From the Editors

363 Ab Imperio, 4/2002 FROM THE EDITORS In the current issue Ab Imperio continues the series of publications in the framework of the journal’s project The State of Art in History Writing on Empire and Nation. This issue features two review articles devoted to historiography of the Baltic region and the usage of national and imperial past in the process of empire- and nation-building, as well as in public politics of the Baltic States and the Russian Federation. History and history writing of the Baltic region provides an ample opportunity for a discussion of historical reconstruction of the complex past, irreducible to a single national history. The Baltic borderland rim had for a long time been the ground of contest between imperial rivals (Polish, Russian-Soviet, Swedish, and German). It has also been a home for a mixture of ethnic groups (it will suffice to recall the fact of the German political and cultural domination in the Baltic gubernias in the period preceding the break up of the Russian empire and the upsurge of the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian national movements). An overview of the national mosaic of this region’s past and the historical dynamic that has led to the emergence of modern Baltic nations and nationstates touches upon the central question that haunts students of history of empires and nationalism: how to strike a balance between a reconstruction of the passed away polyglossic web of estate, religious and ethnic identities on the one hand and the triumph of modern nation and nation-state ushered by the 20th century (though not predetermined by previous periods of history ), on the other. Current political changes associated with the expansion of the European Union pose another question crucial for contemporary historians, i.e. how 364 From the Editors to situate a national history in the narrative of a larger symbolic or historic region (“Northern Europe” or “Europe”), eschewing the temptation of projecting the boundaries of contemporary political union back onto history and making those boundaries as exclusive as the present day political delimitation is. ...