Bóg wysoko, car daleko. Kilka uwag o kulturowych podstawach funkcjonowania frazeologizmu w języku bułgarskim

Author(s): Stanka Bonova / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 16/2004

The article deals with the semantics and the cultural background of the Bulgarian phraseological unit 'God is high, the tsar is far away'. Special attention is paid to its second part because in Bulgarian culture, similarly to all Christian cultures, the identification of God with Goodness is rather obvious, but that of the tsar with goodness may seem unjustified. An analysis is carried out of six semantic models of the phraseological unit in four historical-cultural contexts: (1) the tsar is far away vs. the actual institution of the tsar; (2) the tsar is far away vs. the relationship between God and the tsar; (3) the tsar is far away vs. the image of the tsar in folk culture; (4) the tsar is far away vs. Bulgarian historical figures. The article concludes with examples of contemporary political realization of the unit, connected with the return of tsar Symeon from abroad and his position as the prime minister in the Bulgarian government.

BOOK REVIEW Niall Mulchinock, NATO and the Western Balkans. From Neutral Spectator to Proactive Peacemaker, London: Palgrave MacMillan 2017. 293 pp, ISBN 978-1-137-59723-6

Author(s): Dragos Ionita / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

Bosanskohercegovačka posebnost - tragom jedne čuvene teze

Author(s): Dženita Sarač-Rujanac / Language(s): Bosnian / Issue: 74-75/2017

In the article the author has taken into cosideration the well known thesis about Bosnia and Herzegovina as a little Yugoslavia and the arguments that she has made efforts to establish. It was formed by the political and the Party establishment with the goal to strengthen integration of a new society and a system that had been established after 1945, this Thesis was quickly accepted in the public discurse, and it become the unavoidably ornament of eruptive speaches in massive gathering. However, the above mentioned analysis lead us to the conclusion that Bosnia and Herzegovina establishment in late 1960s and 1970s expressed certain reserve and pointed out that it was a high political risk that it carried. Finally, the autor, in context of modern discusion, has stressed out that it has been important to take into consideration the significance of understanding of the place and the time when the Thesis was used and out of that contex the judgment is more about a daily political criticism, and less about the doktrine that was estabblished as scientifically and objective opinion.

Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Cultural Memory of Bleiburg

Author(s): Amra Čusto / Language(s): English / Issue: 02/2018

This article provides a preliminary overview of the perceptions of Bleiburg among Croats and Bosniaks in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as its role in the overall construction of cultural memory in this deeply divided post-Yugoslav state. The author explores how the remembrance of the Second World War in socialist Yugoslavia fragmented and was replaced by new, nationalist narratives among Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks. The memory of Bleiburg plays a central role in the victimization narrative among Bosnian Croats, and their political leadership has been deeply involved in the commemorative practices related to the events in May 1945. Bosniaks, while primarily focusing on the continuity with the antifascist Partisan tradition, have increasingly opened up the question of communist crimes such as Bleiburg, albeit through the media and memoirs and not yet systematic academic analysis. The article also examines how the Bleiburg narrative is intertwined into the memory of the war in the 1990s, and more broadly how these memory politics are used by various actors in Bosnia-Herzegovina’s deeply divided society.

Breaking Cliché on the Killing of Yugoslavia: A Role of Croatia

Author(s): Vladislav B. Sotirović / Language(s): English / Issue: 11/2017

The HDZ took power in Croatia after the spring parliamentary and presidential elections in 1990 according to the majoritarian electoral principle. Therefore, the party (established in 1989) had an absolute majority in Croatia’s Parliament (Sabor) with Franjo Tudjman as both Croatia’s President and the party leader – a fact which, according to the German political analyst, H. Hoppe, allows the HDZ to establish a full scale of the party’s dictatorship in Croatia for a decade (till 2000). A direct consequence of such electoral results in Croatia, inspired by the electoral results in Bosnia-Herzegovina too, there was election in Serbia of Slobodan Miloshevic and his Socialist Party of Serbia (the SPS) in December 1990 according to the same majoritarian electoral principle as in Croatia. In other words, election of Miloshevic and his SPS in Serbia was in fact Serbia’s answer to the electoral results in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina – two Yugoslav republics in which the ultraright political parties won power at the eve of the new civil war. It was clear for majority of the Serbs in ex-Yugoslavia that a neo-Nazi Croat Ustashi regime was established in Croatia followed by a regime of the Islamic fundamentalist Party of Democratic Action (the SDA) of Alija Izetbegovic in BosniaHerzegovina. That became the main reason for Serbia’s electorate to vote for its own strongman and nationalist who can above all protect their brethren Serbs in other Yugoslav republics (Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina) from the new Croat-Muslim-led holocaust as a continuation of the WWII Magnum Crimen against the Serbs. For Croatia’s Serbs (the “Survivors” of the WWII Ustashi-led holocaust), especially in the Krajina region with the town of Knin as its capital, Franjo Tudjman was nothing else than a new Ante Pavelic (the WWII Nazi Croat leader) and the HDZ as democratically redressed WWII Nazi Croat Ustashi movement.

