Pestrost panelové šedi

Author(s): Petr Roubal / Language(s): Czech Issue: 4/2019

Skřivánková, Lucie, Rostislav Švácha, Eva Novotná, and Karolina Jirkalová (eds). Paneláci 1: Padesát sídlišť v českých zemích. Kritický katalog k cyklu výstav Příběh paneláku. Prague: Uměleckoprůmyslové museum, 2016, 463 pp., ISBN 978-80-7101-161-3; Skřivánková, Lucie, Rostislav Švácha, Martina Koukalová, and Eva Novotná (eds). Paneláci 2: Historie sídlišť v českých zemích 1945–1989. Kritický katalog k výstavě Bydliště – panelové sídliště: Plány, realizace, bydlení 1945–1989. Prague: Uměleckoprůmyslové museum, 2017, 350 pp., ISBN 978-80-7101-169-9. Both collective publications (Prefab houses 1: Fifty prefab housing schemes in the Czech Lands. A critical catalogue of the “Prefab house story” series of exhibitions and Prefab houses 2: History of housing schemes in the Czech Lands 1945–1989. A critical catalogue of the “Residence – prefab housing scheme: Planning, realization, housing 1945–1989” exhibition) are products of a broadly conceived interdisciplinary research project the deliverables of which included, inter alia, exhibitions in Prague and all regional capitals of the Czech Republic and which were awarded the prestigious Magnesia Litera prize in 2018 as an extraordinary feat in the field of professional and educational literature. In the reviewer’s opinion, they bring the first-ever systematic attempt to periodize the prefab-based building projects int he Czech part of the former Czechoslovakia between the mid-1940s and the end of the 1980s, at the same time providing a multifaceted characterization based ona representative sample of fifty prefab housing schemes in Bohemia and Moravia. Each of them was subjected to a thorough artistic-historical analysis outlining the development of the housing scheme’s concept, providing brief information about its authors, describes its urbanistic concept, prefab technology used, and artefacts and decorations. Added to the above is a set of interdepartmental studies analyzing different aspects of the historical development of prefab housing schemes. The compact collective of authoresses and authors has succeeded in presenting the prefab housing schemes, no matter how similar they may seem, as a varied and dynamically developing phenomenon, which fact is underlined by excellent work with archival photographs and the generally outstanding graphic layout of the publications. The only critical comment the reviewer has is that the authors were so absorbed by the architectural aspect of the matter that they tended to overlook substantial changes of the socialist urbanism in Czechoslovakia.

O příznacích totality ve všedním životě a jejich uměleckém zobrazení

Author(s): Pavel Vlk / Language(s): Czech Issue: 4/2019

Klimeš, Ivan and Jan Wiendl (eds). Kultura a totalita, Vol. 4: Každodennost. Prague: Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, 2016, 442 pp., ISBN 978-80-7308-701-2. The reviewed publication is the last volume of the remarkable collective publication project comprehensively titled "Culture and Totalitarianism", in which its editors, film historian Ivan Klimeš and literary historian Jan Wiendl, attempt to present the notion of “totalitarianism” through an analysis of its manifestations in art and culture in the Czech public space in the 19th and 20th century, since the national renaissance until the fall of the Communist regime. They approach the notion of totalitarianism in an innovative and unconventional manner, reflecting it not primarily in a political framework, but against a broader backdrop, using an interdisciplinary interconnection of philosophy and selected art disciplines. While the previous volumes were examining manifestations of the broadly defined totalitarianism inconnection with the topics of nation, war, and revolution, the final one, titled "Everydayness", focuses on manifestations of totalitarianism in artistic depictions of everydayness. The reviewer presents in detail the initial, more general studies, as well as different case analyses and insights into the history of literature, film, and theatre, concluding that the publication is an inspiration for interested parties from many fields and it has succeeded in meeting its objective

Tuzemský komiks dvacátého století

Author(s): Lucie Kubíčková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 4/2019

Prokůpek, Tomáš, Pavel Kořínek, Martin Foret, and Michal Jareš. Dějiny československého komiksu 20. století, Vols. 1–3. Prague: Filip Tomáš – Akropolis, 2014, 996 + 87 pp.,ISBN 978-80-7470-061-3. The reviewer presents a three-tome publication titled "History of the Czechoslovak comics of the 20th century" and written by four authors as the most comprehensive work on the history of comics in the Czech Lands and Slovakia, or in Czechoslovakia, in the twentieth century. In addition to the text, an opulent graphic accompaniment containing more than five hundred illustrations plays an equal role; an important part of the work is a rich technical apparatus concentrated in the third volume. In the reviewer’s opinion, a clear arrangement of the contents, unified methodology, and chronological structure of chapters contribute to a generally positive impression of the book. The chapters bring, in particular, an overview and description of Czechoslovak pictorial serials as well as domestic translations of foreign comics, but there is also a description of a more general historical context and a capture of the period (frequently rather critical) reflection of this pop culture phenomenon. However, much less space has been devoted to an analysis of transformation of comics in Czechoslovakia and their context. Still, the reviewer believes the work is, save for a few minor details, beyond reproach, its uniqueness and contributionare illustrated by many awards and nominations it has earned.

