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The paper describes the institutions and mechanisms of national self-identification of members of the Polish diaspora in Samara province during the second half of the 19th – the beginning of the 20th century. The Polish diaspora in Samara consisted from exiled participants of the uprising of 1863–1864 and economic migrants. The national identity of Samara Poles is described with the help of statistics and official documents, because there are no private sources covering this problem. On the whole, 99.4% of Poles in Samara province were Catholics and 76.5% of Catholics in Samara city were Poles. The important organizations for preservation of the national identity were opened in the Catholic Church: school and library. The Poles tried to avoid inter-confessional marriages and gave their children traditional Polish names. The First World War increased the influx of refugees and led to a growth of activity of the Polish diaspora in Samara. During this period, Polish scout organizations and the club called “Polish House”, where Poles played in theatre and read lectures about Polish literature, appeared in the city. Samara Poles successfully resisted the assimilation processes by creating a system of institutions (religious, educational, and cultural), which allowed them to maintain and strengthen the national identity – “being the Pole”. It means that the Polish diaspora in Samara province, as well as the large Polonia, was a part of the entire Polish nation and contributed its collective experience to the development of modern Polish nation.
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The article looks through the changes in the memory of the Second World War as part of the transformations in the ideas that were established after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of the Marxist-Leninist ideology dominance in the East European countries. The author offers her version of the transformations in the memory of the Second World War, while analyzing the process of the Holocaust ideas’ establishment and the need for condemnation of all totalitarian regimes. According to her, two parallel processes take place in Europe after 1989 – the establishment of the Holocaust as a main event during the whole world war, going from West to East, and the enforcement of the view for similarity between the two totalitarian regimes – the National-Socialist and the Bolshevik, going in the opposite direction. The second process of European revisionism requires not only condemnation of the Communist crimes against humanity in a way similar to the condemnation of the Nazi crimes through the Nurnberg tribunal, but also a full revision of the views on the reasons, the driving forces and the results of the Second World War. In such way, the confrontations between Russia and the West nowadays, related mostly to the accession of Crimea and the war activities in Ukraine, also have their impact on the past: 70 years after its end, the war is starting to look more and more not like a collision between the anti-Hitler coalition and the Axis powers, but like a fight between two totalitarian regimes, in which, for one reason or another, most of the then existing countries were included.
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The outbreak of World War II thwarted the aspirations of Reza Shah to modernization and independent development of Iran. Officially neutral Iran failed to conceal the German influence and the occurrence of certain sympathy for the ideology of Nazism among the ruling circles in Tehran. Soon after Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, Britain and the Soviet Union agreed to occupy Iran to cut off any supply of German troops from south. Their strategic positions in Baku and Khuzestan were seriously threatened by several thousand resident Nazi agents in the country. On August 25 in a joint operation, the Soviet and British troops invaded Iran and in a few hours took control over the major cities. The Iranian distrust to the intentions of the occupiers compelled London and Moscow to allow the government to seek US support. Washington was initially confused and frightened by the Iranian call for help. For the Roosevelt administration, the victory over Nazi Germany was vital for the security of the US and Western Europe, but such intervention, alongside Britain and the Soviet Union, required a clear political vision and a well-trained staff to develop it. Involved in the complex relationship between Iran and its occupiers, the State Department did not intend to affect the British and Soviet interest in the country. But later circumstances made it impossible to maintain neutral position for long. At the beginning of 1942 Britain, the Soviet Union and Iran began negotiations for troop withdrawal within 6 months after the end of the war and on January 29 they signed a tripartite agreement. But the nascent rivalry between the allies put aside the initial reason for the occupation and they started planning the post-war situation in Iran, which remained the last oil bastion in the Gulf. The occupation of Iran by the Allied forces fueled the competition for the acquisition of oil concessions. With the closing of the Tehran conference it became clear to the three Great Powers that Iran would become a point of intersection of imperial interests. On the one hand, Britain sought to continue the exploitation of Iranian oil and to ensure security of the Indian borders to the south. On the other hand, the Soviet Union sought to obtain a share from the oil production and Iran’s refusal of the proposed economic cooperation forced Stalin to intervene in its internal affairs by supporting the communists from the “Tudeh” party. Meanwhile the period for withdrawal of the troops from Iran was extended in favor of the Great Powers along with the deepening of the contradictions between them. The Iranian crisis revealed the genuine plans of the Great Powers for the postwar situation. The outcome crystallized the competition in the New World Order and marked the beginning of the Cold War – a confrontation of ideologies, a battle for resources and a technological rush.
