Lidové milice – nelegální armáda KSČ

Author(s): Jiří Bašta / Language(s): Czech Issue: 02/2008

People’s Militias were called the armed fist of the working people and they acted accordingly. Although at the close of their era they looked rather ridiculous in their shabby uniforms, there was still an arsenal of thousands of guns in their warehouses. Their use was last considered in November 1989. The presented study describes the origin, development and dissolution of People’s Militias. This paramilitary force, which in many aspects resembled the Nazi SA, first presented itself during the coup of February 1948. The presence of its armed members was intended to have and really had a devastating effect on the will of politicians and on citizens‘ resolution to stand up against and resist the oncoming changes. People’s Militias closely cooperated with the Czechoslovak People’s Army which supplied them with weapons, and they reinforced SNB (police) guards and border guards in case of need. They functioned as the repressive component of the communist apparatus. As of the year 1953, People’s Militias were subordinated directly to the Czechoslovak Communist Party Central Committee. Another significant moment in the history of People’s Militias came in 1968-1969. In the course of the Prague Spring of 1968, People’s Militias were under the pressure of the public. However, they became a major support of the normalization apparatus after the suppression of the reform movement. Their action against a demonstration marking the first anniversary of the Soviet occupation on August 21,1969 was particularly brutal. This was the imaginary peak of the history of People’s Militias. In the course of normalization, their activity was restricted to training and actions against demonstrations marking various anniversaries. Individual members of People’s Militias were also sent to schools to show their machine guns to curious pupils. In 1989, People’s Militias had more than 84,000 members. In November 1989, their units were summoned to Prague, but they were never put into action. They were dissolved by the end of 1989.

Kenkarta aneb totalita jako síla zvyku

Author(s): Jaroslav Suk / Language(s): Czech Issue: 02/2008

Editorial

Author(s): Pavel Žáček / Language(s): Czech Issue: 02/2008

Výstavy a konference

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): Czech Issue: 02/2008

Media Consumption Patterns: Watching TV in Former Yugoslav States

Author(s): Nataša Simenunović-Bajić,Lucia Vesnic Alujevic / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2013

The period after the collapse of the communist Yugoslav state was marked by wars in several ex-Yugoslav states. Therefore the state-building period overlapped with the transition from communism to capitalism and processes of reconciliation between the disputed states. This is reflected in the transformation of the media audiences in the Western Balkans region as well. Drawing upon the reception studies tradition, the goal of this paper is to explore media consumption in several ex-Yugoslav states, namely: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia and to find similarities and differences in audiences’ behaviour. The changes in media consumption are connected to the transition processes in the media that brought new opportunities and challenges as well as different audiences’ responses to them. The selection of countries was determined by their shared history, but also by the possibilities for audiences from those countries to easily access programmes broadcast by the other countries within the region. The research asks whether and what kind of connections can be established between the socio-demographic characteristics, cultural and lifestyle values of the audiences and the programmes that they watch. Quantitative and qualitative methods are combined here. Firstly, data obtained from an initial survey carried out in the four states with a representative sample suggests tendencies and patterns in audiences’ consumption of television broadcasting in the aforementioned countries; these are then further explored qualitatively, using in-depth interviews with selected participants, to reveal common cultural values, based on collective memory, among those audiences. The research design employs a comparative approach that allows us to draw more generalized conclusions for the territory of the Western Balkans.

Reading Cutezătorii and Watching Jackie Chan: Romanian Children and the Communist Propaganda in 1970s and the 1980s

Author(s): Laura Visan / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2013

This article will explore an instance of creative resistance to the intrusion of communist authorities in Romanians’ everyday life during the decades of late socialism – the 1970s and 1980s. It will analyse how Romanian children appropriated and renegotiated the propaganda messages that the Romanian Communist Party communicated through media artefacts targeting children. The article will briefly present the Romanian children’s media, with an emphasis on the ideological tenets communicated through these outlets, and the principal rituals of childhood during the Ceauşescu era, particularly those associated to pioneership. This section will be complemented by an analysis of ethnographic interviews with Romanian immigrants from Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area, who recalled their response to the indoctrinatory messages they received during the Ceauşescu era. The analysis will be anchored in Michel de Certeau’s canonical study of everyday living practices. His conceptual pair strategies, usually understood as the appanage of the powerful, and tactics, the space of manoeuvre for the ‘weak’, will be discussed in relation with the social context of late socialism. It will be argued that strategies and tactics are not situated on positions of adversity, but are rather engaged in a relation of complicity, very useful when attempting to reconstitute the social context of socialism.

