Transitions Online_Around the Bloc-Mirjana Markovic, Milosevic’s Partner in Life and Power, Dies at 76
Slobodan Milosevic’s widow wielded great influence in her own right and faced allegations of complicity in liquidating his critics.
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Slobodan Milosevic’s widow wielded great influence in her own right and faced allegations of complicity in liquidating his critics.
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The article is dedicated to the research of Jewish population conditions in southern towns of Ukraine during the end of the XVIII-beginning of the XX centuries. Jewish population constituted a substantial part of southern towns’ population during the studied period. That is why the participation of the Jews in cultural, national and municipal life of southern Ukrainian towns is analyzed. Employment of the Jews in towns is characterized, too. The South of Ukraine from a legal point of view of the Russian Empire was marked as a limit for Jewish settlement, so the details of their participation in self-government are analyzed. The problem of the Jews’ participation in urbanization and modernization of the Southern Ukraine region is studied taken separately. Demographic changes in a part of Jewish population and in regard to their correlation in municipal councils are also characterized. The conclusions are made concerning the role of the Jews in urbanization of the Southern Ukraine region and their activity in municipal self-government.
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Based on documents retrived from the Romanian archives, our study is trying to to analyzethe main views promoted by Nikita S. Khrushchev towards the boundaries between the communist states. Thus, we analyzed the speech delivered by the Soviet leader on March 7, 1959 in Leipzig, as well as the message addressed by Khrushchev to the Heads of State on December 31, 1963. In addition, we analyzed thedifferent views, regarding the border issues between the socialist states, promoted during the Preparatory Conference held in Bucharest (June 24-26, 1960), as well as during the Moscow Meeting of the Communist and Workers’ Parties (November 1960). As case studies we chose China, Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania, Hungary and the USSR, focusing our attention on how the border issues influenced the dynamics of political and diplomatic relationswithin the communist camp until Khrushchev’s debacle.
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The paper deals with the representation of the Ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) in the historiography of the territory once comprising Yugoslavia. The author divides his subject matter according to regions (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina) and periods (inter-war, communist, and post-communist). During the first period, the Volksdeutsche were not a prominent topic in historiography of the three leading Yugoslav peoples, not even in Slovenia, which had the longest history of ethnic strife between the Slovenes and the Germans. It was the Ethnic German authors who published the most works on the Volksdeutsche in this period. Most of them appeared in the 1930s, as many Danube Swabian settlements celebrated the 150th or 200th anniversaries of the arrival of the Germans.After WWII, in which the Ethnic Germans had sided with the invaders and were afterwards collectively punished by the new communist authorities, they acquired the image of the “bad guys” of post-war historiography. During the first 15-odd years, works on them were scarce, although several official papers and memoranda enumerating their war crimes and treasonable activities before and during WWII were written soon after the end of the war. In the course of the 1960s, several important works appeared and set the trend for the 1970s and part of the 1980s. Most of them were published in Slovenia. These works also covered the longest time span. In other parts of Yugoslavia, works on the Volksdeutsche usually dealt with their colonization or with WWII. Works on WWII always insisted on German war crimes, persecution of Jews, and combat against the Partisans.Since the mid-1980s, the image of the Volksdeutsche has become more realistic and less biased. Slovene and Austrian historians organized a conference in 1984 (that engendered a collection of papers in 1986) on the Germans in Slovenia 1848–1941, which made the new trends plain to see. In other parts of the country, several works on the Volksdeutsche Partisan company appeared.During the second half of the 1980s, as the communist political and economic system started to dilapidate, historiography posed new questions, discovered new topics, and opened new approaches. The revision and questioning of decades-long myths and established truths began.This trend boomed after the break-up of Yugoslavia and collapse of the communist system. Communist crimes at the end of WWII – and the atrocities against the Volksdeutsche – became one of the best-researched topics. Gradually, other German-related topics were taken up and – although old views still persisted here and there – the German minority became part of national histories once again. This production has been very lively in Slovenia and especially in Croatia, whereas the number of works in Serbia, and especially in Bosnia-Herzegovina, has lagged behind.
