Transitions Online_Around the Bloc-18 February
Today’s regional roundup: U.S.-Ukrainian rocket takes off; corruption in Croatia; hazing in the Russian army; sugar mafia in Belarus; and coal mining in Mongolia.
More...We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
Today’s regional roundup: U.S.-Ukrainian rocket takes off; corruption in Croatia; hazing in the Russian army; sugar mafia in Belarus; and coal mining in Mongolia.
More...
The article focused on the problem of the political status of the Albanian state addressed at the League of Nations and at the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris during 1921. Albania’s accession to the League of Nations in December 1920 did not finally resolve the issue of international recognition of the Albanian state. The Yugoslav and Greek representatives stated in the League of Nations’ Council that prior to the formal recognition of the Albanian government, the defining of Albania’s borders with neighboring states had to be realized. They felt that the consideration of these issues was not the responsibility of the League of Nations, but of the Conference of Ambassadors of the Allied Powers. Albania’s representative to the League of Nations, Fan Noli, opposed the request of representatives of neighboring states, which was also backed by some Great Powers. The Italian government was in favor of safeguarding Albania’s political borders in 1913, but it demanded of certain strategic and economic rights of Italy in Albania. The British government leaders thought that Albania should exist as an independent state, but they thought that the borders of the Albanian state should undergo some minor rectifications. In early September 1921, the British government generally acknowledged the recognition of the priority of Italian interests in Albania. The issuance of Great Britain to the Italian government led to the achievement of an Italian-British formula, which was adopted by the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris on 9 November 1921. The decision of the Conference of Great Powers Ambassadors dated November 9th 1921 recognized the independence of the Albanian state, but it confirmed to some extent Italy’s “special rights” in Albania. The borders of southern Albania remained under the Florence Protocol of 1913. According to the decision of the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris, some “minor” border rectifications were foreseen in the territories of Shkodra, Has, Gora and Lin. The Albanian government was forced to accept the November 9 decision of the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris, arguing that delaying a definitive settlement of the border issue with neighboring states could jeopardize the existence of the Albanian state.
More...
This study aims to discuss the role of neighboring countries on conflicts and the resolution of conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa as exemplified by Côte d’Ivoire case. It is revealed that neighboring countries have the potential to influence the internal conflicts; however, they are also negatively affected by these conflicts due to the spill-over effect. In this sense, neighboring countries act largely with rational motivations in their conflict or solution oriented foreign policy behaviors. Moreover, it is asserted that while good neighborhood relations might contribute the resolution of the conflicts, pro-conflict attitudes might have a role in increasing the violence and the non-solution of the conflicts.
More...
The article focuses on Kaytek the Wizard, the English translation of Janusz Korczak’s children’s classic Kajtuś czarodziej, originally published in Poland in 1933. Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, the book came out in English with the New York-based Penlight Publications in 2012, almost eighty years after the original publication. The article begins with an overview of the theoretical context of translating children’s literature, with regard to issues such as censorship, political correctness, and ideological manipulations. It demonstrates that contentious passages have often been mitigated, in order to create a commercially or ideologically “appropriate” text, for example in the former countries of the Eastern Bloc, in Spain, or in the contemporary United States. It then describes the context of the publication of the English version of Korczak’s novel, shedding light on the roles of the copyright holder and translation commissioner, the publisher and the translator, and also mentioning the English language reviews of the translation in literary journals. Following that, the article examines the translator’s treatment of the original expressions and passages concerning racial issues, which would be considered racist today. These include references to Africans as “savages”, “apes” or “cannibals”, a reflection of the European racial stereotypes of that period. It is demonstrated that, in her treatment of such lexical items, the translator adopted a middle course, retaining some of the contentious passages but also partly omitting and toning down other controversial examples in question. The article also reflects on the role of, and constraints on, the literary translator, who may be confronted with the ethical dilemma of either respecting the integrity of the original, and recreating the collective consciousness of a bygone era, or appropriating the original text, through eliminating passages which negatively portray blacks, so as to better adapt it to the target context of multicultural American society.
More...