Evaluation of Political Regimes, Personal Predispositions, and Political Information Processing (Case of Bulgaria)

Author(s): Alina Dobreva / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2013

The paper is focused on the micro level processes of democratisation, namely the perception of political information and the consequent perception and evaluation of the political regimes of the past and the present. Illustrated by the case of Bulgaria, it reveals mechanisms that can be observed in other transition countries as well. The study examines the influence of party affiliation and political socialisation on how people process political information and evaluate political regimes, both present and past. The data, collected by quasi-experimental focus groups and analysed by employing quantitative content analysis, provides evidence that people with different political affiliations and with different political socialisation vary not only in their evaluation of the political regimes, but also in the way they reach their evaluations. This is mostly due to their attachment to one of the regimes and the cognitive closure effect. As a whole, the new liberal democratic regime is embraced. However, there are certain aspects of the regime perception and evaluation that raise concerns about the sustainability of this support.

Television News Preferences and a Sense of Belonging among the Russian-speaking Minority in Post-Communist Latvia: the Case of Panorāma and Vremya

Author(s): Jānis Juzefovičs / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2013

Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative audience research and drawing on the case study of two long-running evening news television programmes – Latvian-language Panorama, the flagship news programme of Latvian ex-state and current public television, and Russian-language Vremya, the main news programme of the former Soviet Central TV and today’s Russian state channel, also available in Latvia – this article demonstrates the interplay between news media preferences and broader sentiments and identity formation processes among the large Russian-speaking minority in the post-Communist Baltic country of Latvia. The results show that what can be seen as immersion of the Russian-speaking viewers in transnational television from Russia is not evidence of their lack of interest in the national life of Latvia, nor absence of their national allegiance to Latvia. The paper is part of a larger doctoral research investigation into responses of publics towards public service television as a nation-building project in Latvia.

Eficienţa utilizării computerului în logopedie

Author(s): Constanta Dumitriu,Adina Karner-Huțuleac,Iolanda Tobolcea / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2009

SISTEMUL PENTRU TERAPIA PERSONALIZATĂ A TULBURĂRILOR DE PRONUNŢIE (TERAPERS) Ŕ reprezintă cercetarea ce a fost derulată în echipă interdisciplinară cu scopul de a alcătui şi implementa un sistem informatic inteligent de terapie a tulburărilor dislalice, specifice limbii române (sistem CBST Ŕ computer-based speech therapy), ca metodă logopedică adjuvantă, personalizată şi centrată pe client. În cadrul acestei lucrări dorim să evidenţiem rezultatele optime obţinute de dislalicii prin utilizarea programelor informatice, în comparaţie cu cele obţinute de cei care au parcurs intervenţia logopedică clasică. S-a validat faptul că folosirea terapiei asistate de computer este semnificativ mai eficientă pentru copiii dislalici, facilitând şi completând tehnicile logopedice clasice.

Influenţa nivelului depresiei diadice asupra satisfacţiei maritale

Author(s): Cornelia Amariei,Loredana Gherasim,Nicoleta Turliuc / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2009

In cadrul acestui studiu ne-am propus să analizăm impactul nivelului depresiei partenerilor şi a gradului de dezvoltare familială asupra satisfacţiei conjugale. Ipotezele studiului sunt următoarele: satisfacţia conjugală va fi influenţată de nivelul de depresie şi etapa de dezvoltare familială; satisfacţia conjugală va fi influenţată de nivelul depresiei si genul partenerului depresiv din familie. Studiul a fost realizat pe un număr de 120 de familii cu o lungime a mariajului cuprinsă între 1 şi 20 de ani. Pentru măsurarea nivelului de satisfacţie a fost folosită Scala de Acord Marital (Spanier, 1974), iar pentru măsurarea nivelului depresiei partenerilor am folosit Inventarul de Depresie Beck (1969). Rezultatele obţinute susţin ipotezele indicând faptul că satisfacţia conjugală variază în funcţie de nivelul depresiei partenerilor şi de lungimea mariajului, dar şi în funcţie de sexul partenerului depresiv din diadă.

