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The modern Hungarian science-fiction and utopian literature was born and attained its majority after the Compromise of 1867. The novel of Mór Jókai, A jövő század regénye [The Novel of the Next Century] (1872-1874) was the first of Hungarian utopian novels to present a modern technicised war, which transforms both Hungary and the world. The followers of Jókai (Pál Privigyey, Gyula Farkas) share the same views; the great wars of the future are fought with the help of technical and scientific discoveries. After the turn of the century, in the shade of the forming federal systems, the writers placed the break out of the war in tangible proximity instead of the distant future. (Maritimus: Nagy Háború, [Great War] 1909; Ábel Barabás: A jövő évtized regénye, [The Novel of the Next Decade] 1910). In my study besides the analytical introduction of the war-time future depiction of the texts I show how they fit into the international „invasion” literature, which became popular with the novel of George Tomkyns Chesney entitled Battle of Dorking (1871) and which was fulfilled with The War of the Worlds by (1898) H. G. Wells.
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Gondolatok, megjegyzések
The author writes a monograph (Palóc Land) about a strange people, the Palóc, living in the northern part of Hungary and in southern Slovakia. Material poverty and spiritual riches are the main characteristics of the Palóc. They speak a special and interesting dialect. This study is a part of the mentioned monograph. In this study the author presents the meaning of the Palóc and he presents the regions where they live. And he presents also different opinions of these questions.
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This article deals with a period of Serbian rule over the Northern Albanian districts (from November 1912 to April 1913). As Kingdom of Serbia was the only European country, beside Switzerland, with no territorial access to the open sea, one of its main war aims was the annexation of an outlet to the Southern Adriatic. Thus after the First Balkan War victory, Serbian army occupied some territories in Northern Albania which were not populated by ethnic Serbs, but were of utmost importance for the commercial and strategic reasons. In this article the colonial and imperial aspects of short-lived Serbian rule are examined and compared with the experience of colonial powers.
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This article deals with the widespread assumption that a significant collection of texts known as the Bible is inherently ‘deceptive’. That is, the Bible does not – it is assumed – say what was ‘really’ going on in the ancient world. The truth, therefore, must be found by going behind or beneath the text (the spatial metaphors should be noted). Here the real story may found, through archaeology or reading the text against itself. This approach may be described as a modernist ‘depth model’, in which the surface attempts to conceal the truth, while the truth itself must be found by going around the surface text. This remains a dominant approach in biblical criticism. However, it cannot be understood without earlier and indeed, in some quarters, current assumptions concerning the realist nature of the text. In this case, the text reflects in a reasonably trustworthy fashion the context of the text, if not the ideological assumptions and positions of the putative authors. Modernist ‘depth models’ may then be seen as attempts to respond to realist assumptions. A third moment is what could be called postmodern: in this case, the distance between surface and depth is challenged, so that the various possibilities become equal contestants for the dominant position. This entails a shift away from the assumption of a singular truth of the text, characteristic of both realist and modernist assumptions, to the understanding of multiple truth claims – not as relative but as absolutes that permit other absolutes. The argument emphasises that these approaches should be seen as dialectically related to one another, rather that mutually exclusive approaches.
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The first half of the 20th century was one of the most turbulent periods in human history. Particularly with two of its major migrations: the population exchanges caused by the partition of India in 1947 and the exodus of Palestinians in 1948 after the formation of Israel (also referred to as the Nakba). Both of these events would go on to significantly shift the course of history in the 20th century. The Partition of India led to the creation of the Hindu-majority Republic of India and the Muslim-majority Republic of Pakistan, while the Nakba set the stage for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict which continues to this day. This paper seeks to introduce and analyze the massive exodus of refugees generated from both of these events. There is also an analysis and comparison of how the two cases dealt with their migrations and ethnic cleansing. This paper also seeks to introduce and analyze the issue of absentee property between the two cases. The primary time period that is being analyzed is between 1947-1951 though some of the material may extend a little further for greater context.
