Memory, Remembering, and Legend: Estonian Folklorists’ 10th Winter Conference
An overview of the Estonian folklorists’ 10th winter conference, held on February 26 and 27, 2015, is provided by Mare Kalda.
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An overview of the Estonian folklorists’ 10th winter conference, held on February 26 and 27, 2015, is provided by Mare Kalda.
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Between 2010 and 2012, an extended team of scholars studied contemporary Protestant groups in Russia. The project was labelled Center for the Study of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements in Russia1 (CSPCMR) and was led by Aleksandr Panchenko from the European University in Saint Petersburg and Patrick Plattet from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Besides Russia and the USA, scholars from Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, and Estonia were involved in this collaborative research effort. The host institution of the project was the European University in St. Petersburg. The aim of the project was to analyse the Protestant-charismatic (P/c) Christianity in various regions of post-Soviet Russia. The project proceeded from the notions concerned with global effects of the rapid extension of P/c Christianity in the contemporary world. In the anthropology of Pentecostalism, problems of continuity and change, globalisation and indigenisation, preservation of pre-Pentecostal ontologies, creating the new morality and approaches to economy and politics have been discussed. The Estonian team’s specific task was to analyse contemporary Protestant missions and churches in the north-eastern corner of European Russia, in the Republic of Komi and the European Nenets tundra.
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Paris a suivi pendant la Première guerre mondiale à l’égard de la Serbie une politique beaucoup plus complexe qu’on ne le croit en général. Bien sûr, on soutenait par principe la Serbie, victime de l’agression austro-allemande. En même temps, à plusieurs reprises pendant le conflit des considérations d’opportunité stratégiques ou diplomatiques déterminèrent la position française bien plus que le soutien à la Serbie. A la fin de la guerre, tout en acceptant le principe de la Yougoslavie, Paris essaya de tenir compte également des équilibres régionaux des Balkans, en particulier en évitant de heurter frontalement l’Italie. Dans ces conditions, on comprend mieux les hésitations de la politique officielle française à l’égard de la Serbie, malgré la sympathie générale que suscitèrent les Serbes par leur résistance héroïque
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Relying on post-Byzantine tradition, eleven painters from five generations of the Dimitrijević-Rafailović family, accompanied by Maksim Tujković, painted several thousand icons and several hundred iconostases between the late seventeenth and the second half of the nineteenth century. They worked in major Orthodox Christian monasteries in Montenegro, Kosovo and Metohija, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Dalmatia, but their works can mostly be found in modest village churches in the Bay of Kotor (Cattaro) and on the South Adriatic coast. The decoration of these churches was financially supported by the local population headed by elders. Along with a reconstruction of their biographies and a chronological overview of their major works, this paper seeks to trace stylistic changes in the Bay of Kotor school of icon-painting. While simply varying a thematic repertory established in earlier periods, the painters from the Bay of Kotor were gradually introducing new details and themes adopted from Western European Baroque art under indirect influences coming from the monastery of Hilandar, Corfu, Venice and Russia. This process makes this indigenous school of icon-painting, which spanned almost two centuries, comparable to the work of Serbian traditional religious painters (zografs) and illuminators active north of the Sava and Danube rivers after the Great Migration of the Serbs (1690). Despite differences between the two, which resulted from different cultural and historical circumstances in which Serbs lived under Ottoman, Venetian and Habsburg rules, similarities in iconography and style, which were inspired by an urge to counteract proselytic pressures, are considerably more important.
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This essay portrays Vladimir Ćorović (1885–1941), the distinguished Serbian historian of Herzegovinian origin, who made a distinct mark in the field with his prolific and wide-ranging writing. Given his vast array of interests, both in terms of topics and historical eras, Ćorović has been dubbed the last polyhistor, following in the footsteps of Stojan Novaković and other historians of similar calibre.
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Cet article se propose d’éclairer les relations entre le despote Stefan Lazarević et « sieur » Djuradj Branković dans les premières trois décennies du XVe siècle. Jusqu’à la fin de 1411 ces relations étaient hostiles, cependant qu’après leur réconciliation elles sont devenues et sont restées cordiales et étroites jusqu’à la mort du despote. L’auteur se sert surtout de documents vénitiens relatifs à l’établissement des frontières serbo-vénitiennes dans la Zeta entre 1422 et 1427. « Sieur » Djuradj, qui représentait la Serbie pendant ces négociations, parle d’abord au nom du despote, puis de plus en plus souvent en son nom propre.