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This paper examines and presents court proceedings against the Catholic newspapers Mali koncil (Little Council), Glas koncila (Voice of the Council), and Glasnik sv. Antuna Padovanskog (St Anthony of Padua’s Herald), later the Veritas, and their editors and authors Franjo Kuharić, Živko Kustić, and Ivon Ćuk during the 1960s and 1970s. Based on original archival material and relevant literature, seven court proceedings against Ivon Ćuk and Živko Kustić have been reconstructed. These include misdemeanour proceedings, the confiscation of or bans on the distribution of individual articles or issues of the mentioned papers, and two criminal proceedings, through which the communist authorities tried to limit the writing of the Catholic press and, indirectly, the activity of the Catholic Church in contemporaneous society. Using various research methods – analysis of contemporaneous legislation and court records, the contents of official correspondence between the then state and Church representatives, and individual articles published in the Catholic press – the author sheds further light on not only the legal aspects of these proceedings, but also their political background and motivation, placing them within the context of the contemporaneous relations between Church and state. The activities of the then Commission for Religious Matters of the Executive Committee of the Parliament of the Socialist Republic of Croatia regarding monitoring the contents of the Catholic press, resolving certain legal and political dilemmas related to initiating court proceedings, and its cooperation with the contemporaneous so-called “prosecution organs”, especially the District Public Prosecutor’s Office in Zagreb, are studied separately. Presenting certain reactions of Church representatives, especially through the diary entries of then Zagreb (arch)bishop Franjo Kuharić, the author has shown the way in which the mentioned court proceedings were experienced and “read” by the contemporaneous Church leadership in Croatia. It can be concluded that the then Catholic press – despite being faced with court proceedings – primarily fought for the freedom of the Catholic Church in contemporaneous society. However, in doing so the Catholic media and authors also indirectly broadened the freedom of the press and public speech in the Socialist Republic of Croatia and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, especially after 1971, when the Catholic Church remained the sole organised “opposition” force to the country’s regime.
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Examining the data on Pavle Horvat published on the basis of scientific and profes-sional papers as well as newspaper articles shows two basic views of his work. The first in-volves the beginnings of his public and political activity, and concerns a young man who wished to actively participate in the then current political events in Slovenia but, for various reasons, most of all probably his approach, failed. The second view is much more intense and focuses on moments from Horvat’s life that do not show him in a positive light, but as a “bad guy” who created a false public image of himself. Based on the gathered data, it is difficult to complete both images and it is certainly necessary to conduct more research in order to answer all questions. The data gleaned from the daily press is partial, as is the data from the documents. The second image, which can be seen from the gathered data, serves as the basis for forming the literary character of Pavle Horvat in the novel Fara sv. Ivana (The Parish of St John) by Miško Kranjec. In it, Horvat’s character is showed in a negative light, as a person who primarily fights for his personal interests under the guise of caring for Slovenians in Cro-atia. Such a literary formation may be based on documents and newspaper articles that were available to author Miško Kranjec, but could also be based on Kranjec’s subjective opinion, since it is obvious he knew Horvat personally and therefore immortalised him in his novel. Even though the character of Pavle Horvat is today almost unknown in Slovenian and Croa-tian historiography, it is precisely the literary formation of his character that prompts us to think about the less-known Slovenian-Croatian political relations in the interwar period and especially during World War II.
