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This paper discusses perceptions of alterity on the Greek island of Kos and analyses border crossing practices at the Greek-Turkish border in the Aegean. The paper differentiates between different categories of locals according to their ethnic and religious belonging (Greek Orthodox and Muslim Turks in Kos, and “mainland” Turks and Kos Turks in Turkey). In Kos, distancing strategies can be explained by competition for limited resources, as well as identity and visibility politics. Perceptions of Turkey and border crossing practices also differ according to ethnic lines. For ethnic Turks, Turkey represents a second homeland; for Greek Orthodox, a powerful neighbouring country with whom historical and political relations are difficult. As this paper shows, lived and shared experiences can, however, nuance the perception of others. The paper is based on ethnographic field research and interviews conducted by the author on the Greek island of Kos, and in Bodrum, Izmir and Ceşme in Western Turkey.
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The text presents some references to the Kurds. In the first chapter are presented characteristics of the Kurds as they were caught by the travelers of the centuries XIX and XX. The second chapter presents, in short, the history of the provisions concerning the Kurds in the Treaties of Sevres and Lausanne. Chapter three presents some important aspects of the Kurdish struggle for national identity, including in the form of asymmetric violence. Chapter four presents some conclusions of the research.
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Bulgarians settled in the territories of the Urals and Siberia within several waves of migration mainly in the 20th century and individually in the 21st century. They live scattered over this large territory but nevertheless manage to get together in various organizations. The article identifies the main territories inhabited by individuals with a Bulgarian identity, as well as the ways of virtual communication between them. The different models of online communication and representation of the Bulgarian organizations in the two regions, their influence on the maintenance of community life and the development of their socio-cultural activities are explored. Additional focus is placed on the role of the Internet in creating and preserving the collective memory of life in the Komi Republic and in uniting former workers and students in virtual communities. The study was conducted in the period 2019-2022 with an emphasis on the social networks Facebook and VKontakte and on-site among organizations in the cities of Tyumen, Syktyvkar, Usogorsk and Blagoevo.
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The first part of this research, published in the previous issue 3/2022 of the journal “BulgarianEthnology”, touched on the historiographical, theoretical-methodological and terminological aspects of the present study, dedicated to an increasingly discussed and developed topic in the post-Soviet space. This is the subject of the collective memory which covers the turbulent decades of the 1940s and 1950s., as well as the ongoing processes of collectivization of the property, the inherent repressions, the so-called dispossessing (dekulakization) and the deportation of whole families within the USSR, tearing them away from their places of birth,forcing them to settle down for a long time in the remote and vaguely known northern parts ofthe vast country. Hundreds of thousands of people were forcibly removed and coerced to live inisolation, to work and carry out the orders of the Stalinist regime until the very death of JosephStalin in 1953, in the extremely harsh climatically and poorly developed territories such asCentral Asia, Kazakhstan, the Urals, Altai and Siberia. Rehabilitated after that year, they wereallowed to return to their native lands, but a large number did not manage to restore their homesand property, while some could not settle closer than 40 km to the settlements they lived in priorto the deportation. Similar cases are not a rarity for the region of Bessarabia, which was brieflyunder Soviet rule in 1941 and from 1944 until 1991. As it is known, one of the largest and oldestBulgarian historical communities is located in this area, which after the collapse of the SovietUnion fell within the borders of the modern states of Ukraine and Moldova.The subject of the present study is precisely such a “small” case of dispossessed anddeported as a result of the so-called operation South Bulgarian families from the villageof Korten (or Kiryutnya) in the then Moldavian SSR, who for nearly a decade (from 1949roughly to 1959) resided in several settlements of the Bistroistotsky and Biysky districts ofthe Altai Krai, Russia. Since some of these 80 families were not allowed to return to theirnative Korten, they chose to settle in the town of Tarutino and in some of the surrounding settlements such as Podgornoe, Berezino, etc., located nowadays on Ukrainian territory, in the region of Odesa.
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Campaigns to remove the unwanted population from certain territories due to political strategies, ideological considerations or ethnic discrimination have taken place in history in order to establish homogeneous populations in geographical areas occupied by citizens of several ethnicities. Ethnic cleansing was a method widely used by totalitarian regimes to eliminate citizens who might have opposed regime ideology. The paper aims to provide a series of examples from the Eastern European region, where Russia's communist ideology and propaganda have influenced the regimes of neighboring states that have adopted the same doctrine.
