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Introduction to a Discussion Forum
The introductory essay explains the motivation for this discussion forum. After the success of Samuel Moyn’s slim book on Utopian human rights, the American historians of human rights began to turn a blind eye to the whole period before the 1970s, including the Age of Enlightenment. The focus is now more on persons and events of the Utopian decade, and not on the history of human rights. „On the Spirit of Rights“ is a recent monograph by an influential American historian, which may help reverse the tide. There follows a brief summary of the argument of the book and an introduction to the participants in the discussion. In his discussion of enlightenment authors, Edelstein focuses on the question whether they recognized natural rights after the social contract. He calls such an approach the „preservation regime“ and identifies the physiocrats as authors of such a solution.
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Dan Edelstein responds to the comments by Thérence Carvalho, Olivier Grenouilleau, Emmanuelle de Champs and Ivo Cerman. He sums up the argument of his book and stresses that it was not only about 18th century and physiocracy. He explains that the book was motivated by his efforts to bridge the gap which appeared in US historiography, where an older trend stressed natural law, while a second newer trend focuses only on natural rights and the twentieth century. Edelstein follows the view that natural rights and natural law are two sides of the same coin. He defends the importance of Roman Law and Montesquieu for the critique of slavery. In the responses Edelstein underscores the religious grounding of natural law, the importance of medieval thinkers and the merits of the Catholic Church for renewing the interest in natural law at the end of the nineteenth century. Even though we like the result of this religious thinking, we do not like the metaphysical foundation on which it stands.
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The relevance of addressing the problems of the history of physical culture and sports is due to the special attention of modern society to the issues of personal development, health protection and promotion, preparing young people for work, and increasing creative activity. However, in modern Russia, the potential of physical culture and sports is not fully implemented for solving socio-economic, educational and health problems. The article deals with the problems of creating a system of management of physical culture and sports in Karelia (1918–1939), tracks the development of mass physical culture movement, and discusses the development of mass defensive sports in the late 1930s. The novelty of the research is determined by introducing unpublished sources extracted from the funds of the National Archives of the Republic of Karelia into scientific circulation. For the first time, the authors analyze archival documents and materials from periodicals to investigate the activities of the Council of Physical Culture under the Central Executive Committee of the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (1920–1936), the Committee for Physical Culture under the Repubic’s Council of People’s Commissars (1936–1941) and the School of Masters of Sports, as well as the organization and implementation of friendly matches, demonstration performances and allKarelian competitions in various sports. The main research methods are the descriptive and comparative historical methods. It is concluded that the created Councils of Physical Culture were state bodies for leadership and control both in the center and in the periphery. Russian government used sports and mass physical culture as a tool not only for improving the health of the large masses of workers, but also for the widespread militarization of the population. Demonstration performances, friendly matches and sports competitions were important for conducting outreach campaigns and promoting physical culture and sports among the population.
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The purpose of this article is to investigate the contents and analyze the results of the works on the modernization of the Kirov Railway infrastructure at each stage of the Great Patriotic War. During the war, the Kirov Railway workers faced important strategic tasks. At the initial stage of the war, it was necessary to promptly transfer the troops of the Northern and then the Karelian Fronts, and bring equipment, raw materials of industrial enterprises, and the population of the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic (KFSSR) to the rear areas. From 1942 to the first half of 1944, within the new territorial borders, it was necessary to ensure uninterrupted supply of units and formations of the Karelian Front through army warehouses located at railway stations, and transport goods provided by the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition during the winter navigation from Murmansk to the rear regions of the country as quickly as possible. After the KFSSR was partly liberated from the occupation, the railway communications along the entire length of the Kirov Railway had to be restored. The research methodology included general scientific methods and methods of historical research. The study revealed that at each stage of the war the modernization of the Kirov Railway infrastructure was carried out according to the relevant needs of the wartime. No work was performed to expand the railroad infrastructure and increase the transport and economic connectivity of the regions of the European North.
