Arapski nacionalizam: uspon, slom i posljedice jedne ideologije

Author(s): Davorka Matić / Language(s): Croatian / Issue: 2/2018

The Arab Spring is one of the main triggers of the contemporary Middle East crisis. Indirectly, it strengthened the radical wing of the Islamist movement, led to the wars in Syria and Yemen, intensified regional competition, and destabilised the region. However, this regional instability is not a recent phenomenon. It has its roots in the aftermath of the First World War when the combination of internal and external factors transformed this previously tranquil region into a high-risk zone. The main ideological force in the Middle East in the 1950s, Arab nationalism, ceased to play an important role in the contemporary interArab relations. Still, it would be a mistake not to consider it at least partially responsible for the present-day situation in the region. The article focusses on the developmental dynamics of Arab nationalism. That entails the analysis of the circumstances under which its liberal, pro-European discourse has been gradually transformed into the authoritarian Pan-Arabism, of its impact on the political arrangement and relations in the region, as well as the analysis of the reasons that caused the idea of Arab political unification to cease functioning as a significant framework of individual and collective action. Lastly, the article discusses the political legacy of Arab nationalism. It withdrew from the political scene of the Middle East but has left behind the autocratic regimes determined to stay in power at all cost. These repressive regimes, permanently at “war” with their own citizens and with hegemonic aspirations towards neighbouring countries, are Arab nationalism’s political legacy that bears a significant responsibility for the violence that engulfed the region after the collapse of the Arab Spring and for the resulting Middle East nightmare.

Architectural monumentalism in transitional Albania

Author(s): Romeo Kodra / Language(s): English / Issue: 29/2017

This essay is focused on the artistic concept of monumentalization, in this case in architecture and urban planning, and, through some historical examples, investigates and traces the role of this concept in relation with the construction of representative political power. The chosen context is that of Albania, and more specifically Tirana, during the last 100 years, where three main political models - fascism, state socialism and contemporary neoliberal practices - with their analogies and developments in terms of relation with arts, have produced subjectivities and generated meanings in public space.

Armáda, její doktrína a organisace

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 4/2017

V říjnu 1938 byl ve Vojenských rozhledech zveřejněn článek, ve kterém se jeho autorpodplukovník Karel Veit zamýšlí nad doktrinálními principy a organizační strukturouČeskoslovenské armády. Je zřejmé, že text byl napsán před všeobecnou mobilizací(23. 9. 1938) a před podepsáním Mnichovské dohody (29. 9. 1938). Redakci se přestopříspěvek jevil aktuální, proto se rozhodla jej zveřejnit. Nikdo tehdy nemohl tušit, žese za necelých 5 měsíců geopolitická situace změní tak radikálně, že se veškeré plányi odhodlání k obraně republiky stanou součástí smutné historie. Z následujícího textu,který vám v tomto čísle přinášíme, můžeme čerpat inspiraci i dnes. Je nejen doklademo odhodlanosti armády splnit svá poslání za jakýchkoliv podmínek, zároveň je takézáznamem omylů, jež se naplno projevily až ve světle toho, co přinesl pozdější vývoj.

Around the Bloc: Bulgaria Under Pressure to Stop Neo-Nazi March

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 02/06/2018

For 15 years, extremists have annually honored a Nazi ally accused of signing death warrants for thousands of Jews.

Around the Bloc: Croatian Politicians Divided Over Proposal to Revive WWII-Era Salute

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

Historical commission issues recommendations that Ustashe-era salute could be used under certain circumstances, while some argue that it should be buried altogether.

Around the Bloc: Far-Right Croats Commemorate Bleiburg Massacre

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 05/15/2018

Some say that the event, which the Croatian parliament sponsors, has become the largest annual gathering of neo-Nazis in Europe.

Around the Bloc: Lithuania Looks Ahead, With One Eye on Russia

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 02/20/2018

Independence celebrations kick off a year of centennials across Eastern Europe.

