholmen i Stockholm. Museet var inte en självständig institution utan Nationalmuseums avdelning för modern konst med Bo Wennberg som chef. Året därpå tog Pontus Hultén över.

Under Hulténs ledning blev Moderna ett av Europas viktigaste museer för modern konst. Men det var också något av stockholmarnas kulturhus, bland annat inspirerat av Stedelijk Museum i Amsterdam, med plats för film, musik, teater, happenings och modevisningar.

Efter de första årens framgångar möttes Hultén av ett kulturpolitiskt motstånd mot slutet av 1960-talet. Hultén kritiserades för ointresse för den svenska konsten, för bristande politiskt engagemang och för att gå den amerikanska imperialismens ärenden.

Den 26 april 2017 anordnade Samtidshistoriska institutet tillsammans med forskningsprojektet Levande arkiv: Pontus  Hultén på Moderna Museet (1957-73), fiansierat av Vetenskapsrådet och placerat vid ämnet Konstvetenskap, Södertörns högskola, ett vittnesseminarium om Pontus Hulténs tid på Moderna Museet.

Gotland, Åland, Saaremaa, Hiiumaa and Bornholm are five island regions in the Baltic Sea which constitute, or have until recently constituted, provinces or counties of their own. Combining perspectives from two disparate academic fields, uses of history and island studies, this book investigates how regional history writing has contributed to the formation of regional identity on these islands since the year 1800. The special geographic situation of the islands-somewhat secluded from the mainland but also connected to important waterways-has provided their inhabitants with shared historical experiences. Due to varying geographic and historical circumstances, the relationship between regional and national identity is however different on each island. While regional history writing has in most cases aimed at integrating the island into the nation state, it has on Åland in the second half of the 20th century been used to portray its inhabitants as a separate nation. Dramatic political upheavals as the World Wars has also caused shifts in how regional history writing has represented the relationship to the mainland nation state, and has sometimes also resulted in altered national loyalties.

När strejkerna bröt ut vid Leninvarvet i Gdańsk 1980 var det inte första gången som protester mot det kommunistiska systemet bröt ut i Polen. Under 1950-, 1960- och 1970-talen återkom folkliga protester. I väst väckte detta delvis ett hopp om förändringar men också en oro för vad Sovjetunionen skulle göra. Detta vittnesseminarium kallat Det började i Polen har behandlat hur den svenska arbetarrörelsen och andra aktörer stödde den fria fackföreningen Solidaritet och dess föregångare. Under seminariet uppkom en mängd olika aspekter av hur stödet såg ut, men också hur svenska departement hanterade den oroliga situationen i Polen.

Det svenska försvarets omstrukturering efter det kalla krigets slut är en av de största omvandlingarna av offentlig verksamhet i Sveriges historia. Den försvarsmakt vi har idag har inte mycket gemensamt med den Sverige hade under 1960- och 1970-talen. Ändå har omvandlingen skett utan särskilt mycket debatt. Kastades barnet ut med badvattnet, när försvaret skulle anpassas till nya säkerhetspolitiska förutsättningar och nya ekonomiska krav ställdes?

Under vittnesseminariet ”Förnyelse eller förfall?”, som redovisas i sin helhet i denna skrift, diskuterades försvarets omvandling med fyra huvudaktörer i svensk försvarspolitik, bland andra före detta överbefälhavaren Owe Wiktorin och före detta försvarsministern Björn von Sydow.

This chapter deals with co-operative ambitions to create institutions that would establish international co-operative trade. This implied stimulating trade between the national co-operative wholesales, or more ambitiously, the creation of an international co-operative business organization. Free trade as a trade policy and as an approach to internationalism was a condition for the realization of international co-operative trade. Protectionism was not an option. But the very notion of free trade, and the ways in which co-operators have related to it, has been subject to subtle shifts and changes. In the chapter, we follow the endeavours of co-operators to agree on institutions for co-operative international trade and thereby also their discussion regarding free trade policy. The period covered is the first half of the twentieth century but focus is on the inter-war period.

The purpose of this article is threefold. First, it aims to delineate the flow of resources and the claims on those resources within the humanitarian aid system by locating task structures and functional units across the aid chain. Second, it draws on this account to highlight tensions in the system. Different stations in the organisational process are conditioned by the tasks assigned to them, how those tasks are anchored in a moral economy, and their historical interrelations. Third, it explores how aid organisations are perceived by experts in different parts of the aid chain. Four key agents were invited to recount their work experiences. We then consider how the outlook of the interviewees was shaped by their place in the aid chain. The interviews are an inventory of experiences, a preliminary corroboration of the organisational analysis that preceded them, and a source of future hypotheses. © 2015 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.