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The events preceding the independence of Albania are documented in detail in German diplomatic archives. German diplomats from the region, in Istanbul, Athens, Sofia, Thessaloniki, Skopje, and Cetinje as well as in the major powers’ capitals – London, Rome, St Petersburg, and Vienna – reported to Berlin on the events in the European part of the Ottoman Empire. The goal of this paper is to study the mentioned documents and make them available to the broader public and younger generations of historians. The bibliography of the German Foreign Ministry, Auswaertiges Amt, Politisches Archiv Findbuch, Auswaertiges Amt 1867 – 1920 Oxford, Teil I und II, 1956, catalogues all available documents on Albania under Ottoman rule till 1914 because the German embassy in Istanbul was responsible for Albania at that time. In 1914, Germany opened its first embassy in Tirana, and from then on documents for Albania were catalogued separately. The archived documents show that Germany was very interested in the events in Albania and actively supported Albanian independence, i.e. the establishment of an Albanian state.
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Povijest livanjskog konfesionalnog školstva obradila su dvojica livanjskih učitelja: Stipo Marković katoličkog (Hrvatske katoličke škole i učitelji u Livnu za turske uprave) i Dušan Karanjac pravoslavnog (Srpska konfesionalan škola u Livnu). U tim školama predavali su (kao učitelji) i neki svećenici Livnjaci. No, tek u posljednjem deceniju devetnaestog stoljeća počinju raditi prvi domaći učitelji rođeni Livnjaci, i to kao državni službenici. Predavali su u interkonfesionalnim državnim osnovnim školama diljem Bosne i Hercegovine. U ovom radu riječ je o domaćim livanjskim prosvjetnim radnicima (učiteljima, nastavnicima i profesorima) – od onih najstarijih do onih koji počinju raditi pedesetih godina dvadesetog stoljeća.
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The subject of the report is the created mass of Bulgarian popular songs between the 1950s and 1990s. With a view to the comprehensiveness of the subject, the large number of such songs (several thousand) was reduced to the sum of songs which were awarded at the International Festival for Popular Music “Golden Orpheus”. The second subject of the material is the contemporary musical critique at that time, which accompanied the events of the Festival. The issue in which the author is interested is the prevalence of sharp criticism in the materials toward the Festival’s song production, made from the position of one “critique in general”. Referring to the analysis of the specific phenomenon “compositional critique”, which the German musicologist Carl Dahlhaus suggests at approximately the same time (the 1970s), the author draws the conclusion about the inadequacy of the musical critique which denies in most cases the value of the schlager music, presented at the Festival “Golden Orpheus”.
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The past of the Reformed tradition in Latvia is not a well-known part of our In lory. The first Reformed congregation in Riga was registered in 1590 and it 'used St. Jacob's Church for worship. In the Duchy of Kurzeme (Courland) Reformed Christians appeared around 1645 and they were able to gather in the Reformed hall of Mitau (Jelgava) Castle. Nobles were afraid to involve Latvian peasants in the Reformed congregation because Reformed churches were autonomous and the principle of self-governance would create an independent social space for Latvians. In the 18th century Reformed church buildings were built in Jelgava and Riga and with Kurzeme and Vidzeme becoming part of the Russian Empire the Reformed faith was able to gain a more stable legal status, however, it was integrated in the Lutheran Church. At the end of the 19th century a group of Lithuanian Reformed believers emerged in Riga, which gradually transformed itself into an independent congregation. The number of German adherents of the Reformed faith slowly diminished due to the aging of the Baltic German population. The First World War caused a further shrinking of the Reformed circles because many foreign citizens belonging to this division of Christianity left the Baltic region.
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The end of the First World War coincided in Poland and Germany with the birth of a parliamentary system of government. However, while Poland adopted classical political devices derived from the then model a la française, which at that time dominated, Germany decided to create an original parliamentary system of government, with the strong position of a president elected by universal and direct election. It soon turned out that in both countries this resulted in a “democracy that came too soon”. Quite quickly, crisis and the collapse of parliamentary rule occurred. The subject of the analysis undertaken by the author is the reflection on the solutions of the German Constitution of 1919 and the Polish March Constitution of 1921, which shaped the parliamentary system of government, with particular reference to the premises that led to crisis and the collapse of parliamentary democracy.
