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A párizsi béketárgyalások a kezdődő hidegháború kontextusában

Author(s): Barnabás Vajda / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2017

The study makes a research into the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947 and its links with the unfolding Cold War. The author considers both the negotiation phase as well as the conference phase of the Paris peace process, from late-1945 until late-1947, and analyses the whole peace process in the wider context of international diplomacy. The main conclusions of the study are the following: (i) the process of the Paris Peace Conference as a case study shows the actual process how the relations between the two superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union, derailed form a cooperative phase to an open hostility; (ii) during the Paris Peace Conference we can already observe many signs of both strategical and ideological distrust, which (iii) became visible right after the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty on February 10, 1947 thus contributing significantly to the long set of superpower conflicts that we mark as the early Cold War.

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A positive hero for everyone? The memorialization of Srđan Aleksić in post-Yugoslav countries

Author(s): Nicolas Moll / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

Despite various attempts, the memory of persons who helped and rescued endangered persons “from the other side” during the breakup wars of Yugoslavia is rarely publicly acknowledged. There is, nevertheless, one exception: the case of Srđan Aleksić, a young Bosnian Serb who was killed while saving a Muslim acquaintance in Trebinje in January 1993. Since2007, Srđan Aleksić has not only become publicly known, but his memory is also widely positively connoted in different countries and by groups ofvarious political and ethnic backgrounds in the post-Yugoslav space. This article analyzes the emergence of this memory and the narratives around it, how fragile or strong the consensus which has emerged around his memory is, and what this memorialization indicates about the current memory culture in post-Yugoslav countries and its evolutions.

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A post-mortem monument

Author(s): Paulina Małochleb / Language(s): English / Issue: 05 (48)/2021

Review of: Paulina Małochleb - Wrócę przed nocą. Reportaż o przemilczanym (I will come back before dusk. A reportage on the unspoken) By: Jerzy Szperkowicz. Publisher: Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków, Poland, 2021.

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A ROMANIAN POLITICAL STORY: THE NATIONALISM OF NICOLAE IORGA REVISITED (1899-1914)

Author(s): Georgiana Țăranu / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2021

Nicolae Iorga (1871-1940) was Romania’s best-known historian and public intellectual between the two world wars, both at home and abroad. He is seen as the father of Romanian nationalism, as well as the main provider of historical continuity and legitimacy for the new Greater Romania of 1918. The aim of this paper is to argue that Iorga’s nationalism has been a political story from the very beginning. It was a politically motivated commitment toward reshaping society, through culture. This political reading contradicts the standard narrative that interprets Iorga as a cultural nationalist who only helped raise national consciousness in the wake and during the First World War. Instead, in the first part of this text, my reading of his political career depicts an intellectual who sought not only to cultivate the nation, but to advance his own political platform (based on the rejection of modernity, antisemitism, and irredentism) and to contribute to the establishment of a single strong territorial state reuniting all Romanians around the Old Kingdom. In the second part of the paper, I move from a short survey of the politics of memory by the main political regimes following Iorga’s assassination, namely the military dictatorship of Ion Antonescu and the communist regime, to a discussion of some strategies used in the post-1989 era to condone or obfuscate some beliefs and actions of Iorga by interpreting his nationalism as a cultural one.

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A sérelem láncolatai. Az áldozatfogalom változásai magyar köztéri emlékműveken

Author(s): József Mélyi / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 01/2022

Historical grievance can have deep roots in collective memory, and its representation continually appears in public monuments. In Hungary, national monuments have always been almost inseparable from the sacrifice made by the nation and the nation as a victim, over the past 150 years. The study examines the change in the concept of historical grievance and sacrifice, the duality of the idea of sacrifice and resurrection through public monuments, primarily in the Hungarian context. The various historical grievances seem to form a circular chain with no breaking point. The authorities could always combine the grievances according to their own memory politics, and could embed any traumatic event or national catastrophe in the existing chain. This chain of grievance takes now often the form of memorial parks.

