Transitions Online_Around the Bloc-Lithuania to Publish Reports of KGB Spies
The documents offer an insight into intelligence gathering and spyware methods used by the Soviet security agency.
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The documents offer an insight into intelligence gathering and spyware methods used by the Soviet security agency.
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The ‘Kike Communism’ cliché holds a special position in Polish antisemitic discourse, where it has different functions. Having been replicated over time, it has been reinforced and become a social platitude, a matrix of popular thinking about history, a descriptive category applied by journalist and academic discourses and a keyword in discussions on Polish-Jewish relations. “Kike Communism” is a cultural topos and a condensation of meanings and interpretations that have been adopted and familiarized so well that it is difficult to see, let alone undermine its roots. Apart from the narration about the harm suffered by Polish patriots at the hands of Jewish Communist torturers the names of those torturers hold an important place in the structure of this topos. It is actually difficult to imagine its content without the symbolic figures such as Jakub Berman, Anatol Fejgin, Roman Romkowski, Stefan Michnik, Helena Wolińska-Brus, Julia Brystiger and Józef Różański. For years they have played the iconic roles assigned to them in the Polish antisemitic discourse. Julia Brystiger, or rather her mythologized image, deserves particular attention in this group. Nicknamed ‘Bloody Luna’ she surely is among the most demonized female Communists in Poland. The objective of the considerations in this paper is to try to demonstrate the construction of the phantasm surrounding her on the basis of a thorough analysis of different texts in Polish culture, ranging from literature to film.
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Julian action (program) as a legal and political phenomenon in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the turn of the XX century, which occurred in the areas inhabited by Hungarians living abroad. It mostly referred to the establishment of Hungarian schools, cultural societies, religious schools and state railways. There are two opposing opinions on its main goals: on the one hand Julian action was perceived as a measure of preserving the identity, culture and language of Hungarians abroad, and on the other it was recognized as the political Hungarisation of Slavs, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Hungarian government incorporated Julian action into the concept of the Hungarian state idea, aspiring to unite the Hungarian state from the Carpathian Mountains to the Adriatic Sea, with a single Hungarian national language. In that context Hungarians from Bosnia and Herzegovina were observed by other nations as imposed foreign bodies and conquerors, while for Hungary they were a “fortress” defending them from South Slavic nations who were uniting in their fight against the Monarchy, as well as a means of spreading the Hungarian influence and opposing Austrian aspirations. Julian action was short-lived due to the oncoming World War and failed to accomplish the long term goal in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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The article presents the problem of cultural memory of Poles from two different regions of Ukraine, the south-east of the country and Carpathian Bukovina. It examines the following five main topic areas: the Second World War, life after the war (including the problem of the Russians), the issue of the Roman Catholic religion, the language question, and the problem of declaration of Polishness today. The accounts of the everyday life of Poles in the Ukrainian-Russian and Ukrainian-Romanian borderlands show important differences concerning their experience of war. In Bukovina, which used to be part of Romania, Poles display a much more consolidated sense of national identity. Despite the restrictions imposed by Soviet authorities, they gathered around the Roman Catholic Church as well as the institution of family, and taught the Polish language in private homes. This explains a continuity of their traditions, language, culture, and memory. On the other hand, throughout the Soviet period the Poles in Eastern Ukraine were cut off from contacts with Poland, the Roman Catholic Church and Polish organisations. Geographically dispersed and living in fear in their social environment, Polish families experienced a loss of their loved ones and faced severe punishment for declaring identity other than ‘Soviet’. Another factor at play was a relatively high rate of mixed marriages. The memory of contact with the Soviets is similar in both borderlands. The conduct of the new authorities was the same everywhere, and the examples quoted in the article represent a broader issue which would merit a separate study
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Several prominent historians and researchers of historical memory from Poland, Lithuania and Belarus have focused on some questions concerning traditions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as the role of the close neighbors in the history of Poles, Lithuanians, and Belarusians. This insight give us an idea about the main directions of historical research in these countries for which the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish¬ Lithuanian Commonwealth is a common heritage. This also allows us to understand the level of public and political interest in this problem, and reveal important trends in the historical memory of these three countries.
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There were two phases in the post-1989 Polish historical politics as projected abroad. The initially “normal” Poland gradually transformed itself around year 2004 into a Poland of suffering and redemption. An important role in that transformation was played by the reaction to the external vision of Poland’s role and fate during the Second World War, causing the “Holocaustization” of the Polish historical self-image. The article discusses the main elements of that self-image and the way it is used.
