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Keywords: investigative journalism;investigative reporting;documentary;Bulgarian Politics,
“Kill the Wanderer” is a documentary investigation into one of the most emblematic crimes of the Cold War – the murder of the Bulgarian dissident writer, Georgi Markov, in London in 1978. Throughout the whole world this case acquired infamy as the “Bulgarian umbrella” murder. The assassination became an emblematic example of “wet operations” involving the secret services of the former Eastern Bloc. It recently became the subject of commentary in the media throughout the world after the death of the former Russian intelligence officer from the Federal Security Service and political émigré, Alexander Litvinenko at the end of 2006 in London, due to many of the similarities between the two cases. Although 29 years have passed since the murder and Scotland Yard still has not discovered the perpetrator, the leading opinion in the West is that the murder of the Bulgarian dissident was carried out by the Bulgarian Security Services on the orders of the then head of state in Bulgaria, Todor Zhivkov, with the assistance of the KGB. “Kill the Wanderer” for the first time calls upon specific archive materials to confirm this thesis. Hristo Hristov (1967) is one of the best investigative journalists in Bulgaria and has researched the crimes of the communist regime. He has published documentary books on the murders in the communist camps in Bulgaria (1944–1962) and on the kidnapping of the Bulgarian émigré, Boris Arsov by the Bulgarian State Security Services from Denmark in 1974. Work on the “Kill the Wanderer” took him six years (1999–2005) and as a court reporter he has reported on the Markov murder case since 1991. His book is based on a number of documents hitherto unknown, many of which are from the secret archives of the former State Security Services.
More...Keywords: coin forgery; coin counterfeits; coin dies; numismatics; coin; coin collection; coin circulation; coin matrix; roman coins; roman coinage; roman history; byzantine coinage; byzantine coins; byzantine history; coin hoards; coin counterfeits; ancient coins
Sections in the book: A descriptive text section (pp. 7 – 28) about history of coin forgery as well as technical observations and conclusions; Catalogue (pp. 29-77) with 121 high resolution photos of coins and coin dies including magnified imagery; Lab analysis (pp. 78-79) of the metal dies are made of.
More...Keywords: Byzantium; Taurica; history; numismatics; coin production technology
More...Keywords: science fiction;Czech literature;
A man with no memory wakes up on the deserted staircase of a gigantic building. Gradually he learns about his identity and mission: he is Petr Brok, a detective sent to rescue Tamara, the princess kidnapped by the ruler of the monstrous Mullerdom, the house of a thousand floors. Ohisver Muller is a ruthless tyrant with many faces, eyes and ears in the most remote corners of his empire. But a revolution is spreading through the floors. Yet Petr Brok soon realises that, parallel to his Mullerdom adventure, he is living another life into which he keeps drifting against his will. What is dream and what reality? What is the flickering light inside a skull he sees in the darkness? And what is Mullerdom, a nightmarish reality or a figment of a fevered imagination, an allegory of the capitalist world or a dystopian vision of the future? With its humanistic message and imaginative power, Weiss’s The House of a Thousand Floors, first published in 1929, is a masterpiece of many genres, both unconventional and still contemporary, that has withstood the test of time for close to a century now.
More...This book is a follow-up to our project devoted to personal narratives of ex-Soviets in Israel. Our original plan was to collect previously published articles dealing with immigration issues but differing from the main themes of our book Ex-Soviets in Israel: From Personal Narratives to a Group Portrait (Fialkova & Yelenevskaya 2007). The themes of immigrants in the city, attitude to law, immigrants’ literature and humor were touched upon but not developed in depth in that volume.They were researched in a number of papers written later (Fialkova &Yelenevskaya 2006, 2006a, 2011, 2012, Yelenevskaya & Fialkova 2006,2008) and discussed in our presentations at 11 scholarly conferences.However, when we re-read the articles we realized that the situation in the Russian-speaking community was so dynamic that studies conducted three-five years ago should be seriously revised and updated.