Rozpaky nad monumentem o dějinách československého komiksu

Author(s): Martin Franc / Language(s): Czech Issue: 4/2019

Prokůpek, Tomáš, Pavel Kořínek, Martin Foret, and Michal Jareš. Dějiny československého komiksu 20. století, Vols. 1–3. Prague: Filip Tomáš – Akropolis, 2014, 996 + 87 pp.,ISBN 978-80-7470-061-3. The reviewer sees the three-tome publication titled "History of the Czechoslovak comics of the 20th century" as a work which is impressive at first sight and based on extraordinarily voluminous and meticulous heuristics bringing amazing results in the form of a mass of reliable and often hitherto unknown information, and with an excellent graphic design. However, the superb positivistic performance of the authors implies, in the reviewer’s opinion, a problem with the reader’s ability to absorb the deluge of data often presented as tiresome lists of authors, names and characteristics of the pictorials without a framework that would keep them together. As a result, the general impression is fragmentary rather than compact and concise. In addition, the authors perceive comics as a specific literary-graphic genre and almost ignore interactions between this pop culture phenomenon and the society. The reviewer concludes that the authors have created a basic inventory of Czechand Slovak comics, but have not progressed toward a structured historical analysis.

Blízký východ v komparativní perspektivě

Author(s): Adam Coman / Language(s): Czech Issue: 4/2019

Černý, Karel. Velká blízkovýchodní nestabilita: Arabské jaro, porevoluční chaos a nerovnoměrná modernizace 1950–2015. Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2017, 577 pp., ISBN 978-80-7422-595-6; English edition: Instability in the Middle East: Structural changes and uneven modernisation 1950–2015. Prague: Charles University – Karolinum Press, 2017, 476 pp., ISBN 978-80-246-3427-2. An abridged English version of this review has been published in the online version of the British Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 46, No. 3 (2019). The book by Karel Černý, published simultaneously in English and Czech (with the title "The great Middle Eastern instability: The Arab Spring, post-revolution chaos, and uneven modernization 1950–2015"), offers, in the reviewer’s opinion, a unique and original analysis of a broad spectrum of issues which the Middle East region has had to face roughly since the end of WW2. The author analyses modernization processes in local politics, economies, education, and media, as well as demographical changes and urbanization, finding the roots of the regional instability in a disharmony of the above spheres. He sets his studies of these regions into several macrohistoric-sociological comparative frameworks illustrating both specific and general aspect of the modernization process in the Middle East. In doing so, he evaluates the roles of Islam and post-colonialism as two indispensable factors of the situation in the Middle East in responsive and unconventional manner. Černý backs his analysis and conclusions by a broad selection of secondary published sources and a firm theoretical anchoring, but also by original and detailed empirical research and his own productive theoretical model. Thanks to the above, the author is able to present to us an accurate and convincing picture of the processes and events leading to the tumultuous Arabian Spring and subsequent events.

Emanuel Famíra – muž, který netoužil po Jaru

Author(s): Ondřej Holub / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2020

The case study deals with the Czechoslovak artist Emanuel Famíra (1900–1970), an autodidact who was active in multiple areas of art and who closely associated his lifeand work with the Communist movement. In the early 1920s, Famíra started performing as a solo dancer of the ballet troupe of the National Theatre in Prague and also became a relatively successful painter and sculptor. In the 1930s, he was also involvedin political theatre and these activities earned him several months of imprisonment. He established Proletscéna, an avant-garde theatre, of which he was a playwright, director and actor, and also the puppet Theatre of Pioneers, for which he was creating remarkable puppets. He joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and was participating in its promotional events. After the liberation in 1945, he was the director of the ballet troupe of the National Theatre in Prague for a short time, and then hewas making his living as a graphic artist and pedagogue. His graphic work drew from impressionist-realistic traditions and subsequently identified itself with templates of socialist realism. In the 1950s, he was officially recognized, but he was finding himself increasingly on the periphery of artistic and social life in the 1960s. He could not identify himself with the advancing liberalization, he was openly opposing the reform movement during the Prague Spring, and joined an informal group of “old” orthodox Communist led by Josef Jodas (1905–1970) after the Soviet occupation. The presented study aims to examine the reasons and personal motives which caused Famíra to radically oppose ideas of the “socialism with a human face”. Methodologically inspired by works of German historian Jochen Hellbeck, the author attempts to look into Famíra’s intellectual, worldview and political development through the optics of his autobiography, diary entries, correspondence, and theoretical reflections of art work, and to set it into a historical context. Using the above as a basis, he attempts to define a certain type of revolutionary narrative shared by the group of Czechoslovak Communist “dogmatists” referred to above in the end of the 1960s. The author hypothesizes that the original source and also the keystone of the “Stalinist” political mentality was the intransigent strategy of the international Communist movement inthe first half of the 1930s, which was declared by the Communist International under the banner of fight against the so-called social fascism and of “class against class”. In his opinion, the profoundly adversarial perception of the world became a part of the identity of individuals such as Emanuel Famíra, surviving as an “undercurrent” in the Communist movement and activating itself in emergencies such as the Prague Spring.

