“Čovjek je ujedno i ono što može biti”: interpretacija značenja termina otuđenje u socijalizmu i postsocijalizmu

Author(s): Andrea Matošević / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 01/2020

The paper analyses the notion of alienation in a dual sense: first, as a significant articulation of philosophical and sociological problems in Yugoslav socialist thought and beyond, but also as a very present accentuation of the work conditions detected in industry. This double position builds a partial comparison with and analysis of the context of today’s working conditions in the “cognitariat” sector, but from which detection of alienation is almost completely removed and replaced with terms such as “hopelessness”, “indifference”, “futility”, “self-exploitation”, or “burnout”. The paper interprets the lack of such substitution, since alienation, despite the constantly emphasized abstractness of its meaning, connotes criticism, change and overcoming the current issues. This implies strong effort towards disalienation, which is not the case with the mentioned substitutive terms. For this reason, linguistic analysis and attempts to answer the question on the possibility of speaking and analysing a part of today’s, especially working, conditions in terms of alienation are a dominant part of this paper.

“Showered with Privileges by Our Government:” Russian Self-Presentation to Muslim Communities in Ottoman Syria

Author(s): Paul du Quenoy / Language(s): English Issue: 40/2020

Traditional scholarship of Russia’s involvement in the Middle East has focused on confessional politics, usually arguing that Russian policies were designed to support the region’s minority Orthodox Christian populations to build pro-Russian constituencies among them. Important as this work is, it has devoted relatively little attention to Russian interaction with the region’s other confessional communities, including, oddly, its Muslims. Following the work of Edward Said and other theorists of “Orientalism,” some work on that relationship has argued that Russians looked down upon Middle Eastern Muslims, finding them in some contexts inferior and primitive, in others similar enough to provoke unsettling challenges to the assumption by Russians of a “Western” identity, and in still others simply uninteresting. More recent studies, however, have argued that this interpretation is neither consistent with the Russian Empire’s treatment of its own large domestic Muslim population nor uniformly accurate in its interactions with Muslims beyond its borders.

“State Pride”. Politics of LGBT Rights and Democratisation in “European Serbia”

Author(s): Marek Mikuš / Language(s): English Issue: 04/2011

This article analyses from an anthropological perspective the 2010 Belgrade Pride Parade, the first state-supported Parade in Serbia, as a part of the building of a democratic and European Serbian nation. In their discursive framing of the Parade and making claims on the state to take it under its auspices, the organising NGOs bound the event to the EU integration process of Serbia. This policy link helped them forge a political alliance with the state, but was also instrumentalised by the government to avoid an ideological conflict with the opponents of the Parade. Owing to the perception of the alliance as “elitist” and to the militarised and depoliticised nature of the state’s involvement, the event materially actualised and reified rather than transcended the enduring conflict of liberal and collectivist citizenship visions in Serbia. The article argues that the overall discourse of the government on Europeanisation is informed by the same top-down and instrumental logic. However, members of civil society develop political subjectivities which demand active citizen participation and critically engage with the discourse to restore its democratising potential. Similarly, the emerging “populist” politics of LGBT rights, illustrated by the pop singer Jelena Karleuša’s participation in the domestic debate, are better placed to face the legacies of socialist and ethnonationalist nation-building than the human rights and Europeanisation approaches.

“Take Back Control of Our Borders”: The Role of Arguments about Controlling Immigration in the Brexit Debate

Author(s): Simon Goodman / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2017

In the run-up to Brexit, the British referendum on leaving the European Union (EU), immigration was one of the top issues of concern to voters. Discussions about immigration dominated the campaigns, with the “Vote Leave” campaign linking leaving the EU with the opportunity to prevent immigration into the United Kingdom (UK). The focus on this was in part due to the migration and ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe that coincided with the referendum. This paper presents an analysis of how the key players in the Brexit debate focused on immigration. The question is, therefore, how did the participants in the Brexit debate talk about immigration and what did this talk accomplish. Discourse analysis of campaign coverage reveals that: 1. Leave campaigners presented immigration as out of control, including that from within and outside of the EU and those arriving in Europe as refugees; 2. “Remain” campaigners presented Brexit as an ineffective way of controlling migration; and, 3., in limited cases, immigration was presented as beneficial. The conclusion is that the focus on immigration appeared to have been a major factor in the eventual success of the Leave campaign. Although it remains to be seen what impact Brexit will have on immigration, opposition to immigration has become mainstream.