More...Keywords: armed forces;information space;Russian domestic politics;Russian foreign policy;cyberspace;information war;Russia;
The question about the role of the armed forces in the information space is in fact a question about the role of the factor of force in the Kremlin’s domestic and foreign policy. In Russia, this factor has invariably been treated as a hallmark of the country’s position as a global power, an instrument of deterrence, and a way to exert political pressure and build spheres of influence. The country’s military information strategy is designed to serve those tasks, and envisages multiple battle fronts, including internal and external affairs, the info-psychological front, the cyberspace and other spheres. Its visible consequences include a militarisation of the language of politics and propaganda, the imposition on public opinion of the narrative of an information war against Russia, and a radical change of the Russian army’s image. Today Russia forcefully demands that other countries respect its spheres of influence in the neighbourhood (as seen from its aggression against Ukraine and its armed intervention in Syria). It claims to be the guarantor of peace processes, even as it demolishes the European and global security architecture, and presents itself as a centre of power, asserting the right to co-decide on matters of global security.
More...Keywords: Geopolitics; Information warfare; diversion; special forces;
The remarks presented in this paper show the complexity and multi-dimensionality of the techniques referred to as ‘active measures’. The renaissance of this question currently observable today has called their role in causing crises into prominence. This topic also deserves special treatment because the contemporary forms of active measures are largely based on patterns already known and described in the past. A historical perspective may help to assess and identify their covert mechanisms. The current problems with the aggressive actions of the Russian special services are enhanced versions of the old, to which new informational and communication technologies have contributed. This text is an attempt to clarify this historical concept, by showing the institutional framework of the information-sabotage activities, the conceptual and organisational innovations made since the Cold War, and it also highlights the current challenges and how to identify them.
More...“Hungary is a great power in sport.” These words so dear to Hungarian sports lovers were first spoken almost a hundred years ago at the General Assembly of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) held in Stockholm in 1922. The representative of one of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy’s successor states, Czechoslovakia, felt it unjust that Hungary – a country that had been reduced to one-third its size by the Peace Treaty of Trianon – should be granted two seats (filled by Count Géza Andrássy and Gyula Muzsa) at the IOC, the same as the “great powers”. The Swedish heir to the throne – president of the council – replied: “Hungary’s territory is indeed small, but in sport it is a great power.” We Hungarians were truly fl ag-bearers of the Olympic movement. We were the fi rst to form a national Olympic committee (the predecessor of the Magyar Olimpiai Bizottság or MOB [Hungarian Olympic Committee, HOC]), as early as December of 1895. In Paris in June of 1914, world public opinion in sport found it natural to grant the right to organize the 1920 Olympic games to the Hungarian capital. But Franz Ferdinand was assassinated a few days after that decision. Hungary, defeated in World War I, was even barred from the Olympics of 1920. But we didn’t give up: we tried to att end no less than seven times!
More...Keywords: Ukraine; transformation; demoracy
On 24 August 1991, the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR proclaimed independence, and on 1 December the same year, the Ukrainian people ratified that proclamation in a referendum. The new Ukrainian state had some very important assets, such as the peaceful path that led to its independence, the fact that its territory was uncontested and its civilian administration was established. They downside, which determined Ukraine’s fundamental weaknesses, was that like the other former Soviet republics, it had been part of the Soviet state and had no central state bodies of its own, such as a general staff, a bank of issue, or most of the necessary ministries. // After nearly a quarter century of peaceful development, interrupted by the outbreak of the war in 2014, Ukraine is still weak, but at the same time it has consolidated internally and internationally, demonstrated its capacity to withstand armed aggression, and is actively looking for its place in the world. The country’s greatest success has been to raise a new generation of ‘natural-born citizens’ of Ukraine, while its greatest failure has been to succumb to the dramatic population decline with irreversible consequences, and to allow the impoverishment of the lower strata of society, typical for all the post-Soviet states. // The present paper is not a history of independent Ukraine, but an attempt to present the main mechanisms by which the former Soviet republic has transformed itself into an independent state with a market economy. It is therefore mainly focused on internal developments in Ukraine.
More...Keywords: Olympic movement; political tensions; boycotts' propaganda; nations top ranking.