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With emergence of the modern Latvian nation Islamic civilisation was manifested in the Latvian literature and publications through a variety of extremely different interpretations originating from Orientalism influenced by the Enlightenment and Romanticism, narrow-minded missionarism of the Western church, national awakening sympathetic to the ‘Eastern lands’, socially oriented solidarity with peoples who had suffered colonialism and meta-human openness to different cultures, religions and traditions. The aim of the article is to touch upon these evaluations in the Latvian materials from the 18th Century to the Middle of the 20th Century through typical examples by disclosing their causes resulting both from the perception of the heritage of European intellectual history and from the transformation of the world outlook determined by the historical experience of Latvian intellectuals. Influence of Central European thinkers who wrote in German and Baltic Germans in this regard is no less important as the later contribution by Latvians who continued the centuries- long discourse of reception of Muslim countries, which started in Livonian times and lasted during existence of Baltic provinces in the Russian Empire, independent Latvia and the USSR.
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The Songs of Frontier Warriors represent the tradition of the practical and imaginative life of Albanians. They are a monument to their life's culture. Consequently, they are also identified with features of the customary tradition that emerges from the Code of Lekë Dukagjini (Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit), the customary Albanian code, known by the end of the Middle Ages and onwards. These songs still act as a monumentalizing imaginary of the traditional Albanian culture. Since the territory (landlords’ properties) is the place of common memory, the life that is developed there and described in the song is a witness to this culture and territory, as well as a proof of the cultivated sense of the community. The spiritual-symbolic territory created on this territory, lies on the background as an identity cornerstone. Meanwhile, the identity of the Frontier Warrior is complex, in its own way. In Albanian literature, the Songs of the Frontier Warriors can determine the territory according to the memory size of the Frontier Warrior's memory. The Albanian Frontier Warrior protects his life and community and territory before defending doctrinal concepts. Each of these heroes emerges strongly motivated as a literary entity, a verbal epic, which exerts powerful influence even today, not only in the literary cultures of the nations where they were created. They generate cultural, national and literary identity at once.
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This article investigates urban water infrastructures in the Russian Empire and USSR during the “Long 20th Century” and focuses on prospects for further development in infrastructural and environmental history within the framework of this subject. Infrastructural history has been particularly notable in German historiography of Western and Central Europe, and its theoretical solutions appear useful for research into Russian/Soviet city infrastructure. First, we suggest a shift in perspective from technological history to those aspects of environmental and urban history most closely concerned with politics and civil society—especially urban society, with its collaborations and collisions between various social groups, such as city and state officials, activists, and specialists in different areas. Differences between capitalist and socialist urbanization are also worthy of more study. Finally, we discuss the importance of modernism and modernization discourses, as well as issues related to the production of space. The combination of various research perspectives of urban history, the history of the environment, and infrastructure of the past makes it possible to productively explore city water infrastructure. At the same time, the analysis should pay attention not only to correlation with political history, periodization, and which points of view to challenge via new approaches, but also incorporating a new social history, the history of society.
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The article observes the communists’ activity in Vardar Macedonia in the 30s and the beginning of 40s of the XX century. The main accent is focused on the political propaganda of the Macedonian communism, its external dependencies and the organizational forms it acquires. The relationships of the Macedonian communists with the Bulgarian national liberation movement are studied as well.
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I.N. Kibardin, the representative of the Vyatka region district intelligentsia, achieved significant success in the entrepreneurial activity during the establishment of capitalism in the Russian province. His numerous commercial projects – library, printing office, bookshop, and newspaper publishing – in Yelabuga, the city of a district status in the Viatka governorate – were interrelated. Each separate initiative contributed to the capitalization of his printing business. In this industry, I.N. Kibardin was a nontrivial example: the simple typographical production of the Vyatka province became a company capable of producing nationwide publications that took a leading position in the governorate. The experience of I.N. Kibardin is of interest for studying capitalism formation at the local level of the Russian province in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The maximum development of the market opportunities of the Russian hinterlands by the entrepreneur was achieved under the state policy of restrictions and emerging demands of the society for the product he offered. He proved the efficiency of the mechanisms of bourgeois development at the local level. From the point of view of historical personology, the unique path of the “little man” who advanced by himself to prominent positions in the business community of the region is of particular interest. The relevance of the research lies in the anthropological approach to the study of the history of Russian entrepreneurial activity during the late 19th – early 20th centuries, in focusing on the background historical figure who was devoid of the halo of uniqueness and elitism.
