За истината и университета днес
Рublic lecture at the Sofia University, organized by the Higher Research Institute "Balkan-Panitza".
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Рublic lecture at the Sofia University, organized by the Higher Research Institute "Balkan-Panitza".
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The essay discusses the reason for the marginalizaton of human and social sciences today. Besides the economic and social aspects of the problem, their decline is linked to the permanent feeling of crisis of culture itself. As well as to the deideologization of the humanitarian intelligetsia, who avoid to fight for changing of the world.
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Like echoes of the Philippine "people power" revolution of 1986 , spontaneous mass protests reverberated through Eastern Europe in 1989. In Poland , a series of wildcat strikes led to semi-free elections by June. A crowd chanting "no more shall we be slaves" at the re-burial of martyred Communist reformer Imre Nagy pushed Hungarian democracy forward. Tens of thousands of refugees undermined East German leader Erich Honecker in October, and hundreds of thousands of demonstrators forced open the Berlin Wall overnight on November 9. Later that month , and undeterred by violent security force tactics , student protests on Prague's Wenceslas Square ousted an entire Communist party leadership in a few days. Following such unexpected occurrences , social scientists need to bring society back into the center of their theories about democratization. The question is, how? [...]
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From the Mamluk Empire to British rule, Egypt had gone through political changes in its pursuit of state formation; even after independence, the pro-cess didn’t stop. Independent Egypt has always been a military-dominated state. When this authoritative domination came in touch with globalization, people started to cherish their dream of Democratization. This also led Egypt to witness its own ‘Arab Spring’. For a little time, Egypt has enjoyed its democracy but again with the coming of Sisi in power, military domina-tion again became visible. At the same time, Civil society always struggled for its place and function in Egypt under authoritarian rulers, and the ruler’s tendency to keep his citizens in check created very rigid relations with the civil society. This paper aims to understand the political changes in state formation in Egypt, the inception of Civil society in Egypt, and the relation between state and civil society. This paper will also try to explain this ‘state-civil society’ relation from the theoretical point of view and would like to understand the reason behind such relations through analysing the political changes Egypt experience from the past century till today.
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The European Economic and Social Committee, through its advisory function, participates in the decision-making process in the European Union, thus contributing to the quality and transparency of the decisionmaking process, which is particularly important given the criticisms regarding the democratic deficit of the EU institutions. The Committee is composed of representatives of employers’ organizations, workers and other civil society organizations, and they act independently regardless of the views of the Member State from which they come. It has the task of enabling European legislation and policies to take account of economic, social and civil circumstances in society, to ensure the involvement of stakeholders in decision-making in the European Union, while respecting public opinion, and to contribute to the development of participatory democracy and the strengthening of the role of civil society organizations. The methods of content analysis, induction, deduction, compilation and historical method were used in the paper. The aim of this paper is to explore the organization and functioning of the European Economic and Social Committee in the complex system of the European Union.
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This text had been written in September 1989, two months before the "velvet revolution" in Czechoslovakia. It does not mean that the authors were then subject to self-censorship. By no means. The intellectual climate prevailing in the Institute for Forecasting was then quite liberal and, at least for the people from the Institute, that November Revolution brought about no important change in this respect. Yet the text is influenced by the authors' pre-revolution state of mind, though this influence is delicate and rather complex. [...]
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Perestroika has intensified sleeping antagonisms-social, national, and culturo-historical. But a special conflict of a more general sort lies behind them. It splinters social consciousness, confronting two concepts with each other. There "they" are-and here are "we." The inevitability of this confrontation, as well as its prevention, depends in large part on our perception of what lies behind this division. Reform is suffering from an ever greater arrythmia. [...]
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One month after the popular revolt in Romania, the editorial board of the critical weekly journal 22 introduced into its first edition a public discussion of the constitution of civil society in Romania. 22 commemorates December 22, 1989, the day of the Ceausescus' flight from Romania's capital , as well as of the birth of the Group for Social Dialogue which predominately authors 22. This independent group of intellectuals representing various disciplines (sociology, philosophy, literature, history, archaeology, and law, among others) is based in Bucharest. [...]
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Perhaps the most pressing political problem of the 1980-81 period in Poland was to fit Solidarity's organization into the political and economic structure, existing or reformed. Despite numerous legal and some organizational changes after the introduction of martial law, these systems remained basically the same until after the Roundtable Talks, which faced the same organizational dilemma. The agreements reached during these talks represent some significant changes in the regime's understanding of political authority and legitimacy, showing that there had been movement towards reconciliation during Solidarity's first legal period, during martial law and the subsequent attempts at normalization. We shall not try to predict the outcome of the new changes, but will look at the organizational dilemma as it developed in 1980-81, as this kind of analysis may help to sharpen our perspective on current changes in Poland. [...]
