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This paper examines the relationship between Bachelard’s (Gaston Bachelard, 1884–1962) philosophical comprehension of the water element, Debussy’s (Claude Debussy, 1862–1918) musical interpretation of the water phenomenon and Thaulow’s (Frits Thaulow, 1847–1906) intellection of the same element in painting. More precisely, having in mind the snow as one of aggregate states of water, I will explore via examples of Bachelard’s study on water and dreams – L’eau et les rêves essai sur l’imagination de la matière (Water and Dreams. An Essay on the Imagination of Matter, 1942), Debussy’s composition Des pas sur la neige (Footprints in the snow, Book I, 1909–1910) and Thaulow’s piece La Rivière Simoa en hiver (Winter at Simoa river – from a series of images of the Simoa river, unknown date), the reciprocal relationship of their artistic perception, as well as their interpretation of the water phenomenon. These three authors have devoted a significant “expanse” of their oeuvres to their interpretation of the phenomenon of water. In the mentioned “expanse”, their creative interpretations encounter, intertwine, and interrelate. In other words, in this “expanse” of interpretation of the water psyche, we can detect the correspondence between Bachelard’s, Debussy’s and Thaluow’s poetics of the water vastness. Therefore, through the analytical and comparative approaches, my aim is to emphasize the correspondence among Bachelard’s (philosophical), Debussy’s (musical) and Thaulow’s (painterly) representations of the water element and to demonstrate which compositional and expressive methods Debussy employs to embody his understanding of the phenomenon in question.
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Besides its main tasks – judiciary and executive, the town administration fulfilled a variety of functions ranging from economic production through defense and protection of its citizens, to the development of culture and education. This required oversight and stewardship by municipal dignitaries and extensive system of urban employees. The paper deals with the management of urban employees and town dignitaries responsible for major sectors of town economy, security, health care, culture and other areas of urban living. The author analyzes the position of urban employees and contracts made by town. Management of urban facilities belonged to the main duties of the elected members of the municipal court. Economic facilities (mills, granary), supervision of wine trade, linen weaving or patronage of hospitals represented the main areas of their functions. An important place among municipal employees belonged to servants in judiciary, diplomacy and urban defense. Specific field, financed by the town council, represented the area of art and culture, where painters, masons, organists and trumpeters were employed.
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Throughout the world cities after the fall of the totalitarian regimes deal with numerous issues that affect the everyday life of their inhabitants. The cities, which benefited from the economic direction of the totalitarian regime concerning selected sectors of the economy, may become sites on the periphery of events after several years. Conversely, the democratization of post-totalitarian societies associated with the opening of borders, free movement of persons, knowledge and technologies in a short time can affect the development of cities and towns stagnating in the previous era.
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The transformations of the North Atlantic Alliance in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and its mission in Afghanistan have proceeded hand in hand with the redefining of security interests in individual member states. Poland and Germany have also been affected by a polarization of views, particularly on the nature, place and role of NATO in today's world. The countries’ geopolitics and their varying visions of European security have significantly affected their positions.
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The article outlines the role of the EU in resolving the armed conflict in the western Sudanese province of Darfur, and explains the important role played by the EU in its engaged in peacekeeping and that guided his condition, as well as how it actions and decisions were received by the Darfurians and the government in Khartoum. Unfortunately, the nature and progress of the conflict, and above all, the great ignorance of the region and the population, makes all attempts to resolve the conflict are ineffective. Through these years, the EU has introduced a number of resolutions, declarations and sanctions. All this was not only to save the life of hundreds of thousands of civilians, but also opposition to the regime and impact on its interests. Unfortunately, there was no general coordination of EU the actions, not only in Darfur, but also in the whole of Sudan. That resulting chaos in actions related to the quality of cooperation between the EU bodies. There was no close co-operation aimed at planning of aid from the United Nations, also because it was a kind of rivalry between EU and UN organizations who want to be seen as a major mediator in peacekeeping.