“The Change Was But An Unfulfilled Promise": Agriculture and the Rural Population in Post-Communist Hungary.

Author(s): Péter Agócs,Sándor Agócs / Language(s): English Issue: 01/1994

This essay describes the conditions faced by the rural population of Hungary during the three-year period beginning in 1990, when free elections, held for the first time in forty-some years, introduced a democratic political system and brought hopes of improvement in the lives of the villagers. Antecedents are dealt with only where they throw light on the current situation. This focus demanded that our sources come mostly from contemporary Hungarian newspapers and recent issues of periodicals, as well as participant-observation by us and by other Hungarians willing to consult with us and to confirm, correct, or deny our perceptions. Like many of the writers of the newspaper articles, they are social scientists who apply their expertise to the study of conditions in rural society. [...]

“The Intentions of Life” Philosophical Points of Departure in The Power of the Powerless

Author(s): Lenka Karfíková / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2018

Philosophical scrutiny of The Power of the Powerless shows that Havel’s key concept “the intentions [or aims] of life” depends on Heidegger’s conception of Dasein’s authenticity, even if Havel replaces Heidegger’s “anticipating death” with “the intentions of life” to fulfill itself in freedom. At the same time, these “intentions” prove to have a self-destructive tendency (as Havel’s plays make very clear). In his political reflections and possibly also in his later political activities, however, this point seems to be underestimated. Political systems do not differ only by the room they allow for free development but also by the degree to and manner by which they protect the intentions of life from their inner tendency to degenerate.

“The Minor Would Hinder the Mother in Finding Employment:” Child Protection and Women’s Paid Work in Early State Socialist Hungary

Author(s): Eszter Varsa / Language(s): English Issue: 04/2017

This article discusses the role of child protection and residential care institutions in mediating the tension between women’s productive and reproductive responsibilities in early state socialist Hungary. At a time when increasing numbers of women entered paid work in the framework of catch-up industrialization but the socialization of care work was inadequate, these institutions substituted for missing public child care services. Relying on not only policy documents but more than six hundred children’s case files, including Romani children’s files, from three different locations in Hungary as well as interviews with former children’s home residents and personnel, the article examines the regulatory framework in which child protection institutions and caseworkers operated. It points to the differentiated forms of pressure these institutions exercised on Romani and non-Romani mothers to enter paid work between the late 1940s and the early 1950s from the intersectional perspective of gender and ethnicity. Showing that prejudice against “Gypsies” as work-shy persisted in child protection work across the systemic divide of the late 1940s, the article contributes to scholarship on state socialism and Stalinism that emphasizes the role of historical continuities. At the same time, reflecting on parental invention in using child protection as a form of child care, the article also complicates a simplistic social control approach to residential care institutions in Stalinist Hungary.

“The Occupation of Beauty”: Imagining Nature and Nation in Latvia

Author(s): Katrina Z. S. Schwartz / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2007

This article uses the case of Latvia to explore the relationship between discourses of nature, homeland, and national identity. National entrepreneurs construct homelands by infusing physical terrain with national meanings, thereby transforming landscape into “ethnoscape.” The author traces this process in Latvia, beginning with the National Awakening of the 1860s, including the interwar period of independence, and the period under Soviet rule. By focusing on the intranational discursive construction of homeland, this article seeks to complicate the dominant understanding of national identity as a phenomenon linked solely to the drawing and policing of boundaries between members of the nation and outsiders.

