Around the Bloc: US-Soviet Relations on ‘Hair-Trigger’ Alert in 1983
Britain wants to bar the release of papers showing a close call between the Cold War superpowers.
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Britain wants to bar the release of papers showing a close call between the Cold War superpowers.
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(A polemics with Michael Stewart’s article Remembering without commemoration:the mnemonics and politics of Holocaust memories among European Roma, “Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute” nr 10, 2004) In the recent years the traditional approach to Roma as „people without history and memory” has been challenged, among others, by a new perspective that assumes that even if Roma do not consciously reflect upon their past, the past is „remembered”for them due to the fact that it is in a way „stored” or „embedded” in the nature of the relations between Roma and non-Roma. Such an „implicit memory” approach, represented by Michael Stewart, means a step forward since it has assumed a more sophisticated concept of social memory. Nevertheless, it shares with the older approach the essentialized concept of Roma identity. With a help of Lech Mroz’s conception of Romani „non-memory that does not mean forgetting”, I am developing mycriticism of Stewart’s argument as (1) treating the Roma as a passive and static group formed by external determinants; (2) homogenizing the diversity of Romani life; (3) presenting a monolithic picture of the non-Roma world; (4) seeing a firm borderline between Roma and non-Roma while we should rather speak here of a liminal frontier zone; (5) neglecting the actual cases of active remembrance among Roma, supported by Romani commemorative ceremonies. In the end, I am suggesting that in contemporary „postmodern condition” the Romani practices of memory and identity do not radically differ from the non-Romani ones, especially those influenced by traumatic historical experience.
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The purpose of this article is to show the survival strategies and the everyday life of Jewish women living on the so-called Aryan side in occupied Krakow and its surroundings. Ego-documents are the core source: relations and diaries collected in the Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, the Archives of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the Archives of the Metropolitan Curia in Kraków. A thorough analysis of the phenomenon is very complex, therefore this article only discusses the fate of the Jewish women who co-existed amongst Polish society rather than those who did not have ‘Aryan documents’ or could be betrayed by their appearance, and were thus forced to remain in hiding the whole time. The article not only pays attention to the survival strategies and ways in which they disguised their origins and identities, but it also explores the everyday life, family relationships, work and religious life of these women. The author’ s aim was not to analyse aid provided to Jewish women by non-Jews, or symmetrically, to synthesise problems regarding the selling out of Jews in occupied Krakow. Both issues do appear in the article, but rather as background to the individual cases, since they were, in fact, inseparable elements of any survival strategy on the Aryan side in the GG ‘capital’. The article also notes the absence of certain topics in the interviews, related to the daily life of Jewish women in hiding, which makes a more comprehensive analysis difficult.
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Some diplomats see the trip as part of Moscow’s search for friends within the EU to undermine sanctions over the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
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Four people were charged for arresting and abusing Gheorghe Ursu, a writer and dissident who died in police custody in 1985.
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Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way (madhyamaka) doctrine met with the objection that it is a mere verbal attack (vitaṇḍā) against other philosophical positions. As one of the Madhyamaka critics pointed out: because Nāgārjuna does not hold own position, he is not able to justify his criticism of the essence (svabhāva). The article is an answer to the question whether, in the context of Indian philosophy, it is possible to know things devoid of essences. Theory of knowledge of this kind, i.e. the concept of omniscience (sarvajña) was presented in Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā sutra. Associations between Nāgārjuna’s texts and the sutra suggest that omni- science could be a substrate for epistemological position of the Middle Way.
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The area in the bend of the Brda in Bydgoszcz, which is the portion of the district Okole, now occupies the campus of the University of Economy in Bydgoszcz, food company Colian Sp. with o.o. Bydgoszcz (formerly “Jutrzenka” Colian, Division No. 3) and the newly arising Nordic Haven (residential and commercial property). These are inner city brown elds located at the con uence of the so-called Old Bydgoszcz Canal and the River Brda, the stretch of Solidarity Bridges towards the Bridge of Queen Jadwiga. History of the district Okole is directly related to the economic development of Bydgoszcz, which occurred in connection with the construction of the Bydgoszcz Canal and later a major rail line and the location of large industrial plants. These projects were aimed by the German authorities to improve the Bydgoszcz junction of water-rail-road, as an internal communications center. Based on the conversion of functions of this area will be illustrated the conversion of industrial space in academic and recreational space. The idea and the main assumptions adopted revitalization activities are based on a holistic, integrated approach to the revitalization process. The objective of the planned work and regeneration was the restoration and development of the center-functions, including the continuity of the historical heritage associated with this area. Because degraded shoe factory buildings were taken over and revitalized by a college, it can be concluded that these areas still function as productive. But whereas previously, in the industrial economy and in accordance with the standards of industrial society, it was the production and distribution of products, now in the knowledge society it is making knowledge, or rather the enrichment and development of human capital and also its distribution in the minds and activities of graduates.
