Artistic Memorialization of the Roma Holocaust in Romania

Rendering Visible the Historical Trauma and Documenting the Suffering

Author(s): Caterina Preda / Language(s): English / Issue: 12/2019

Although the Roma Holocaust in Romania has been documented, and there is an officialpolicy to recall this historical fact, its memory is marginal in contemporary Romaniansociety. This article analyzes four recent examples of art of memorialization of the RomaHolocaust in Romania and argues these artistic forms of memory play an important role inthe building of a more comprehensive public memory of the Porrajmos. The analysis usesan interdisciplinary approach, which combines theoretical resources that belong to the studyof cultural memory with a focus on artistic memory, and the analysis of the relationshipbetween art, politics, and memory. The examples of artistic memorialization have two aims:to render visible the historical trauma through the use of testimonies of the survivors and toprovide further documentary sources of this historical trauma.

Arts & Culture: The Museum of Anti-Terrorist Operations

Author(s): Abel Polese / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/06/2018

What was thought as a way to remember the victims of a bloody conflict, and point fingers at the enemy, might turn out to be a unique instrument of identity-building in Ukraine.

Avengers of Bleiburg: Émigré Politics, Discourses of Victimhood and Radical Separatism during the Cold War

Author(s): Mate Nikola Tokić / Language(s): English / Issue: 02/2018

Bleiburg was at the center of a deeply-ingrained national victim-complex that served as an integral component of post-war Croatian émigré identity discourse. This article explores the relationship between this victim-complex and the radicalization of a small but active group of Croatian émigrés in the 1960s. It examines how discourses regarding “Serbo-communist” genocide first at Bleiburg and later within socialist Yugoslavia both radicalized many young emigrants to the West and was used to justify acts of terrorism against the regime in Belgrade. More specifically, the article explores how disputes within the émigré community itself concerning responsibility for Bleiburg contributed to the radicalization process. While not the only factor leading to an embrace of political violence by younger radicals, this generational schism surrounding the memory politics of Bleiburg proved central to the development of a campaign of émigré separatists terrorism aimed at the hated Yugoslav state that lasted more than two decades.

Az antipopulizmus mint a rendszerváltás szimbolikus eleme

Author(s): Ágnes Gagyi / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 21/2014

The project of transition as „catching up” with the West implied the acceptance of a symbolic hierarchy according to which Eastern European societies are qualitatively inferior to Western ones. Locally, the acceptance of this frame of modernization ideology, which legitimizes global hierarchies by making reference to internal qualities of individual societies, is manifested in various mutations. Through showing Hungarian examples, the article traces such effects of symbolic subordination at the levels of macrostructural integration, local political struggles, and everyday struggles of symbolic identification.

BAJA I DRUGOVI DERVIŠA SUŠIĆA - POKUŠAJ RAZBIJANJA KANONSKOGA KULTURNOMEMORIJSKOGA MAKROMODELA NA PRIMJERU RATNOG TEATRA

Author(s): Amra Memić / Language(s): Bosnian / Issue: 2/2016

The play Baja i drugovi is a comedy in three acts with elements of the vaudeville. This play is at the same time Sušić’s attempt to disperse the canonical macro-model of cultural memory by means of (partisan) war theatre. Partisan theatres were being founded within all district and municipal boards of the People’s Liberation Movement (NOB) whose primary goal was to “educate the masses” in the spirit of the People’s Liberation Movement (NOB). The cultural policy at the time, and the theatre as well, was expected to boost the number of consumers of culture, to emancipate ignorant and illiterate masses and strive towards focusing their energy to the benefit of further social and political awareness-raising with the aim of reaching canonical aesthetic-ethical single-mindedness. By using the counterpoint, a modern dramatic device, and by juxtaposing the tragical and the comical, throughout this play, which is mostly permeated with elements of comedy, Sušić maintains a tragic note by introducing the characters of Baja and Pisac, which will culminate at the end of the play in Baja’s death and Pisac’s psychological demise. However, even though the play unfolds towards a resolution, it unexpectedly and in a slightly ironic way changes the pattern present until a point when it suddenly turns bleak and brings us to a tragic end, which, after all, leaves us, in an imperatively ironical way, filled with cathartic ideological optimism that mocks the inevitable ideological optimism of single-mindedness.

BALCANII DE VEST – VALENȚE ALE (IN)STABILITĂȚII ÎN ACTUALUL CONTEXT DE SECURITATE EUROPEAN

Author(s): Cristina Bogzeanu / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 1-2/2019

Perturbarea capacității societăților și statelor de a funcționa, valorificând o gamă variată de instrumente se numără printre obiectivele a ceea ce, după criza ucraineană, este definit drept „război hibrid”. Lucrarea de față1 constituie o analiză a dinamicii securității din regiunea vest-balcanică din această perspectivă, având drept ipoteză faptul că acest spațiu poate fi valorificat ca pârghie pentru accentuarea instabilității la nivel european. În acest sens, articolul cuprinde o scurtă trecere în revistă a principalelor tendințe de evoluție a securității la nivel european, mergând ulterior către cercetarea modului în care Balcanii de Vest sunt abordați de către Federația Rusă nu doar în planul documentelor strategice, ci și în studiile geopolitice. Vulnerabilitatea regiunii este ulterior analizată atât din perspectiva relațiilor conflictuale ale actorilor din acest spațiu, cât și din cea a evoluției acestora în cadrul unor barometre internaționale ce ilustrează nivelul de stabilitate și soliditate al instituțiilor.

