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The most strategic demand of the First World War was inarguably the oil. The places which the “Big Powers” mostly focused on for the supply of oil was East Europe, Black Sea, The Caspian Sea region. The operations which aimed to gain the dominancy over the region had continued after the war in 1919 as well as during the war times. The English who knew the strategic importance of the Caucasian Region, did not only control the oil regions in Baku but also caused major industrial losses in Soviet Russia. Apart from the Caucasian Region, the English also tried to gain the unilateral dominancy over the Black Sea, Sea of Azov and the Caspian Sea. The Soviet rulers who were trying to displace the Czarist Russia, also set eyes on the same region for it was vital for their future and to this respect fired the start of an extensive battle. On one hand, while the political, economical and military conflicts were going on, on the other hand, the ideological arguments had become the fundamental element of the expansionist policies. As the main sources of this study, Die Rote Fahne (Vienna), Pester Lloyd (Budhapest), Wiener Zeitung (Vienna) were thoroughly reviewed
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Rousseau’s philosophy can be situated as a continuum between the ancient and the modern traditions; we argue that it does not fully belong to either and this is particularly evident in his discussion of liberty. Our point of departure is a view that in order to grasp peculiarity of Rousseaus’ understanding of liberty we need to go beyond the liberal tradition and its scheme of thinking about freedom as well as beyond the intuitive understanding of liberty. The second part of the article presents an analysis of the four different meanings of liberty that we find in Rousseau’s theory: natural, social, moral and civil. The most important for political philosophy is his discussion of the shift from the natural to social and civil liberty and the insistence that true freedom cannot be totally separated from morality. Finally, we discuss some of the contemporary interpretations of Rousseau’s political thought which often emphasize one of the different meanings of liberty that we find in his writings.
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Vilayet of Shkodra has been one of the most problematic areas of Albania under Ottoman rule. The Empire didn't ever reach the goal to fully subdue that, because as it is known Mirdita and Malësia e Mbishkodres have always had a certain customary and religious autonomy. So, in short vilayet of Shkodra has had solid relations with High Gate. With the advent of the Young Turks in power in 1908 it was hoped that their reports would have improvements, because their electoral promises had managed to obtain the consent of that province. This hope was soon extinguished, because the government of the Young Turks not only didn't keep promises but also violated in the collecting taxes and disarmed the population through military expeditions. This behavior of the government urged greater dissatisfaction to Albanians who burst into regional insurgencies during 1909, 1910 and 1911 being concretized with the insurgency of 1912. This one that was exploded in Northern Albania, although there was no assistance from foreign countries, it succeed in uniting the Albanians against the Ottoman Empire. Although the human losses and material damages were considerable, they retracted until the High Gate decided in July 1912 to terminate military actions in Albania and accepted to sit in talks with insurgents. This was a prelude to the Proclamation of Independence.
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The article describes the issues related to the economic reconstruction of Europe after World War II. Based on a large number of previously unused archive materials, as well as on published Russian and foreign diplomatic and economic documents, the processes of the creation and implementation of the Secretary of State of USA, John Kerry Marshall’s plan to aid to the European countries are reconstructed and analyzed. The author analyzes Moscow’s attitude to the Marshall plan and to the possibility of the Soviet Union’s participation in it and using Italy as an example, shows its ambiguous impact on the economies of the European countries. A comprehensive analysis of the data about the conditions and the aid USA provides Italy with reflects the nature of the economic impact on various industries, on the agriculture of the country, and on Rome’s political orientation. Special attention is paid to the study of the effect of Plan Marshall’s implementation on the acceleration of the split between the Soviet Union and its Western allies from World War II.
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In 1941 when Bulgarian rule came into power Vardar Macedonia was in an extremely hard cultural condition. The population had been suffering for almost a quarter of a century most outrageous decentralization, political terror and violence, the inhabitants longed for its own cultural development.
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The article examines the common revolt of Albanians and Bulgarians in September 1913 against the Serbian, respectively Montenegro oppression, in Macedonia, Kosovo and Northern Albania.
