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The Soviet-Finnish war of 1939–1940 became a tragic page in the history not only of our country, but also of neighboring Finland. This military conflict became an integral part of the Second World War history. Its outcome was influenced by several important factors. One of the most important ones was the issue of logistics of the Red Army troops during the hostilities. It was particularly pressing in the Northern Ladoga area. During the war, it was in this area that the 18th and the 168th rifle divisions, as well as the 34th light tank brigade were surrounded. The novelty of the research arises from the fact that the issue of the troops logistics during the studied period has been poorly covered in special literature, which makes its study particular relevant for military history. The purpose of this article is to summarize the previously published materials and to identify the prospects for further study. The author makes a conclusion that the Soviet plans of military operations against Finland didn’t take into account a combination of factors connected with supplying the Red Army units with everything that was needed. All this ultimately led to the disastrous consequences for the Red Army.
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The most controversial and unresolved issue of human losses of Croatia and Yugoslavia in World War II is the number of victims of the Jasenovac camp. Lists of victims and estimates and calculations by historians and demographers often diverge widely on this point, ranging from minimisation to impossible megalomaniac claims, and are strongly linked to (daily) politics. Especially after the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the issue of the number of victims of the Jasenovac camp began to be interpreted differently from the until then only permitted one-sided and ‘megalomaniac’ approach. Democratic changes, but also rising nationalist sentiment during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, led to studies on the human losses of Yugoslavia in World War II, and the unavoidable issue of the number and structure of Jasenovac camp victims, having a distinct ideological-propaganda background in Croatian and Serbian historiography, opinion journalism, and public discourse. Serb nationalists vastly inflate the number of Jasenovac camp victims, most of all Serbs, while Croat nationalists strive to minimise this number. The issue of the number and structure of Jasenovac victims is heavily nationally, ideologically, and emotionally charged, which greatly hinders evaluation. Proponents of both left and right worldviews in Croatia and Serbia continue to ignore and belittle any research and facts that do not support their favoured image of the past. Furthermore, they devaluate proven facts and present typical justifications. Inflation or reduction, omission, often coupled with ignorance, stem from personal, national, or political motives. It is noticeable that both Croatian and Serbian media, for the most part, transmit such efforts. The Jasenovac camp and the number and structure of its victims continue to be popular discussion topics in Croatian and Serbian historiography and opinion journalism, which have stratified into the left and right within national frameworks since the early 1990s, and in Croatian and Serbian public discourse; very different, sometimes diametrically opposed statements and claims are made, often without basis in fact. Facts about the Jasenovac camp have been contaminated from the start, and we are still witnessing contamination from various sources, with no end in sight. Despite all the efforts of a part of Croatian and Serbian historiography, and some opinion journalism, no major progress has been made from the early 1990s until today regarding the research and aggregation of knowledge and new data on the number and structure of Jasenovac camp victims; our level of knowledge in this regard has remained more-or-less the same as in the pre-1990 period. There is no doubt that historiography, Croatian and Serbian, has yet to present substantiated answers about the number and structure of Jasenovac victims. This article presents and questions the most significant Croatian and Serbian historiographical and opinion journalism works – as well as the unavoidable echoes of the topic of Jasenovac victims in public discourse – that question the number and structure of the victims, including those that offer substantiated facts, but also some illustrative examples of indisputable ignorance and manipulation.
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In the following discussion, the author analyses the percentage and role of lawyers in the Slovenian political life from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of World War II in Slovenia. He initially provides a comparative presentation of the considerable percentage of lawyers among politicians while paying particular attention to the Members of Parliament and the Ministers and then illustrates his research with the percentage of lawyers in other areas as well (among mayors, committee members, party officials, Bans, and so on). On these foundations, the author presents a collective biography of lawyer politicians in the continuation of the article.
