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Lithuanian political scientist of Baltic politics and international relations
In his 2007 article "Bloody Sunday", he re-examined Gorbachev's claims of innocence about the January 1991 events in Vilnius and Riga. He concluded that Gorbachev most likely did not order the deaths of innocent people, but embraced the solution that led to that outcome.
Ainius Lasas is a Lithuanian political scientist who studies Baltic politics and international relations. He graduated from LCC International University in 1999, earned a master's diploma in journalism from Vilnius University, and took a PhD in international relations at the University of Washington. After working as a journalist with a national radio and television broadcaster, he was a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford and taught at the University of Bath before returning to Lithuania as dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities at Kaunas University of Technology. His research spans political psychology, including threat perception, historical memory and conspiracy theories, and political culture, including informal business-state relations.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 2000년대Lithuanian political scientist
- 2007Author of “Bloody Sunday” in the Journal of Baltic Studies
- 2008Co-author on Baltic Sea regional security cooperation
- 2000년대~현재Research on Baltic politics and international relations
- 1999Graduated from LCC International University (BA, English Language and Literature)
- 2000년대Master's diploma in journalism, Vilnius University; PhD in international relations, University of Washington
- 2010European Union and NATO Expansion: Central and Eastern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan)
Related historical events
EU and NATO Enlargement as Historical-Psychological Settlement
Lasas's representative work is the sole-authored monograph European Union and NATO Expansion: Central and Eastern Europe, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2010 (213 pages). Its opening chapter is titled 'Introduction: Explaining NATO and EU Enlargement', followed by chapters on the 'black trinity' and the Cold War, NATO enlargement, EU enlargement, and conclusions.
According to the National Library of Australia's catalogue summary of the book, the EU and NATO eastern enlargements represent a settlement of historical-psychological accounts for countries affected by the 'black trinity': the Munich Agreement, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and the Yalta-Potsdam Conferences. In the publisher's book information, Wade Jacoby writes that the book makes the novel argument that the EU and NATO were enlarged primarily because key Western states felt guilt about earlier abuse suffered by the states of Central and Eastern Europe during that black trinity. David Galbreath, University of Aberdeen, describes it as an insightful account of the role of history and morality in European integration and international politics, offering an in-depth analysis of how domestic actors in both East and West negotiated the transformation from behind the Iron Curtain to within the European Union, and a fresh critique of the legacy of the Cold War on EU and NATO enlargement. The guilt discourse therefore appears on both sides, in the candidate countries of Central and Eastern Europe and in the existing Western member states. These are the catalogue summary and reviewers' assessments, so they are attributed rather than stated as settled fact.
The background the book addresses is that after the disintegration of the Soviet bloc many Central and Eastern European countries launched a vigorous 'return to Europe' campaign focused on NATO and EU accession, and that by 2007 ten countries had become members of the Euro-Atlantic community.
Together with his 2007 article 'Bloody Sunday', this book forms one of the two pillars of Lasas's scholarship. Published on 1 June 2007 in the Journal of Baltic Studies, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 179-194, that article addresses the January 1991 military operations in which Soviet troops moved to subdue the renegade Baltic republics of Vilnius and Riga, leaving nearly 20 civilians dead and dozens injured; it re-examines Gorbachev's claims of innocence and concludes that he most likely did not order the deaths of innocent people but embraced the solution that led to that outcome.
A further work confirms the Baltic-security axis: the 2008 co-authored volume Continuity and Change in the Baltic Sea Region. Comparing Foreign Policies, written with David J. Galbreath and Jeremy W. Lamoreaux in the Baltic studies series.