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The involvement of Poland in the activities of the international community for strengthening peace, security and stability in conflict-prone states and regions was one of significant elements of the foreign policy pursued after 1989. It assumed various forms, from diplomatic initiatives and activities, to the direct participation in international peacekeeping operations and stabilisation missions. The involvement of Poland in the activities of the international community for strengthening peace, security and stability in conflict-prone states and regions was one of significant elements of the foreign policy pursued after 1989. It assumed various forms, from diplomatic initiatives and activities, to the direct participation in international peacekeeping operations and stabilisation missions.
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The study tackles the issue of applying respective theories of European integration to explain the processes occurring in the EU, and in particular, in the debt-wrecked eurozone. In the author's view, the eurozone crisis revived the dispute over the shape of EU. On one hand, it is the supranational neofunctionalism and on the other, state-centric intergovernmentalism views clashing with one another. The author believes that the key theory that successfully explains the member states' behavior in face of eurozone crisis is the intergovernmentalism theory. It assumes the primacy of nation-state and its interests in the process of European integration. This is particularly apparent in the time of crisis when supranational mechanisms typical of neofunctionalist theory serve solely the purpose of legitimizing national interests of the economically strongest EU members.
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This paper presents some remarks on the situation of Poland in NATO. The problem of ‘predictability’ is analysed on the basis of a simple scheme (system, its environment, their interactions). The geopolitical analysis of this dynamic model leads to the conclusion that the future cannot be described as highly predictable, although some long-term scenarios seem to be relatively plausible and may be used in the construction of more realistic global and national/regional strategies. The results of this analysis suggest global cooperation and regional integration.
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This article examines the role of Karimov regime and his opponents in influencing Turkish-Uzbekistani relations in the 1990s and its consequences for later developments. Following the description of the characteristics of Turkish-Uzbekistani relations, it will be discussed how far had the opposition leaders such as Abdürrahim Polat and Muhammad Salih an impact on the worsening of the bilateral ties between Turkey and Uzbekistan. This article then stresses Turkey’s attitude towards Uzbek opposition leaders which finally addresses the reasons for worsening of Turkish-Uzbekistani relations such as the bombings of Tashkent, Uzbek students in Turkey, Gülen Movement as well as the ideology of Pan-Turkism.
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No matter what the reasons are for providing development aid, the “how and where” of the countries doing it influences their image in international relations and testifies to the intelligent power of a country. Helping a country such as Tajikistan is difficult, and not only because of its geographic location or high level of poverty. It is hard to make some changes there (especially in the field of democracy) when a donor country has to face the despotic presidency of Rachmon and the high level of support for Putin's policies. Since 2004 Poland has been providing aid to this country (mainly with the participation of Polish NGOs), regardless of the fact as to whether it was on the list of priority countries or not. What are the main areas of Polish aid there? And what does Poland want and expect to achieve by helping the Tajiks? In this research and analysis the author looks for answers to these two questions.
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The first contacts of the Anglican Church with the Eastern Orthodoxy date from the early 17th century and launch a process of rapprochement, which is well known in the international historiography. Over the centuries, until today it has a different intensity depending on the degree of theological negotiations and political situation. The study traces the impact of this process among the Bulgarian Orthodox community and among Bulgarian society, how Bulgarians form their perceptions of the Anglican Church and to what extent the subject goes out of theological dialogue and is publicly known and discussed, and hence politically exploited. The author traces the attitudes and positions which the representatives of the Anglican Church occupy regarding major events related to Bulgaria, and Bulgarian Orthodox Church in the 19th and early 20th century; how individual public officials try to see farther than purely theological dialogue and to use sporadically, albeit unsuccessfully, the benevolence of the Anglican Church to Eastern Orthodoxy in the context of the national tasks that need to be resolved. During the Second World War and the Cold War Anglican-Orthodox rapprochement becomes part of big politics and is influenced by Stalin‘s religious policy. Initially, Stalin relies on the Anglican Church for expansion of Orthodox influence in international organizations, but later he begins to consider it as a rival and opponent. Consequently, the dialogue is restored only after Stalin‘s death, but on the part of Orthodox churches of the socialist camp and particularly Bulgaria it will be subject to the religious policy of „opening“ led by communist parties, which aims to use the churches in the big propaganda war between Orient and Occident about the existing religious freedom behind the Iron Curtain.