Alcoves of Indian Knowledge in Theofil Simenschy’s Works

Author(s): Hilda-Hedvig Varga / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

The present text aims to highlight the contribution of the Romanian scholar Theofil Simenschy to Indian Studies in Romania, who became the first to teach Sanskrit at an institution of higher education – in Iași. The goal of reminding or helping readers discover his legacy in the forms of translations from Sanskrit into Romanian of sacred Hindu texts and several didactic works, full of useful information, was also kept in mind when bringing ideas together.

Madhva and Calvin. A Comparative Study of the Views of Two Medieval Theologians of Hinduism and Christianity

Author(s): B.N. Hebbar / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

This article compares and contrasts two eminent theologians, one Hindu (Madhva), and one Christian (Calvin) who had similar ideas in terms of the sovereignty and majesty of God and the doctrine of Predestination of souls each, of course, based on their respective religious-cultural contexts and scriptural texts.

The Third Assembly of the World Council of Churches in New Delhi, in 1961, in the Asian Religious Context of the Second Half of the Twentieth Century

Author(s): Ștefan Popa / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

The Third General Assembly of the World Council of Churches took place in New Delhi, a multicultural and interreligious town in India. By this means, the World Council took a step forward towards the dialogue with the world’s religions. From ancient times, India was a place of dialogue between adherents of different cultures and religious traditions. At the Third General Assembly of the WCC, the interreligious dialogue which will be more acknowledged throughout the years became a leitmotif on the ecumenical agenda of the member churches. In this study, I try to present how this historical ecumenical event has shaped the interreligious dialogue architecture of the World Council and how it fits in the Asian interreligious landscape. It was the first General Assembly of the WCC outside the traditional Christian space, which up to that moment represents more or less the European and North-American geographical space.

Uma Das Gupta, A History of Sriniketan. Rabindranath Tagore’s Pioneering Work in Rural Reconstruction

Author(s): Eleonora Olivia Bălănescu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

Review of: Uma Das Gupta, A History of Sriniketan. Rabindranath Tagore’s Pioneering Work in Rural Reconstruction, New Delhi, Niyogi Books, 2022, 234 pp., ISBN: 978-93-91125-44-8.

Zasoby wileńskich archiwów jako źródło informacji o polskich pisarzach z przełomu XIX i XX wieku

Author(s): Irena Fedorowicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2022

Collections of manuscripts in Vilnius are stored in three archives: the Lithuanian State Historical Archives, the Central State Archives of Lithuania, and the Lithuanian Literature and Art Archive. They are also stored in the Manuscript Sections of the most important Vilnius libraries: the Library of the Vilnius University, the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, and the Lithuanian National Library of Martynas Mažydas. Among the collections are many documents and written texts (referred to by the Latinate word polonica) from different epochs. Polonica texts by Polish writers and poets of the 19th and 20th centuries have been examined mainly by Polish researchers. Vilnius collections consist of many documents presenting the characters of minorum gentium writers such as Czesław Jankowski, Nikodem Erazm Iwanowski, and Maria Rodziewiczówna. Manuscripts are a valuable source of information about these authors. Irena Fedorowicz’s aim in this article is to show the output of archival studies concerning the life and work of 19th- and 20th-century writers. Some of the results have already been published in Lithuanian scholarly publications in the years 2016–2022.

Най-важните категории християнско население с военнопомощни или полицейско-охранителни задължения и тяхното място в социалната структура на османското общество – сходства и различия (XV – първите десетилетия на XVII в.)

