Теодор Теодоров като председател на VIII ОНС (1894–1896 г.)

Author(s): Maria Peneva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2013

Born March 14, 1859 in Elena, Teodor Todorov received his primary and secondary education in Elena and Gabrovo and then continued his studies in Russia. In 1893 he graduated from the Faculty of Novorossiysk University (Odessa). This determined his enduring feelings for Slavophilism and Russia. After returning to Bulgaria in the middle of 1886, he began his career as a lawyer in Ruse. His involvement with politics coincided with his professional development. Teodorov did not belong to the generation of politicians who took part in the national liberation movement, or the struggle for an independent church and education. From the beginning of his political career after the dethronement of Prince Alexander I he was defined as a Russophile. He strongly supported the dethronement of the Prince and endorsed the interim government of Metropolitan Kliment (Vasil Drumev) and was one of his defenders. During the time Teodorov served as Chairman of the National Assembly (1894-1896) he proved himself an extremely clever politician and a gifted orator. He asserted himself as the third major political factor in the country after the Prince and the Prime Minister. He was an irreconcilable enemy of liberals and Stambolov in particular. He was an undisputed authority among conservatives and hard-line Narodnyak Russophiles, and he advanced on the political arena at a time when the country had plunged into both social and political turmoil.

За евреите и антисемитизма в Средна Европа

Author(s): Radoslav Mishev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2013

Отзив: Пейковска, П. Българските общности в Унгария през ХIХ-ХХ в. Миграции и историко- демографска характеристика. София, 2011, 402 с.

Author(s): Kalcho Kalchev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2013

„Малката Франция” и приемането на България в Обществото на народите 1920 г

Author(s): Ludmil Spasov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2012

The present article analyzes the relations between Bulgaria and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (KSCS) through the prism of the accession of Bulgaria to the League of Nations (LN) in 1920. By tracing the specific steps of Bulgarian and international diplomacy, the article throws light on the real nature of the Balkan model of interrelations between victor and defeated and highlights the circumstances in which the post-war foreign policy of Bulgaria was formed. The arguments adduced in the article justify the claim that KSCS behaved like a “little France” in the Balkans and, unlike Romania and Poland, was unwilling to listen to and follow Paris in everything.

Българската държавност след Освобождението (1878) и в началото на ХХI век: сравнителен анализ

Author(s): Georgi Yankov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2012

The problem of consolidating the system of state government was as importance for the development of Bulgaria after the Liberation, as it is in the beginning of the 21st century. The analysis shows that the outstanding political wisdom of the builders of the young Bulgarian state, the historical optimism and patriotism of the society, and the demographic boom after the Liberation, contrast with the enormous deficit of a sense of statehood in the majority of the political elite, with the pessimism and nihilism, with the demographic collapse and the diminution of the activities and functions of the state after 1989. The article concludes that in the beginning of the 21st century the Bulgarian society is once again faced with the necessity of consolidating the system of state government, of increasing the institutional effectiveness of the state and its administrative capacity. In this respect the lessons of the construction of the Bulgarian state after the Liberation can be of use, especially in respect of raising the “sense of statesmanship” of the political elite.

Българо-турското „братство по оръжие” на Добруджанския фронт през 1916 г.

Author(s): Kalcho Kalchev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2011

The present work is focused on the dynamics of the problems of the Bulgarian-Turkish military interaction during the war against Romania in 1916. The underlying thesis is that in spite of the joint military operations against the common enemy, the brotherhood-in-arms was a fiction because it was a political formula related to completely different geopolitical goals of the now-allied former enemies.

Středoevropský historik Bedřich Loewenstein

Author(s): Tomáš Hermann / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1+2/2018

