The NATO Summit held in Vilnius July 11th-12th, was an excellent opportunity for the Baltic States and Lithuania a to affirm their strong European identity and to shed the "post-Soviet" label that is often applied to them, writes Mykolas Romeris University (MRU) Law School Vice-Dean for Research Assoc. Prof. Dovilė Sagatienė.

Assoc. Prof. Sagatienė, a postdoctoral researcher at MEMOCRACY project,  (Volkswagen Stiftung, 2021-2024), based at Centre for Military Studies in University of Copenhagen (Denmark) made the comments in a July 11th  Verfassungsblog post.

The term "post-Soviet" in international discourse referred to the 15 sovereign states that emerged and re-emerged from the Soviet Union following its dissolution in 1991. The list includes European and Asian countries with contrasting backgrounds: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

Rooted in the context of the Cold War, the term fails to capture the crucial ongoing metamorphosis and challenges of these states for the past thirty years, writes Assoc. Prof. Sagatienė.

For Lithuania and the Baltic region at least, the July 2023 NATO Summit in Vilnius was a chance to emphasize the strong European identity. In addition, it was an opportunity to challenge the deep colonial mindsets, which overlook Eastern European perspectives in favor of those set in Moscow since the beginning of the 20th century.

MRU Assoc. Prof. Sagatienė's comments and full article can be found here:
Challenging the ‚Post-Soviet‘ Label and Colonial Mindsets – Verfassungsblog