The article is an analysis of the regulations regarding the reduction of pensions of former officers of the People’s Republic of Poland’s security services as an element of state politics of memory, presenting the Uniformed Services Pension Amendment Acts of 2009 and 2016 from the perspective of transitional justice.Whilst investigating the admissibility of using such a retribution mechanism, the author draws attention to the purpose of this type of regulation. Reducing pensions has, in fact, two goals – a retrospective one and a prospective one. The retrospective goal is about administering historical justice by penalizing a specific group of people using various mechanisms (in this case administrative sanctions). In the prospective aspect, it is an element of institutionalizing memory and building a specific political narrative. As a consequence, apart from commemorative practices, it aims to produce and disseminate knowledge in public space, while clearly rejecting the past regime.In relation to the Uniformed Services Pension Amendment Acts, while the Act of 2009 was to some extent aimed at the retrospective goal, the 2016 Act is primarily an element of politics of memory used by authorities to control the recollection of past events by explicitly condemning the previous system and all persons in any way related to it. For this reason, the author focuses on the mechanism of reducing pensions as one of the elements of politics of memory in Poland.
More...
The article quotes, as a context for the problematics defined in the title, demographic data indicating systematic decrease of Polish population in Zaolzie. The publication referred to, Wizja 2035. Strategia rozwoju polskości na Zaolziu [Vision 2035: Strategies for the Development of Polishness in Zaolzie] (2015), suggests that national and regional awareness are two fundamental values of collective identity which consolidate the community in question. According to the mentioned study, amongst the major positive factors that have to be accounted for while considering the future of the Polish national identity, Scena Polska Tĕšínského divadla w Czeskim Cieszynie is prominent. The repertoire choices presented in the article were made as early as in 1951 by the said professional theatre company run by Polish autochthons in Těšín Silesia, and those choice ought to be perceived as both the carriers of Polishness and an important indicator of regional identity. They prove unambiguously that the only Polish-language professional theatre operating outside Poland may be considered a benchmark of rejuvenating and embedding the national and regional awareness of the Polish minority in Zaolzie.
More...
The issues touched upon in the article concern the impact of the “supernatural” element in re-defining the Ukrainians’ identity during and after the Revolution of Dignity, including the merger of the events’ casualties with the image of an angel hero fighting under the leadership of Archangel Michael against the Yanukovych regime. It instigated the process of the mythologizing victims, whose souls – according to collective imagination – composed the Nebesna Sotnya waging war against evil from the heavens above, while at the same time protecting the living. The community commenced the said re-definition of identity, among others, by referring the initiation hero’s journey, who first fought at Maidan, then proceeded to the battlefield of war, while still remaining under the “supernatural” protection. Moreover, mystical signs only reinforced the rightfulness of taking up the challenge and the righteousness of the very idea.
More...
The main goal of this paper is to explain how the group of so-called Namibian Czechs identifies itself and how it expresses the feeling of belonging to a specific identity in its narrative. The paper is based on the analysis of biographical narrative, which was obtained by the method of oral history, and it also contains information from archival sources and participant observation. The respondents are members of a group of fifty-six children war refugees, who were educated and accommodated in Czechoslovakia between 1985 and 1991. It was a part of international solidarity aid, provided to liberation movements with communist orientation. The analysis of the biographical narrative of the respondents provides us with information about the specific individual reflection on processes of self-identification and a multiplicity of certain identities.
More...
The notions of Central Europe and East-Central Europe (in opposition to Naumann’s Mitteleuropa), as well as Europe médiane, have replaced after the fall of Communism the term Eastern Europe, which was in universal use since the war. The metaphors offered by Miłosz, Kundera, and Braudel inspired the studious historical works of Halecki, Kłoczowski, Wandycz, Bibó and Szűcs, and Snyder, which, in turn, have revealed from their longue durée point of view a cohesiveness in the structures and identities of nations situated “between Germany and Russia;” the three historical kingdoms of Bohemia, Hungary, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The distinctive identity of this region was expressed in the nineteenth century under the influence of Herder’s philosophy and Romantic poetry, by the figure of a “national poet” and the idea of “cultural nationhood,” which was distinct from the “nation state” associated with the Enlightenment paradigm.
More...