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At the end of the interwar period and the beginning of 1940, the attitude of the Ukrainian minority in Romania was strictly dependent on the international political situation. The leaders of this minority were aware of the intensive action coordinated by the leaders of the Ukrainian emigration in order to create a united front, with the aim of achieving, by any means, an independent Ukrainian state. Ukrainian leaders were on standby, waiting for a decisive event to determine their stance. In this context, the developments in Romania's relations with Poland were also relevant, as well as the attitude of the Polish state in relation to the Ukrainian emigration.
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Humans have been migrating from ancient times. The first migrators were the tribal peoples in search of food, land and resources. They were not considered refugees or asylum seekers, but gatherers or hunters who explored new lands. Therefore, it is a fact that refugees have always existed but the formalization of international community's responsibility to provide protection and to find solutions for refugees only dates back to the founding of the League of Nations. This organization defines refugees in categories, mainly according to their country of origin. The refugee crisis has represented a topic of great interest to the international community since the creation of the United Nations. Through the asylum process, refugees and other people who needed protection were offered access to assistance offered by other states. But, in some cases, the national asylum system proved to be ineffective and offered asylum seekers unequal access. In order to solve this problem, the European Union developed a common European asylum system designed to harmonize the national asylum systems and procedures of the member states and to facilitate the examination of the asylum seeker requests. In order to do this, the European Union relied on the existing international legal framework, regulated by the provisions of the 1951 Convention and the principle of non-refoulement.
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This piece of writing focuses on the theme of Chinese America as a part of the Greater Chinese Diaspora. The international migration among Chinese is centuries old: long before European colonists invaded the Asian continent, the Chinese had moved by see or land, either seasonally or permanently, to earn a living and to support their families. Amy Tan offers a historical view of Chinese emigration as a basis for understanding Chinese immigration to the United States. Diaspora is reflected in an old saying: “There are Chinese people wherever the ocean waves touch”. Migrant networks interact with structural factors: colonization, decolonization, nation-state building and changes in political regimes. The Chinese emigration maps implications for both countries of origin and both countries of destination. The main factor is the historical factor. There are distinct streams of emigration from China and remigration from the Chinese Diaspora after World War II. Local and global economies, diasporic communities, and migration networks interact with origins as well as shape the direction and nature of international migration.
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This publication traces the markers and the dynamics of the anthropological borders of the territory and the real estate during the 1920s in a specific region of Bulgaria. It encompasses Kardzhali (in Tukish Kırcaali) and its district, which have been annexed to the state in 1912 and were mainly populated by Turks up until the end of World War One. The subjective dimensions of the historical processes are enlightened through the memories and the stories of a part of the participants in the events – the Bulgarian refugees, who settled in the region. During the 1920s Kardzhali and its district radically changed. The Bulgarians and the Turks were the ones that were most often separated. The space, inhabited by the old Turkish population, shrank and Bulgarian-populated neighborhoods appeared, as well as mixed zones. Furthermore, places, which have been previously empty, became populated. In practice, the Bulgarians managed to wedge themselves in between the Turks of Kardzhali and its district and to change their traditional look. In the Bulgarian zones appeared buildings, connected to the Bulgarian national institutions – ecclesiastical and scholastic, as well as ones that marked the beginning of the modernization.
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The present text, the first parts of which are published in the previous two issues of “BulgarianEthnology” journal, presents the last, concluding part of an ethnological study conducted within the framework of an IEFSEM – BAS project and dedicated to an important and current problem in the post-Soviet space. It is about the ‘big all-Union’ topic of repressions and deportations in the former USSR, illuminated on the basis of the ‘small’, private example of a Bulgarian settlement in the Bessarabia region. The purpose and tasks of the study are aimed at revealing the main aspects of the collective memory of those deported in 1949 as a result of the collectivization in the then Moldavian SSR of 80 Bulgarian families from the village ofKorten (or Kiryutnia) and of their residence for about ten years in the Altai region of today’sRussia. The research is the result of the field ethnographic expedition conducted in the summer of 2021 in the town of Tarutino, Odesa region of Ukraine, where after the death of Y. V. Stalin and their subsequent rehabilitation, some of those people settled down to live, returning from the far northern lands in Bessarabia. However, those declared by the authorities as kulaks are not allowed to settle closer than 40 km from their native village and they choose as their newport the former German colony – well-known for them before the so-called lifting, i.e. before deportation, a market and business centre with the old name Chokrak.The main object of study in the first two and in the present last part of this text are the trajectories of memory about deportation, about forced migration and about the return from exile, i.e. for the return journey from Altai again to Bessarabia. The analysis text, built almost entirely from the author’s own field materials, aims to reflect the main points of reference, the accents in the memories, through which our interlocutors nowadays present and empathize with the events that took place in their childhood and youth years.