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Twenty-seven years ago the editors of London's Survey published the results of an enormously stimulating questionnaire, which they distributed among the leading specialists in international and Soviet affairs. The occasion was the tenth anniversary of Stalin's death and the questions ranged from the overall assessment of Soviet developments since 1953 to the very specific issues of ideological, diplomatic, economic, and cultural change. [...]
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Poland's incorporation into the Soviet political orbit in the mid 1940s and the accompanying Communist seizure of power checked the organic development of Polish political life. Of the prewar political parties and those that functioned in the wartime underground, only a few were legalized by the new authorities in 1945. The government repressed the National Party (SN, Stronnictwo Narodowe) and the National Armed Forces (NSZ, Narodowe Sily Sbrojne), which it viewed from the very beginning with extreme hostility. These nationalist organizations refused to acquiesce in the Yalta accords and rejected compromise with the Communists. [...]
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With the utopian elan characteristic of new members of a power elite, the activist women of the Anti-Fascist Women's Front (AFŽ) led a campaign at the end of 1948 to take over New Year's Day as a "socialist holiday," "our day of celebration," a future "national custom. " At a time when no project seemed unfeasible-"progress," "culture," socialism/communism were within arm's reach-the appropriation and resemantization of a thousand-year old tradition seemed a completely routine assignment. Forty years after they were written, these documents are more than testimony to the intensity of the revolutionary eros of one generation. Relevant texts on the desired meaning of the New Year, instructions and circulars of higher committees of AFŽ sent throughout the wide base of the hierarchical pyramid, as well as the reports sent back "from the field," enable us to examine, in virtually laboratory conditions, how the traditions, like steel, were tempered. [...]
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Traditionally, and tradition means here the praxis of social and political sciences in the 1950s and early 1960s, East European societies were described and analyzed within the framework of a one-actor model, with the party-state acting and society obeying. There were variants of this model depending on how the political elite and its interactions with various social groups were defined. The elite could be restricted to a handful of people who governed the country from behind the bulwark of a personal cult. Alternatively, it could be understood as a relatively large group of political and economic leaders who surrounded themselves with expert consultants and who ruled in the name of a large social group which has been called by many the "new class." Views also varied about whether this sole political actor was free to act as it wanted to, or to what degree it acted under various external and internal constraints, but the fact remained that only the party-state was regarded as an active participant in the sociopolitical game. [...]
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In the present study, we aim to analyze the context of the presidential elections in the Republic of Moldova in November 2020 and, in particular, the offer of the favorites of the campaign regarding the Transnistrian dispute. What do you propose Maia Sandu and Igor Dodon? We also follow the evolution of the presence in the Transnistrian vote starting with 1994 and until 2020. More on what is the role and impact of the Transnistrian vote for politicians on the right bank of the Dniester.
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Two separate Warsaws symbolize what happened in Poland during the Second World War. One Warsaw-the razed city of the 63-day Warsaw Uprising of 1944-represents the suffering and the militant heroism of the entire Polish nation. This Warsaw, resurrected from under the rubble and ashes of the destroyed city, is celebrated as a confirmation of the endurance of the Polish nation and the bravery of the many thousands of young people who gave their lives in the Uprising and in the underground. Its very destruction has become an icon of hope. [...]
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Both texts refer to events that began on June 25, 1976, when Polish workers struck in response to a proposed rise in the price of foodstuffs. By striking, the workers presented a profound challenge to the partystate in the Polish People's Republic. An earlier outbreak of strikes in 1970-71 on the Baltic coast and in the city of Łódź had led to the retirement of the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), Wladyslaw Gomulka, for "reasons of health. " He was succeeded by the "boss" of the Silesian party organization, Edward Gierek. Gierek was able to withstand the challenge to his authority in June, 1976, though he was to be less fortunate four years later. [...]
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Shortly after the Polish October of 1956, C. Wright Mills came to Warsaw to learn from the experience of Polish intellectuals then fresh from the battlefields of the revolution they first spurred and later helped to contain. A few days after his arrival the new political leader, Wladyslaw Gomulka, went on the radio to criticize, in no uncertain terms, the views of the undisputed intellectual leader, the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski. The censured professor and his friends were nonplussed; they remembered only too well the times when names appeared in public speeches only to disappear from public life. But Mills was elated. "However hard did I try to push and kick the American political establishment and spit in its face," he reminisced, "no one paid attention. In your country," he went on, "the word counts. And so the word can change things. What you, intellectuals, do," he concluded, "matters." [...]
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For at least three decades, the relationship between politics and the writing of history in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe has been a subject of interest to historians, political scientists, and others. Recent publications show the continuing strength of this interest. These writings document changes in the degree of ferment within one or another country's historical profession and in how various themes are treated, seeking to relate these to political developments; some contributors then go on to ask whether historical debates reveal evidence that socialism's scholars have some autonomy. [...]
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