Author(s): Krastyo Yordanov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2022

The study examines several categories of the Christian population with military assistance and police security duties during the early centuries of Ottoman rule. Their obligations and socio-economic status are compared. The study shows that very often it seems that the service of martolos, jebelyu voinuks, akanji Christians, Vlachs and derbentjias overlapped and there were many points of contact. Much more specific were the duties of the voynuks than the imperial stables and doganjias (falconers). What all the military aid groups studied had in common was that they were exempt from extraordinary taxes and duties. However, they were at different levels in the social hierarchy of Ottoman society, depending on the conditions under which they performed their official duties and their sources of income. An important criterion for determining the place in the social hierarchy was also the tax status under Ottoman law – whether people of a certain category with special obligations cultivated Mirian land within timars, zeamets, hass and waqfs, owing land taxes to their owners (which was characteristic of the raya), or were exempt from tax. The martoloses and falconers, owners of timars, as well as those who received a salary for their regular military service were identified as representatives of the askers. Voynuk commanders of lower rank – lagators, and Wallachian elders - princes, who in the 15th century owed timars can also be classified as military class. One step lower in the hierarchy were the representatives of those military aid groups which, in return for their service, were exempt from all land and personal taxes within the official farms they owned. These people were an intermediate category between the raya and the askers. Voinuks, part of the akandjias, the Falconers and the martoloses, had a similar status. This group also includes the Vlachs, who made a living from cattle breeding, and few settled in the villages, engaged in agriculture, but did not pay land taxes. The lowest in this categorization are some of the falconers, akandjias and martoloses, as well as all derbentjias. These groups were exempted only from state extraordinary taxes and duties, but paid all other raiyat taxes along with the ordinary raya. Therefore, we can say that these people best fit the concept of privileged raya.

Roma voices in history. A sourcebook. Roma civic emancipation in Central, South-eastern and Eastern Europe from the 19th Century until World War II

Author(s): Magdalena Slavkova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2022

Book Review

Впечатляващи изследвания за историята на столицата

Author(s): Nikolay Poppetrov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2022

Books Review

Кризата в Косово в последното десетилетие на СФР Югославия

Author(s): Mariyana STAMOVA / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2022

The study provides an overview of the crisis in Kosovo in the 1980s, which is analyzed from an economic, political and international perspective. The period from Tito’s death until the mid-1980s was characterized by growing discontent among the Albanian population and a gradual escalation of tensions in Kosovo. On the other hand, after the death of the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha on April 11, 1985, Ramiz Alija became the head of the Albanian Labor Party and Albania entered a new stage of internationalization of the problem of the situation of the Albanians in Yugoslavia. The negative phenomena and trends in the development of Tito’s Yugoslavia in its last decades and especially after the death of the Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito brought the country to a serious crisis. The contradictions in the Yugoslav society, the economic and political problems and the inter-ethnic tensions were exacerbated significantly and questioned the unity of the Yugoslav federation, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) and the future of the “Yugoslav model of socialism”. The general crisis in Yugoslavia, which encompassed the different areas of life found expression in the extreme aggravation of the economic, social, political and interethnic relations in Kosovo. The political processes, the exacerbation of the inter-ethnic relations, the developments in Kosovo and especially the introduced emergency measures had a negative effect on the international reputation of Yugoslavia. In the late 1980s the multinational Yugoslav federation faced the problem of its further existence.

Едно изследване на еленски род със забележителен принос за утвърждаване на българска държавност

Author(s): Ljubomir Zlatev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2022

Book Review

Гласове от „сянката на историята“ (70-те години на ХIХ и 50-те години на ХХ век). – Извори за историята на жените: дневници, спомени, писма, белетристика.

Author(s): Rositsa Stoyanova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2022

Sources Collection Review

Приключенията на цветовете

Author(s): Tatyana Batuleva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 5/2022

Енциклопедично изследване на национално-териториалните конфликти в Източна Европа от 30-те – 40-те години, осъществено от един историк

Author(s): Iskra Baeva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2022

Book Review

Ohlédnutí prvního biskupa plzeňského

Author(s): Michal Sklenář / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2022

The protagonist of the book "V Boží režii: František Radkovský v rozhovoru s Tomášem Kutilem" [In God’s Direction: František Radkovský in Conversation with Tomáš Kutil] is the Roman Catholic priest and the bishop František Radkovský (born 1939). From 1990 to 1993 he was the auxiliary bishop of Prague and then, until 2016, the first bishop of the newly established diocese of Pilsen. The reviewer first situates the publication in the context of other biographical interviews with contemporary Czech church figures and reflects on their significance for modern church history and for historiography in general. He finds it in the genre of testimony, not only on individual destinies, but also in the epochs, the Church, society and the ruling regimes. The review then discusses the interview and introduces the readers to František Radkovský’s life story as well as to his insights into some of the issues Radkovský was confronted with as a priest and as a church dignitary.