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During the Second World War, the Central Institute of Statistics in Bucharest carried out a series of surveys in the territories of the Soviet Union under military administration between 1941 and 1944. The survey was coordinated by sociologist Anton Golopenția, director of the Research Office of the Central Institute of Statistics, with the aim of identifying the ethnic Romanians in the Soviet Union. The team led by Anton Golopenția produced a sociological monograph of the village of Valea Hoțului in the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (RASSM), which remained in manuscript until 2006. These studies lack references to Soviet repressions against the local population before the outbreak of the war, so we will try to establish what Romanian researchers actually have learned about these repressions in comparison with the data from Soviet archives that have been made public so far.
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“The flea market” was a place intended for the old furniture trade, but also other items that today we generically call second-hand goods, which appeared on the Bucharest trade map in the second half of the 19th century. It was erected in a disadvantaged area, densely populated, marked by the Jewish singularity. For more than half a century(1876-1930), the activity in the flea market, coordinated exclusively by Jewish merchants,had an undeniable role in the capital’s economy. Regarding its image, it was painted in the context of new socio-political realities in the Old Kingdom of Romania, such as the awakening of nationalistic feelings and xenophobia, especially antisemitism. In the last decades of the 19th century, the “Jewish Question” became an intellectual problem with an essential political stake, the emancipation of the Jews being in an irreconcilable position with Romanian nationalism. The anti-Semitic discourse used by the political, intellectual,and cultural elite presented the Jews as unassimilable, anti-national elements that could undermine the Romanian character. Examples from the periphery of life, including the Jewish merchants in Lazăr Street and the “Flea market”, constitute the extreme otherness and a potential danger to the nation’s body, thus emphasizing the opposing nature discourse and favoring an ideology of excluding Jews from Romanian culture and society.The research aims to capture the flea market atmosphere and the image of the Jewish community nearby, as reflected in the writings of some personalities (politicians, historians,prose writers, journalists) of times past Bucharest. The perspectives exhibit a wide range of observations, from objective ones, in contrast to the circulated stereotypes, to subjective ones, filtered through emotions, all pieces of the collective mind’s mosaic. Examples in the press oscillate between fin-de-siècle anti-Semitism and the anti-Semitism of the early 20thcentury, infused with scientific claims, all using the flea market as a symbol of inadequacy for an entire ethnic community
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This article analyzes the content of the bilingual edition of the Dobruja newspaper, which was published between 1919 and 1924 in Bazargic (present-day Dobrich). Until 1921, it was published in Romanian and Ottoman Turkish, and later only in the latter. Dobruja is important because it was the first bilingual newspaper of the Muslim community in interwar Romania that existed for a long time. Also, the main authors of the articles published in this newspaper were important figures of the community, such as Halil Fehim (the mufti of Caliacra County), Mehmet Niyazi (the national poet of the Tatars and a Turkish language teacher at the Muslim Seminary in Medgidia), and Ibrahim Themo who had an Albanian background and was an important leader of the Young Turks. After presenting the context in which the Dobruja newspaper came out, the article analyzes the content of bilingual editions from three perspectives: the demands that the Turks and Tatars made before the Romanian authorities, the organization of the community, and international developments. The author points out that the main idea encountered in the articles published in the newspaper is that the Turkish and Tatar minority was a safe one for the Romanian state because it had no territorial claims. This message was important, given that Southern Dobruja had an ethnic composition in which the Romanian ethnicity was a minority, and that the territory was claimed by Bulgaria. Thus, the reiteration of this by the elites of the Turks and Tatars was necessary for the attempts to obtain the satisfaction of some demands and support in the initiatives to improve the situation of the community. The Dobruja newspaper was the means by which this message was conveyed.
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Family involvement in children's education is fundamental for success in education. Given the even more important role of the family and the community in the Roma context, it is essential to identify the consequences of early school leaving on Roma children, in terms of personal development, as well as on their future socio-economic integration. It is extremely important that there is a collaboration of Roma families in terms of staying in the educational system of Roma girls, who are the most affected by the high rates of early school leaving. Therefore, a widespread phenomenon that should be treated with greater attention and that has become a serious problem of Romanian education is school dropout. School dropout is found among all students, but especially among those of Roma ethnicity, students who adapt with difficulty both in society and in the education system, who face the difficult acceptance in communities (more and more parents are reluctant to enrol their children in classes where there are also children of Roma ethnicity). (The Gentle, 2021) Roma cultivate, especially in children, a sense of reality as well as the ability to conceive survival strategies and less concern for school, they, in turn, receive the same education.