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The Belgrade coup of 27 March 1941 forced Hitler to improvize the post-Yugoslav political arrangements, as in the preceding years he had sought to woo, rather than destroy, the Kingdom. For his part, just before the Axis attack Mussolini reactivated the leader of ustaša émigrés Ante Pavelić and obtained his reaffirmation of earlier commitments to cede Dalmatia to Italy. Hitler accepted the ustaša 'solution,' whereby his strategy was to let the Italians make enemies of Croats by annexationist policy, and at the same time to encourage Pavelić to terrorize the Serbs. His stratagem resulted in the chronic weakness of the occupation system. Italy did not secure longterm control over the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). Latent antra-Axis tensions provided Pavelić with the room to maneuver between Rome and Berlin and to secure a degree of autonomous action for himself - primarily in his radical attempt to solve the 'Serb question' and in the economic sphere. The NDH diplomatic apparatus reflected the ustaša power structure and the character of the state. Reports from missions abroad were sent mostly ad hoc and they were devoid of attempts to draw analytical conclusions from the news. They were invariably imbued with ungrounded optimism until the very end, likely because of the reluctance to present inferences which the political leaders would not be pleased to hear. Available archives do not indicate how the decisions affecting the NDH foreign relations were formulated; they were probably made by Pavelić and verbally conveyed to the minister. The areas of activity of the foreign ministry were twofold: consular work and the maintenance of routine relations with the Axis powers and their satellites. The consulates in the Reich were mainly dealing with the workers from the NDH in Germany, and they were actively discriminating against the Serbs who were issued one-way travel passes which prevented their return to Germany. After the fall of Italy Pavelić could no longer exploit intra-Axis rivalries. Nevertheless, its dubious legal status notwithstanding, the NDH did posses significant attributes of statehood. Its interaction with external entities was not a mere extension of Italz's or Germany's policy. For that reason its leaders bear much greater responsibility for the countless ustaša crimes than would have been the case had the NDH territory been merely the object of foreign occupation. The example of the ustaša diplomacy indicates that without a high degree of willing complicity of Croatia's educated urban bourgeoisie - people who were often not formal members of the movement - Pavelić's creation would not have been able to function even in its improvized form. The paradox of the banality of evil (Hannah Arendt) is reflected in the fact that the work of Pavelić's accomplices in coattails was arguably more conducive to the functioning of the ustaša state than the work of mass murderers on the ground.
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During Ceausescu regime, Romania intensified its efforts in the nuclear research field. The first part of this article presents some important moments from the development of Romanian nuclear program: the establishment of the State’s Committee for nuclear energy, the Romanian-Canadian and Romanian-American negotiations for buying the nuclear technology and devices. The last part presents the memoirs of Cornel Mihulecea, the president of State’s Committee for Nuclear Energy (1976-1990), related to his activity.
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The author analyses the causes of the break-up of Yugoslavia and shows that the main cause was the expansion of the Greater-Serbia idea, but was also contributed to by a number of internal problems and changes in the international scene. After the break-up of Yugoslavia, a number of processes are still active and generating conflict: the goal of Serbian expansionists to create a Greater Serbia; the lack of a solution to the Bosnia conflict; the .Albanian desire for an independent Kosovo state; Muslim aims of autonomy in Sandjak; a growing sovereignty movement in Monte Negro; and continuing Serbian pressure on Macedonia. The author concludes that decisive international intervention is necessary to prevent deepened conflict and its spread to neighboring countries.
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If anyone can be considered the creator of the American democracy and its most influential promotor, it is Thomas Jefferson. The American democracy is deemed Jeffersonian - rightly and doubly so: Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence (1776), the basic political and constitutional act but he also inspired, created and proselytized American democracy all over the world. Tocqueville considered him to be the sturdiest apostle of democracy ever. Jefferson is one of the few scholars and politicians whose belief in the value and the possibilities of democracy never wavered. His political credo is that the man is capable of controlling himself. The two centuries of ordeals and tribulations of democracy and the experience of various forms of tiranny testify to the continual topicality and universality of Jefferson’s attitudes.
