Skandinavskii sbornik
Skandinavskii sbornik (Scandinavian Review), also Скандинавский сборник, Skandinaavia kogumik, and Skrifter om Skandinavien, was an annual serial publication of the history and wider humanities in Scandinavia and the Baltic. It was published by the University of Tartu in Estonia between 1956 and 1990 and has been described as the principal forum for scholars of Nordic studies in the Soviet region. It emphasised long-term trends over short-term events and had a philosophy that peaceful coexistence between nations and peoples was the most natural order of things. It ceased publication following the collapse of the Soviet Union. History The first issue of Skandinavskii sbornik was published in 1956 by the University of Tartu and the Estonian State Publishing House, in the Russian language with article summaries in Estonian and Swedish and other languages. Its founder and first editor, with Lidiia K. Roots, was the historian and food-writer William Pokhlyobkin (1923–2000) who served until 1961. About Scandinavia but not published in Scandinavia, it has been described by George C. Schoolfield of Yale University, with Scandinavian Studies and The American-Scandinavian Review, as part of the "literatures of the North". It was part of an expansion in Nordic studies in Russia and the Soviet republics that saw departments of Nordic studies established in many universities and institutions in the Soviet region after the Second World War. Its philosophy was to emphasise long-term historical processes and periods of peace over warfare, arguing that peaceful coexistence among nations and peoples was the most natural order of things. In a review of the first two volumes in 1959, Russian historian I. P. Shaskol'skii welcomed the journal, saying in Вопросы истории (Questions of History) that it brought a Marxist-Leninist approach to the history of the Scandinavian countries to which Soviet historical scholarship had previously paid little attention, leaving many fundamental questions open, such as establishing when the feudal system in Scandinavia transitioned to the capitalist system and when a class society emerged. The emphasis on peaceful periods was needed as Soviet scholarship had formerly focused mainly on Russian wars with the Swedes, thus neglecting the internal economic and social development of the Scandinavian countries. In Shaskol'skii's opinion, the Marxist-Leninist approach enabled breakthroughs in solving problems that had defeated bourgeois historians, such as the ownership of peasant lands in Norway. He also noted the extensive use made by authors of archival material, in Russia and outside, that had not previously been examined by Soviet scholars, and the frequency with which contributors addressed questions of historiography and interpretation. Scandinavian specialist Ernst Ekman of the University of California wrote that Swedish historians had been more interested in relations with Germany than with Russia and that therefore it had fallen to Russian historians to highlight relations with Sweden, particularly in respect of Russian support for Sweden during the Thirty Years' War, saying in reference to Skandinavskii sbornik that "the whole existence of a special journal for Soviet specialists on Scandinavia is an indication of their interest in this". In 1965, after the Soviet