The Cold War ran from roughly 1947 until the USSR collapse in 1991. Those years were marked by the arms race and the fear of a possible nuclear war between the USA and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Sports were used as a vehicle for superiority of one political regime over the other. Champion athletes image and results were used as propaganda means because the international visibility, the public interest in major sports competitions and the national pride they aroused. U.S.A., after losing the top nation position in favor of Soviet Union in 1956 and 1960, considered winning in Olympic Games a matter of national prestige. The athlete for whom the flag is hoisted and the national anthem is sung, is the bearer of this prestige and his or her performance is inevitably associated with the country and system effectiveness. In the Olympics arena, the Cold War culminates in the boycott of the 1980 and 1984 Games. The main research question of this paper is if in present time we can address the sporting Cold War as an historic, past issue or a new stage of rivalry still persists influencing the Olympic movement? The changes that were made in the international political landscape since 1989 were reflected in the Olympic Games in Barcelona 1992 participation, when for the first time since 1972, no country boycotted the Olympic competition. Throughout the Cold War, U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. have used the Olympic Games and their athletes as opportunities for promoting their political agenda. The end of the Cold War could not prevent the politics to interfere in sport, especially in Olympic movement.Keywords: Olympic movement, political tensions, boycotts, propaganda, nations top ranking.
More...Keywords: art of Burgundy; art of Netherlands; North European art
The volume encompasses the Burgundian art and culture related mainly to the prince’s court in Dijon and Paris, as well as the Netherlandish art created in the middle-class circles, primarily in the wealthy cities of Flanders and Brabant (Burgundian-Netherlandish tapestries, goldsmithing and miniature painting, Burgundian panel painting, Burgundian monumental stone and bronze sculpture and Netherlandish mobile wooden sculpture). First of three volumes presenting the synthesis of the artistic culture in an important region of old Europe, written by the expert on the subject. The series can be read as a thorough analysis for the specialists, as a coursebook for the students and as an interesting book for the wider public.
More...Keywords: Secret services; intelligence agency; special services; media; Russia’s information warfare; leaks of compromising information;
It is generally believed that one sign that the secret services are doing their job well is that the media says nothing about them. In this respect, Russia is a special case: the services receive an excess of media coverage. This is only partly due to the media’s natural interest in an attractive subject, as well as the services’ own selfpromotion (although that is increasingly true around the world). In fact, it is a symptom of Russia’s information warfare, in which the special services’ public image is just one block in building the appearance of a strong state and a strong government. It also justifies and legitimises the high position which the services and elite members of the institutions of force enjoy in the Russian Federation’s political system. However, this artificial, mythologised image of the services conflicts with their non-public practices. These are revealed when their cover is blown, when journalists investigate criminal scandals involving the services, when controlled and uncontrolled leaks of compromising information take place, and when the opposition publicises cases where the special services violate fundamental rights and civil liberties – something they often do under the pretext of fighting the ‘fifth column’ of the West, international terrorists and foreign spies. This produces two different images of the services: the official one and the common one. The former presents the services as professional, patriotic and a stronghold of traditional values, Russia’s ‘sword and shield’; the latter shows them as pampered by the regime, lawless, corrupt and undisciplined, involved in brutal competition with one another, bureaucratised and criminalised.
More...Keywords: Rhetoric; aesthetics; theory of literature; wit and esprit; British literature; French literature; 17th century; 18th century;
The thesis deals primarily with the term wit and its modern and historical usage in literary and aesthetic theories. Further, it concerned with the literary and aesthetic implications of the terms wit and esprit as they were theorized in critical writings of several authors of the early modern England and France. The thesis has two primary goals. The first goal is to re-assess the English concept of wit, nowadays regarded as an out-dated device of past poetic systems, and to present it as vital and useful part of the contemporary discourse. The second goal is to provide comparative reading of early modern English and French theoretical texts dealing with wit and esprit, respectively. Presenting ideas on the English term wit as employed in the theoretical writings in the light of its French equivalent esprit, I wish to demonstrate a gradual development of the terms from rhetoric to aesthetic.