The author summarizes the life and in particular scientific career of historian Bedřich Loewenstein, describes areas of his professional interest and his intellectual orientation, reminds of his most important works published in Czech and German, and assesses his contribution. Loewenstein was born in 1929 in Prague, in a Czech-German-Jewish family, lived through the German occupation in difficult conditions, and started studying history and philosophy at what was then the Faculty of Arts and History of the Charles University, but was expelled two years later for political reasons. He was allowed to complete his studies later, and in 1957 started working at the Institute of History of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, where he remained until his dismissal in 1970. He started intensive contacts with West German historians and other intellectuals during the 1960s, and organized an important international symposium, “Europe and Fascism”, in Prague in 1969. Since the early 1970s, he was not allowed to publish and was employed as an interpreter/translator of the trade mission (since 1973 embassy) of the Federal Republic of Germany. Although watched by the State Security, he managed to make use of his position to establish an important connection between domestic dissenters and their supporters abroad, which was used to exchange publications and other documents. In 1979, he accepted an offer of professorship of recent history at the Free University in West Berlin, where he remained until 1994 and where he could develop and expand his research interests and devote himself to intensive publication activities For a long time, Bedřich Loewenstein was focusing on the German history of the 19th and 20th centuries; since the 1960s, he was also studying ideological, psychological, and social prerequisites of Nazism and later also more general issues of crises of the 20th century, modernism and modernity, civic society, European nationalism, and civilization. In this respect, he was able to integrate approaches and knowledge of other social sciences – sociology, social psychology, anthropology, philosophy, political science, and economy – in a prolific manner. He was a long-time and intensive intermediary of views and ideas between the Czech (or Czechoslovak) and German historiographies. His works, written in a concise, scientific-essayist style, earned him respect among colleagues both at home and abroad. His principal works include Plädoyer für die Zivilisation (Hamburg, Hoffmann und Campe 1973), Entwurf der Moderne: Vom Geist der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft und Zivilisation (Essen, Reimar Hobbing 1987; in Czech in 1995), Problemfelder der Moderne: Elemente der politischen Kultur (Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1990), My a ti druzí: Dějiny, psychologie, antropologie (Brno, Doplněk 1997; in German in 2003). A synthesis of Loewenstein’s thinking about a broad spectrum of issues is presented in his book Der Fortschrittsglaube: Geschichte einer europäischen Idee (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2008; in Czech: Víra v pokrok: Dějiny jedné evropské ideje. Prague, OIKOYMENH 2009).

Evropský Středoevropan Bedřich Loewenstein

Author(s): Miloš Havelka / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1+2/2018

In his article, the author presents, in a concise and condensed fashion, the foundation, contours, principal features, and themes of the thinking of Bedřich Loewenstein (1929–2017), a modern and contemporary history historian spanning a multitude of disciplines. He finds the deepest layer of Loewenstein’s thinking in historical anthropology, in his interest in specific human beings and their actions, motivations, and orientations, explaining the historian’s “frame of mind” by his personal, lived experience of a Central European intellectual confronted with dramatic turns of history in the twentieth century. This also the reason behind Loewenstein’s understanding for the diversity of identities (in Central Europe mainly ethnic and national) and their coexistence, as well as his sensitivity to historical location and conditionality of individuals. According to Havelka, Loewenstein was representing a viewpoint (fairly rare in the Czech environment) which regarded “spiritual sciences” as sciences on creations of the collective and individual human spirit, focusing also on historical forms and influences of these creations, no matter whether his research topic was Fascism, “Bonapartism”, civic society, development and progress, or, more generally, history of ideas. The author points at Loewenstein’s skepticism toward constructions of great theories and his pronounced terminological nominalism refusing to grant essential validity to collective entities such as nations and cultures. This is related to Loewenstein’s conviction about the openness of history, both to the past and to the future, toward potential alternative interpretations. The historical pessimism is counter balanced by Loewenstein’s complementary perception of historical processes of disciplination and emancipation, or the formation of order and human freedom, although he was also a historian of nationalism, violence, and mass manipulation. The author pays special attention to Loewenstein’s concepts of modernity, civilization, and mainly belief in progress, which is viewed in his works in diverse manifestations of its ambiguity. In the end, Havelka emphasizes Loewenstein’s Europeism as a perspective of his historical view and as an integrating civilization principle which is associated with trust in intellect as a means of understanding, tolerance, and consensus.

Генерал Рачо Петров и строителството на железопътната линия Радомир – Кюстендил – турската граница

Author(s): Evgeni Kostov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 10/1991

The article follows mainly one of the economic manifestations of the eminent military and political functionary Racho Petrov and its consequences. The word is for the activity of the general as a partner, director and representative of the created in 1898 association “Petrov, Dzhumaliev and Co” in front of the government. The only purpose of this economic association is the building of a railway with a great military and strategic importance Radomir – Kjustendil – the Turkish border. In the summer of the next year the Peoples’ Assembly approves the proposal of the ruling cabinet for partial stopping of the building. In the course of the presentation as a result of this the strained relations between the government and the association are followed and accent is put on the manifestations of the general as he firmly defends the interests of the contractors. A detailed picture of his actions is given in the growing more complex life of the association. The unset with the state financial questions are solved satisfactory for the already non-existing association hardly in 1903 when Racho Petrov becomes a Prime Minister. Because of the interest of the society he tries hard to justify from juridical and moral point of view the carried in this way considerable damages on the state budget. After some years, these and some other actions of the already ex-Prime Minister become subject of investigation of several special commissions. In February 1911 the general and yet another four members of the second National-Liberal government are brought to trail. Nevertheless, in 1914 a parliamentary decision is taken for declining the responsibility from all of them. The article clearly marks the political aspects of the treated economic and financial problems. In this aspect, it contributes for the description of the political and moral appearance of General Racho Petrov.