The article In the Mirror of Literature. The Czech–Polish Central European Myth and Its Transformations is an attempt to outline the transformations of the Central European myth, which consists of the Habsburg myth and its transformations expressed in the works of Austromodernists after 1918; the revival of the Central European myth, which took place after the Second World War and was connected with the post-totalitarian regime introduced in the countries belonging to the Soviet Bloc; and the post-transformation period – from the 1990s to the present. The comparative juxtaposition of Polish and Czech literature allows us to trace the development, transformation, and silencing of the myth of Central Europe, which at the same time expresses the identity problems of both nations.
More...
Review of: Kaja Kaźmierska -A review of Marcin Starnawski’s Socjalizacjai tożsamość żydowska w Polsce powojennej: Narracje emigrantów z pokolenia Marca ’68, Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Dolnośląskiej Szkoły Wyższej 2016
More...
This article discusses Kamil Kijek’s book Dzieci modernizmu: Świadomość, kultura i socjalizacja polityczna młodzieży żydowskiej w II Rzeczypospolitej [Children of Modernism: The Consciousness, Culture and Political Socialization of Jewish Youth in the Second Polish Republic]. Using young people’s diaries which were sent to three competitions held in the 1930s by the Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO), Kijek studies the ways young Jewish people described themselves, their visions of Jewish or Polish-Jewish identity, and the influence exerted on their attitudes and ideological choices by schooling, the activities of political youth organizations and the antisemitism of interwar Polish culture. This was the first generation to grow up in newly independent Poland, in a state that simultaneously demanded loyalty from its Jewish denizens and excluded them from its symbolic universe. Kijek calls the worldview predominant among this Jewish generation “radical modernism” – a conviction that the world requires a radical transformation. The political shades of this view – Communism, Zionism, or the Jewish right – were of lesser importance, with membership in a particular organization often depending on the circumstances.
More...
Modern rituals are exceptionally complex events; the actors performing them have a narrative and imaginative connection with the space where the performance is taking place, with the history and tradition that the ritual concerns as well as with the wide community that they themselves represent. This paper interprets performances of post-war rituals in Vukovar, focusing on the Vukovar Remembrance Day of November 18th. The first part of the paper presents different ways of commemorating that day by Croats and by Serbs, whereby the two sides assign completely opposite meanings to the Battle of Vukovar. The second part follows the marking of Vukovar Remembrance Day after Vukovar once again became part of the constitutional and legal system of the Republic of Croatia. The third part of the paper follows the commemorations from 2013 to 2015 through the concepts of routinization and dramatization. In doing so, the paper tries to explain the differences and changes in marking one of the most important events in modern Croatian history.
More...
The vast majority of documentary films relevant to the events of March ‘68 and its consequences were created after 1989, when the abolition of censorship and the opening of previously hidden archives allowed Polish filmmakers to explore previously prohibited topics. The article focuses on the earlier period, and its main objective is to find echos of this political crisis in documentary films created before the collapse of the communist regime in Poland.
More...
This study discusses the first of a series of topics that I believe are relevant to the recent developments in the Romanian-Hungarian relationship. The background for the Romanian-Hungarian relationship has changed profoundly in the last few years. The factors that sparked these changes include the fact that many Romanians of Hungarian ethnicity have obtained the Hungarian citizenship, the increase in Hungarian investment in Transylvania, the influence of FIDESZ among Hungarian ethnics, the alienation of the Hungarian community in Romania along an increase in its contacts with Hungary and, at the same time, its emancipation from the Romanian state. Few investigations have looked at these topics. The many, mostly ideological, texts written on the occasion of the two centennials, of the Great Unification and the Trianon Treaty, cannot take the place of the research that needs to inform adequate policies towards the new reality of the Romanian-Hungarian relationship. The paradigm of the “Romanian-Hungarian reconciliation” that dominated the '90s and the beginning of the '2000s seems obsolete. This first part of the study is an introduction to the issue of “the missing research”. My analysis looks at the relevant actors, decision-makers and those influential in forming public opinion, that affect the relationship Romania has with its Hungarian minority and with Hungary.
More...