More...Książka jest próbą prześledzenia dziejów sportu w Związku Radzieckim i Federacji Rosyjskiej oraz wymienienia, opisania i przeanalizowania najważniejszych uwarunkowań, cech oraz zadań stawianych przed sportem przez władze w danym okresie historycznym. Autor skupia się zwłaszcza na polityce sportowej oraz jej funkcji w polityce wewnętrznej i zewnętrznej państwa. Wskazuje m.in., że niekwestionowana potęga sportowa ZSRR nie przetrwała upadku tego państwa, a sytuacja sportu we współczesnej Rosji poprawiła się dopiero po objęciu władzy przez Władimira Putina. Niemniej jednak obecnemu wzrostowi nakładów na sport i organizowaniu wielkich imprez sportowych w latach 2014 i 2018 towarzyszy też afera dopingowa rzucająca cień na osiągnięcia rosyjskich sportowców.Artur Podleśny – absolwent prawa na Wydziale Prawa i Administracji Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego oraz stosunków międzynarodowych na Wydziale Nauk Politycznych i Studiów Międzynarodowych Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Obecnie doktorant na kierunku nauki o bezpieczeństwie na Wydziale Nauk Politycznych i Studiów Międzynarodowych Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Do jego głównych zainteresowań badawczych należą sport w stosunkach międzynarodowych, siły zbrojne Federacji Rosyjskiej oraz zorganizowana przestępczość w krajach byłego ZSRR.
More...Keywords: Antonio Samaranch;IOC;Olympic Games;international relations;sport and diplomacy;sports diplomacy
The monograph presents the place and importance of sport in public diplomacy, which is related to the category of sports diplomacy. The subject of the study in particular included issues of using sport to improve international relations, showing its role in shaping the international image of states and discussing the diplomatic subjectivity of international sport management organizations on the basis of the International Olympic Committee. An important factor of the analysis was to consider the entities with which sports diplomacy could be associated. The research has yielded results which made it possible to isolate models of sports diplomacy focused on building closeness between countries, assign the use of different methods of image-related sports diplomacy to different types of countries and propose a model explaining the diplomatic subjectivity of sports organizations.
More...This publication analyses the changes in the third sector during the 2010 – 2013 period and at the same time outlines the positive practices in the social entrepreneurship as well as the risks that reduce the chances for nongovernmental organisations to effectively impact the democracy and well-being of Bulgaria.
More...Keywords: Transnational Lives ; academic; biography; cold war; diplomat; Gabor Rekettye; Hungary; Japan; migration; professional; Tokyo;
“I was born at the end of World War II, and so I was young in the ’60s. This means that I belong to the so-called (at least in Hungary) ‘great generation’. Young people of this generation, especially in America and Western Europe, rebelled against the existing system, showing their dissatisfaction by protests, new types of music and by outrageous clothes and behaviour. We – here and in the other socialist countries – experienced this, only because of the limitations of the repressive system, in a much gentler way. I have never been a rebel myself, and yet what tied me to this great generation was my desire to know the world much better, to be more informed than the average, to be a real cosmopolitan. That is why I studied languages and travelled much more than most.”
More...Keywords: First WorldWar;
The story of the book Men in War, written by Andreas Latzko, is set during the First World War. Andreas Latzko uses not only his powerful writing but also his own experiences to depict various points of view on the war. Describing the storylines of the characters in this book Andreas Latzko writes about the horrors of war, the lasting effects, and the crisis of morality and ethics. Book was first published in 1918. Translated by Adele N. Seltzer
More...Keywords: ZAPAD 2021; NATO; Russia; Show of force; Vladimir Putin; Belarus; Covid-19; Information activity triggers; media; false information;
On 10-16 September 2021, Russia conducted the formal part of ZAPAD 2021, one in a cycle of annual military exercises which represent the culmination of training by the Russian Federation Armed Forces in a given year. As ‘Zapad’ (the Russian word for ‘west’) suggests, the exercise is centred on what Russia calls the Western strategic sector or ‘direction’. ZAPAD 2021 included Belarus. Accordingly, it was termed ‘a joint strategic exercise’, primarily to emphasise the participation of Belarus as well as that of the Russia-controlled Collective Security Treaty Organisation. ZAPAD 2021 was preceded by weeks of preparatory and associated exercises, and, as repeatedly emphasised by Russia, involved as many as 200,000 troops, drawn predominantly from Russia. ZAPAD 2021 included a powerful communication campaign in the form of messages and narratives, which this study identifies, explores, and explains. This study consists of two separate but interconnected parts: Part I looks at the exercise from the perspective of what the exercise signalled, both explicitly and implicitly. It deconstructs and groups these messages and narratives.
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