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A Solitary Man in the Space of Genocide

Author(s): Paweł Tomczok / Language(s): English / Issue: 6/2020

In this essay, I discuss a particular narrative structure manifest in contemporary genocide narratives, a structure based on a distinctive presence of a first-person – usually male – narrator, who describes his experiences and reflections born in the course of his peregrinations to sites of mass extermination. Rooting my research in geocriticism, I explore ties between space and memory, which allows me to distinguish several levels of analyzed texts, tending towards metaphysical generalizations of nihilistic or patriotic nature. I apply the said analytical categories to my study of selected passages of Dawid Szkoła’s and Przemysław Dakowicz’s respective essays.

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A Tale of Two Revolutions: Hungary’s 1956 and the Un-doing of 1989

Author(s): Victoria Harms / Language(s): English / Issue: 03/2017

This article investigates the evolution of Hungary’s memory of 1956, from the counterrevolution to the dissident struggle for rehabilitation in the eighties, its relation to the change of regimes in 1989, and its subsequent appropriation for nationalist purposes in defiance of a European memory regime. Mnemonic warriors like Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and historian Mária Schmidt have championed 1956 as a struggle for freedom and independence and symbols of Hungarian martyrdom and bravery. Only recently a new-found Central European unity in adversity has been observed: the “counterrevolution” against the European Union. Perusing interviews, samizdat articles, public appeals and speeches, and other documentary evidence, including historical analyses, this article identifies mnemonic actors and strategies to assess the intricate relationship between 1956 and 1989. The analysis of museum exhibitions, statues, monuments, and national symbols helps reveal the varying significance ascribed to 1956 before and after 1989. The study relies on the conceptual groundwork of Michael Bernhard and Jan Kubik. It contributes to arguments put forth by historians James Mark, Anna Seleny, Nora Borodziej, and Árpád von Klimó.

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A Time of Crisis—A Crisis of (the Sense of) Time: The Political Production of Time in Communism and Its Relevance for the Postcommunist Debates

Author(s): Costica Bradatan / Language(s): English / Issue: 02/2005

A haunting theme in today’s debates over postcommunism is the necessity of facing the past. Ironically, what those people in East Europe and Russia having to face their past lack most is precisely a proper understanding of what the past is. This is because one of the major losses they suffered under communist regimes was their proper sense of time. In my article, I analyze how in the communist context, time (and people’s sense of it) was produced politically and how the communist political imaginary presupposed as one of its essential ingredients a systematic disruption of (and interference into) people’s sense of time. In the final part, I briefly point to the fact that a successful confrontation with the past can start only with a recovery of these people’s sense of their temporal situation in the world.

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A timeline, interrupted

Author(s): Mateusz Mazzini / Language(s): English / Issue: 06 (44)/2020

The past does not exist. It is what one makes of it. From a purely axiological point of view, every one of us is constructed of different pasts and we have different memories at our disposal. The non-existence of the past as a tangible point of reference is a subject of individual or collective creation and interpretation; it is the founding assumption of any sociological research devoted to mnemonic subjects. That is the case because, put simply, we all have a past – and it does not matter how that past came about in our minds. It has been somehow socially constructed. It is a result of much more than a mere sum of our individual memories. As observed by all the great theoreticians of collective memory – ranging from the early writings of Emile Durkheim to our contemporary Jeffrey Olick – memory is inherently plural and inherently social. Collectivities, argues Olick, have memories just like they have identities. The relation between the two is of mutual intertwining – they construct each other and they are mutually complementary. What makes the content of both is, however, beyond the control of an individual, especially if the past employed in the process is a past which we have no direct recollection of.