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The paper is devoted to the analysis of the reproductive reception of John Keats’ works in Russia during the 21st century. Based on the study of user queries in the most used, according to the Seo-auditor, search engines on the Internet – Yandex and Google – and groups devoted to the author in the most popular social networks – VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, and Facebook, it has been concluded that due to the lack of promotion of the English poet-romanticist in Russia, J. Keats has a low popularity among ordinary readers. Compared to the popularity of A.S. Pushkin, G.G. Byron, and W. Shakespeare in the Russian Internet, the popularity of J. Keats can be estimated as very low. Translations and publications of sonnets, odes, and creations of other genres, especially epic poems, by J. Keats in the Russian language caused a surge of research interest to the author, his creativity, his literary method, biography, and artistic ideas. The analysis of dissertations and articles on J. Keats written during the last decades has revealed a shift of interest of researchers from the genre features of his works towards the aesthetic concept of authorship, which distinguished J. Keats from other English romantic poets of the 19th century and influenced many followers of J. Keats, such as W. Morris and O. Wilde.
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This paper considers the problem of Assyriology development in the context of the general evolution of research on history. Assyriology has undergone the following several stages in its development: 1) middle 19th century – 1920s: collection, translation, and initial interpretation of data obtained during the archaeological expeditions; 2) 1930s – 1950s: creation of generalizing works, attempts to characterize the specificity of the state structure and royal power of Assyria; 3) late 1960s – early 21st century: the modern stage in Assyriology development, attempts to apply new approaches to the study of the history of Assyria. Based on how modern Assyriologists consider the problem of the ideology of Assyria, we tried to show that the newest theoretical and methodological approaches, such as the ones developed by R.J. Thompson, L.R. Siddall, B. Pongratz-Leisten, and M. Karlsson, are applied currently in the field of Assyriology. During the review of these monographs, the following conclusion has been made: the development of the methodological foundations of history research and their introduction into various spheres of historical knowledge, on the one hand, expanded the problematic field of Assyriology and allowed us to look at the archaeological sources from different perspective based on new data which were not earlier available to researchers. However, on the other hand, using the example of ideology, we have shown that researchers, due to differences in the applied approaches, see the problem of studying ideology and understand the basic terms in different ways. It leads to different results of research that cannot be combined within the framework of a single cognitive space.
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The paper is devoted to the study of the military estate of Japan by British and American scholars since the discovery of the country in 1853 until the World War I. Their transactions are valuable because the authors wrote about samurai during the period when they existed. In Russia these works have not attracted attention of scholars. The paper is aimed at analyzing the first scientific and journalistic works from the point of view of their evaluation of samurai, as well as the origin of scientific study of Japanese history. In this period three stages were identified. 1) Protoscientific (until 1869). Lack of terminology and single perception of the Japan history, inaccessibility of sources, and, as a consequence, inaccuracy of information. The focus of attention of Europeans was the shogunate and the daimyo. 2) Early scientific (1869–1894). The beginning of cooperation between Western and Japanese scientists, active work of the founders of western Japanese studies – E. Satow, W. Aston, B.H. Chamberlain, W.E. Griffis, et al. The beginning of the “Asiatic Society of Japan”. The rise of interest in samurai as a marginal stratum of society. 3) Popular-science (1894–1914). Japan military victories led to an increase in the number of popular literature about the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese war and, as a result, the interest in samurai and their ethics has increased.
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