Cultural heterologies and democracy: culture in the Baltic countries in the 1990s

This special issue represents one of the first attempts at comparative analyses of cultural processes in the three Baltic countries during the post-socialist transition period. A transition period is here understood as the decisive and radical transformation of the political and economic conditions of a specific geographical area (a country or region), resulting in complete systemic change within a timeframe comprehensible within a human lifespan. In this introduction to the special issue, we outline the general conditions of a transition period and highlight three key characteristics that define the interplay between cultural and societal processes during the Baltic states’ transition period.