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This article discusses the abortive efforts of King Nikola of Montenegro to achieve territorial expansion for his country during the First World War. Although he was a believer in the unification of Serbdom, he wanted to achieve it under his leadership rather than that of the Serbian Karadjordjević dynasty, and therefore had no intention of letting Montenegro be simply merged with Serbia and his family pushed into the background. Therefore, King Nikola campaigned not just for the preservation of Montenegro as an independent state, but also for its considerable territorial expansion, mostly at the expense of Austria-Hungary, and also at that of Serbia and Albania. He did not desist from his endeavours even at the time of his exile following the capitulation and occupation of Montenegro in 1916; on the contrary, it was then that his demands were most comprehensive. However, he could not resist the reality on the ground during and in the wake of the war, and all his efforts remained useless.
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In the history of the central Balkans prior to the Roman conquest migrations of people had manifold importance. The recognition of these migrations has been the basis for distinguishing between different periods of prehistory. Various analyses of the material culture offer information on the social contact between the invaders and the autochtonous populations. They reveal details of the transfer of elements of culture and technological knowledge from one region to another. Of particular significance in this respect are migrations over vast territories, sometimes from as far as the Ural mountains in the east, the Alps in the west and the Pindus in Greece to the south. Investigations into the models of the migrations open up possibilities for determining the variation in, and different forms of, human movement from one geographic area to another.
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L’un des plus grands hommes d’État serbes du XIXe siècle, Jovan Ristić (1831–1899) fut également historien distingué qui contribua largement au développement de l’histoire diplomatique en tant que discipline en Serbie, précédant de tels historiens remarqués comme Mihailo Gavrilović et Grgur Jakšić . Ayant étudié à Berlin et à Heidelberg, Ristić se développa sous l’influence décisive du grand maître allemand de l’époque qui fut Leopold von Ranke. L’auteur examine les écrits majeurs de Ristić questionnant son approche méthodologique et la notion de l’objectivité à la lumière des débats du XIXe siècle. En analysant l’expérience de Ristić en tant qu’homme politique, Jovanović met l’accent sur la distinction entre mémoires et histoire dans l’oeuvre de cette figure illustrée de la vie politique et culturelle serbe.
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The fact that ban Tvrtko of Bosnia had maternal ties with Nemanjić dynasty and seized certain areas of the former Serbian Empire was used as a basis for him to be crowned king of the Serbs and Bosnia in 1377 in the monastery of Mileševa over the grave of Saint Sava. His charter issued to the Ragusans in 1378 contains the term “double wreath” which figuratively symbolized the rule of Tvrtko I over two Serb-inhabited states, Bosnia and Serbia. Tvrtko’s choice not to annex the conquered territory to his own state, Bosnia, but to be crowned king of Serbia as well required the development of a new ideology of kingship and a new form of legitimation of power. Although his royal title was recognized by his neighbours, including probably the rest of the Serbian lands, that the project was unrealistic became obvious in the aftermath of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. What remained after his death was only the royal title, while the state ruled by his successors became exclusively related to Bosnia. Yet, echoes of his coronation in medieval Bosnia can be followed in the further development of the title and of the concept of crown and state. Interestingly, an attempt to revive the double crown concept was made in the early fifteenth century by the king Sigismund of Hungary, who requested that the Bosnians crown him the way Tvrtko had been crowned.
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During the fourth century BC the Celts expanded into the Balkan Peninsula and the Carpathian Basin. After the major defeat at Delphi, in Greece, the surviving Celtic tribes formed an alliance under the name Scordisci. They settled in the wider territory around the confluence of the Sava and the Danube, which became a base for their subsequent invasions into Thrace and beyond. The Celtic presence in the region has been best documented by the necropoles in Karaburma (Singidunum) and Pećine (Viminacium). These graveyards had a complex arrangement of burials into groups and sections. The warrior graves contained pieces of weaponry showing decorative elements of both Western and Eastern Celtic art tradition. Some of the female graves contained rich personal adornment such as the coral bracelet and the Münsingen-type fibula in a grave in Pećine. Until the Roman conquest, the Scordisci remained the most powerful military force in the region.
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The authors analyze Serbia’s position and politics in relation to the Greek states of Epiros and Nicaea which emerged after the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1204. The available sources show that Serbia under Stefan the First-Crowned and his successors wisely used the rivalry between the two Greek states, which both sought to present themselves as the lawful successor of the fallen Empire of the Romans, and thus safeguarded her independence. Acting as an adviser to Stefan the First-Crowned and his successors, his brother Sava played a prominent role in conducting this realistic policy.