Социална опора на Либералната (Радославистката) партия (края на XIX – началото на XX в.)

Author(s): Milko Palangurski / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 11/1991

The Liberal (Radoslavov’s) Party is one of the major parties of the bourgeois democratic system in Bulgaria. It is involved in every success and failure of the young Bulgarian state in the period between the Unification of the Bulgarian Principality and East Roumelia till the end of the World War. An attempt is made to define the main social groups, forming the Liberal party and expressing their interests through it. The Party comprises representatives from almost all social strata of Bulgarian society. But their representation is unevenly distributed. Numerically prevail the groups of the small landowners and dealers, but they do not play a decisive role in the formation of the party policy. It is played instead by the representatives of the middle class such as merchants, landowners and some industrialists. However, major industrialists, workers, craftsmen and intellectuals are only poorly represented in the party. An attempt is made to characterize the so-called “political figure” epitomizing the Liberal Party activities.

Prošlost u sadašnjosti: vrijeme i narativ o balkanskim ratovima u medijskoj industriji i međunarodnoj politici

Author(s): Enika Abazi,Albert Doja / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2022

In this article, we explore various forms of travel writing, media reporting, diplomatic record, policy-making, truth claims and expert accounts in which different narrative perspectives on the Balkan wars, both old (1912–1913) and new (1991–1999), have been most evident. We argue that the ways in which these perspectives are rooted in different temporalities and historicisations and have resulted in the construction of commonplace and time-worn representations. In practical terms, we take issue with several patterns of narratives that have led to the sensationalism of media industry and the essentialisation of collective memory. Taken together as a common feature of contemporary policy and analysis in the dominant international opinion, politics and scholarship, these narrative patterns show that historical knowledge is conveyed in ways that make present and represent the accounts of another past, and the ways in which beliefs collectively held by actors in international society are constructed as media events and public hegemonic representations. The aim is to show how certain moments of rupture are historicised, and subsequently used and misused to construct an anachronistic representation of Southeast Europe.

1890-1914: The Golden Era of the Bund in the Russian Empire

Author(s): David E. Fishman / Language(s): English Issue: 13/2022

This article provides an overview of the Bund from the establishment of its precursor organization in 1890 until World War I. First it takes into account the historical conditions that led to the rise of a distinct Jewish socialist movement in the Russian Empire to then focus on its three spheres of activity: (a) economic difficulties, as a Jewish workers’ movement engaged in union-organizing and strikes, (b) political challenges, as a Jewish revolutionary movement working to overthrow the Tsarist system and (c) national obstacles, as a movement fighting for Jewish civil rights and Jewish national autonomy, the advancement of Yiddish language and culture, and the organisation of Jewish self-defense against pogroms. Appended to the article is the translation of an early Bundist pamphlet, The Town Preacher (1895), which presents the movement’s ideas in a simple, popular form, based on the story of the single strike of Jewish tobacco-workers in Vilna.

Бащите на Търновската конституция – духовниците между политиката и религията

Author(s): Milko Palangurski / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 1/2017

According to the 1878 Berlin Treaty, the Bulgarian state is a constitutional monarchy. The establishment of the Organic Statute was entrusted to the Constituent Assembly summoned by the Provisional Russian Administration. The leaders of the Bulgarian Orthodox Exarchate, as well as representatives of the Ecumenical Patriarch, the Muslims and the Jews, occupied a special place in this task. The forefront of the meeting was given to the priests due to their great influence in forming the Bulgarian society. Their educational background was related to two of the most conservative structures of the nineteenth century – the Russian theological educational institutions and the Patriarchate in Istanbul. Their careers in the religious institutions of the Ecumenical Patriarchate defined them as followers of century old canonical rules, thus their inability to become a part of the progress. All this, plus their important role as teachers, writers and spiritual leaders, took them to the conservative sector of the gathering. They failed to enforce their vision for the constitutional arrangements, thereby creating conditions for reducing their role in the future political life of the country. For a very short period of time, a “political secularization” took place and all of the religious communities were removed from the political scene.

THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND THE POLITICAL MAP OF EUROPE

Author(s): Adrian-Claudiu Stoica / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 20/2020

The First World War led to the disappearance of the great European empires, the triumph of democracy, but also of nationalism. It has changed the political map of Europe, by the emergence of new states, in accordance with the principle of national self-determination. But these states that wanted to be national had an accentuated multi-ethnic component, which generated instability.

ROMANIAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Author(s): Anamaria Lepcaliuc / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 32/2023

The article traces the history of bilateral relations that includes several distinct phases. It is about the period of the First World War, including the important action carried out by the representatives of Transylvanian Romanians in the context of the Wilson doctrine on the territory of the United States, in support of the national cause. That is why, although we are generally talking about relations between two friendly states, frictions did not fail to appear. We took into account the period of the First World War, including the important action taken by the representatives of the Transylvanian Romanians in the context of Wilson’s doctrine on the territory of the United States, in support of the national cause.

When Typhus Rode a Red Horse: Weaponizing Disease During the Polish-Bolshevik War

Author(s): Christopher Blackburn / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2021

This work explores the role of the Red Army in the spread of typhus on Polishlands during the Polish-Bolshevik War, 1919–1920. As a result of the Bolshevikstyle of war, one of the results of the Soviet advance into Poland was the anti-typhus effort along the border and throughout the country. Polish efforts, supportedby American humanitarian groups, had made great strides in eradicating typhushowever, much of this was undone with the Bolshevik offensive of 1920. Throughboth active and passive means the Bolshevik advance drove typhus victims andrefugees across the Polish lines, while at the same time Bolshevik forces destroyedor removed sanitation equipment and supplies across the frontier.

Ustrój i działalność sądownictwa rosyjskiej floty wojennej w latach 1867–1914, część 2

Author(s): Leszek Madej / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2020

Stosunek społeczeństwa polskiego i mniejszości narodowych do obowiązku służby wojskowej w czasie wojny z Rosją bolszewicką (luty 1919 – listopad 1920)

Author(s): Leszek Kania / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2020

The article is devoted to the protection of the combat capability of the Polish Army front troops from negative phenomena lowering their morale and discipline during the war with Bolshevik Russia in 1919–1921, and the attitudes of the Polish society and national minorities towards fulfilling their military service. After regaining independence, the war for independence and eastern borders had to be fought with a traditionally aggressive neighbor, Bolshevik Russia, which wanted to take advantage of the limited capabilities of a country ruined by wars, the enormous internal difficulties of a state united from three partitioned districts, the apparent attractiveness of the Bolshevik ideology and the multi-ethnicity of the society, which to some extent became susceptible to the populist slogans of the invader. During this war, the Polish Army was troubled by desertion of soldiers from the battle line and by mass evasion of military duty by men with a national minority background. Units fighting at the front were agitated by the propaganda apparatus of the Red Army, whose intention was a moral decay of the Polish Army.

Ocjene i prikazi

Author(s): Grozdana Cvitan,Jozo Džambo / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 59/2023

Reviews of: 1. Miljenko Domijan: Armenia sacra (Hodočašće sakralnoj arhitekturi), ArTresor naklada, Zagreb, 2021. 2. Amira Žmirić, Karikaturen über Bosnien-Herzegowina in deutschen und österreichischen satirischen Blättern 1878 bis 1908. [Karikature o Bosni i Hercegovini u njemačkim i austrijskim satiričkim listovima 1878. do 1908.] Band I + II. (Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft, Bd. 48) Bielefeld: wbv media, Athena 2021, 148 + 167 str. ISBN: 978-3-7639-6714-8

The Stance of the Great European Powers on the Creation of Albania and the Question of Scutari in 1913

Author(s): Saša Knežević,Boris Vukićević / Language(s): English Issue: 3-4/2023

The paper explores how the international policy addressed the Albanian question during the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913. The paper sheds light on the dynamics of relations between the Powers just before the onset of the World War I and points to the course a small country’s ambitions were dealt with under the European Concert, the last stand of whose was the Scutari crisis of 1912/13. It discusses one of the major debates during the Balkan Wars, the fate of Scutari. In order to present the impact of the European Powers’ diplomacy and its modus operandi, the article brings in light the unpublished British historical records from the Public Record Office, published diplomatic documents, the contemporary press that covered these events and relevant books and articles on the matter. The article proves that, despite being part of different alliances, the Great Powers were not eager to clash in regard to interests of a small Balkan country, and that all military efforts of Montenegro were, from the very beginning, futile and diplomatically groundless.