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This article looks at the fate of the kind of home furnishing in Hungary known as “bourgeois” (polgári lakáskultúra) as a way to investigate the middle classes that have emerged since the fall of state socialism. In the 1990s, political discourse was full of speculation about the revitalization of a historic bourgeoisie, and the media regularly featured the material culture of such a historic class. Such furnishings were indeed highly valued among an urban intelligentsia, and seemed to represent evidence of a long history of Hungarian bourgeois taste, civilized values and refinement starkly at odds with socialist material culture, tastes and manners. However, I argue that for many of the emerging middle classes in the 1990s and 2000s, this form of furnishing was no longer a suitable expression of the kind of class position to which they aspired, nor for how it was being newly legitimized. As I show through my anthropological fieldwork among the aspiring middle classes in the former “socialist” town of Dunaújváros, even families who owned such furnishings sold them or demoted them to less prominent places in their homes. Although the socialist state had attempted to devalue inherited, antique furnishings in its promotion of modern lifestyles in the 1960s and 70s, it was not until the end of socialism that such furnishings began to fail to represent middle class respectability. New ideals for such a class were based on entrepreneurial achievements in the present rather than on inherited status, and new home décor was an important way in which this new middle class subjectivity was being constituted.
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This article is devoted to the problems of historic development of Slavic population on the Dnieper Left Bank during the old Russian state formation. The analysis of archaeological materials and other available sources allowed the authors to make the following conclusions.In the middle of 9th century, on the Dnieper’s Left Bank a prototype state was growing up based on the tribes union of Severa led by Khazar noble offsprings, who settled there after a civil war in khaganate and received the rights of Itil vassals.In the first half of 9th century, in the North (the territory of Krivichi, Slovenes, Merya and Chud’), the prototype state formation («Rus’») was growing up, headed by Varangians «coming from overseas», and their ruler accepted the title of «khagan». Its outposts were Gnezdovo on the Dnieper and Yaroslavl’ region on the Volga. The Rus’ troops began their raids in the Dnieper and Volga directions to bring these places under control. In the Dnieper directions Rus’ supported its trade interests by military activities, i.e. by organizing campaigns against the Byzantine Empire (Sourozh and Amastrida) and the Northern outskirts of Khazar Khaganate (the ruin of Novotroitskoe hillfort, the appearance of treasure group on the Desna River, lower Seim and Oka buried in late 830s). On the Volga River, the politics carried out by the Volga Bulgars to restrain the Russian activity led to making roundabout ways by the Rus’ through Byzantine and Khazar possessions, letting them penetrate into the Caspian Sea and far into Arabian East countries.The middle - the second part of 9th century is a period of military activity on the Dnieper’s Left Bank where Rus’ played a leading role. The territory of the Severa, Viatichi and Radimichi - Khazar tributaries - was exposed to attacks, which is proved by the treasure group in the Seim region and on the Upper Oka River, as well as by destruction of Souprut hillfort. This fact can be connected with Oleg’s campaigns in his struggle for joining the Northern Rus’ Khaganate and Kievan separate region of Askold’s and Dier’s Rus’ into a solitary state. These campaigns and the battles of Rus’ against the Slavic tribes resulted in the Dnieper trade way «from the Varyangians into the Greeks» falling under control of the Kiev dukes.
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The article is an attempt to present the development of geopolitical concepts of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and the role of the 1934 text “The international politics of Ukrainian nationalism” by Bohdan Kordiuk played in shaping them. I include the source material, in an English translation, in the second part of this paper. In the article, I concentrate on the discussion of OUN’s geopolitical concepts in the 1930s. To a limited extent I also mention ideas put forward by the Organisation at the end of the 1920s to illustrate the difference which occurred upon the emigration of former activists of the National Executive of OUN.
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The article publishes dedicative inscriptions of the Olbian officials in I-II cc. AD. The article also suggests that members of Olbian councils would not always improve their career growth by rising from step to step. It is also unclear whether it was the law or an old venerated tradition in Olbia that determined strict order of replacements in magistrate’s offices.
