History of Communism in Europe

Volume 11, 2020

Transnational Biographies: Destinies at the Crossroads Before and After the Cold War

Defining ‘Baltic Germanness’ in Post-Soviet Latvia and Estonia
Ethnic Germans’ Life Stories between East and West

This article, based on interviews conducted in 2019 with Latvian and Estonian citizens ethnically defining themselves as “Baltic Germans”, aims to analyse the way this self-identification is shaped by the experience of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, and by the ideological polarisation between East and West. Studying this hybrid ethnic belonging allows taking a look at individual life paths through a transnational lens and paying attention to all forms of mobility that play a role in its construction. By integrating the interviewees’ migratory experience, their discourses on other ethnic groups, and their perception of Germany, Latvia, Estonia, Russia and the USSR, this article intends to apprehend “Baltic Germanness” as a transnationally and trans-ethnically shaped category, to which the interviewees resort in order to make sense of their lives outside the framework of the nation-state.