The author analyzes the figure of the cyborg in science fiction literature and film. The text begins by showing this kind of literary work in the theoretical field and presents it as an interactive discourse. The author describes the scientific roots of constructing a human-technical hybrid, emphasizing the ideological and political context of this research. In this approach, the cyborg appears as a participant in and also a hostage of the Cold War. Next, the author finds literary and film creations of cyborgs inspired by this political and military heritage. The article also presents alternative images of cyborgs co-creating a feminist and postcolonial discourse. They were also included in specific policies and strategies aimed at deconstructing concepts such as sex and gender, sexuality, race, nation, social class. The main thesis of the article is that as fictitious and real entities, cyborgs are prone to ideologization and burdened with the obligation to politicize. Therefore, when studying cyborgs in literature, film and comics, we must ask what ideologies and politicians they serve.
More...
The article presents theoretical and methodological constructions of the analytics of the phenomenon of identity, modernized socio-cultural determinants of the content of European identity, updated the logic of transformation from the national-ethnic, historical and cultural principles of the interpretation of identity to modern politically motivated conceptualizations. The specificity of the discursive procedures of European identity in contemporary philosophical inventions is explored. The globalization context (one’s Asian-European dimension) was discovered on the problem of identity clash at the perspectives of Chinese geopolitical strategies (One Belt, One Road Initiative). The results of World Values Survey were interpreted for substantiation of conclusions.
More...
Although the gendered media portrayal of female Kurdish fighters has drawn academic attention, the representation of the socio-political model of Rojava by the British and American media is often neglected. This paper surveys the British and American media to understand the kinds of opinions found in the media, the discursive means that make the Rojava model intelligible, and what is rendered either commonsensical or unimaginable. The Rojava project is framed as “a separatist rebellion”, “an experiment”, and “a genuine social revolution”. By excluding the anti-capitalist and ecological principles of Rojava, and either dismissing or romanticising its achievements, these discourses render an alternative to capitalism and the nation-state unthinkable, and reproduce Orientalist images of the region, thus serving capitalist and imperialist interests. This study suggests that we should pay more attention to socio-political imaginations and representations of non-state paradigms in order to understand the hegemony of the state.
More...
How does the role of ordinary citizens change in the interpretation and production of national identity under an authoritarian political system? Exploring the discursive role of authoritarian political stability on perceptions of national identity, this study examines how categories of “national” are appropriated and internalized in identity talks among Belarusians. It offers a bottom–up perspective on national identification, drawing on analysis of six focus group discussions with Belarusian citizens. The main objective was to observe everyday language and how people construct symbolic significance for certain practices as “national” and what are the meanings invested in replicating and re-enacting different identity markers, given the contingencies of everyday life in an authoritarian political context. I evaluate cross-group and intergroup discursive variations in responses and repertoires of volunteer participants in terms of agreement and disagreement. Public conformity with regime ideational practices does not appear to equate with political allegiance to the current regime. Even when identity repertoires echo the identity discourses of official state ideology, people attach their own meanings and interpretations to these identity markers. However, I find that the authoritarian context affects how identity repertoires are enacted and talked about. Integrating performative aspects of identity talks into the analysis, I note how participants consciously reflect on the sensitivity of political topics, and prioritize politically neutral narratives.
More...
Jovan Rašković, the popular founding president of Croatia’s Serbian Democratic Party (Srpska demokratska stranka, SDS), is widely viewed as representing a “missed opportunity” for peace in Croatia in 1990–1991, a moderate advocate of “cultural autonomy” and equality within Croatia who was undermined by the aggressive politics of Slobodan Milošević’s Serbia, which supported instead the territorial and separatist ideas of Milan Babić. This support is considered a key component of Milošević’s intervention in Croatia and is often viewed as decisive in foreclosing opportunities for a peaceful settlement of Croat–Serb relations. This article challenges this interpretation, arguing that the SDS’s politics were premised from the start on the notion that the Serbs in Croatia were a “sovereign nation” with the right to self-determination up to secession. If Croatia remained in a Yugoslav federation, this meant that Serbs could opt for a wide variety of rights within Croatia, including forms of territorial autonomy. In the event of Yugoslavia’s disintegration or transformation into a confederation, the Serbian minority could secede from Croatia. The differences between Rašković and Babić have been considerably overstated, and some of the SDS’s more moderate rhetoric fundamentally misunderstood. It was Rašković, not Babić or Milošević, who founded the territorial and separatist politics of the Serbian Democratic Party in Croatia.
More...