This chapter investigates the differing roles of teacher unions in Sweden and Finland. In Sweden, there are separate teacher unions for subject teachers, with their roots in the grammar-school tradition, and for class teachers, rooted in the folk-school tradition. In Finland, these two teacher categories were merged into one union in the early 1970s. The Swedish teacher unions have different views on the organisation and content of teacher education, with disagreements focused on lower secondary school, where both subject and class teachers claim the right to teach. This has been connected to ideological arguments, where subject teachers have defended the role of subject knowledge in teacher education, supported by the political centre-right, and class teachers have argued for the importance of general pedagogical skills, supported by the Social Democrats. This has led to new reforms of teacher education at every change of government since the 1970s. During this entire period, no new reforms of teacher education have taken place in Finland where the united teacher union has, in order to please both categories of teachers, emphasised flexibility and the importance of in-service training as a means of adapting teachers’ competencies for different student age groups.

Deals with the politics of compensation for Nazi war crimes against Sinti and Roma

Describes the problems of studying the Assyrian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire.

Article describes and analyzes the Assyrian genocide in Ottoman Turkey during World War I.

The liberation of the family from the excessive control of the state, support of children's moral values, the improvement of childcare, and overcoming the demographic crisis have all influenced recent discussions on preschool education and care in Russia. The essay analyses how different, and often conflicting, formulations of public interests' influenced preschool institutions in Russia during the last 25 years. The essay also seeks to explore contemporary evaluations of preschools in the context of the interpretations offered by public discussions and parents of the Soviet practice of childcare.

Vid militärkuppen i Chile den 11 september 1973 störtades Salvador Allendes och Unidad Populars demokratiskt valda regering. Sjutton år av militärdiktatur under general Augusto Pinochet följde, då flera tusen människor dödades, torterades och ”försvann”. Sverige var ett av de länder där solidaritetsrörelsen med Chile var som störst.

Vad var viktigast med solidaritetsarbete? Vilken roll spelade kulturen? Hur koordinerades arbetet med chilenska politiska partier och ledare i exil och i Chile? Vilken betydelse hade solidaritetsarbetet i Sverige för Chile?

Denna skrift dokumenterar ett vittnesseminarium om solidaritet med Chile som arrangerades den 9 mars 2016 av Samtidshistoriska institutet vid Södertörns högskola. De medverkande var Göran Sallnäs – f.d. rektor på Runö Folkhögskola, Jan Hammarlund – sångare och aktivist, Carlos Nuñez – f.d. ordförande för Post- och telegrafarbetarförbundet i Chile, Anna Rydmark Venegas – en av grundarna till Chilekommittén och under 1973–1974 dess ordförande samt Stefan de Vylder – nationalekonom.

The 1970s was a watershed for Europe and for social democracy. Economic crises, regime changes in Southern Europe, and rising neoliberalism posed challenges and offered opportunities that shaped the end of the 20th century.

In a witness seminar organized by the Institute of Contemporary History, Södertörn University, and the Centre for Nordic Studies, University of Helsinki, four social democrats shed light on the period and on the interactions of Northern and Southern Europe.

Participants included: Pierre Schori (former international secretary of the Swedish Social Democratic Party), Valdo Spini (former vice-secretary of the Italian Socialist Party), Ulf Sundqvist (former chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Finland), and Jaime Gama (founding member of the Portuguese Socialist Party).

The concept of the Nordic model played an important role in the ideological and political rejuvenation of the Northern and Southern European political left from the 1970s to the 1990s. 

In a witness seminar organized by the Centre for Nordic Studies at Helsinki University, the Institute for Contemporary History at Södertörn University and the Department of History and Classical Studies at Aarhus University, key political actors for the development of European social democracy and Northern and Southern processes of European integration discuss the fortunes of the Nordic model from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Participants included: Allan Larsson (former Minister for Finance of Sweden), Mogens Lykketoft (former  Minister of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, leader of the Social Democrats) and Joaquín Almunia (former Minister of Public Administration of Spain and leader of PSOE). The witness seminar is funded by the Joint Committee for Nordic research councils in Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS).

Since the 2010s, it has become common to view the European project as troubled by crisis. As the EU historical narrative is selective, the problems that we perceive today in the EU seem to be exceptional and unusually dangerous, not the least from the perspective of Europe’s peripheries. In order to assess the current challenges and future prospects of the European project, we need to understand better the complexities of European integration in Southern and Northern Europe in the recent past. 

By bringing together three relevant political actors, deeply involved in these historical events – Esko Aho (Finland), Mats Hellström (Sweden) and Juan Antonio Yáñez-Barnuevo (Spain) – this witness seminar provides important insights into the negotiations concerning EC/EU integration as well as the similarities and differences between the Northern and Southern European experiences.

The Paper analyses the voluntary action of the London-based Committee for Relieving the Distresses in Germany and Other Parts of the Continent, a set of humanitarian relief campaigns in the years 1805-1815, and its connections with the advocacy work of the anti-slavery movement and that of the British and Foreign Bible Society. While advocacy is a well-known dimension of early transnational civil society, early humanitarian relief services across borders are virtually unknown to research. This paper argues that advocacy and service were always interrelated and co-evolved as the two principal dimensions of global civil society already at the turn from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.