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During excavations in the south-eastern part of the Upper City of Olbia in 1998, a small fragment of a marble slab with the relief of a Thracian horseman and two lines of Latin inscription was found. The relief belongs to the group of rather rare reliefs, where a Thracian horseman was depicted during hunting for a wild-boar, who was running under a croup of a horse. The appearence of such slabs in Olbia was connected with Thracian warriors in the Roman garrison here. The inscription can be restored in such way: — ET COH(ortis) I CILICUM DE/[CIANAE] ———[EX] VOTO POSUIT. The translation is: «—and coh(ort) I Cilicianae De(cianae)———(by) promise dedicated». In accordance with this interpretation, the inscription can be dated by 249-250. It is the latest epigraphical monument, which testifies residence of the warriors of the Ist Cilicianae cohort on the territory of Moesia Inferior and in the Greek centers of the Northern coast of the Black Sea. It is also the first epigraphical monument, which testified residence of the warriors of the Ist Cilicianae cohort in Olbia and that the cohort was rewarded with the honourable title Deciana. Together with already known epigraphical monuments this dedication permits to specify some aspects of the history of Olbia in the middle of the III century, first of all concerning composition of the Roman garrison, the date of its withdrawal from the city, penetration and dissimination of Thracian cults here. Till the middle of the IIIrd century, the Roman military administration assigned Olbia a certain role to play in politics of holding the barbarians on the Danubian frontiers of the Empire.
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The term «heraldry» is not used with the personal and urban emblems of the Russian Middle Age. Indeed, in XIV-XVII Russia did not know stems. There were, however, signs, which undoubtedly were symbols of power. These were the Rurik dynasty’s bidents or tridents; their images are found on various objects, including the earliest coins and stamps. Majority of researchers are inclined to interpret them as personal and family symbols of the Russian knyazes in X-XIII c. The Rurik dynasty’s signs treated as stems face an essential difficulty. The stem’s layout follows strict rules, its inheritance is also strictly regulated. Meanwhile, the written records do not mention any rule on inheritance of the dynasty’s tamga. The same signs would be ascribed to different knyazes upon an assumption that a son of a trident’s owner could use a bident, and after that could use the trident again. If so, then it seems there were no laws in transmitting the signs from one generation to another, and hence, the signs are heraldic in essence. A conclusion on chaotic rules of inheritance of the signs, however, is wrong, because genealogical schemes have been built so far upon various ideas about personifications of the signs depending on the place they were found and dating of the object. To overcome this hypothetic practice, a new research has been pursued of the primary record. It reviewed objects dated by X – XI cc. with images of the Rurik’s dynasty: coins (Chapter 1), stamps (Chapter 2), graffiti on coins (Chapter 3), drawings on household items and walls of temples (Chapter 4), the so-called “heraldic pendants” (Chapter 5), potter’s stamps (Chapter 6) and graffiti on bludgeon made of horn (Chapter 7). The research has crowned with a genealogical scheme (fig. 35) containing personified signs of the Russian knyazes. It established that a simple bident was used by the ruling dynasty since Igor, and could be used already by his father Rurik. Until the IV generation the sign was inherited without any changes. Its first transformations took place in time of Svyatoslav’s sons: one of them, Yaropolk, was entitled to receive the family’s bident, Oleg changed its leg’s shape, and Vladimir used trident when his father was still alive. Apparently, it was during Svyatoslav’s sons’ fight for their father’s heritage that Rurik’s family sign transformed into personal-family one. This transition to use of personal-family signs is also connected with representatives of the V generation of the dynasty. Svyatopolk Yaropolchich, the only son of Svyatoslav’s eldest son, used his family’s bident till 1013, later to change its form. St. Vladimir’s sons originally used to possess personal-family signs: Vysheslav added a cross to the leg of his father’s trident; his younger brothers would change the shape of the central dent. The same principle by which the elder son changes the leg of the inherited trident can be seen with representatives of VI-VII generations – grand- and great-grandchildren of Vladimir Svyatoslavich. So, Russia not only had a set-up structure of personal and family signs, but also followed a detailed order of their inheritance. One can be sure ascertaining that in X-XI cc. there was a peculiar heraldic system in Russia, and Rurik dynasty’s signs we find today are Russia’s earliest stems.
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We pioneer the report for silver and copper coins of Jujid mint from Saqchi (late XIII — early XIV cent.) found on medieval site named Costesti, Moldavia. Two types of coins yet unpublished are discovered and one of them could be presumably attributed as issue in the name of Chaka khan, son of Nogay. Interpretations of coins’ legends are also discussed, and main problems concerned with Saqchi coinage research are briefly observed.
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