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(South-Eastern European Monetary and Economic Statistics from the Nineteenth Century to World War II. Athens, Sofia, Bucharest and Vienna: Bank of Greece, Bulgarian National Bank, National Bank of Romania and Oesterreichische Nationalbank, 2014, 405
A very precious and useful handbook for economic and monetary historians of the Balkans.
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The principal research question pursued by this work is as follows: How do the Republic of Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine present one another in their history curricula and textbooks? How do the history textbooks of each of these three countries present the relationship between majorities and minorities?This book is thus focused on two main objectives: first, to generate improved understanding of the state of the discipline of history in these countries via discussion of reforms to and debates around history curricula in each country, and second, to shed light on the ways in which history textbooks in each of the three countries represent the other two and their peoples.Curriculum development and textbook production in all three countries still remain centralised. Textbooks are produced by state and private publishing houses. Most textbooks are curriculum-based and developed according to the guidelines issued by the Ministries of Education. Through their textbook publishing policy, these ministries control the content and quality of textbooks. History curricula and textbooks in all three countries have progressed, but we still encounter many problems. Among them are the following:• the content of curricula and history textbooks continues to place too much emphasis on national aspects to the detriment of the world, regional, and local dimensions of history;• it reflects the history of wars and violence instead of giving more space to periods of peaceful coexistence, cooperation and cultural communication, or of mutual enrichment between various social groups as well as between nations;• it neglects regional history and cultural and historical links with neighbouring countries;• as it stands, it causes problems in history education and the development of ethnic identity, as well as the relationship between “Us” and “Others”;• it leads to or accepts poor textbook design.The relationship between national and European history remains a closely debated topic in all three societies. Their shared reality, as evidenced by this study, is that all three countries are currently not presenting one another in any meaningful way in their history textbooks at all educational levels. In all three countries, history education and textbooks are dominated by political history and narratives of victimisation. National histories do not pay attention to their neighbours.History textbooks play an important part in the process of collective identity formation, building a relationship with the past and creating an image of the “other”. The content of textbooks determines, in many cases, students' attitudes to their neighbours. Therefore, in order to improve the situation in history education and to develop a tolerant approach to “others” in history textbooks, there is a great need for joint efforts by politicians, professionals and members of civil society in Moldova, Romania and Ukraine.
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Sarmizegetusa Regia was included, together with other five Dacian fortresses (Bănița, Costești-Blidaru, Costești-Cetățuie, Piatra Roșie and Căpâlna), on the List of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1999. They are a unique synthesis of external cultural influences and local traditions in terms of building techniques and overall, in the ancient military architecture, representing the monumental expression of the civilisation of the Dacian Kingdom.These fortresses are the accurate expression of the exceptional development level of the Dacian civilisation during the 1st century BC – early 2nd century AD, Sarmizegetusa Regia lying at the forefront of this fortified complex, epitomizing the evolution phenomenon from fortified centres to proto-urban agglomerations.After 2000, various laws regulated the management, preservation and protection of the monuments listed among World Heritage Sites. Some of their provisions have never been applied or abided by. Unfortunately, currently, only Sarmizegetusa Regia has a legal administrator, the other five remaining un-administered.There is no management plan for any of the six fortresses and they have no managers or administration plans. Except for Sarmizegetusa, there are not even short term strategies for the other five fortresses that would solve urgent matters. They are not even protected 24/7. The single Dacian fortress within this fortified complex that benefits of security services 24/7 is Sarmizegetusa Regia, which is under the administration of the County Council of Hunedoara. Subsequent to these measures, the phenomenon of archaeological poaching and deliberate destruction disappeared entirely from the area of Sarmizegetusa Regia. Not the same may be said for the other fortresses, where destruction and vandalism actions and archaeological poaching are still often found. In most these fortresses, there are buildings in ruin and walls dislodged in several portions. Access roads to some of these Dacian fortresses are inadequate, while vegetation in these not administered sites conquered the monuments. The poor situation in these fortresses is due to the fact that nobody administers them. The legal status of the land on which said monuments lie was not clarified to date either, and they remain not registered in land registers; the