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After the annexation of Crimea in Russia, irrevocable changes occurred. The space for dialogue grew smaller, politics waded into our daily lives, leaving untouched neither culture nor scientific discourse, and sparing neither our small talk nor the idle stories we swap at bus stops, in cafes, and during breaks at work. It has become harder to avoid confrontation, and more difficult to keep our ears tuned to a reality that is becoming unbearably homogeneous and saturated with war propaganda. Can we therefore talk about a new symbolic conflict in Russia? About a split, about two societies, two kinds of people – as some would like? These questions have been asked repeatedly for months by those involved in Russian culture. Intellectuals trying to understand these dynamics talk about a crash or a turn, about the end of illusions, or about the beginning of a new world, a new Russia which “has risen from its knees”. The present text considers the attitudes of Russian intellectuals during the annexation of the Crimea and the war in Donbas in the autumn of 2014.
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Based on the example of the wartime texts of Witold Hulewicz, the article shows how this author, an eminent figure in (Great) Poland’s culture, and, at the same time, a participant in two world wars, struggled with his experiences with the conflicts of his day. Hulewicz uses his texts as a weapon, and is able to appreciate and make use of their potential. While fighting on the front as a young soldier during the First World War, he wrote poems as a form of confession, a way of discharging emotions. Hulewicz works through his experience of the Second World War differently, meticulously constructing elaborate propaganda texts and thereby confronting the demons of war. By reading Hulewicz’s texts through the category of trauma, it is possible to show a new side to the relationship between culture and conflict. In Witold Hulewicz’s biography, conflicts give culture a new dimension, and culture gives conflicts meaning, while trauma acts as a bridge connecting culture and conflict.
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Harriet Low Hilliard’s memories were written in the first half of the 19th century during her four year stay in the Portuguese Macau, on the southern coast of China. She was twenty years old when her aunt Abigail Low and uncle William Henry Low invited her to travel to Macau. It was time when women were not allowed to enter Canton which she visited thanks to the position of her uncle. In her memories, Harriet Low Hilliard describes everyday life of foreigners in Macau, bringing up such subjects as accommodation, food, fashion and customs of Europeans in that small Portuguese colony, as well as customs of the local people working and living in Macau and its suburbs.
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The main aim of the paper is to analyze the ground-breaking imperial edict issued in the Middle Kingdom in 1906, which introduced a package of reforms aimed to establish a constitutional monarchy. The edict is an important part of the process of selective adaptation of not only certain Western institutions, but also the fundamental principles relating to the core organization of the political community. This process was neither mechanical nor one-dimensional. „Translation” of the Western object was involved in a number of dilemmas and challenges (the relationship between the tradition of the „new”; instrumentality or autotelicity of copying foreign institutions; selection of native counterparts of the copied objects). The main theoretical perspective employed in the paper is the “legal transplant” theory. It enables to point out a broader set of conclusions about the process of copying foreign laws and institutions basing on the particular example from China at the beginning of the 20th century.
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South Slavic scholars jump all over Polish-American professor’s claim of an inborn East European tendency to cheat.
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The subject matter of this document is the formation of the concept of supplementary penalties in the criminal law in the period of the Second Polish Republic. The article presents the birth of the concept of supplementary penalties in Polish criminal law science, which was formed in the early 20th century against a background of criticism regarding the institution of legal consequences of conviction and efforts to grant judges more discretion with regard to sentencing. The article contains a broad presentation of the views on criminal law doctrine concerning the need to break-away from the automatic consequences of conviction and to introduce supplementary penalties. The article also presents discussion on the final model of supplementary penalties that took place during the works of the Codification Committee and describes the normative form of supplementary penalties in the Penal Code of 1932. It was concluded that the replacement of legal consequences of conviction with supplementary penalties was an expression of the idea of progress in Polish criminal law.
