The new political tensions stemming from the recent events in Ukraine have radically widened the perceptions of the European crisis. Not only have the economic and political structures of the European Union, challenged by the lingering euro crisis, been called into question: the sudden and inauspicious return of power politics and the broadening rift between Russia and the “West” have questioned the very foundations of the post- Cold War European security order. All at once, there is disquieting insecurity in the air as to the future – as well as the recent past – of the region.

Recent events have led scholars to give a new look at the making of the post-Cold War European order at the turn of the 1990s. How did contemporaries act or react upon the opportunities or insecurities provided by rapid systemic change in Europe?

This panel invites to reassessing European politics at the end of the Cold War. Instead of subscribing to the traditional historical narrative picturing the period as a uniquely victorious birth of a new, more peaceful, collaborative and democratic world order, we propose an alternative and more critical reading of these important events. Drawing on recently released archival documents, interviews and new theoretical approaches in International Relations, our analysis emphasizes insecurity and the fundamental openness of the historical situation. The focus is on Finland, Estonia and Northern Europe, where the pressures arising from the rapidly shifting international landscape and the gradual dissolution of the Soviet Union’s power system were particularly strong.