“The Past Is Never Dead”. Identity, Class, and Voting Behavior in Contemporary Poland

Author(s): Krzysztof Jasiewicz / Language(s): English Issue: 04/2009

This article presents a summary of analyses addressing the changing patterns of voting behavior in post-communist Poland as a context for examination of the issue of the relationship between regions defined by history (eighteenth-century partitions, border shifts after WWII) and contemporary forms of voting behavior. In the 1990s, the dominant cleavage in Polish politics was the one between the post-Solidarity and postcommunist camps, and the best predictor of voting behavior was one’s religiosity. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, this cleavage has been replaced by another, between the liberal, pro-European orientation and the more Euro-skeptic, populist attitudes. The empirical evidence seems to suggest that one end of the populist–liberal continuum is relatively well defined and represents the traditional system of values, which defines Polish national identity in terms of ethnic nationalism, strong attachment to Catholic dogmas, and denunciation of communism as a virtual negation of those values. The other end of this continuum is defined more by rejection of this nationalistic-Catholic “imagined community” than by any positive features. This article examines the relative role of identity-related factors (e.g., religiosity or region) and determinants based on one’s socioeconomic (class) position in shaping voting patterns in the 2007 elections to the Polish Sejm and Senate. The empirical data come from a postelection survey, the Polish General Election Study 2007.

“The Yellow Duck” Attacks: An Analysis of the Activities of the “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd” Initiative in the Serbian Public Space

Author(s): Agata Domachowska / Language(s): English Issue: 19/2019

The main aim of the paper is to present the performative dimension of activities undertaken by the “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd” Initiative. The Initiative’s actions, which initially concerned opposition to the “Belgrade on Water” project, turned into a regular political campaign. These activities clearly illustrate contemporary ways of managing civil opposition, as well as performative practices aimed at creating a civil society. The focus is on verbal and non-verbal practices of expressing resistance, as well as strategies for building a sense of community among the participants of the Initiative’s gatherings.

“Turncoats, Traitors, and Provocateurs”: Communist Collaborators, the German Occupation, and Stalin’s NKVD, 1941–1943

Author(s): Jeffrey Burds / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2018

Historians have long assumed that Germany closely followed a take-no-prisoners policy in dealing with captured communists in the East. That was the direct conclusion to be drawn from Hitler’s notorious Commissar Order issued on the eve of the Barbarossa invasion, which prescribed summary execution of all communists and communist officials. Data published in the Soviet Union largely confirmed this impression, reflecting a dramatic reduction in Communist Party members during the first six months of the war in the East. New data suggest, however, that far from annihilating communist cadres as part of the so-called “Jewish-Communist” threat, the German occupation authorities instead recruited many former communists for service in occupation governmental work, as spies, or in other roles vital to German authorities in eastern zones. Post-Soviet archives offer profound insights into the development of Stalin’s special policy towards these suspected communist turncoats.

“United We Stand Strong:” Bulgaria’s EU Council Presidency

Author(s): Jakub Pieńkowski / Language(s): English

On 1 January 2018, Bulgaria took up the presidency of the EU for the first time. Over the next six months, it will try to build up its image as a stable and responsible EU partner and the leader of the Balkan states. The effectiveness of the Bulgarian presidency will depend on its ability to achieve compromise on such issues as mass-migration, Brexit, and the new budgetary framework. Bulgaria avoided involvement in Article 7 actions against Poland, but in this situation, its emphasis on the mediating role of the presidency may be particularly important.

“Vrem o ţară ca afară!” - How Contention in Romania Redefines State-Building through a Pro-European Discourse

Author(s): Ruxandra Gubernat,Henry Rammelt / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2021

Massive protest waves, mainly led by younger citizens, appeared during the past years in Romania. Gubernat and Rammelt provide an analysis of the production of meaning by the “Romanian street” as a collective actor. They argue that “Vrem o ţară ca afară! (We want a country like abroad!)” became the leitmotif for important parts of the Romanian protests of the past eight years. For so doing, Gubernat and Rammelt analyze the discursive underpinnings and the constructed frames in recent protests in Romania. Their demonstration synthesizes a social phenomenon that appeared during the Roșia Montană protests of 2013, continued with the Colectiv protests of 2015 and was reconfirmed during the 2017–2018 anti-corruption protests: the dichotomy between the discursive appropriation of the West, as a benchmark of progress and social modernization and the “self-racism” manifested in these movements. The use of Frame Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis for the study of these waves of protests enables them to show how the Western hegemonic discourse on state-building provides the cultural conditions for social action as well as it enables mobilizing agents to frame national discontent. “‘Vrem o ţară ca afară!’ Redefining state-building through a pro-European discourse in Romania” concludes that recent protests in Romania reproduce Western ideals of modern state and politics through a value-based discourse around the idea of belonging to Europe.