Review: Sébastien Bohler, 150 de experimente pentru a înţelege manipularea

Author(s): Richard Constantinescu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2009

« Winning the Cold War »: politique étrangère américaine et psychosociologie (1946-1968)

Author(s): Paul Arnault / Language(s): French Issue: 2/2009

Cet article vise à rendre compte du développement des usages de la psychosociologie dans le cadre de la politique étrangère américaine de la Guerre froide. Il examine les conditions sociales de possibilité d’un tel phénomène en prenant en compte les enjeux professionnels des scientifiques et présente un certain nombre d’applications géopolitiques de la psychosociologie entre 1946 et 1968. Le cas du déroulement du Plan Marshall en France sert à illustrer plus spécifiquement la manière dont les usages politiques et la diffusion de la psychosociologie contribuent à la transformation du champ scientifique français et à la scientificisation des modes de domination dans les organisations. Ce travail fondé sur la méthode sociohistorique de la collecte documentaire met en évidence, dans une perspective transnationale, le rôle

Determinanţi afectivi ai persistenţei motivaţionale

Author(s): Constantin Ticu,Ana Maria Hojbotă / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2009

Persistenţa motivaţională se referă la nucleul dur al motivaţiei individuale, dimensiunea mai degrabă cantitativă (energia şi stabilitatea motivaţională) decât calitativă a acesteia (Constantin şi col., 2007). Psihologia personalităţii include persistenţa atât în modele temperamentale cât şi caracteriale, ca parte a unor trăsături precum conştiinciozitatea şi dependenţa de recompensă. Studiul de faţă examinează relaţia dintre scala PM3, măsurând persistenţa motivaţională, o serie de dimensiuni afective: afectivitatea dominantă (PANAS, Watson, Clark şi Tellegen, 1988), strategii de coping cognitiv (CERQ, Garfensky, Kraaji şi Spinhoven, 2001) şi tendinţa de a controla manifestările emoţionale (Affective Control Scale, Williams şi Chambless, 1992). Corelaţiile indică o asociere între persistenţa motivaţională şi afectivitate (directă cu cea pozitivă şi indirectă cu cea negativă). De asemenea, persistenţa motivaţională corelează pozitiv cu scalele planificare, reevaluarea situaţiei şi focalizare pe aspecte pozitive; sunt discutate şi corelaţiile neaşteptate cu scalele variabilelor dezadaptative ruminaţie şi viziune catastrofică. Nu am identificat corelaţii semnificative între persistenţa motivaţională şi tendinţa de control al afectelor.

A nagy válság nagy magyarázatai. Az 1930-as évek gazdasági válsága az újabb szakirodalom tükrében

Author(s): Ágnes Pogány / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 54/2013

Demográfiai válság az Ormánságban. Családrekonstitúciós eredmények a vajszlói anyakönyvi kerületből

Author(s): Gábor Koloh / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 54/2013

