(Re-)Claiming the Social Contract: State-Society Relations in Three Former Socialist Towns in the Baltics

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Science was always one of the biggest inspirations in my life. While studying political sciences, I had an opportunity to explore many different subject areas, ranging from political philosophy to regional studies. As years passed, I have found, that I feel the greatest challenge as well as pleasure while conducting a field research. I participated in a scientific expedition with academics from my University and worked as a student researcher conducting a field study on the outreach of state power while combining quantitative and qualitative research methods. That made me particularly interested in social anthropology and ethnography.As a result, I am conducting a field study myself for my Bachelor thesis on the topic that fascinates me the most - the relationship between the state and its society. I am inquiring the southeastern borderland of Lithuania, where the state's power to he the main actor establishing social and political boundaries as well as to secure the compliance of its citizens is contested by the Polish minority living there. Even though, a tense relationship with the central government is being maintained addressing the minority rights, a deeper look into the context reveals, that the problem is far more complicated than the matter of ethnicity. Rather, it raises questions about people's loyalty to the state and their identification with it. One of the most distinctive features of this region is nostalgia for the Soviet Era, still choosing Russian language and media (despite the availability of Polish and of course Lithuanian sources), thinking positively about the authoritarian regime of the neighboring country as well as blaming the West for the current events in Ukraine. Furthermore, the history of the region is rich of belonging to different states with different policies towards minorities that makes the problem even more complex. White conducting a field study, I am trying to figure out what actors and what mechanisms are being used that obstruct the state from introducing unitary national identity into the region.While working on this subject I have understood, that this might be a broader phenomenon, possibly also characterizing other post-Soviet countries in the region. Even though the Soviet Union has collapsed, the image of it is still alive in people's heads and it is reproducing in younger members of the society as well. Moreover, most of the time in the twentieth century communism was "fitted" to young countries with still traditional societies. Due to that, people's understanding of and their relationship with the modern (democratic) stale in which they arc living now becomes really interesting. It becomes even more engaging having in mind the factor of the spread of nowadays Russian influence. I would like to continue working on this topic, exploring new depths and transferring it to the other regions of Lithuania and other post-Soviet states (especially Belarus). In order to do that, a broader and deeper knowledge both of the region and methodology is needed.