Beg od modernizacije (OGLEDI I-VI)

Author(s): Latinka Perović / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 112/1995

Na kojoj osnovi je danas moguća analiza odnosa Srbije prema Zapadnoj Evropi? Taj odnos nije uvek i pre- vashodno eksplicitan, niti je vezan samo za jednu instituciju - političku, naučnu, kulturnu. On je više implicitan i može se detektovati kroz analizu vitalnih pravaca unutrašnjeg razvoja, posebno kroz ulogu elite u usmera- vanju tog razvoja. U suštini, reč je o spontanom i formu- lisanom odgovoru na izazov koji je pred srpsku elitu postavilo, sjedne strane, ujedinjavanje i na toj osnovi dalja ekonomska modernizacija Zapadne Evrope, a sa druge - raspad sistema u Istočnoj Evropi i otuda neophodnost izbora puteva sveopšteg razvoja u budućnosti. Jer, bilo je sve očiglednije da se i u Srbiji jedan dugoročan program, u protekloj deceniji, već bio istrošio.

BETON - Kulturno propagandni komplet br. 194, god. XIII, Beograd, utorak, 17. april 2018.

Author(s): Saša Ćirić,Adriana Sabo,Miloš Živanović,Stejn Vervat / Language(s): Serbian / Publication Year: 2018

MIXER, Stejn Vervat: Sećanje na balkanskom tržištu trauma; antiCEMENT, Saša Ćirić: Kanadska inicijacija; ARMATURA, Adriana Sabo: Čemu služi populaciona politika; VREME SMRTI I RAZONODE, Miloš Živanović: Sever mi u krvi, Psalam konjskog lika

BETON - Kulturno propagandni komplet br. 74, god. IV, Beograd, utorak, 30. jun 2009.

Author(s): Dragan Nikolić,Aleksandar Novaković,Lamija Begagić,Predrag Lucić,Miloš Živanović / Language(s): Bosnian,Croatian,Serbian / Publication Year: 2009

MIXER, Dragan Nikolić: „Nema te više, moj Niš-e”; antiCEMENT, Aleksandar Novaković: Muk bez krika; ŠTRAFTA, Lamija Begagić: Neprijatelj prelazi livadu!; VREME SMRTI I RAZONODE, Predrag Lucić: Koska, koska, koskica, Miloš Živanović: Dijete Gojko i Kamen mudrosti; BULEVAR ZVEZDA, VULIN, Aleksandar; BLOK BR. V, Đorđe Milović: Kolica

Between amnesia and the «war of memories»: politics of memory in the museum narratives of Ukraine

Author(s): Polina Verbytska,Kuzmyn Roman / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2019

This paper seeks to lay out certain critical reflections on social transformations, changes in memory politics and its representation in the Ukrainian museum narratives over the years of independence. In particular, it focuses on the challenges involved in constructing various forms of historical memory, it determines the ways of its representation in current museum narrative practices, illustrates memory politics controversy over the historical issues of the Holodomor of 1932 – 1933, World War II and the Holocaust and reveals the place they occupy in historical memory and museum narratives of different regions of Ukraine. Correlations between historical memory, identity and museum narratives of different regions of Ukraine are highlighted.

Beyond Bearing Witness. Avrom Sutzkever's Surreal Griner akvaryum

Author(s): Kathryn L. Brackney / Language(s): English,Yiddish / Issue: 1/2020

This article examines A. Sutzkever’s series of Yiddish prose poems, Green Aquarium (1953– 1954), as an exemplar of an alternative, surreal tradition of Holocaust remembrance that stands in contrast to more austere modes of witnessing. Sutzkever can be understood as one of several refugee poets and artists in the early post-war period whose works mapped out highly imaginative liminal spaces between the past and present, living and dead.

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.

Bosanskohercegovački potencijali razvoja nekroturizma

Author(s): Mirza Džananović / Language(s): Bosnian / Issue: 18/2019

Necro tourism is a young and still relatively unknown and underdeveloped type of tourism that has been experiencing intense expansion in numerous countries around the world in recent decades. People’s interest in visiting sites of distress has a long history. However, only in the second half of the 20th century did it experience the character of planned and organized visits through agencies and institutions specialized in providing such services. Such services also imply a certain amount of compensation, which makes these visits tourist based and that they become an integral part of regular economic flows. Along with increasing tourists’ interest in necro-tourist sites, this phenomenon is gradually coming into focus of the academic community, which seeks to provide a theoretical framework for necro tourism. However, not all dilemmas caused by the appearance of necro tourism, including basic terminology, have yet been fully resolved, but the general consensus is that the concept of necro tourism or dark tourism implies the practice of visiting sites related to some form of death or distress. Despite justified criticism from part of the expert and general public that necro tourism encourages the commercialization of death and distress, in many countries around the world this type of tourism is experiencing intense development. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s neighbours are also catching up with this new global trend and are seeking to improve existing infrastructure and offerings. In the context of Bosnia and Herzegovina it is necessary to emphasize that there are huge, less controversial, necro tourism potentials primarily in the form of medieval tombstones called stećak, but also of other similar objects and sites. Nonetheless, necro tourism is still a relatively unknown trend in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and there is still much work to be done in presenting and popularizing it with the ultimate goal of specializing tourism offer and making better use of existing tourism resources.

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.