“What Happened to Jokes?” The Shifting Landscape of Humor in Hungary

Author(s): Martha Lampland,Maya Nadkarni / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2016

Since 1989, commentators on both sides of the Atlantic have mourned the death of jokes in postsocialist societies. While in fact humor has not gone away, the everyday experience of sharing jokes as an intimate form of political criticism has indeed vanished. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and archival research on the history of Hungarian humor, this article contributes a new perspective to the recent wave of scholarship on Soviet laughter, by examining the “loss of the joke” as both a cultural phenomenon and a critical discourse in postsocialist Hungary. First, we argue that a series of important shifts in the way Hungarians work, socialize, communicate, and engage in politics has led them to be far more circumspect in sharing political humor. Second, we analyze the self-reflexive perception of loss as a form of cultural criticism that indexes broader anxieties about the challenges of interpreting the operations of power under postsocialism. With this shift in political sensibility, we argue, the lament that the joke is “lost” may now offer more effective political commentary than a joke itself.

“Why Can’t We Be Friends?” The Coalition Potential of Presidents in Semi-presidential Republics—Insights from Romania

Author(s): Veronica Anghel / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2018

Coalition governments are a regularly studied feature of parliamentary democracies. Debates still linger in the field as to what extent the outcomes of these studies are also applicable in determining who has the upper hand over coalition formation in semipresidential regimes. This article explores the dynamics of government formation under semi-presidential regimes using evidence from Romania (1990–2016) and discusses the formal and informal potential of the president to shape coalitions. It covers a lacuna in qualitative studies by using evidence gathered from in-depth interviews with prime ministers, cabinet members, and key party decision makers and shows that under certain circumstances presidents can play an influential role in government formation, but these are rather the exception than the rule. Using a case that presents the incentives for an increase in the presidentialization of politics, I show that the mechanisms of a multiparty regime mostly limit the president’s exclusive bargaining advantage to nominating the prime minister and then, much as in a parliamentary democracy, render him or her dependent on the coalition potential of his or her own party.

„A világ legjobb 140 karakteres írója”

Donald Trump és a twitter-elnökség

Author(s): Rajmund Fekete / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2017

With his election in 2016 as president of the United States, we can assert that Donald Trump ushered in a new era in American public life, in administration, in foreign policy and especially in political communication. What Franklin D. Roosevelt was to radio and John F. Kennedy to television, Donald J. Trump is to Twitter. The 45th president of the US broke from President Obama’s elitist, intellectual communication and introduced a simpler, louder, more troll-like style of communication in public. His Twitter account, which has almost 80 million followers, serves as his primary channel. During the 2016 elections, his Twitter profile functioned as a „prototype campaign,” an example of innovation merging with real-life practice in the world of politics. Equipped with this communications platform and style, he has created a communications space where it becomes impossible to not talk about him. Moreover, with his proactive and innovative approach, the president communicates directly with the American citizens, bypassing the filter of the media.