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In line with the provisions of the St. Vitus’ Day Constitution (1921), Slovenia was divided into the Ljubljana and Maribor Administrative Units. As late as in 1927, the Slovenian Administrative Unit self-governments became operational, which implied a partial mitigation of centralism. Fifteen Slovenian lawyers were elected for the Ljubljana and Maribor Administrative Unit Assemblies, the highest bodies of these two territories. By carrying out essential self-government functions, they contributed significantly to the fact that the Slovenian Administrative Unit self-governments were the most successful among all 33 in the state at implementing the tasks, crucial for the multifaceted progress of Slovenia. Lawyers in particular had merit for the developments in the regulatory field. After the unification of the Ljubljana and Maribor Administrative Units into the Drava Banate in the autumn of 1929, the Ban’s Council functioned as the Ban’s consultative body with regard to budgeting. The Ban’s Councillors were appointed by the Ministers of the Interior. In the 1930s, the Ministers also appointed 32 lawyers as representatives of cities and districts in the Ban’s Council. They were exceedingly active, especially in their efforts to expand the autonomous powers of the Ban’s Council. All of the highest officials of the general state administration in the Administrative Units and the Banate were lawyers.
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The contribution focuses on the perception and presentation of the October Revolution’s significance in the circle of Slovenian communists between 1920 and 1945. It is based especially on the contemporaneous mainstream and underground press, published by the Communist Party and at least partly available to a wider circle of readers. The analysis of the materials reveals an extremely affirmative attitude towards the October Revolution, since the Slovenian communists, as a part of the Yugoslav Communist Party and the international communist movement under the auspices of the Comintern, deemed it to be the most important watershed in the human history. At every anniversary of the Revolution, the Slovenian communists would repeatedly emphasise the fundamental principles that had enabled the victorious triumph of the Revolution under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party as well as the subsequent implementation of socialism in the Soviet Union. During the period between both world wars, the Slovenian communists would particularly underline the progress in the economic, cultural and social field; while during World War II they kept emphasising the power of the Soviet state and its Red Army, which was capable of confronting Hitler and whose power was also based on the October’s “accomplishments”.
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World War II, which started in 1939, caused both countries entering the war and countries which were succeed in not entering the war until last moment thanks to following a certain policy of balance and neutrality such as Turkey to experience really difficult times both economically and socially. Due to the war economy, the decrease in many basic consumption items from food to clothing, coal to gasoline, the onset of black market and the tax policies applied worsened the socio-economic situation of the people. The absence and scarcity experienced were felt intensely in all segments of the society, and these difficulties experienced economically and socially reflected on art, as well. The burden of war economy on the people, especially in literature, painting, cinema and especially music was mentioned as the subject of emerging artworks. In an environment where people tried to survive under such difficult conditions, the main venues where cultural and artistic activities were held were cinema, theater, exhibition, fair, school buildings and especially public house halls. The concert halls and musical activities performed in these places were the sharing of works with society, and they also served as a function for mass entertainment for the Turkish society who were overwhelmed by the war environment. In this study, music policies and the impacts of the war on music in Turkey will be discussed. Besides, music institutions and musical activities and activities carried out during the war period will be included in the study.
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The author unveils some hitherto unknown or less known details of the life of Ustasha “knight” Ibrahim Pjanić Pirić, as one of the controversial figures from the Gračanica area and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It concerns the period from the spring of 1945 to the end of 1951 which Pjanić spent in Austria, Italy and Syria after fortunately “overcoming Bleiburg”. The author brings some new data based on his refugee documentation which can be seen as a useful contribution to Pjanić’s biography and a contribution to the papers that were published so far about him.