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The article is aimed at seeking an answer to the question about the place of Polish immigrant organizations centered around cultural activities, Polish artists residing abroad and the general immigrant community within the organizational field focused on the promotion of Polish culture abroad. To answer the question, the author analyses key documents underpinning cultural policy and policy towards diaspora, describes the structure of organizational field including various kind of organizations engaged in promotion of Polish culture abroad. The policy analysis covered the presentation of assumptions on the role the diaspora should play both – as an addressee and the “tool” of public policies. Findings on positioning of organizations representing Polish diaspora in organizational field stemming from the analysis of documents were confronted with the results of state programs analysis. The author focused on 15 state programs ran between 2017 and 2022 – their goals and beneficiaries. The study reveals that immigrant organizations and Polish artist residing abroad had limited access to structural support for their projects, despite policy makers’ positive evaluation of diaspora resources. Members of diaspora are positioned at the periphery of national branding organizational field. Therefore, the resources of numerous members of Polish diaspora – dispersed around the whole world – are still underestimated and unused.
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Review of: Milada Vilímková: Le ghetto de Prague. Prague, Artia 1990, 231 pages; Josef Krása, České iluminované rukopisy 13./16. století (Böhumische illuminierte Handschriften des 13./16. Jahrhunderts) - Praha, Odeon, 1990, 456 Seiten; Milan Kuna, Hudba na hranici života (Musik an der Grenze des Lebens) Praha, Naše vojsko, 199; Martin Buber, Chasídská vyprávění (Récits hassidiques) Traduit de l’allemand par Alena Bláhová, Prague 1990, éditions Kalich, 575 page; Vladimir Lipscher: Zwischen Kaiser, Fiskus, Adel, Zünften: Die Juden im Habsburgerreich des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts am Beispiel Böhmens und Mährens. Abhandlung zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der Philosophischen Fakultät I der Universität Zürich. Zürich, Zentralstelle der Studentenschaft, 1983, 298 Seite; The Feast and the Fast. The dramatic personal story of the Tosfos Yom Tov Zt”L. Prepared by Rabbi C.U. Lipschitz and Dr. Neil Rosenstein, New York — Jerusalem 1984, 75 pp., 41 genealogical charts; Kieval, Hillel J.: The Making of Czech Jewry. National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia 1870—1918. New York — Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988, 279 pp. The Kaufmann Haggadah. A 14th Century Hebrew Manuscript from the Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Budapest, Kultura International, 1990. (Facsimile, 60 folios; introductory study by Gabrielle Sed-Rajna, 23 pp.)
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Saul or Shaul Yeroham Mezan is a doctor with specialization in surgery and urology, Doctor of Medicine, officer, public figure, Zionist, anti-fascist, publicist, journalist, poet, historian, and folklorist – researcher of Sephardism, political scientist and current political analyst. He was born in the city of Tatar-Pazardjik (today Pazardjik, Bulgaria) in 1893, and died far from his homeland, as a victim of Nazism, probably around 1943. Nowadays his name is known to a few researchers, as the predominant writings about him and his work are episodic in time and fragmentary in their subject matter. His literary and journalistic works, as well as his socio-political views, remain almost unknown to the general public, including, unfortunately, to the Jewish community in Bulgaria. The objective of the paper is the French-speaking environment in which S. Mezan was formed, and his works in French in various fields of the knowledge, which prevail over the ones in Bulgarian both in quantity and in terms of scientific and social significance. The author also pays special attention to the numerous yet scattered references for the French influence on the language, the way of life and the culture of the Sephardim in Bulgaria in the book by S. Mezan dedicated to them.
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The article presents and analyses disaster management in Bulgaria with a focus on floods based on two recent examples in the town of Berkovitsa and the town of Etropole from June 2023. An overview is given of definitions, strategic documents, and legislation at the national and local level on disaster management mechanisms in particular floods and the key actors on the ground. The article discusses the idea, put forward by Lisa Irene Saban, that public administration can facilitate the possibility of mutual empowerment between structures ' above’ (state apparatus) and ‘below’ (volunteers, residents in general) through collaboration with active civil society associations during natural disasters. Based on the tracking of the two flood cases, the article traces the stages that characterize the management process: (1)preparing for a disaster before it occurs, (2) developing disaster response measures, and (3)relief and recovery after natural disasters occur.
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