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A vallásszabadság mint európai alapjog egyes mai dilemmái

Author(s): Dávid Gyerő / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2018

This articlepresents some of the current dilemmas around religious freedom as a fundamental right in the European Union, and contributes to its appreciation as one of the main values of European cultural heritage. 2018 was a good year for this research, as it offered the 450th anniversary of the oldest European declaration to promote religious tolerance and diversity: the Edict of Torda. In the religious context of the churches, the terms religious freedom, religious tolerance, and freedom of conscience and thought are often joined together, or even mixed up sometimes; their legal meaning is, however, distinct or even incompatible. Today, the social and political relevance of these terms is nevertheless consistent and consonant, and gives a chance to consider their inquiry as timely and even necessary. In the 21st century, religious freedom is, in theory, not only acknowledged as part of the European culture, but also recognized by the European Union as a fundamental right. At the same time, the social and political impacts on Europe challenge the unconditional expressions of religious freedom. In European communities we are witnesses to new forms of violation of this right. The religious map of the continent is more diverse than ever, and the coexistence of many nations and religions is growing. Therefore, the terms and conditions of this symbiosis ask for new forms of regulation as well. As a foundation of everyday life, religious freedom needs to be included in new initiatives in education, promotion, and protection.

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ABORDĂRI SPECIFICE SPRIJINULUI LOGISTIC, ADECVAT UNOR CAMPANII MILITARE ALE REGELUI FILIP AL II-LEA AL MACEDONIEI

Author(s): Ferencz CIORVAȘI-FILIP,Bogdan-Costin MATEI / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 02/2019

Throughout history, the army leaders who have realized the overwhelming importance of logistics in military action have been those who have achieved their intended goals. The importance of logistics in relation to the success of military action is highlighted eloquently by the French general Antoine Henri Jomini: “Logistics encompasses the means and arrangements with which tactics and strategies are implemented. The strategy decides where to act; logistics bring troops to that point. “But what is the beginning of military logistics in history?All the great conquests were based on a strong logistics component, but who was the first leader to recognize its value?

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About the usefulness and harmfulness of forgetting the German guilt

Author(s): Paweł Wójs / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2019

The distinction between kinds of guilt has not lost its power to illuminate matters, and it remains a great tool to study the consequences of forgetting guilt of any kind. Karl Jaspers made the distinction between kinds of guilt mainly to ease the Germans coping with guilt, as all of them were blamed for the evil that happened under Adolf Hitler. Jaspers believed that in using this distinction the German nation could have come back to its origins, and thus purified, take its part in the possible future unity of the world and of all mankind. But soon after World War II ended, a confluence of political, social, psychological and philosophical factors contributed to a situation in which a large number of culprits were not brought to account: criminals were rarely rightly punished. In addition, many Germans believing in the ideology of National Socialism felt no guilt in terms of morality; they downplayed the political guilt; they negated the very existence of the metaphysical guilt. The process of forgetting guilt occurred.

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AFGHANISTAN UNDER TALIBAN: A NEW REGIME POSES A THREAT TO INTERNATIONAL STABILITY

Author(s): Valeri Modebadze / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2022

The purpose of this study was to see whether the Taliban regime poses a threat to the international community. The research primarily examined the threats that the formation of a theocratic regime in Afghanistan poses to neighboring countries and the international community. With regards to research methods, a document analysis method was used to obtain valid information and to analyze and describe the complex situation in Afghanistan. A wide array of documents and scholarly articles were analyzed to obtain reliable and objective information. This research revealed that the Taliban has not changed at all and still rules Afghanistan with medieval methods and strategies. Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the economic situation has deteriorated considerably and people face severe hardship. Therefore, hundreds of thousands of Afghans want to leave their homeland and migrate to the West. The Taliban violates constantly human rights and discriminates against women, ethnic and religious minorities. The Taliban has transformed Afghanistan into a narco-state. Neighboring countries fear that Afghanistan might become a hotbed of terrorism and extremism again.