lands were not recorded in the cadastre; the owners of the right to administer the UNESCO remains were not established; the monuments and protection areas were not included in PUZ (regional Urban Plan) and PUG (General Urban Plan)type documentations of the administrative-territorial units within whose range respective monuments lie, there are no documentations for the draft of large feasibility studies for each fortress.At Sarmizegetusa Regia, things have changed for the better in the last 6 years, while discrepancies between this site and those which remained not administered are increasingly visible. The Administration of the historical monument Sarmizegetusa Regia was set up, constant security/surveillance, video surveillance were provided, a consulting Scientific Council was created and a regulation for visiting the site was drafted and implemented. Visiting routes were set up and explanatory panels with texts in Romanian and English for each monument set up, while at the pavilion by the entrance into the site may be purchased adequate informative materials. There were introduced audio guides in Romanian and English with much information on the monument and its history. The road that ran to Sarmizegetusa Regia was modernised and the County Council of Hunedoara funds the archaeological excavations. Survey measurements of the site were completed as did the documentation for the approval of intervention works (DALI). Furthermore, the issue of the sick trees on the sites’ surface, which endangered visitors, employees as well as important parts of the monument, was partially solved. Because the efforts of the research team were also implemented a series of projects which facilitated the access of the heritage from Sarmizegetusa and the other Dacian fortresses on the List of World Heritage Sites. The efforts of the County Council of Hunedoara and the Site Administration made the site appear clean, constantly maintained, regardless the season, thus reaching some of the standards that UNESCO sites must comply.Past all these positive things, there are aspects that still require remedy. Among, count the dislodgement of the constructional blocks and elements on certain portions of the fortification walls, the pentagonal tower or the poor state of the Roman baths. To these add the lack of management and administration plans, yet also the lack of drafting and submitting projects for accessing European funds designed for historical monuments.There is obviously still much work to do, and one may not speak of perfect administration or a model of solid administration at Sarmizegetusa Regia. Nevertheless, we are confident that year by year, any dysfunctionality will disappear, the errors and failures will become increasingly few, despite the site complexity, while the gathered experience and efforts of those involved for the good of this monument will multiply.
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The paper proposes a comparative analysis of the forms of address and greeting as part of the verbal politeness models identified both in Spanish and Romanian, in order to determine some similarities and differences between the two cultural models. This analysis reveals the existence of a tripartite system of hierarchical politeness in the Romanian language, whilst in Spanish there is a bipartite system, oriented towards the horizontal axis of interpersonal relationships.
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The past year, 2017, was a time of great anniversaries, reminding us of events that significantly influenced the shape of history, especially the history of the Church. On the one hand, the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s speech and the split of Christianity in the West, the 300th anniversary of the creation of Freemasonry and the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and on the other – a clear revival of the Marian cult after the Council of Trent, the 100th anniversary of the coronation of the image of Our Lady of Częstochowa, the 100th anniversary of the Fatima apparitions, coronations of Marian images in many other sanctuaries and increased pilgrimage. All this proves that it is impossible to understand the history of human community without referring to it Christian interpretation, for in critical and extreme moments God in his mercy shows – mainly through intercession of the Mother of God – the path of conversion and healing relationships both interpersonal and those between Him and a man.
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The problematic term the Vinča script denotes a number of incised ornaments and signs on the surface of the pottery of the Vinča culture – one of the most important “cultures” of the South Eastern European Neolithic. The modes of use and abuse of this phenomenon and the very term the Vinča script have changed through time, eloquently testifying about the paradigm shifts in the European archaeology, at the same time indicating dangerous contaminations of archaeology by pseudo-archaeological ideas. During the 19th and first half of the 20th century, the idea of a script in the Neolithic cultures of South Eastern Europe surfaced occasionally as an argument for the short „historical“ chronology and Near Eastern influences. During the 1980s the idea of the Vinča script emerges again in Serbia, this time from the pseudo-scholar circles, and is massively supported by the media. The Vinča script becomes the central motif of a much larger pseudo-scholar movement. Unfortunately, over the last years the term the Vinča script – falsely represented by the media as a new and equally valid interpretive paradigm – seeps into the general public discourse, and even into archaeology itself.
