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The article is dedicated to one aspect of the long-lasting life of the Cyrillic alphabet, namely the use of Cyrillic script as base for the Slavonic book publishing in its initial period from the end of the 15th – the 16th centuries. The main goal is to illustrate some peculiarities in the grapheme inventory, and to point out the cultural-historical functions of the early printed Cyrillic, the major of which was the preservation and the reproduction of the religious and spiritual identity. Supplementary, but not less important functions were the creation of cultural communities, the integration of the Bulgarian written legacy in Europe, its cognitive, moral, entertaining function, and others. The statement is subjected to the pursuit of shaping historically the relation between alphabet and identity, which should be realized as value, especially in the year of the Bulgarian presidency of the European Union, and the Cyrillic as one of its symbols.
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The main aim of this paper is to examine the discourse on Frédéric Chopin that took place in Poland in 1949, when the 100th anniversary of his birth coincided with the culmination of the socialist realist propaganda in the field of Polish culture. The discourse, initiated and moderated under effective surveillance of the Polish People’s Republic’s government, was filled with communist ideology. The authorities aimed at creating a sense of com-munion in the Polish nation, therefore they undertook numerous actions in the area of cultivating memory of Chopin and reception of his works. The composer was used as a banner under which culture of socialist realism was to be consolidated. Chopin was presented by the narrators in the socialist realist context in various dimen-sions. “Deep humanism”, “truth”, “optimism”, “sincerity” and “democratic features” of Chopin’s music were the crucial notions used by them. Chopin was depicted, among others, as a revolutionist and a prophet of tri-umph of communism. The oeuvre of Chopin was said to bring together “fraternal countries and nations”, Polish People’s Republic and Soviet Union, while being simultaneously a crucial element of class conflict. The authori-ties had a tendency to overemphasize folk roots of his compositions, thus among musical genres composed by Chopin the importance of Mazurka was exaggerated. Other genres without such strong folk connotations, as sonatas, ballades and scherzos, were marginalized in the discourse.
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The problems concerning research, preservation and management of Bulgarian cultural monuments in Romania have attracted the attention of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and particularly the Embassy of the People‘s Republic of Bulgaria in Bucharest for many years. The Art and Culture Committee, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and other institutions are also involved in solving of these problems. Although many meetings of political and cultural leaders of various fields and the exchanged diplomatic notes the targeteted specific measures have not been achieved. The first reason for this is the lack of coherence, systematicity and organization and the lack of persistence, flexibility and purposefulness in solving of these problems by the People‘s Republic of Bulgaria.The second reason is the „special line“ of the Romanian government towards Bulgarian cultural interests and monuments. Remarkable in this aspect is the case of the Bulgarian School „Hristo Botev“ in Bucharest, which accordingly to the new architectural planning, were destroyed in February 1988 with an old Bulgarian church on Str „Kalarashilor“ (present-day „Cornelius Coposu“ Blvd.).
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Social transformations, the rapid development of scientific and technological progress, the change of the ruling regimes pose many challenges to the modern citizen. An average person is often not ready to psychologically resist rapid changes, and tries to adapt to them in a different way. In terms of fleeting social changes, we can observe an increase of interest towards religion in certain categories of population, because in a faith in God, people are trying to find spiritual support, protection and answers to the challenges of the present time. In view of this, studies of the transformation of religious consciousness in the conditions of socio-political transformations acquire a special relevance.
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The objective of this article is to outline the basic tensions in contemporary Bulgarian society concerning the intertwining of religion and secularism through the prism of relations between national state and different religious organizations and individuals.The general goal is to combine the presentation of national historical context, existing legislation and the current social debate based on anthropological fieldwork.
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The paper is the first part of a research, dedicated to the problem of how national identity of Kosovo is forged. It is analysed from the point of view of a particular case study – the missing persons and how their character is represented in the public discourses of Prishtina, Belgrad, and how the international community is involved.The problem of national identity building is considered in its complexity, taking into account numerous rival projects. The museum exhibition, dedicated to missing persons and cultural heritage artifacts could be regarded as case study.All the actors on the terrain apply their own ideological strategies, which could be identified in the concept of the “Missing” exhibition: how the personal memory is being domesticated and turned into history of the nation, how the transition from text to action was carried out, how memory, oblivion and history were (ab-)used as social building ideological toolkits. Particular attention was paid to the problem of the conceptualization of the recent past: how it was interpreted and attributed signs of prestige by the social actors involved in accordance to the interests of each of them.The ethnic conflict paradigm as a key concept widely used in contemporary humanities for explaining the Kosovo case as well as the disintegration of Yugoslavia is put under question. The history of the Museum of Kosovo is also involved, the debate between Belgrade and Prishtina for returning 1247 initially taken artifacts transported to Gračanica monastery and then to Belgrade in 1998 along with the withdrawal of the Yugoslav administration of the region is traced in its history and ideology, establishing references to the Kosovo myth, based on the folklore epics which were first published by Vik Karadžić in the 1820s and later became a canonized version of late medieval Serbian history.
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When setting up the premises for a dialogue between disability studies and critical trauma studies and embarking on editing this pilot issue on ‘encounters’ between the two disciplines, we necessarily welcomed interdisciplinary approaches, ranging across disability studies, trauma studies, literary and cultural studies, media studies, as well as many other disciplines in the humanities. The first step in introducing this issue to our readers will be to present the histories of both disability studies and trauma studies in order to see how they evolved and see why our proposal that they should meet half way or at least more often can be considered a valid one.