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The aim of the article is to provide a possible interpretation of identity in one of the contested border regions on the Balkans well known for the competing politics and interests by the two bordering countries – Bulgaria and Serbia, for the past century. This region is known as „Western Outlands” in the social and political life. The communal memory of the Bulgarian minority in Bosilegrad, Serbia, leads the narration through different historical periods and their respective politics to uncover an identity which has become a survival strategy at the intricate periods. This will reveal a complex picture of the multiple identity levels where the individual and social identity are tightly related and are further shaped by the existing number of internal and external „others.“
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The article examines the policy of cross-border cooperation in the field of culture and cultural and historical heritage of the bordering region of Petrich, Bulgaria, and Strumica, Macedonia. For centuries, until their final political division after 1944, the two regions were not familiar with the existence of dividing state border and established close economic, social and cultural relations. However, in the period after 1944, those relations were rendered difficult and for a certain time even completely impeded which led to their strong violation. The political contradictions between Bulgaria and Macedonia (until 1991 part of Yugoslavia) almost completely broke off the contacts and cooperation between the municipalities of Petrich and Strumica. The attempts at their resumption began only after the year of 2000 when the European mechanisms for cross-border cooperation started working. Focusing the attention on joint projects of the two municipalities, the article tries to answer the question to what extent the example of cross-border cooperation presented here achieve the purposes related to cultural and historical heritage and identity and set in the idea of a "Europe of the regions" and which are the main problems and failures.
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The paper explores the links between political magination and social memory in the sphere of everyday discourses. During a seven-week long multi-sited fieldwork in Stranja, a mountain region in the southeast corner of Bulgaria, references and allusions to politics were constantly slipping in humour, various other trivial situations and memories of the past. Using a sociolinguistic framework informed by Mikhail Bakhtin I analyse why and in what ways these utterances have ubiquitously infiltrated speech and argue that they reveal a lot about the non-collective and multidirectional character of memory. I discovered that nostalgic recollection, which in academic literature is often believed to be characteristic of European rural margins, is merely a fragment of a more complex mode of remembrance which poses a challenge to the notion that memory can be collective.
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One of the leading methodological linguistic trends of the past 20th century is undisputedly linguistic structuralism. The Prague school, also known as the Prague linguistic circle, is one of the first structuralist linguistic schools, being properly defined as functionalist in its essence. Representatives of the Prague school from its classic period (1926 – 1945) and their disciples in the late 20th century give their invaluable contribution to worldwide development of linguistics. The text examines those key concepts of Prague functional structuralism that substantially contributed to the formation and development of functional grammar as we know it in the works of A. V. Bondarko and I. Kutsarov. First, it is R. Jakobson’s concept of binarism, also known as the theory of markedness, that plays a key role in the development of modern linguistics, underlying the morphological concepts of A. V. Bondarko and I. Kutsarov that represent the relations between grammemes of morphological categories through morphological oppositions. Second, the Prague structuralists developed the functional approach to linguistic phenomena and the theory of centre and periphery in language. Both are uniquely elaborated in Bondarko’s functional theory of semantic fields underlying his theory of functional grammar. The latter was not only promoted but also successfully implemented by I. Kutsarov in Bulgaria. And last but not least, much like the Prague linguistic circle, A. V. Bondarko, I. Kutsarov and their disciples evaluate the theoretical significance of synchronic and contrastive studies. Functional grammar, which is to meet many more scientific challenges in the future, undisputedly applies to the study of a particular language as well as to contrastive studies.
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The study closely traces the fate of Church Slavonic monuments in the collections of the Basilian monasteries since the establishment of the Order of the Basilians in 1617 to the period of socialism. A full quantitative and thematic characterization of the manuscripts and books preserved until today is presented against the background of historical events. The author argues that the collections of the Basilian libraries are unique in character and represent a kind of synthesis between western and eastern traditions.
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