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After the War and Repressions: Mediating of Traumatic Experiences in Estonian Life Stories

Author(s): Tiiu Jaago / Language(s): English / Issue: 83/2021

This article looks at how contemporary life stories reflect the historical-political events that took place in the 1940s, and their impact on the development of family relationships. The focus is on the expression of traumatic experiences caused by these events. Observable events, such as the Second World War, living under a foreign power, political repressions, escape to the West, etc., and their impact on Estonian society have been analysed by Estonian sociologists using the concept of cultural trauma. Literary researchers have studied this subject from the perspective of literary trauma theory. This article provides an analysis of Estonian life stories, which is based on the tools of folkloristic narrative research and the trauma conception. Although the narrators do not use the word ‘trauma’, it can be assumed that they express their traumatic experiences in some special way. It appears, for instance, that these first-person narratives provide a laconic description of the situation, relatively free of the emotion that possessed the narrator in the situation being described. The narrative style is determined by the distance between the narrator and the event that traumatizes them. This distance can be created by the narrator through using urban legends and rumours to characterize the general attitudes of the period being described. When the events of the twentieth century were discussed in the stories told in the 1990s, the dynamics of family relationships between two or three generations came to the fore in the stories told in the present time. The changing focus of the stories, shifting from events to the subject of intimacy, directs researchers to observe the transmission and transformation of trauma in a new context.

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Against the “Moonlight and Magnolia” myth of the American South. A new materialist approach to the dissonant heritage of slavery in the US: The case of Whitney Plantation in Wallace, LA

Author(s): Dorota Golańska / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2020

The article presents an analysis of the operations of the Whitney Plantation Museum, which opened in 2014 in Wallace, LA (USA), situated within the context of plantation heritage tourism in the American South. The argumentation offers an illustration of the significant transition, even though still of marginal character, of the dominant tendencies of representing slavery in heritage sites (plantation museums) devoted to cultivating knowledge about the history of the region. New materialist in its orientation, the analysis subscribes to the most fundamental assumption of this philosophical tendency, namely that knowledge is generated in material-semiotic ways, and applies this approach in an enquiry into the educational experience offered to visitors by this heritage site. The article argues that although the emergence of institutions such as Whitney Plantation is meant to pluralise the memorial landscape of a given community, rather than serving as multivocal spaces they tend to remain steeped in fragmentation.

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Aids po jugoslovansko? Začetni odziv na aids v Sloveniji in Jugoslaviji (1984–1987)

Author(s): Maja Lukanc / Language(s): Slovenian / Issue: 3/2021

AIDS appeared in the Slovenian and Yugoslav territory in the mid-1980s, when Yugoslavia faced an economic crisis and increasing political discord, while at the same time the Slovenian society was characterised by accelerated democratisation and liberalisation. This article addresses the question of how the Slovenian – and to some extent the Yugoslav – politics, experts and public reacted to the arrival of AIDS. Drawing on the periodical press and supplementary archival sources, the article outlines the measures adopted by the state in the struggle against AIDS. It also highlights the disagreements that emerged among Yugoslav experts and between federal and republican authorities in dealing with the new disease. In this paper, the response to AIDS serves as a prism for examining the capacity of Slovenian and Yugoslav authorities to deal with complex socio-medical issues, the functioning of the Slovenian and Yugoslav medical profession, and the state of the Slovenian media. It also provides insight into public atitudes towards republican-federal antagonisms and the stigma of disease, thus revealing the state of socio-political values in the Slovenian and Yugoslav territory during the turbulent 1980s.

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AJALOO JA PROPAGANDA VAHEL: EESTI JA LÄTI KUJUTAMINE VENEMAA AJALOONARRATIIVIDES

Author(s): Vladimir Sazonov,Sergii Pahhomenko,Igor Kopõtin / Language(s): Estonian / Issue: 17/2021