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Review of: Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska, Reko-rekonesans: praktyka autentyczności. Antropologiczne studium odtwórstwa historycznego II wojny światowej w Polsce, Kęty: Wydawnictwo Marek Derewiecki 2018, s. 391, ISBN 978-83-65031-37-2. Review by: Janusz Barański
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Review of: Małgorzata Maj (red.), Antropologia i etnologia w czasie wojny. Działalność Sektion Rassen- und Volkstumsforschung Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit, Krakau 1940-1944, w świetle nowych materiałów źródłowych, Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego 2015, ss. 250, ISBN: 978-83-233-3879-6. Review by: Filip Wróblewski
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General Lucjan Żeligowski came from a Polish noble family, the coat of arms “Bończa”. His ancestors fought against the Swedes in the sixteenth century and his father participated in the January Uprising in 1863. He is one of the most controversial figures in the corps of generals of the Second Polish Republic. He fought in the Russian-Japanese War (1904–1905). During the Great War, after the consent of the Russian authorities to create Polish military formations, he was a co-organizer of the Polish Riflemen Brigade, he fought in the ranks of the Polish Rifle Division and the Polish First Corps. In the final period of the war he co-organized the 4th Polish Rifle Division, with which he reached Poland via Odessa and Bessarabia. He fought with the armies of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic and in the Polish-Soviet War – the Northern Front (10 DP) and in the fighting at Radzymin (during the Battle of Warsaw). After the war, the 1. Lithuanian-Belorussian Infantry Division took Vilnius and led to the creation the Republic of Central Lithuania. „Żeligowski’s Mutiny” resulted in joining this area to Poland. In the Polish Army he was the commander of the Army Inspectorate No. 2 in Warsaw and the Minister of Military Affairs. After Piłsudski’s coup d’état (the May coup), he stood at the head of the Liquidation Commission set up to clarify the circumstances and course of May events in 1926. He was also an Inspector of the Army in the General Inspectorate of the Armed Forces. On August 31, 1927, he retired. In 1928 he became the president of the Chapter of the Order of Polonia Restituta and a member of the State Tribunal. In 1935 he was elected a member of the Parlament (Sejm) of the 4th term from the list of the Non-Partisan Block of Cooperation with the Government – he chaired the Parlament Military Commission, and then the Parlament (Sejm) of the 5th term from the non-party list. During World War II, he was a member of the National Council of the Republic of Poland, chairman of its Military Committee and Chancellor of the Order of Virtuti Militari. A supporter of Slavophile in the postwar period, he was in favor of cooperation with the USSR. He died in London in 1947. He rests at the Military Cemetery in Powązki in Warsaw.
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With the growth of Protestantism, changes in conceptions and in political representations have provoked participation in political parties. In 1940, evangelical parliamentarians participated in the legislature. With the military coup of 1964, Protestantism divided into one sector which joined the military, and another which resisted it and built a Protestant opposition sector, The Evangelical Bench, which aligned itself to the conservative sectors in Parliament.
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The political life in Timiș-Torontal County as well as that one at the national level was dominated in the second half of 1946 by the campaign for Parliament elections in November, with lot of abuses and illegal acts, and teasing the traditional parties (the National Peasants’ Party and the National Liberal Party, and also the Independent Social-Democratic Party lead by advocate Constantin-Titel Petrescu). A series of crises, “secessions”, resignations and dismissals occurred also within the Block of Democratic Parties, generating at a certain moment, a severe crisis of confidence among the members of the governmental coalition. That one was caused by making “a covenant” with “the enemy” (namely, the political organizations of the democratic opposition), by a different visions concerning the Germans and Serbians, as well as by defeatist actions of some of the leaders in communes, towns, counties and regions, or some of important cadres’ disciplinary deviations, etc. The leaders of BDP were looking askance at the guardists too; they made so a series of lists with the guardists who had become members – sometimes, even presidents – of some local subsidiaries of the parties in the governmental “arch” (without any note on the context or the way of such cases); they were also more than “attentive” to the former members of the so-called “fascist”, “nazist” or “pro-fascist” organizations, etc. The electoral campaigns that lasted for long in fact (June-November 1946) was a special opportunity for a propagandist “duel” between the power and the opposition; non-transparence in informing adopted ever frequently by the cabinet of “a large democratic concentration” lead by dr. Petru Groza, induced a similar retailing that covered all the “topical” questions the population in Timis-Torontal and the limitrophe counties to (Caraș, Severin and Arad) had to face. The “treasons” of some of the cadres in BDP that were revealed just in the election day (November 19, 1946) needed an urgent re-organizing of those structures and a large cabinet reshuffling (done at the end of November the same year).