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The subject of this paper is the study of Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, as a place of interdisciplinary discussion of the concepts which shaped the historical development of anthropology and psychoanalysis. After explaining the psychoanalytically informed concept of cultural origins, the paper will discuss the most significant anthropological criticism addressed at Freud. At the time of publication of the study, the existence of totemism had already been called into question, and the deconstruction of the totemism was completely formulated by Lévi-Strauss. The paper deals with Alfred Kroeber’s critiques, and then considers Malinowski’s first critique of the universality of the Oedipus complex, based on his research of the matrilineal society of the Trobriand. Freud applied psychoanalytic findings to social phenomena for the first time in this study of totemism. The purpose of this paper is to present the early disagreements between anthropology and psychoanalysis, as well as possible implicit readings of Freud’s work.
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Relying on Foucault’s theoretical differentiation of three derived management models reflecting the historical and political response to the emergence of three infectious diseases, namely leprosy, the plague and smallpox, this paper will consider the manner in which the approach of health policy-makers in Serbia has changed before, during and after the introduction of the state of emergency caused by the outbreak of the SARS-CoV2 epidemic, largely following the ideal-typical description of these three models of confronting the infection. Starting with the idea of identifying and completely isolating those that are infected from the community for the purpose of preserving a “clean” society, typical of the period of the spread of leprosy, through the idea of introducing quarantine and monitoring mechanisms for the purpose of establishing a disciplined society, typical of the period of the spread of the plague, to the reliance on vaccination and abandonment of the idea of complete eradication of the pathogens, i.e., reliance on statistics and risk analyses for the purpose of long term understanding and curbing the epidemic, typical of the outbreak of smallpox, it is possible to identify significant similarities of these historical models with different stages in managing the crisis caused by the Covid-19 epidemic in the contemporary local context.
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In his autobiographical, slightly fictionalized writing A Drunken November Night 1918 (Pijana novembarska noć 1918, written in 1942, first published in 1952), Miroslav Krleža seeks to reconstruct a sensational scandal to whose outbreak he had made a significant contribution: In November 1918, in the interregnum from the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy at the end of October to the founding of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes at the beginning of December, the young author considered himself compelled at a tea party held in Zagreb in honor of the Serbian officers to protest loudly against the speech of the former high Austrian-Hungarian officer Slavko Kvaternik. The public scandal in the immediate post-imperial era retrospectively confirmed Krleža’s conviction of the misery of the contemporary Croatian elite, a state whose reasons, in his opinion, lay not only in political opportunism and moral corruption, but also in an unreflective utopianism and an associated political naiveté. His hope that after the dissolution of the compromised k.u.k. regime the South Slavic peoples could advance to national, political and social emancipation is soon replaced by the sober insight that the large Habsburg Empire has been replaced by a small-scale post-imperial entity, likewise built on pronounced relations of dominance.
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The debate on objectivity and the great Man’s theory in historical writing is of remote origin. Prominent historians and scholars have adumbrated different sides of this debate. The objectivity debate questions the historian’s ability to present an entirely unbiased interpretation of historical facts and historical events in epistemology. It assesses the extent to which the historian resolves the “insider problems” in the reconstruction of a past which he (the historian) is a part of and also the degree to which the historian is influenced by his environment in the interpretation of historical facts. Simply put, objectivity in history evaluates the extent to which the historian reconstructs the past. The great man’s theory on the other hand interrogates the selective focusing of history on the activities and exploits of great Men. It raises the question of a complete and comprehensive history of mankind. Carr’s emphasis on Ceaser’s crossing the Rubicon while many had crossed it before Ceaser buttresses the selectiveness of historical events and the great man’s theory. This paper examines the notions and dialectics of objectivity and the great man’s theory in historical writing and provides an explicatory critique on both concepts reflecting the views of modernist and postmodernist historians.
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The construction of modern Romania has been achieved, not only through the efforts of politicians and culture people, who proposed and made the necessary reforms, but also by the teachers's contribution, especially rural teachers. Besides the class and extracurricular students activities of lifting the masses through education, teachers have also been involved in solving other problems, with impact on the community, such as the study of natural phenomena (climate and influence on vegetation, earthquakes), contributing to the foundation of Romanian scientific research in this field. This study presents the role of Bacau teachers in the development of Romanian meteorology and seismology at the end of the XIX-th century and the beginning of the XX-th century.