This article analyses the main historical narratives and events of Latvia and Estonia concerning the Second World War, fascism, and the Soviet period more generally, and their representation in the pro-Kremlin ideological discourse. Moscow is using several narratives and messages to try to influence different target audiences in Russia, but also in Estonia and Latvia (especially the Russophone audience) with its own interpretation of the historical events and narratives concerning Estonia, Latvia, the Soviet Union, and the Second World War. Several different channels are used to promote the pro-Kremlin ideological agenda: not only profound historical studies (monographs, collective volumes, and articles), popular-scientific overviews, conferences, workshops and seminars, but also TV series, social media platforms, documentaries, and so on. Even more materials are available to the narrow audience that has a strong interest in contemporary history, especially the Soviet period and the Second World War. The main topics of these narratives are the Second World War and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (1939), the occupation of Estonia and Latvia by the USSR, both in 1940 and in 1944, and the consequential post-war Soviet era. The main actors that design the pro-Kremlin understandings of Estonian and Latvian history are undoubtedly state officials, i.e. the president and his entourage. Major subjects such as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (1939), the annexation of Latvia and Estonia in 1940, and the activities of the Latvian Legion and Estonians in the Second World War in 1941–1944 are presented in a manner that is characteristic to the Soviet propaganda and historical science. According to the pro-Kremlin discourse, the Soviet–German pact on non-aggression and the delimitation of the spheres of influence were forced into existence by the inactiveness of the Western allies and the unwillingness of the USSR to enter into the war. Moreover, according to the official Kremlin narrative, Latvians and Estonians should think of the USSR (and its legal successor the Russian Federation) as the force that saved them from being in the same position as the countries that were defeated in the war that had collaborated with the Nazis.

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Ak Parti’nin Düzen Kurucu Diş Politika Söylemi Ve Ortadoğu

Author(s): Gökhan Telatar / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 3/2015

The Ak Party administration argued that Turkey has neglected its historical legacy and could not use the advantages of its rich historical potential in its foreign policy. However Turkey was supposed to pursue an active foreign policy that goes beyond security fears and directs developments rather than having a reaction-based foreign policy as a center country with multiple regional identities. Such a foreign policy would have transformed Turkey from the center country to the global power. To this end, the Ak Party administration asserted that Turkey should pursue an order building foreign policy. In other words, Turkey was supposed to lead the changes of regional and international orders. Upon the US’s initiation of a new Middle Eastern order building period in the context of the war on terrorism after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, Turkey embarked to influence on this period. The aim of this article is analyzing of the Ak Party administration’s order building role in the case of its Middle East policies after the September 11 era. It will be examined whether Turkey has been successful in acting as an order building actor in the Middle East in the formation of new order after the September 11 era. Thus it will have been revealed which consequences should be taken from the Ak Party administration’s policies in the new Middle Eastern order building period between Iraq war and the beginning of the Arab Spring. Finally, the Ak Party administration’s policies toward the Arab Spring that has been changing Middle East order again will be reviewed in order to analyze whether the administration has been successful to take consequences and to revise its policies toward the Middle East conform to these lessons.

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Aleksander Bocheński a realizm polityczny – zarys problemu

Author(s): Ariel Orzełek / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2021

Political realism is not easy to define. The analysis of specific cases may help. In this text, I wonder whether Aleksander Bocheński was a political realist. His journalism has undergone a significant evolution. He was a supporter of the Polish „power state” before 1939, he wanted to collaborate with the nazi Germans during the war years, and after the war he was an apologist for People's Poland and a critic of the Third Polish Republic. My considerations prove, that Bocheński was looking for political realism in his life and oeuvre, not always, however, entering this trend of reflection on politics.

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All That is Solid Melts into Air’: Abstraction as Empowerment for the Migrant Mind in the Poetry of Warsan Shire

Author(s): Subhayu Bhattacharjee / Language(s): English / Issue: 9/2020

Abstraction as a critical faculty has often been in use in philosophical and critical discourses. The frequency of its usage has often left unconsidered the myriad dimensions of the term pointing to the various centers of contemplation of abstraction. These range from looking at abstraction from the perspective of the invisible and non-deictic to minimalism in art. This paper seeks to explore the question of abstraction in relation to the ‘home’ and its equivalent terms in the poetry of British-Somali poet Warsan Shire to see how abstraction is a tool of empowering the diasporic identity. In other words, taking recourse to various facets of the term, this essay tries to show that abstraction identified as the absence of the concrete is a form of individual resistance in itself instead of simply being a tool for philosophers to ‘interpret the world,’ as Marx suggests in the Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach. In doing so, this paper will also attempt to show how an idea such as dissidence could become qualitatively different in a non-European setting and how collectivist resistance might occlude the unique modes of conception of individual resistance.

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