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This essay examines the divergence in views and actions between the two leading Serbian statesmen, Nikola Pašić and Milovan Milovanović, during the course of negotiations with Bulgaria which led to the conclusion of the Serbo-Bulgarian alliance, a prerequisite for the successful military operations against the Turks in the Balkan War of 1912. Milovanović, the foreign minister, considered an agreement with Bulgaria as an indispensable diplomatic asset for Serbia which would allow her to preserve her independence in the face of the hostile Austria-Hungary and secure an outlet to the Adriatic Sea. Although he fully appreciated the difficulties of Serbia’s position pointed out by Milovanović, Pašić was rather unbending in respect of the territorial concessions to Bulgarians in Macedonia to which Serbia had to agree in return for the conclusion of an alliance. This essay demonstrates that the difference between Pašić and Milovanović was a matter of tactics rather than principle. The former realised that the price had to be paid for the Bulgarian alliance but preferred to have the Serbian government accept an unfavourable borderline under duress, because of the arbitration of Russian Emperor, rather than on its own volition. Not willing to take the responsibility for the concessions made in Macedonia, Pašić chose to present formal rather than real opposition to his party colleague. It was Milovanović’s diplomatic elasticity and courage that enabled the Serbo-Bulgarian agreement to come into being.
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The Slavs do not consider bread to be a common foodstuff, but a sacred object, a symbol of wealth and happiness. Almost all significant rituals (holidays, rites from the life cycle of a person, occasional magical activities) use bread. In some of them, such as marriages or the Serbian holiday krsna slava, it is the main ritual object, which has great symbolic value. This paper addresses the use of bread in the ritual behavior of the Serbs and related peoples, where bread has the characteristics of a symbol and therefore gains a communicative function (it is used to convey or to receive information). It is also points out that the symbolic function of bread changes depending on the grain used to make it, whether it is leavened or unleavened, and the shape of it.
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Since the early 1860s many Croat politicians, both prominent (from Ante Starčević and Ante Pavelić to Franjo Tudjman) and little known, have been openly expressing the ambition to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina to Croatia at a favourable moment and under certain conditions, invoking Croatian state and historical right in support of their pretensions. These pretensions, born out of the belief that the unfortunately shaped territory of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia lacks the necessary strategic depth, have led to a fully-fledged strategy for creating an ethnically and religiously pure Greater Croatia and to constant conflict with the Serb side which also lays claims, predominantly ethnic, to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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This paper gives an overview of the history of Belgrade from the reign of Justinian I (527–565), i.e. the time of Slavic settlement, to the Ottoman conquest in 1521. The millennium can be divided into three thematic and chronological units: the Byzantine era (up to 1204), the Serbian era and, finally, the Ottoman era (fifteenth–sixteenth centuries). Within the Byzantine cultural orbit, and especially during the twelfth century, the city played a major role in the relations between the Byzantine Empire and Hungary. Byzantine emperors sojourned in Belgrade on multiple occasions. The city reached its peak during the reign of Despot Stefan in the early fifteenth century. After his death in 1427, the Ottoman threat cast its shadow over the city. Its inhabitants, the Serbs, defended Belgrade for almost a century (1427–1521), thus defending the whole of Central Europe. Belgrade’s fall into the Ottoman hands was followed by the demise of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1526. Even Vienna was threatened by the Ottomans, in 1529.
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Cet article décrit le rôle capital de Stojan Novaković (1842–1915) dans la politique étrangère du Royaume de Serbie durant les dernières décennies du XIXe et au début du XXe siècle. Diplomate, premier ministre et ministre des Affaires étrangères, chef politique du Parti progressiste, Novaković s’occupait profondément des questions les plus importantes de la politique serbe et balkanique de l’époque telles les questions de la Vieille Serbie et de la Macédoine, de l’intégration nationale serbe ainsi que des perspectives de l’unification yougoslave et de la confédération balkanique. Confrontant les aspects divers de la politique des grandes puissances dans les Balkans au tournant des siècles, l’auteur cherche à élargir la compréhension des idées politiques de Novaković en tant qu’homme d’État, intellectuel et idéologue national.
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Accounting books of the Caboga (Kabužić) brothers 1426–1433 (Squarço/Reminder, Journal and Main Ledger) kept at the Historical Archives of Dubrovnik provide new evidence for the composition and advanced levels of processing of precious metals from Serbian medieval mines. Notably, that the residue left after the process of obtaining fine silver was copper. Even the price of the refining process is specified. Two items of a transaction entered in the Squarço in 1430 contain some previously unknown data about auriferous silver (argento di glama). Besides gold, it also contained copper and, moreover, the ratio of the two per pound is specified. Apart from the Caboga brothers’ accounting books, neither the other written sources nor geological research have provided any indication about the presence of copper in the auriferous silver mines.
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