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The article develops K. Randsborg’s idea, according to which the decorative elements of the Trundholm disc have the character of calendar symbols. When considering these elements in their structural and numerical groupings, astronomical and calendar significance is found for all belts of both sides of the disk, and the proposed interpretations are consistently contextual. One discloses on the right side of the disk an 8-year cycle connecting the counting of days according to the sun and to the moon, 16 transitions of the sun from winter solstice to summer solstice, and 27 weeks of the summer half of the year. The patterns represented on the left side of the disk are relevant to the night sky: the same 8-year cycle, since it refers to the counting of days not only according to the sun, but also according to the moon; either division of a year into 10 months or the 19-year cycle of the return of both the moon and sun to their common position with respect to the stars; 25 weeks of the darker, winter half of the year. One concludes that in Denmark of the Bronze Age two types of calendars were used: lunisolar, which regulated the timing of religious festivals, and a solar, so to speak, civil, with a year made up of two not quite equal half-years, 52 weeks and 364 days (probably coexisting with knowledge of a year of 365 ¼ days). The data concerning the medieval Scandinavian calendars, on the one hand, and ancient calendars of Greece and the Near East, on the other, are in perfect agreement with the above conclusions.
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In this study we aimed at understanding the concept of Tradition in the thinking of theologians Georges Florovsky and Dumitru Stăniloae. I propose to highlight the main contributions of these theologians regarding the importance of Tradition in the current theological approach. Although the writings of the Holy Fathers weren’t unfamiliar to the Orthodox theologians before these two fathers, as well as to the theologians from their time, the difference consisted of the way of relationing to the patristic work and thought. Georges Florovsky is the theologian who officially announced at the Athens Congress of 1936 the need to restructure Orthodox theology on its patristic foundations by returning to its origins, to patristic thinking unaltered by rationalism, abstract scholasticism, idealism, syncretism, and religious individualism. Although he didn’t elaborate a proper synthesis, he laid down the foundations of a new method in theology: the neo-patristic method. On the other hand, Father Stăniloae rediscovers the importance of Palamite theology, Hesychasm, and Philokalism, and he accomplishes a true neo-patristic synthesis, able to free the Orthodox theology from those Western influences that Father Florovsky pointed out in his writings. The present study aims to expose the main directions of the neo-patristic synthesis related to the dynamic and creative updating of the Church Tradition in the works of Fathers Georges Florovsky and Dumitru Stăniloae.
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On models of interpretation and Uku Masing or how to understand „Üldine usundilugu“? This article deals with the issue of using conceptual and historical models for the purposes of interpreting Uku Masing. Primary focus is on his major work, „Üldine usundilugu“ and how it has been understood over the years and why these interpretations are misleading. Instead, an alternative reading of this book is presented. This is used to exemplify the more complex methodological problem of relying on historical and conceptual models in research. It is argued that this has become too prevalent in research on Masing. Instead, more attention should be paid to the actual intellectual context of Masing’s development, the fields of research and the schools of thought he himself is in clear dialogue with.
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The publication includes documents on the history of the public organization IMRO – UMS (Union of Macedonian Societies). The organization originated from the Union of Macedonian Cultural and Educational Societies in Bulgaria, restored in 1990, and lasted until the end of the 1990s, when the political party IMRO – Bulgarian National Movement was established on its basis. The documents show the official position of IMRO – UMS on the Macedonian issue and its efforts to defend the rights of the Bulgarians in the newly created after the break-up of communist Yugoslavia independent Republic of Macedonia (now Northern Republic of Macedonia).