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In this article, the author traces how the lessons of the Munich Agreement of September 1938 (on the basis of which Czechoslovakia was forced to cede the predominantly ethnic-German Sudetenland to Nazi Germany) were projected into US foreign policy. In Part One of the essay, based on published sources and unpublished documents from American archives, the topic is covered from the late 1930s to the outbreak of the Korean War (which is discussed in Part Two, to be published in the next issue of Soudobé dějiny). The author looks at immediate American reaction to the North Korean attack on South Korea in June 1950, and then returns to autumn 1938 to test his hypothesis that behind the unusual unity of this reaction was the ingrained negative attitude of the United States to the policy of appeasement. He demonstrates that since the late 1930s the terms ‘Munich’ and ‘appeasement’ have remained forever linked in US policy and US public discourse, and he discusses the transformations of the perception of the two concepts during the Second World War, after the war, and at the beginning of the Cold War. The lessons of Munich, he argues, have drawn on the idealistic as well as the pragmatic sources of US policy, because they stem from the conviction that appeasement is immoral and does not pay. Whereas in Roosevelt’s policy the general lesson was not to allow Hitler’s expansion, Harry S. Truman, Roosevelt’s successor in the White House, had to use the lessons, despite his own self-restraint, to try to counter the steps of a wartime ally, Stalin’s Soviet Union. The Communist take-over in Czechoslovakia in February 1948 and the blockade of the western sectors of Berlin beginning in the summer of that year were important events on this path. The author further considers the infl uence of this factor on the US approach taken in the Korean War in the early 1950s. He seeks to demonstrate that the decision of the Truman Administration to substantially intervene in this confl ict was a direct consequence of the negative attitude to the policy of appeasing an aggressor. This attitude was also shared by the American public, regardless of party affi liation and political sympathies. Arguments based on the rejection of appeasement, however, soon began to be used by the Republicans as ammunition in the election campaign against the incumbent Democrats and the choice of strategy also became a matter of dispute in the choice of strategy on the Korean battlefi eld after China entered the war. Whereas the White House wished to avoid an unlimited confl ict with China, the Commander-in-Chief of the United Nation Command in Korea, General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964), was in favour of an uncompromising approach and in fact ceased to obey President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972). After being relieved of his command by Truman, MacArthur became the chief critic of his policies and a hero of Truman’s Republican opponents. In spring 1951, the Republicans organized a special Senate committee hearing on the circumstances of MacArthur’s suspension. The author looks in detail at this exceptional clash in post-war US domestic politics, which was meant to be triumphantly used against MacArthur, but gradually changed into a debacle in consequence of, among other things, the compelling testimonies of Secretary of State Dean Acheson (1893–1971) and Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall (1880–1959). In his conclusion, the author seeks to demonstrate how other US presidents returned to the ‘lessons of Munich’, and he argues that these lessons became Truman’s lasting political legacy and as such became fi rmly rooted in American political discourse.
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Purpose of Article. The purposes of the article are to define features of cultural perception of the USA and analyse general tendencies in the development of American studies in modern Belarus. Methodology. The research methodology is based on using descriptive method and the method of system analysis, which allow us to describe and analyse necessary training programs, the contest of materials, publications in mass media, and interviews, conducted by the author. Structural and functional, historical, anthropological, and axiological scientific methods provide a comparison of the American and Belarusian cultural spaces in their integrity. Deduction and induction, abstraction, generalization were also used. Scientific novelty. This article is devoted to the cultural perception of the USA and American Studies development in the contemporary Belarus. Conclusions. In Belarus, the most part of people knows about the USA too little. Negative and positive cultural perceptions of the USA exist among Belarusian citizens in parallel. After intensive development in 1990-s, American Studies in Belarus have been falling since 2000-s. Nowadays, American Studies are only a part of several predominantly culturalogical, historical and literature university courses. There are no any special courses or training programs on American Studies, neither any statistic nor analyses on the issues. To develop constructive Belarusian-American cultural dialogue it is hence necessary to provide more objective information about the U.S.. New American Studies courses and training modules for universities (including regional) can become the serious step in that direction.
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