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Review of: Dorota Pauluk - SYLWIA WINNIK, DZIEWCZĘTA Z AUSCHWITZ. GŁOS OCALONYCH KOBIET, WARSZAWA: WYDAWNICTWO MUZA. SPORT I TURYSTYKA, 2018, SS. 303, ISBN 978-83-287-0837-2
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In Poland during the communist period and until 1989, it was nearly impossible to openly talk about the Second World War. First, due to friendship with the Soviet Union and later, after the fall of communism, Poland was busy creating its own government, introducing the democratic culture and fighting with an economic crisis in order to transform the country it became between 1989 and 2000. After this period, history and commemoration events started to play a very important role for the national and political identity of the country. Like in other Central and Eastern European states, Poland is an example of how history is used as a political tool in the museum narratives and exhibition forms, which also trigger conflicts.
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The aim of this study is to explain the formation of the Arab Army and its effects on the 1948 Arab Israeli War. In this study we also tried to find the Causes of Arab defeat in 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The main part of the first Arab-Israeli War of 1948 between Israel and the Arabs after the establishment of the state of Israel was involved with the causes and consequences. As a result, the Arab Army, led by the Arab Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (the religious leader of the Arab Palestinians) and the forces of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia; opposed to the newly formed state of Israel, the political rivalry between them, the inability to act together, the inconsistency, etc. they have failed for reasons. Israel has won the war and even expanded its territory. There was almost no land left in Palestine after the war. About half a million Palestinians have fled in fear or been forced to leave territory seized by Israel during the war. This research has been prepared using the method of documentary scanning and Analysis.
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The article is devoted to Belarusian war prose in the 20th century which portraits a German who has been presented as an enemy, a nonconformist rejecting official ideology, and an ethnic German outside Germany. Specific common features that characterize works written by Z. Biadulia, A. Harodnia, C. Hartny,M. Harecki, E. Samujlionok with A. Adamoviˇc, V. Byka˘u, L. Dajnieka, I. ˇCyhryna˘u heritage have been revealed. A tendency to abandon a simplified image of a German as an enemy popular in the 1940s–50s has been pointed out.
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The communist elite of Yugoslavia established Yugoslavia anew during World War II. A federal communist arrangement was put in place, with the period shifting from an almost totalitarian regime towards an operationally consociational one. In this paper, we question the issue of the homogeneity and very existence of the Yugoslav ruling communist elite in the period 1943–1991. We focus on decision-making, discussions and purges by considering newly available archival sources. The article finds that while the elite was successful in taking power it was not long before the elite started to be ethnically segmented. The origins of this segmentation related to how resolution of the national question of the nations at issue was understood, in turn further driving the segmentation process. Overall, we argue that individual national elites were already established by 1972.
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This introductory essay provides an overview of the historiography of the borderland region of Bukovina after 1945 and 1989–1991. Presenting the approaches adopted in different national contexts after the end of the Second World War, it points to the methodological nationalism which characterized research on the region during the Cold War. We show that while the historiography of Bukovina on the ground, in Romania and the Soviet Union, refracted wider national ideologies, abroad, particularly in West Germany and Israel, it remained for a long time the prerogative of small groups of “Bukovinians,” who saw it as their “lost home.” We explore both the similarities and differences between these narratives and stakeholders as well as the changes that took place after 1989–1991, especially in Romania and Ukraine. We show that while divided, the actors behind the narratives and thereby the narratives themselves have been connected in complex ways over the decades and particularly since the collapse of communism. Indeed, while for a long time the study of Bukovina resisted transnationalism, it nevertheless constituted and constitutes an ultimately transnational research object. Today, Bukovina remains a space of contest but it is also a space of opportunity, not least for researchers interested in the contested histories of borderland regions. This essay therefore contextualizes the themes and issues addressed in the following cluster of articles and identifies avenues for future research in this field.
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The author offers to use the creative activities of blackout poetry and found poetry to interpret works dealing with the subject of the Holocaust. She presents a detailed scheme of applying this form of work during lessons with students. She argues that such a solution can be an enrichment of traditional interpretation, it also allows to stimulate the creativity of students and engage them in the didactic process.
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