Olaf Mertelsmann is Associate Professor in Contemporary History at the University of Tartu (Estonia).Kaarel Piirimäe is a Marie Curie research fellow at the University of Tartu and a professor of strategy at the Estonian National Defence College.

• Contents: Kari Alenius: A Baltic Prelude to the Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Annexation of the Baltic States, 1939-1941 – Eero Medijainen: On the Razor’s Edge: The US Foreign Policy and the Baltic Issue in 1940-45 – Kaarel Piirimäe: ‘A Really Dead Issue’: the Baltic Question in the European ‘Non-Settlement’ at the Start of the Cold War – Pauli Heikkilä: Baltic Council of the European Movement (1948-1950): Regional Exception in Early European Unification – Lars Fredrik Stöcker: Bridging the Baltic Sea in the Cold War Era: The Political Struggle of Estonian Émigrés in Sweden as a Case Study – Vahur Made: Finland and the Baltic Question during the Cold War: a Non-Declaration Policy – Olaf Mertelsmann: The Social Costs of the Early Cold War: an Example from a Soviet Republic – Vahur Made: To be Anti-Communist or Anti-Soviet? The People’s Republic of China as a Dilemma for the Estonian Exiled Diplomats during the Cold War Period – Kim Frederichsen: Soviet Cultural Diplomacy in Denmark during the Cold War: The Case of the Society for Cooperation between Denmark and the Soviet Union – Virpi Kaisto: An Actor’s Perspective to the Cold War Finnish-Soviet Trade – Sigurd Hess: Intelligence Clash in the Baltic Sea during the Cold War – Pierre-Frédéric Weber: The Szczecin Lagoon in the Cold War: Germans, Poles, Czechoslovakians and the Soviets – Martins Kaprans: Normalising the Cold War habitus: How Latvian Autobiographers Cope with their Soviet-time Experience – James G. Connell, Jr.: Culture of the Cold War as Reflected in the American Reconnaissance Flights Lost over or near the Soviet Union Following the End of World War II.