„an die besten Traditionen der Ersten und Zweiten Republik anknüpfend“ : Polnische Erinnerungskultur im öffentlichen Raum nach 1989

Author(s): Heidi Hein-Kircher / Language(s): German Issue: 3/2010

In the early years of what is generally known as the Third Republic, which was brought to an end by the 1997 Constitution, the politics of history and memory reflected the new Polish society’s search for a fresh conception of itself, a conception that would displace that of communist times. To this end a specific effort towards the creation and search for historical continuities was characteristic of this stage: new and renewed national themes, new and renewed rituals, symbols and political myths formed important elements in political psychology and political culture. These were not only used to create a new identity, but also to legitimise the revolution and the new political system. As will be shown, the historical memory of the Second Republic, in particular of its founder and dictator Józef Piłsudski, as well as of the (negatively perceived) Soviet occupation and hegemony over Poland, became the focus of the politics of memory in public discourse. In this process, the problematic history of German-Polish relations was all but excluded, in order to build up a new, positive national image, as well as from political necessity, in the efforts to join NATO and the EU. The memory of the German crimes committed during the Second World War was now – in contrast to position in the communist era – just one element in historical consciousness and collective memory. Hence the culture of memory as a whole was characterised on the one hand by linking up with the historical traditions of the Second Republic, and on the other by attempts to remove the boundaries to the culture of memory set under communism. Thus the change in the culture of memory reflects political change, i.e. the change of system, as Poles were now able to set their own markers in the culture of memory. Since the end of the 1990s, it has become ever clearer that what was really happening was a form of suppression of historical memory, especially with regard to German-Polish relations.

„Constituție”, „Coroană” și „țară”.Constituționalism și monarhie autoritară în intervalul 1938-1940

Author(s): Ioan Stanomir / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2003

The purpose of this study is to investigate, from an intellectual and legal perspective, a historical interval (1938-1940), in which the Romanian constitutional system underwent a dramatic transformation, from a relatively stable parliamentary democracy to a regime characterized by a single party state and the confusion between the three branches of the government. In doing so, the present paper has chosen to place in sharp contrast two kind of attitudes defining two different approaches towards constitutional law and legal order. The distance between the authoritarian approach of Armand Călinescu, king Carol's home minister an prime minister, and the constitutional critique put forward by Iuliu Maniu underlines the importance of a perspective which would embrace the whole set of options, as expressed during this given period. This political and legal confrontation, opposing two visions concerning individual liberty and political representation, paves the way for a future in which the dilemma between the rule of law and arbitrary became a dramatic one, involving the entire political community.

„Cvijeće zla” – Bijela knjiga Saveza komunista Hrvatske

Author(s): Davor Marijan / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1/2021

The White Book is the popular name for the internal analysis of the League of Communists of Croatia from March 1984, in which anti-system occurrences in the public space—i.e. those that were at odds with the policies of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia—from 1982 to 1984 and mostly from Serbia, were gathered. It was the result of the consistent implementation of the policies of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in Croatia as well as in most parts of the other Yugoslav republics and autonomous provinces. In Serbia, this was done only partially, obviously due to a desire to avoid a thorough settling of accounts with the media and anti-communists, because they were important to a part of the political leadership that wanted a change of the political system, which was a euphemism for redefining Yugoslav federalism. The goal of the Analysis was to highlight this issue, while the Consultations of Cultural Creators held on 23 May 1984 were intended to offer help from Zagreb. It appears that the White Book purposefully ended up in the hands of persons in Belgrade for whose eyes it had not been intended, and thus worsened relations between the Leagues of Communists of Croatia and Serbia. The White Book was also the cause of long-lasting media polemics, despite the Party leadership’s demands that they be stopped. It is a concrete example that there existed serious differences in the approach to the topic of ideological struggle within the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, and that the conclusions of the League’s Central Committee were not being conducted according to the principles of ‘democratic centralism’.

„Democrația” înainte de partide

Author(s): Raluca Alexandrescu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2004

The article portrays the main tendencies of the concept of "democracy" in the 19th century Romanian political thought, before the formal creation of the political parties. Using the methodological basis of conceptual history (Kos- selleck, Skinner, Farr etc.), the author follows the emergence of several meanings of "democracy", in the pre- and post-1848 cultural and intellectual context, related, at first, with the 17th century philosophical heritage (Descartes, Locke etc. ) and slowly translated into the 19th century philosophical language. The European invention of some fundamental concepts, such as "Revolution" and "Nation State", including some essential debates opposing democracy and equality and linking the democratic system with the idea of representation and universal vote, is also present in various ways in the Romanian political thought.