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This is a review article of a collection of essays entitled Trauma and Public Memory, edited by Jane Goodall and Christopher Lee.
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Data about scientific events in the field of the humanities in Bulgaria in 2018.
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Russia has always been making efforts to define itself, since the rule of Peter I, and even earlier, by comparing itself to Kievan Rus and the Grand Duchy of Moscow. Russia has always managed to revive itself as a country, though always different, but the question remained – was Russia the East or the West, or was it something else, no matter how old it was? In all respects, Russia is Europe and its place is in Europe but the way it is governed always pushes the country toward the East.
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Freedom, in the context of the ethical views of the Russian classics – Berdyaev, Solovyov, Dostoevsky and others, is examined. Emphasis is placed on freedom and the enormous challenges to achieve it. The faith in Man and the possibility for divine incarnation is a distinctive characteristic of Russian religious philosophy. The first part discusses Berdyaev’s statements about God and unbridled freedom. He regarded Christianity as a new beginning in the understanding of freedom. Berdyaev highly appreciates the contribution of Dostoyevsky to this topic. Freedom and related suffering are the big themes of Dostoyevsky. The battle between Christ and the Antichrist is studied.
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The debates about the relation between the national and European identity have recently gained a new impetus as a result of the growing national populism within the EU. In this regard, the article aims at elaborating the points of resemblance and dissonance between the identity-patterns of the two collective identities construction. In addition, it raises the question about the relation between national and European identity – do they compete with each other or they are parts of a bigger postmodern identity mosaic? In the first part of the research the main structural elements taking part in the National identity construction are discussed making a parallel with the European identity composition. In the second part of the text a more detailed analyses on the ethnic and civic model of identity construction is offered revealing two levels at which European identity is being created. Given that the majority of the academic work on the topic is more statistically or case orientated the article might be of interest due its fundamental approach.
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The post-war situation confronts the Turkish population in Bulgaria with the challenges of both the strained relations between Sofia and Ankara and the assimilation-led policies of the communist ideology against the minority. This publication examines the attempts of the Bulgarian Communist Party to build a new view of life among the Turkish women in Bulgaria through the mechanisms of education and culture. By pursuing its goal of depersonalizing the influence of religion at the expense of emancipatory perceptions of women’s active participation in social and political life the state harnesses totalitarian propaganda in order to change the value orientation of the Turkish women. The striving for modernization of the life of the Turkish women is also in compliance with the specific tasks and problems of the simultaneously pursued minority policy in the country.
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The proposed text does not attempt to present in detail the transformations pertaining to the Bulgarian Turks that have taken place in the state system and the society in Bulgaria since November 10, 1989. Rather, it attempts to explore a phenomenon which, at first glance, undoubtedly resembles nostalgia, but reveals, after a more thorough looking into it, the Bulgarian Turks‘ memory of the repressive party line of the totalitarian state and its culmination - the policy of forced assimilation, cynically called „revival process“. Also, the new reality of the Transition evokes a certain perception of the totalitarian regime, not in regards to its construction, normative or services, but in regards to its everyday life expressed through work realization, education, organization of public spaces, etc.
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Conference report on the International Science Conference ‘Culture as Fieldwork: Authentic, Spectacular, (In)visible'
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In this paper we present our research about the economic situation in Eastern Slovakia based on official data and on own surveys in the region of Rožňava. We also present our results concerning the economic situation in Uzhgorod region, Ukrainian Transcarpathia. Additionally we discuss the migration trends in Eastern Slovakia and the Ukrainian migration to this part of Slovakia, and especially the one originated from Transcarpathia. Our results with students at the Universities of Košice and Prešovshow the interest of the Ukrainian young people to stay in Slovakia or to emigrate to neighboring EU countries in order to have more professional opportunities, compared to Ukraine.
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The issue of gender justice has drawn the attention of gender scholars as does gender equality a justice or civilization. Because of this, the paper examined women and gender equality justice or civilization. In discussing these gender issues, several documents, reports, newspapers, magazines, archives, articles, journals, among others, were systematically reviewed to support the argument. Two theories were used in supporting the argument. These are Islamic Feminist and Liberal Feminist theories. The assumptions of these theories centered on gender equality and gender justice in society. The study found that gender equality is not civilization but justice. This is of the fact that both men and women are born equal and need equal justice for the development of the nation. The paper recommended that men and women should be given equal opportunity in all aspects of life in order to ensure gender justice. Parents and religious leaders should adhere to the principles of gender equality for the betterment of society.
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. Since early times, Muslims have speculated on the nature of Revelation and the Divine Speech. This has resulted in Muslim scholars developing divergent approaches to this problem. With the constitution of the orthodoxy, the former school became dominant and it postulated that the Quran is the Word of God dictated to Prophet Muhammad through the angel Jabrail. However, during the last decades in Iran emerged scholars, such as Abdulkarim Soroush, who proposed new approaches to understanding and interpreting Revelation. This paper discusses the hermeneutical project put forward by Soroush by discussing his article on the “Expansion of Prophetic Experience”. In this article, the author argues that his modern hermeneutics is radically different from orthodox theology and problematizes that the idea that the Quran as a human creation brings about other implications outside theology, such as for instance opening the Muslim thought and liberating it from scriptural readings.
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