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This paper will analyse the representation of houses in selected novels and non-fiction by Penelope Lively. Houses feature in her writings as material objects as well as immaterial forms created by the human psyche; they may also be conceptualised as organic beings whose lives mirror the lives of their inhabitants. However, it will be argued that for the characters in Lively’s novels houses function primarily as sites of memory. Houses are treated as repositories of the past, both because they hold secure its material remnants and because they have the potential to evoke memories and thus enable people to forge and maintain meaningful connections with the past. The article will also take account of Lively’s three autobiographical books, Oleander, Jacaranda: A Childhood Perceived, A House Unlocked, and Ammonites and Leaping Fish, in which the writer embarks on the project of retrieving memories by exploring, respectively, three houses she used to reside in as “material memoirs” of her own past as well as collective history.
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Alzheimer’s is a disease that poses a challenge to the established ways of thinking about the relation between memory, identity and narrative. In this article, I offer a reading of Lisa Genova’s Still Alice (2007), Stefan Merrill Block’s The Story of Forgetting (2008), and Matthew Thomas’s We Are Not Ourselves (2014) to examine the ways in which the increasingly popular literature of Alzheimer’s represents, and possibly reconfigures, the prevalent notions of identity and memory, as well as the relation between literature and science. A number of critics have noted a shift in contemporary literature demonstrated by the growing focus on neurological conditions. Accordingly, the analysis of Alzheimer’s novels refers to selected critical descriptions of this shift, including the discussions of syndrome literature and the neuronovel.
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The article analyses the features of the model of the national memory, represented by historiographycal discourse of 1920-th. Images of historical events and key personalities of intellectual Ukrainian space are considered as attempts of compromising and adaptation of the model of the national memory to the socio-political processes of the Ukrainization.
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The purpose of the article is to trace the development of the victims vs. perpetrators discourse as an integral part of the historical master narrative of Latvia since the end of the 19th century till nowadays. The narrative of abuse plays an essential role in historical master narratives of many modern national communities, as their integrity is strongly dependent on defining themselves via binary oppositions. According to Anthony Smith, in this self-identification process of a nation culture, mass communication and education play a particular role [Smith, 1991]. Maurice Halbwachs has specified that school textbooks, media and cultural production actually do not care much about the 'real history' - what is being implemented, refers to 'collective memory', adapted to the requirements of the actual presence [Halbwachs 1980]. The research paper analyses how this collective memory pattern has been shaped throughout time in the historical master narrative of Latvia as reflected in literature, media and school textbooks. The research focuses on the 'official' master narrative, as the research objective was to reveal how the past has been adjusted to present under changes of political regimes and social developments. However, in the context of the second half of the 20th century contrasting voices have been included in order to suggest the presence of the multiplicity of narratives and to pose a series of questions to the current cultural and socio-political interpretation of the past of Latvia.
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The article, prepared on the basis of documents from the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, examines the history of unsuccessful attempts by the post-war leadership of the Kabardin ASSR to obtain the right to hold the anniversary of the 400th anniversary of “voluntary adherence” to the Russian state. The episode in question clearly demonstrates the mechanism of decision-making by the central bodies concerning the holding of commemorative celebrations. The initiative in holding the jubilee celebrations came from Kabarda. The leadership of the republic requested permission to organize celebrations first in 1953 and then in 1954. In the first case it was stated that the accession took place in 1554, and in the second, that in 1555. Each time representatives of the Kabardin ASSR tried to prove, That this year it is necessary to celebrate the 400th anniversary of voluntary accession. For the local elite, the jubilee was an opportunity to light up at the all-Union level, which could become a career springboard for many, and receive additional funding. But the last word in the decision to hold the jubilee was for the central bodies. To make a decision on the conduct, it was necessary to include professional historians; moreover, preference was given not to local specialists, but to leading central institutions. The analyzed case demonstrates the complicated process in the functioning of memory policy in the USSR, which local elites often actively used in their own interests.
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The article presents the process of building of war industry in Poland in the interwar period through the prism of Jan Prot's biography – a Polish independence activist who was a member of the Piłsudski political camp. He was also one of the most significant economic activists of the Sanacja camp even though did not belong to the milieu of its first-rank leaders. As an adolescent Prot entered the Polish independence camp led by Józef Piłsudski. As an officer of the Polish Legions and then the Polish Armed Forces he took part in the struggle for independence and frontiers of the Polish state. After the end of the war he left the army and continued university studies in the field of chemistry, which were finalized with a PhD dissertation in non-organic chemistry in 1924. From 1927 he worked as the Central Executive Manager of the State Gunpowder Factory (PWP) in Zagożdżon-Pionki where he expanded both the factory and a settlement built around it. With time the PWP plant became the largest gunpowder and explosives factory in Poland as well as one of the biggest factories of that kind in Europe. It successfully attended the creation of the Central Military District (COP) which was the greatest economic project of the interwar Poland. In September 1939, the outbreak of WWII made Prot and most of his subordinates evacuate PWP to the east in the hope to resume military production in a safe place. The Soviet aggression against Poland made those plans futile which led to Prot's involvement in clandestine fight against the German occupiers. Soon after, on the order of the underground organization called the Union of Armed Struggle he left for France and then Great Britain where he died as a political emigrant in 1957. He paid great merit in the process of building of the Polish war industry during the Polish IInd Republic despite the fact the outbreak of WWII interrupted it.
