The Baltic Universities — Facing New Challenges

Abstract

The Baltic universities flourished in the hard-fought independence period between the First World War and the outbreak of the Second World War. During these years the universities played an important role in the prosperous economic developments of the Baltic States and their faculties became an integral part of the Western European community of university scholars. However, with the Soviet occupation these successful developments, particularly in the fields of economics and law, came to an abrupt halt. The universities of the Baltic States, though reduced to the status of provincial institutions, were able to maintain a good reputation in some fields of the natural sciences, computer science, mathematics and statistics. However, high academic standards laboriously built up in law and economics eroded in an atmosphere in which inquiry was kept within strict boundaries and where access to academic careers and advancement often depended more upon loyalty to the communist party than ability.