In present-day Estonia, the country's Russian-speaking minority is regularly considered to be a peril for social cohesion and sometimes even national security. As a result, the government has implemented far-reaching assimilation policies which include reforms in the education sector as well as the close monitoring of Russian-speaking populations and the media. It is the expectation of the government, that these efforts will lead to an integration of the minority into Estonian society overall and also pull the minority out of the Russian orbit. However, assimilation pressure might very well lead to the contrary and the awakening of an ethnic identity, aided by the aggressive interference stemming from neighbouring Russia. Through Estonian policies and Russian interference, historically-grounded identity, which includes competing outlooks on geopolitics, might harden. This paper first shows that Estonians with a Russian background are less likely to think about Russia as being the major geopolitical threat for national security. I then highlight, using a mediation analysis, that the difference between these security assessments is substantially explained by different assessments of history between minority and majority population.

In the historically contested borderlands of the Vilnius region (Vilnija/Wileńszczyzna), local museums act as significant mediators of historical knowledge for the public, playing a significant role in shaping the social cohesion and sense of belonging that underpin regional stability. This paper examines how memory institutions in southeastern Lithuania navigate a complex heritage shaped by interwar nationalizing projects, the Holocaust, and Soviet era forced modernization. These ruptures created a "fractured public memory" where multi-ethnic histories were long relegated to private remembrance or suppressed by state-supervised Soviet and post-Soviet narratives. Drawing on 30 semi-structured interviews with museum curators, local historians, and community leaders conducted between 2024 and 2025 (EUROPAST project), the study analyzes the current museum landscape—from state-funded ethnographic sites to grassroots school collections. Many of these institutions have traditionally pivoted between Soviet internationalism and rigid ethnocentric identities, often marginalizing the region's Polish, Jewish, and Belarusian histories. By avoiding politically charged topics like local collaboration or forced modernization, these museums risk leaving "memory voids" that can be exploited by contemporary disinformation or polarize local communities. The paper argues that moving toward more transparent, inclusive versions of history is a prerequisite for resilient social integration. By transforming museums into "contact zones" — using tools like the digital repatriation of diasporic archives—these institutions can help "un-silence" marginalized perspectives. The goal is to integrate these disparate memories into a cohesive regional identity that reduces social fragmentation and mitigates the risk of heritage being weaponized in regional conflicts.

This paper explores how perceptions of international politics and security shape attitudes toward refugees in Estonia, with particular attention to generational and ethnic differences among respondents with Estonian and (Soviet) Russian backgrounds. Perceptions of international politics are measured through agreement or disagreement with three statements concerning Russia’s role in global affairs: whether it is important for Russia to counterbalance Western powers; whether Russia’s war against Ukraine serves to protect its legitimate political interests; and whether Russia alone bears responsibility for the escalation of the war in Ukraine. Security perceptions are captured through assessments of which countries, among them Russia, the United States, and Ukraine, pose the greatest threat to Estonia. Drawing on original survey data collected in 2024 and 2025, the paper examines how these political and security orientations inform refugee hierarchies, whether Ukrainians are welcomed, whether Russians fleeing conflict are accepted, or whether certain groups are rejected altogether. The analysis foregrounds the role of historical interpretations of the Soviet period in structuring these attitudes. It asks, for instance, whether those who view the Soviet past positively are more ambivalent toward Ukrainian refugees and more supportive of Russian ones, while critics of the Soviet legacy tend to align with pro-Ukrainian positions. It also explores whether narratives about the deportation of Estonians during and after the Second World War shape these patterns, such that respondents who acknowledge these deportations express greater acceptance of Ukrainians and stronger rejection of Russian entrants, whereas those who dispute this history show more openness toward Russians. The paper further investigates how identity orientations, such as fusion with Estonians or identification with Russian-speakers in Estonia or in Russia, interact with security perceptions and historical memories. By integrating security, historical, and identity dimensions, the study reveals distinct generational and ethnic configurations of refugee attitudes within and between Estonian and (Soviet) Russian-background populations. Notably, second-generation individuals of (Soviet) Russian background tend to align more closely with their Estonian peers than with their parental generation, suggesting emerging horizontal convergences across ethnic groups alongside pronounced vertical cleavages within families.

As the modern political landscape grows increasingly fragmented, language remains a visible line of inequality and disagreement across the globe. It is no exception in European multilingual democracies, where linguistic identity structures everyday communication, facilitates access to education and public institutions, and often defines the political climate. Yet the political impact of linguistic identity is not constant. In some situations, linguistic divisions remain muted; in others, membership in a language group may become a tangible source of tension that influences political opinions and ideological positioning. These dynamics become more complex when an ethnic group undergoes a transformation in its institutional status, from a federal titular group to an ethnic minority in a newly established nationalist state. To examine these dynamics empirically, the paper relies on a newly harmonised dataset of forty Eurobarometer waves (2004-2024) to examine the relationship between linguistic identity and individual political attitudes, including trust in institutions, satisfaction with democracy, and left-right ideological orientation. This empirical strategy combines cross-national comparison with within-country temporal analysis. The paper contrasts Latvia and Estonia with multilingual Western European states (Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland), where linguistic divisions have not undergone comparable status reversal. This comparison allows the study to distinguish between the political effects of linguistic diversity as such and the effects of the institutional context surrounding language and minority recognition. The study further zooms in on Latvia as a focused case to examine how policy-driven uncertainty connected with language reforms reshapes linguistic cleavages over time. Using the difference-in-differences analysis, the paper traces how recent changes in media and the schooling system altered the political relevance of linguistic identity across different groups of Russian-speaking communities. Overall, the paper seeks to contribute to a better understanding of how linguistic identity operates within multiethnic communities, and when it becomes politically relevant across different institutional and policy contexts in the Baltic States and beyond.

In the historically contested borderlands of the Vilnius region (Vilnija/Wileńszczyzna), local museums act as significant mediators of historical knowledge for the public, playing a significant role in shaping the social cohesion and sense of belonging that underpin regional stability. This paper examines how memory institutions in southeastern Lithuania navigate a complex heritage shaped by interwar nationalizing projects, the Holocaust, and Soviet era forced modernization. These ruptures created a "fractured public memory" where multi-ethnic histories were long relegated to private remembrance or suppressed by state-supervised Soviet and post-Soviet narratives. Drawing on 30 semi-structured interviews with museum curators, local historians, and community leaders conducted between 2024 and 2025 (EUROPAST project), the study analyzes the current museum landscape—from state-funded ethnographic sites to grassroots school collections. Many of these institutions have traditionally pivoted between Soviet internationalism and rigid ethnocentric identities, often marginalizing the region's Polish, Jewish, and Belarusian histories. By avoiding politically charged topics like local collaboration or forced modernization, these museums risk leaving "memory voids" that can be exploited by contemporary disinformation or polarize local communities. The paper argues that moving toward more transparent, inclusive versions of history is a prerequisite for resilient social integration. By transforming museums into "contact zones" — using tools like the digital repatriation of diasporic archives—these institutions can help "un-silence" marginalized perspectives. The goal is to integrate these disparate memories into a cohesive regional identity that reduces social fragmentation and mitigates the risk of heritage being weaponized in regional conflicts.