Brunnbauer, Ulf. Globalizing Southeastern Europe. Emigrants, America, and the State since the Late Nineteenth Century. New York, 2016

Author(s): Valentina Sharlanova,Petia Bankova / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 4/2016

Budowa przemysłu zbrojeniowego II Rzeczypospolitej oglądana poprzez pryzmat biografii Jana Prota (1891-1957)

Author(s): Marek Wierzbicki / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2017

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.

Bulgaria and the United States in the 60s – from Confrontation to Détente a Cold War Case Study

Author(s): Veselina Uzunova / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2019

In the 1960s the relations between the US and Bulgaria reached its highest point of confrontation since the beginning of the Cold War. Bulgarian government was accused in three consecutive attempts for assault on the US Legation in Sofia which was considered a significant part of the conducted policy of intolerance, contempt and hatred towards everything American. At the time the US representation in Bulgaria was meant to be isolated and unappreciable, separated by a thick wall from the curious eyes of Sofia citizens. However, the shift of Soviet foreign policy in the mid-60s quickly changed the Bulgarian government’s hunger for confrontation by taking a course towards warming and reconciliation of their bilateral relations. The present paper seeks to outline Bulgaria’s ultimate pro-Soviet policies as Cold War best practice. The topic of US-Bulgarian bilateral relations in the period following the break of diplomatic relations in 1950 has not been a subject to detailed research neither in Bulgaria, nor in the USA. The paper cites the rich sources of both archives – the archive of US State Department and the archive of Bulgarian Politburo.

Bulgarians and Russians Today: A Mismatch of Two Complexes

Author(s): Deyan Kiuranov / Language(s): English / Issue: 49/2018

This is the story of the modification of a hypothesis about the attitudes of Bulgarians towards Russians as a result of an empirical survey. The main tenet is that both groups regard one another through two different complexes. The adequacy of the notion of complex (used in the sense of Charcot rather than of Freud) in this context is explained. The Bulgarian complex is vassality: Bulgaria is/should be a vassal to suzerain Russia, therefore expecting protection for services rendered. The Russian complex is imperialism: Bulgaria is/should be a colony of Russia, therefore Russia is under no obligation to Bulgaria regard- less of circumstances. As in reality Bulgaria is a member of the EU and NATO, these complexes create misunderstandings that complicate further a relation- ship that objectively is already complex enough.

Burdensome past: Challenging the socialist heritage in Macedonia

Author(s): Goran Janev / Language(s): English / Issue: 29/2017

points towards establishment of ethnocratic regime in the country. Juxtaposed to the treatment of the socialist monuments it reveals the major shift in the historical narrative. This symbolic appropriation accompanies the neoliberal capitalist appropriation of space and is in its service by shifting the debate away from the capitalist accumulation by means of dispossession. The neglect of socialist monuments is indicative of grey-zoning, a governmentality technique easily abused in ethnocratic regimes that allows neoliberal practices to flourish unhindered by any productive public debate. Article concludes with a discussion of the possibilities for articulated resistance.

Centralizam i decentralizacija

Author(s): Milutin Jakšić / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 02/1922

Što su ljudi i narodi primitivniji manje otadžbine imaju. Čovek vezan zbog saobraćajnih teškoća, koje su se u staro vreme mnogo teže savladjivale, za svoje selo ili najbližu okolinu, ima ljubavi samo za ono što mu je poznato (≫znano voljeno≪), za selo i pleme; a što je daleko i nepoznato mu, to mu je tudje, gotovo mrsko. U tom primitivnom stadijumu, on stvara plemensku državu, župu, i smatra druga plemena — koja se od njegova plemena razlikuju u dijalektu, nošnji, i drugim sitnicama — za krvne neprijatelje. Vekovima vodile su se kod raznih naroda borbe izmedju plemenskih državica, dok nije kojoj od njih, ponekad kulturnom ponajčešće militamom snagom, pošlo za rukom da ostale pobedi i stvori jednu nacijonalnu državu.

Childhood memories in three novels by Philip Roth: Portnoy’s Complaint, The Plot Against America, and American Pastoral as pivotal components of the protagonists’ identities

Author(s): Stefan Kubiak / Language(s): English / Issue: 03 (14)/2016

The objective of the paper is to discuss Philip Roth’s approach to the Jewish community in Newark, where he spent his childhood and where he chose to set several of his novels. Roth’s narrations referring to his hometown are written in the first person singular and often take the form of childhood memories. The persistent return to the settings of the Jewish quarter of Newark in the past seems an attempt at understanding the reality of a relatively closed community, yet far from isolation, which provided him with all the elements determining his complex sense of identity. Despite the various grades of fictitiousness of the characters and settings, the narrating protagonist of a number of Roth’s novels is usually a Jewish schoolboy born and brought up in Newark. The paper includes short analyses of “Jewish memories” in three novels by Philip Roth: The Plot Against America, where the narrator is called Philip Roth but the circumstances are elements of pure political/historical fiction, American Pastoral, where the speaker is Nathan Zuckerman, Roth’s frequent alter ego, and Portnoy’s Complaint, narrated by the fictitious Alexander Portnoy. Being both American and Jewish has considerable implications, which include, for example, the characters’ sexuality. The image of the childhood and adolescence of Roth’s protagonists seems not only an obsessive theme to be found in so many of his texts, but also the core of the intellectual construct which may be recognized as his sense of identity

