Baltic Symposium "1945 in the Baltic and its legacies"

The end of the Second World War in the Baltic marked a complex and tragic turning point that had long term social, political, economic and cultural consequences. As Nazi Germany retreated, the Red Army (re)occupied the Baltic states, Poland, eastern Germany and parts of Finland. Locally, collaboration with the Nazis gave way to collaboration with the Soviets. In the underground, anti-Nazi resistance was superseded by anti-Soviet resistance. While ‘the Big Three’ celebrated victory, the iron curtain that they traced in their summits left the Soviet-occupied Baltic region face an abrupt and thorough sovietisation, marked by unprecedented social engineering, repressions, retributions and forced population transfers. For Finland, which managed to avoid the fate of its southern Baltic neighbours, 1945 meant fulfillment of conditions imposed by Moscow and its wartime allies, with war responsibility trials among them. After 1991, the newly reinterpreted historical memory of the events of 1945 became part and parcel of statehood and nationalism in the Baltic, shaping policies and attitudes towards each other and the other.

This symposium brings together the leading scholars and experts of the region to discuss the fateful year 1945 in the Baltic as well as its afterlives in the (geo)politics of the region today.

This event will be held at the McCrum Theatre, part of Corpus Christi College Cambridge, and is located behind the Eagle bar in Bene't Street.