Around the Bloc: Polish Prime Minister’s Holocaust Remarks Irk Israel

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 02/20/2018

Swastikas drawn on the gate of the Polish embassy in Tel Aviv mark the latest developments in the Polish-Israeli row over Holocaust remembrance.

Around the Bloc: Serbia’s Seselj Sabotages Croatian Lawmakers’ Historic Visit

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 04/24/2018

Some question the nationalist leader’s right to a seat in parliament after a UN court upheld his war crimes conviction.

Around the Bloc: Victory Day Celebrations Highlight Contrasting Views of War

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 05/15/2018

Putin warns against ‘exceptionalism,’ while Slovak premier denounces ‘anti-Russian madness.’

Articles 55a and 55b of the IPN Act and the Dialogue about the Holocaust in Poland

Author(s): Katarzyna Liszka / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2019

Relations between the Holocaust, memory, and law are constantly reconceptualized. In the second decade of the 21st century there is no clear consensus on the way the Holocaust, memory, and law are or should be interconnected, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. A striking example of the new dynamics of those tensions is an amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance, which in January 2018 inserted Articles 55a and 55b. The paper states that these controversial provisions (later withdrawn) should be understood as specific memory laws in response to the transnational memory of the Holocaust and the non-consensual dialogue on the Jedwabne pogrom in Polish society. The paper shows the law as a result of a certain dialogue, a voice in the dialogue, and an attempt to limit this dialogue – as well as the effects of such limitation. The paper adopts Leszek Koczanowicz’s conception of dialogue, Natan Sznaider’s description of the transnational Holocaust memory, as well as the idea of the future-oriented ethics of never again, and Eviatar Zerubavel’s concept of a conspiracy of silence in order to frame the context and meaning of the emergence, short life, disappearance, and traces of the law. Although these articles “refract” criminalization of the Holocaust and genocide negationism, understood in the context of Polish historical politics, they are themselves close to a specific form of denial, i.e. denial of the Jedwabne massacre. A recollection of the Polish memory law casts a shadow on the future, as a threat exists that the law might appear again.

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.

Balkanizacija istorijskog sećanja

Author(s): Dubravka Stojanović / Language(s): Serbian / Publication Year: 2019

Kontroverzni termin balkanizacija najčešće se koristi da bi se opisao proces fragmentacije i deljenja neke teritorije, stvaranja malih nacionalnih država na mestu starih imperija ili većih država, čime se prostor usitnjava, drobi. Proces stvaranja nacionalnih država na Balkanu započet je početkom 19. veka, s prvim nacionalnim revolucijama podignutim u okviru Osmanskog carstva i, nešto kasnije, stvaranjem prvih nezavisnih država. U kasnijim ratovima nastajale su nove države, čime se prostor dalje „parcelisao“. Naročito veliko drobljenje nastupilo je od 1990-ih godina, kada je počeo proces raspadanja Jugoslavije i ratovi na teritoriji te nekada multi nacionalne i multi konfesionalne zemlje, iz koje je nastalo 6 ili 7 novih država, u zavisnosti od toga da li priznajete nezavisnost Kosova ili ne. Zbog toga je termin balkanizacija od 1990-ih godina bio izuzetno popularan i u svetskoj javnosti, pa je bio primenjivan i na mnoge druge geopolitičke situacije.

Bariery konsolidacji demokracji lokalnej: prezentyzm i recentywizm

Author(s): Marcin Wałdoch / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2016

Constructing collective identity is one of the most crucial challenge for political power which seek legitimization. Pursuing such aim political actors choose different tools due to theirs ideological affiliation and political roots. One may observe in local Poland that depoliticization process play its role. This have a great impact on local communities. That is why local political elites make barriers for disputing history by using two techniques: presentism (is the view that neither the future nor the past exist – past times must meet present political requirements) and recentivism (only present time exist). Such practice of political power makes barriers for consolidation of democracy.

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.