Chiny w polityce zagranicznej Stanów Zjednoczonych w latach 1911-1918

Author(s): Jan Pajor / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 2019

The intention of the book is to present the policy of the United States towards China and ascertain the position of Peking in the American foreign policy between 1911 and 1918. The author considers various aspects of the problem against a background of political changes taking place in both countries and diplomatic struggle in the First World War period. The book is based on unpublished materials from the Library of Congress and the National Archives at College Park, as well as printed sets of documents and vast literature on the subject.

CLASHING HISTORICAL NARRATIVES AND THE MACEDONIAN NAME DISPUTE – SOLVING THE UNSOLVABLE

Author(s): Zhidas Daskalovski / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2017

In the early 1990s Greece blocked the international recognition of the Republic of Macedonia under that name and is currently blocking accession of this country to NATO and EU demanding name changes, which the government of Skopje refuses to adopt. The Macedonia name dispute is a clash over historical narratives and the right to claim origins of the Macedonian ethnic group and nation today and in the ancient past. For Greece, the key element is winning the argument over the legitimacy of ancient Macedon as a Greek state and not having the name Macedonia used by its northern neighbour. For the Republic, the intricacies of the ancient history are only instrumental to the recognition of the country under its constitutional name and the unblocking of the Euro-Atlantic integration. Consequently, the only way to resolve the seemingly intractable name dispute between Greece and Macedonia is to deal with the historical and identity issues that both sides care most for and ignore those that are not important for the resolution or could be left aside to be disagreed upon without political consequences. A political solution with an agreed international name for the country ‘Republic of Makedonija’ is likely to solve the dispute and improve the relations between the two countries.

Communicating Yugoslavia – cultural politics, media memory and broadcasting of the Yugoslav past in Macedonia

Author(s): Ana Pop Stefanija / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2013

The aim of this article is to analyze how the shared Yugoslav past and history is communicated in Macedonia, 22 years after the dissolution. For that matter, the emphasis of the research will be on analysis of the media production of the state-owned, public service broadcaster in Macedonia, the Macedonian Radio Television (MRT). By analyzing a core of recently produced documentaries, the article aims to show how the recent change in cultural policy and the process of “nation-(re)building” is readable through new broadcasts and how the media memory of the Yugoslav past of Macedonia is present or absent from the media scene. Finally, this text aims to give answer to the question how, and to what extent, the recently produced media content contributes to the politics of remembrance / forgetting of the Yugoslav past.

Complexities of the Mundane

Recollections

Author(s): Sandra Borges Tavares,Mikka Lene Pers-Hoejholt,Sanna Stegmaier,Christian Pentzold / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

Conference Report: Workshop Power and Politics of Mundane Memories. Tracing, Templating and Transforming Everyday Life. London (March 24, 2017), King’s College London.

Conflicted Cultural Memory and U.S. Foreign Policy: The “Lost Ca(u)se” of the U.S. Radar Base in the Czech Republic

Author(s): Kryštof Kozák / Language(s): English / Issue: 19/2018

This article analyzes the developments in cultural memory in Czech-U.S. relations since the end of the Cold War with a special emphasis on the heated debate about placing a U.S. radar base on Czech soil in 2008. It first describes the abrupt transformation in cultural memory related to the transition from communist rule from the transatlantic perspective. It claims that the debate about the radar base is a clear indication of the shift within cultural memory, which became much more contested, especially when compared with the previous period culminating with the Czech Republic’s entry into NATO. As cultural memory is closely linked to dominant historical narratives as well as identity, the findings have serious implications for the future of the transatlantic ties in the region.

CONSIDERENTE ACTUALE DESPRE UNITATEA EUROPEANĂ

Author(s): Victor Aelenei / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 14/2013

Freedom, security and justice are key values, major components defining the present European society. They are cornerstones of the European integration framework. The European Union has already established for its citizens a single market, an econom

Construction of the image of Taras Shevchenko as a part of national memory

Author(s): Larysa Buryak / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2015

The image of Taras Shevchenko is considered as an integral component of national memory, which was formed in the 1920-s. The content, structure and mechanism of constructing of Taras Shevchenko’s image are analyzed according to the social-political and cultural transformation, creating new collective identity.

Contemporary Historical Discourse on Polish Communism in a Narratological Perspective

Author(s): Katarzyna Chmielewska / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

The author analyses contemporary historical discourse on Communism from the perspective of narratology. Applying the tools most often used in the discussions of fiction, the author describes the construction of historical actors and the patterns of employment (sensu H. White), as well as characteristic strategies and tendencies of mainstream historical narratives.