Nils Daniel Carl Bildt is a Swedish politician and diplomat who served as Prime Minister of Sweden from 1991 to 1994. He led the Moderate Party from 1986 to 1999, appearing at its lead candidate in four general elections, before his appointment as Minister for Foreign Affairs under Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt from 2006 to 2014. Bildt first entered the Riksdag in 1979, holding a seat until 2001. A member of the Bildt family, he is a great-great grandson of Baron Gillis Bildt, who was Prime Minister of Sweden from 1888 to 1889.
Hans Anders Rausing, KBE was a Swedish industrialist and philanthropist based in the United Kingdom. He made his fortune from his co-inheritance of Tetra Pak, a company founded by his father Ruben Rausing, and the largest food packaging company in the world. In the early 1980s Rausing moved to the United Kingdom to avoid Swedish taxes, in 1995 he sold his share of the company to his brother, Gad. In the Forbes world fortune ranking, Rausing was placed at number 83 with an estimated fortune of US$10 billion in 2011. According to Forbes, he was the second richest Swedish billionaire in 2013. By the time of his death in August 2019, Forbes estimated the net worth of Rausing and his family to be $12 billion.
Richard Sakwa is a British political scientist and a former professor of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent, a senior research fellow at the National Research University-Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and an honorary professor in the Faculty of Political Science at Moscow State University. He has written books about Russian, Central and Eastern European communist and post-communist politics.
Per Anders Åslund is a Swedish economist and former Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He is also a chairman of the International Advisory Council at the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE).
James Franklin Collins is a former United States Ambassador to Russia. A career Foreign Service Officer in the State Department, he is a Russian specialist.
Sven Rydenfelt was a Swedish economist and political writer known for his libertarian views.
Mark R. Beissinger is an American political scientist. He is the Henry W. Putnam Professor of Politics at Princeton University.
Aurel Braun is a professor of international relations and political science at the University of Toronto. He is also a senior member of the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies and of the Centre for International Studies, and a fellow and senator of Trinity College at the University of Toronto. Braun has been twice appointed as a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Braun received his Ph.D. in international relations from the London School of Economics. He is a Canadian citizen.
Mark Bassin is a geographer and specialist on Russian and German geopolitics. He is currently employed as a professor in historical and contemporary studies at Södertörn University.
Taras Kuzio is a Professor of Political Science at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. His area of study is Russian and Ukrainian political, economic and security affairs.
The Institute for Information on the Crimes of Communism (IICC) is a Sweden-based non-profit and non-governmental human rights organization, founded in 2008, with the stated purpose of "spreading essential information on the crimes of communism and to promote vigilance against all totalitarian ideologies and antidemocratic movements". The institute is a member organization of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, an educational project of the European Union bringing together government institutions and NGOs active in research, documentation, awareness raising and education about the crimes of totalitarian regimes.
Elena Korosteleva is a dissident academic researcher and principal investigator focusing on governance, democratisation, complexity and resilience. She is Professor of Politics and Global Sustainable Development and Director of the Institute for Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick and is visiting professor at the Oxford Belarus Observatory at the Oxford University.
The background of the occupation of the Baltic states covers the period before the first Soviet occupation on 14 June 1940, stretching from independence in 1918 to the Soviet ultimatums in 1939–1940. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia gained independence in the aftermath of the Russian revolutions of 1917 and the German occupation which in the Baltic countries lasted until the end of World War I in November 1918. All three countries signed non-aggression treaties with the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. Despite the treaties, in the aftermath of the 1939 German–Soviet pact, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were occupied, and thereafter forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union, in 1940.
Kristian Gerner is a Swedish historian, author, expert on Eastern Europe and Professor of History at Lund University. From 1994 to 2002, he was Professor of Eastern European History and Culture, also at Uppsala University. Gerner earned his doctorate at Lund in 1984.
Lars Jörgen Pålsson Syll is a Swedish economist who is a Professor of Social Studies and Associate professor of Economic History at Malmö University College. Pålsson Syll has been a prominent contributor to the economic debate in Sweden over the global financial crisis that began in 2008.
Antony Barry Polonsky is Emeritus Professor of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis University. He is the author of many historical works on the Holocaust, and is an expert on Polish Jewish history.
Julian Marc Cooper is a British academic, and specialist on Russian economic matters, including Russian defence budget and military expenditure.
James Raymond Hughes is professor of comparative politics at the London School of Economics (LSE). Hughes' research interests relate to political violence and terrorism, secession, national and ethnic conflict in the former Soviet Union, the Balkans, and Northern Ireland.
Johan Henrik Åkerman was a Swedish economist and was a Professor of Economics and Statistics at Lund University. He was the younger brother to Swedish economist Johan Gustav Åkerman.
Timothy James Colton is a Canadian-American political scientist and historian currently serving as the Morris and Anna Feldberg Professor of Government and Russian Studies at Harvard University. His academic work and interests are in Russian and post-Soviet politics. He is currently an editorial board member for World Politics and Post-Soviet Affairs. He has been a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2011. He is the brother of former CBC Radio Washington, D.C. correspondent, Michael Colton.