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Witchcraft cases in Poland (before partitions) have been examined by historians since olden times. Among the issues discussed in this matter there was the Act of the Polish Sejm of 1543, according to which witchcraft cases should be in the competence of ecclesiastical courts. Researchers have been interpreting the meaning of this Act in a very different way. According to one group, the Act excluded the competence of lay courts in witchcraft cases totally. Another group claimed that the lay court could examine a case if there was evidence of damage caused by a witch. In practice these cases were examined by the lay courts (especially town courts). It has been pointed out recently that the 1543 Act was only supposed to remain in force for one year, so there was no legal ground to undermine the competence of lay courts in witchcraft cases. It seems that one cannot agree with such a simple solution. Research on practice of the old courts and the works of the 17th century lawyer Adam Żydowski, presents a viewpoint contrary to this. Żydowski, among other issues, discusses the competence of lay and ecclesiastical courts in witchcraft cases and illustrates their respective abilities. The author himself – according to his concept of research – does not present clear opinion. Notwithstanding, his work reveals that the 1543 Act was included in 17th century treatises as still being in power. Probably the clause which limited the act to only one year had been forgotten.
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On 24 Oct. 1934 the President of Poland issued an ordinance concerning the Territorial Government Auditing Union (Związek Rewizyjny Samorządu Terytorialnego – ZRST). It was assumed that reasonable control would make it possible to prevent wasteful and ineffective economic undertakings of local governments. The Union’s operations were supervised by the Minister of Internal Affairs. ZRST was responsible for inspecting financial and economic operations of local governments, as well as municipal plants, enterprises, institutions and companies in terms of their formal compliance and usefulness (in particular from the viewpoint of cost-effectiveness required from the public economy sector). In connection with its surveillance duties ZRST carried out large-scale activities focusing on providing instruction, advice and guidance related to the financial and economic operation of local governments.
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In this article the author tries to analyze extraordinary life of famous painter Vincent van Gogh. The article consists of eight parts. The author stars with the general characteristic of Vincent’s childhood, which was the product of a strict Calvinist upbringing, and his first apprenticeship with the international art dealers, Goupil. The second part concentrates on Vincent’s attempts to follow in his father’s footsteps, his preoccupation with religion and study of the Bible, which led him to missionary work as a lay-preacher in the Borinage, a coal-mining district in Belgium. In the third part the author tries to show the beginnings of van Gogh’s art work, but the author notes that Vincent wasn’t really interested in following any traditional art education. In another part of the article the author concentrates on stormy relationship with Clasina Maria Hoornik, better known as Sien, a woman older than Vincent. In the fifth part author notes that Vincent finally understood that to be taken seriously as an artist, he had to come to Paris, where he befriended many of the aspiring artists of the day. The six part concentrates on van Gogh’s staying on the south to Arles, in Provence and his unsuccessful attempt to realize the biggest dream of his life, establish an artists’ colony, a “Studio in the South”, as he called it, where artists could work together in a collegiate culture. In another part of the article the author focuses on tragic consequences of Paul Gauguin’s stays in Arles – Vincent suffered repeated episodes of mental instability and madness. At the end of the article the author concentrates on van Gogh’s stays in Auvers and the mystery of his tragic death.
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Kuzman A. Shapkarev has left very interesting records of traditions, beliefs and mythological stories for the antiquity in Macedonia in the huge collected folk material funds. For the earliest history of the Macedonian spaces he recorded the tradition of the old ethnic population Ezerci which inhabited the coastal area of the Ohrid Lake. Attached to it are also the folk beliefs for the giants as very tall and mighty heroes and for the Emperor Alexander III of Macedon as the inventor of the wars, which is actually a small fragment of the well known motif for the quest of live (immortal) water in the Alexander Romance. Shapkarev announces that he heard the stories for Alexander III of Macedon from his father Anastas which he certainly learned from someone older in his family. The traditions of the Ohrid settlement Hermeleia, where the Christian saint St. Erasmus preached as well as the tradition of the Prespa villages Istok and German as ostensible birthplaces of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian and his regiment commander Velizarius, are particularly interesting.
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In the middle of the 5th century AD, when the emperor Theodosius ruled, Macedonia was divided again. Two new provinces with newly formed borders began to exist in a place where until recently existed the provinces Macedonia Prima and Macedonia Salutaris. The city of Thessalonica remained the capital of the province Macedonia Prima, but the borders of the province expanded, regardless of the first division in the 80’ of the 4th century AD. The province now took the territories of south and central Macedonia, including the city of Heraclea. The city of Stobi was assigned as capital to the province Macedonia Secunda and the territories that the province now took were those in the middle flow of the river Vardar, the lower flow of the river Crna reka and the territories by the river Bregalnica. The province Macedonia Secunda was abolished in the period 535– 545 AD, when Macedonia was reunited and referred to as whole. Based on the archaeological excavations so far, there were three wine regions in Macedonia: the Bregalnica region, Vardar region and Tikves region. This paper will present the vineyard in the city Bargala, the wine press in Stobi and several objects found in the Tikves region which refers to an existing vineyard in the ancient site of Beograd.
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