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The article is the first comprehensive analysis of Peter the Great’s role in the formation of the Chinese vector of Russian foreign policy at the beginning of the XVIII century. The contribution of Peter the Great to this process can hardly be overestimated. Through his activities, the first Russian emperor laid foundations for creating a unified Eurasian geopolitical and sociocultural space and formed the paradigm of the Eurasian policy of the Russian Empire. During this period, thanks to Peter the Great’s efforts, Russian-Chinese trade entered the phase of active development. The establishment of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Beijing marked the beginning of spiritual, scientific and cultural ties between the two countries. The policy of Peter the Great towards China on the whole was aimed at maintaining peace and good neighborliness between the two countries and tranquility on the Russian-Chinese border. The relevance of this topic at the present time is due to the steady pivot of Russia’s foreign policy to the East and the need for a deeper study of the history of Russian-Chinese relations.
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Professor Anton Domide was born in the village of Şanţ (today in the county of Bistriţa-Năsăud) on 18 December 1880. He began his school in his native village and continued his studies in Năsăud, at the Gymnasium and at the Hungarian State Preparatory School in Deva. After graduated from “Pedagogia Superioară” in Pesta (1905), he went to the Romanian Greek-Catholic Preparatory School in Gherla where he taught mathematics, physics, chemistry, natural sciences, geography and astronomy, being a supporter of the modernization of education at that time. After three years of fruitful activity, Professor Anton Domide was dismissed by the Consistory of the Greek Catholic Diocese of Gherla, as a result of his reformist ideas. The move sparked protests among his colleagues and heated controversy in the press at the time. As a result, in 1908 he was transferred to a secondary school in Hajduszoboszlo, Hungary. After the Great Union, he worked as a teacher at several schools in Cluj, and he performed other professional and community activities. During this period, wealso find him involved in the problems of Orthodoxy in the Rodna Valley during the inter-war period, with his revival centre Sângeorgiul Român (Sângeorz-Băi). Transylvania being ceded in the autumn of 1940, he took refuge in the house of his son, in Timişoara, where he worked as a teacher at the “Constantin Diaconovici-Loga” High School until 1942, when he retired. He died on 4 December 1944.
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Elisabeta Scurtu, Familii de preoţi greco‑catolici din Ţara Năsăudului 1700–1948, Editura Mega, Cluj-Napoca, 2021, 266 p. Grigore Mihai Stavariu, Feldru, un sat din graniţa năsăudeană, Ed. Argonaut, Cluj-Napoca, 2021, 784 p. 784 de pagini recente pentru FELDRU Poenar Dănuţ, Coşna. File de istorie, Ed. Pim, Iaşi, 2020, 747 p. .
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In the Christian world, the worship of relics dates back to the second century of the Christian era. The veneration of the earthly remains of the saints, considered lucky and having healing powers, came to occupy a very important place in the culture of saints’ worship. The relics retained all the prerogatives of the holy bodies of which they were a part, having the great power to heal the sick, to protect the communities from epidemics and invasions, to bring good fortune and prosperity. Moreover, people believed that the remains of the saints had unsuspected powers, including the power to secure the connection between the world of the living and the heavenly world, in which God reigns and judges. Relics were found to be the solution for almost every problem. As a form of popular devotion, the worship of relics has occupied an extremely important place in the history of Christianity, its evolution being long-lasting and allowing the analysis of the most intimate feelings of the members of the Christian community. One may state that this cult of relics is one of the most amazing and striking aspects of medieval religious life.
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The article has as subject the impact of the plague on the collective mentality in the Romanian space during the 16th and 17th centuries. Of all the calamities that befell people during the Middle Ages, and especially during the 16th and 17th centuries, the plague was undoubtedly one of the most frightening. The lack of logical explanations for the cause of its occurrence and its way of spreading, its devastating effect on those infected and the inability to apply effective treatment made this contagious disease have a profound impact on the collective mind. Thus, the sources that recounted the events related to this calamity, the periods in which it spread and deeply affected the population of Transylvania, Moldavia and Wallachia are highlighted. The way in which the people of those centuries tried to explain the causes of the plague, the measures of prophylaxis imposed, even sporadically, and the effort made by human communities, both in rural areas and especially in urban areas, to overcome this terrifying calamity are contained in the pages of this article. In the face of this threat, people were trying to take measures that mainly consisted in isolating the sick and fleeing the calamity. When they proved ineffective — that is, almost every time — the people tried to find the support of the divinity or resorted to ancient rituals, in which they placed their last hopes.
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