The study is a preliminary report of a research project on the one-child family system that became prevalent in the Ormánság region of Hungary as a result of family planning becoming increasingly wide-spread in the inter-war years. This most telling evidence for the widening practice of family planning is analysed from a number of angles and placed in the context of the period’s social processes. The study is not wholly without previous foundations; preceding studies helped make this subject one of the most frequently studied questions of Hungarian historical demography. For example, this present research project also builds on the conclusions of Rudolf Andorka’s work on the subject. The project picks up where Andorka left off and it covers the period from 1895 onwards, primarily based on public records providing data about heterogeneous social groups. The one-child policy of Ormánság families was one of the most important questions and the centre of attention in the so-called ‘one-child discourse’ between the world wars. Koloh’s new study juxtaposes some of the statements of this discourse with actual demographic statistics from the region. The figures in the report are based on family reconstitution, which is one of the most valuable tools for this nominative analysis. It is important to stress that the report is preliminary, because calculating the age-specific fertility rate and the average birth intervals of women having children in the Vajszló registry district has been completed for only 111 families so far. The paper also entails an analysis of the distribution by number of children, concluding that the single-child strategy was a decision based on a new kind of appreciation of children rather than the result of financial considerations.

Viszontválasz Ungváry Krisztiánnak

Author(s): Zsombor Bódy / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 54/2013

Válságtörténetek a humor optikáján keresztül. A gazdasági válságok, az éhínség és a kolera a korabeli élclapokban

Author(s): Ágnes Tamás / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 54/2013

The study examines contemporary crisis perceptions in texts and cartoons published in political satirical magazines, such as Borsszem Jankó, Az Üstökös, Bolond Istók, Ludas Matyi and the Vienna-based Figaro, for the years 1869, 1873 and 1882. The analysis focuses on the economic crises of these years, and the ensuing disputes about the Hungarian Bank (1873), as well as other disasters such as the 1873 cholera outbreak, stem rust epidemic, and famine. The methodology is based on the categorisation of the devices of humour and satire in both text and image. Regardless of the subjects of satire in these papers, whether revolutions, historical and Biblical events or the quotidian, the texts and images often contain recurring subject-specific devices and symbolism. It is apparent that the satirical representation of the lesser crisis of 1869 was not directly associated with Jews, and relevant cartoons also feature Jewish and non-Jewish characters equally. While the treatment of the bank question in 1873 still does not suggest a direct connection, the frequent mention of Ede Horn brings a Jewish character into the narrative. The subject of the stock market crash, however, definitely reflects the contemporary public’s views about the role of Jewish speculators. The satirical papers’ representation of the 1873 cholera outbreak, stem rust epidemic and famine also show the pedagogical intentions of the authors, and what is especially interesting is the authors’ ability to poke fun at severe problems that deeply affected most layers of society.

A Lloyd-mechanizmus. Krízis és árpolitika a lapkiadásban (1860-as és 1870-es évek)

Author(s): János Mátyás Balogh / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 54/2013

The study explores business strategies and decision-making mechanisms shaping the pricing policies of market-based daily papers in response to crisis. The history of publishing from a corporate angle has not previously been studied by Hungarian researchers, so the media-economic approach in this study is unprecedented. The analysis is based on two market-based factors of newspaper publishing at the time, which are referred to as information trends and economic trends in this study. While the former had an impact on demand, the latter determined advertising budgets. Based on the analysis of business performance of Pester Lloyd, a German-language daily published in Pest, the author points out that the paper was a profitable enterprise in the 1860s and 1870s and it was an important medium both for the advertisement market and for the readers. Before the financial crisis of 1873, advertisement sales made up for nearly half of all revenues for several years. Following this, the study looks beyond the façade of performance indicators and examines the publisher’s responses to the dramatic changes taking place in the publishing industry, as well as the steps taken to remain profitable in economically hostile periods. The study discusses five pricing decisions that took place between the beginning of 1866 and the end of 1873, such as raising the price per issue or advertisement tariffs, and reaches the conclusion that the publishers of Pester Lloyd alternated between market factors during crises, always choosing the one that looked more likely to preserve fiscal balance. This meant that when the information trend was in a more favourable position, they increased the price per issue, whereas a more positive economic trend meant they raised their advertisement tariffs, which is what Balogh describes as the ‘Lloyd-mechanism’.

Zárás helyett

Author(s): Krisztián Ungváry / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 54/2013

Értékek a romok között. A csődperekben ránk maradt iratfajtákról és forrásértékükről

Author(s): Judit Klement,Károly Halmos / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 54/2013