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For 15 years, extremists have annually honored a Nazi ally accused of signing death warrants for thousands of Jews.
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Intergroup contact reduces prejudice and improves outgroup attitudes, while a salient social identity might have the opposite effects. Recent research has shown that exposure to positive information about the outgroup could influence such effects of the contact and social identity on the outgroup attitudes. Here we investigate the effects of the contact and social identity on the outgroup attitudes, and forgiveness toward the outgroup of Bosniak Muslims among Serbs (N = 400) by randomly al-locating them into control and experimental groups. In the experimental condition, the students were presented with brief biographies of three eminent Bosniak Muslims, in the positive context, after which they com-pleted a survey. In the control group, students were only presented with the survey without the biographies. Subsequent independent samples t-tests showed that the mean values for ingroup identification and inter-group trust were significantly different in the two groups. Specifically, participants who were in the experimental condition, being exposed to the positive information about Bosniak Muslims, reported a higher level of intergroup trust and a lower level of ingroup identification as Serbian. We then performed a multi-group structural equation modeling through which we tested a predictive role of the past contact and in-the group identification on trust and collective guilt in both control and experimen-tal conditions. Across both groups, past contact positively and ingroup identification negatively predicted both intergroup attitudes and forgive-ness via trust and collective guilt. Exposure to the positive information about the outgroup moderated the indirect effects of the ingroup identi-fication on the intergroup attitudes via collective guilt.
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Not many studies have dealt with how Serbs from Serbia see Croats and Bosniaks in the light of the wars from 1990s. In our study, we used a quasi-experimental approach to assess the type of stereotypes provoked in Serbs, and their relationship to social distance and the national identity. The sample consisted of 66 participants of Serbian ethnicity, born between 1991 and 1995, who are residing in Serbia. The instruments included Social Distance Scale, National Identity Scale, socio-demographic ques-tionnaire and a set of collective memory stimuli followed by a set of questions. As stimuli, we used shortened versions of collective memories as described by Ruiz Jiménez (2013), in order to set a context which referred to the 1990s wars. The results have shown that the described stimuli have impactneither on stereotypes nor on the social distance and the national identity of participants. However, the social distance is lower than in previous studies in the region, and Croats are consistently seen in more negative terms than Bosniaks and Serbs.
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Swastikas drawn on the gate of the Polish embassy in Tel Aviv mark the latest developments in the Polish-Israeli row over Holocaust remembrance.
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This study deals with the use of the Holy Crown of Hungary in Hungarian revolts and Habsburg representation between 1604 and 1611. It describes how the meaning of the crown suddenly changed after 1604 and how this meaning was spread across the borders of Hungary. The focus is on the use of the crown in the propaganda of King Matthias II at the time of his crowning as King of Bohemia in 1611. This is a rare example of the use of the Hungarian crown in the political legitimation of a ruler in another country outside Hungary, but it has a special ideological background. This use is an aspect of the history of the crown that has been overlooked to this day.
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In this study, the dinamics that lead the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) to success in the elections will be explored. The process of formation of these parties, the political traditions they belong to, the strong leadership of their heads, their performance in foreign policy and economy will be examined and the dynamics that made the CDU and AKP one of the dominant parties will be tried to revealed. Conceptualizing these achieved dynamics will contribute to create a political road map for other political parties and it will also contribute to presenting the elements that lead a political party to success. The main questions of this study are: What are the characteristics of a catch-all party and what are the dinamics making a party mobilize and integrate the society? How do the historical conditions in the country affect the success of a party? What role does play a party's strong political tradition and leadership aimed at mobilizing and integrating the ideological and values social dynamics in the political system as a source of succeses?
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The relations between China and European Union (EU) are a subject of great significance for analysis within the respect of bilateral ties as well as that of world politics. Today China is the most important trade partner of the EU, that shows the importance of the bilateral ties between both actors in the balance of global politics. However there is a set of problems in the bilateral relations between both sides. First issue area in the Chinese-EU relations is human rights violation as well as democracy deficite in Chiana that followed by the EU Council‟s arms embargo on Pekin set in 1989. Other problems in the bilateral relations between both actors are; economic and trade disputes, differences in the regional politics, global governance, proliferation of the nuclear weapons and environmantal pollution as well. These issue areas will be explored in this article and analysed China‟s strategies for the overcomming of these disputing issues.
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Interview with Prof. Dr. Birgül Demirtaş about Turkish Foreign Policy and Current Issues
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