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China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative is designed as a development strategy and framework that focuses on connectivity and collaboration and clearly reads as an ambitious vision for transforming the political and economic landscapes of Eurasia over the coming decades via a network of trade and infrastructure partnerships. The “Belt and Road” run through the continents of Asia, Europe, and Africa, connecting the vibrant East Asia economic circle at one end and developed European economic circle at the other, and encompassing countries with huge potential for economic development. The formation of the 16+1 framework is one of the most. The ‘16+1’ framework as one of the important achievements of China’s diplomacy, refers to different mechanisms and arrangements between China and 16 Central and Eastern European countries. This cooperation framework has been widely accepted in Central and Eastern European countries and has moved on a fast track. The inclusion of the ‘16+1’ cooperation framework into the concept of the New Silk Road (“One Belt, One Road”) is the most important and promising element for the CEEC. The region is predestined to be the Road’s ‘hub’ and can be used during its construction, all the more so because the individual states and cities of the region have been aware of the opportunities connected to it. From the potential and future development of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative the platform “16+1” Bulgaria also expects to deepen cooperation in tourism, agriculture and food, energy sector, science, education and culture. Bulgaria is considered also a leader in the field of information technologies in Southeastern Europe and in the production of components for the automotive industry so it’s another opportunity for future Chinese investment in these emerging sectors in Bulgaria. Bulgaria declares strong commitment to support Chinese companies wishing to invest in Bulgaria in sectors in which Bulgaria has traditional advantages and those that provide high added value and increased competitiveness of the economy – engineering, automotive, electronics, information and communication technologies, chemical and pharmaceutical industry, agriculture and food industry, the creation of industrial zones and hi-tech parks. Bulgaria always emphasizes its desire to attract Chinese companies to invest in Bulgarian industrial zones, which can be obtained support from “National Company Industrial Zones”.
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Głowacka considers three decades of Polish criticism of Lanzmann’s Shoah in the context of recently published outtakes from the documentary. She explores the role of language interpretation in both the film and the outtakes, focusing on statements in Polish and their French and English translations. The testimonies of Poles whom Lanzmann describes as ‘false witnesses,’ Głowacka suggests, ought to be treated as credible accounts that shed light on the complexity of Polish Holocaust memory. But Lanzmann appropriates this memory, framing the Polish language as subordinate to other languages in the film. She also points out sequences in the outtakes where Polish witnesses’ memories coincide with the recollections of Szymon Srebrnik, a survivor of the Chełmno extermination camp. Based on this she proposes to introduce the notion of a co-memory, that is to say a modality of memory that can pose a valuable alternative to the dominant paradigm of conflicting memories.
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In 2018 it is 75 years since the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews. On this occasion, I bring to the attention of the readers of Istoricheski Pregled a story about the life and activity of a person who experienced the threat to be sent to the Treblinka camp; who fought for her freedom and chose Bulgaria for her homeland – Sophie Leon Pinkas, born on 1 September 1923 in Vidin. In Bulgaria she graduated from school and then completed her higher education and became a specialist in pediatrics, defended her doctoral dissertation and habilitated.
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The present study focuses on texts of Western Travelers (Konrad Grünemberg, Pietro Casola, Arnold von Harff, Felix Fabri) and data pertaining to the culture, languages and customs of the Balkan people. Curious details about wedding and funeral customs in the Balkans we can found in the travel notes of Konrad Grünemberg. Arnold von Harff provides valuable data on Balkan languages – Slavic, Greek, Albanian and Turkish, including short dictionaries of these languages. In the travel notes of Western pilgrims and travelers, the ethnic diversity of the Balkans is consistently reflected. The western texts state that the majority of the Balkan population was Christian Orthodox. At the same time, there is interesting information on the minorities of Gypsies and Jews in a suburb of Modon, and their characteristic cultural features are discussed at length.
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The article aims to present in broad outlines and to make some remarks on the main aspects of the past and above all the present of the historical Bulgarian studies abroad or the study, teaching and popularizing of Bulgarian history abroad. Besides publications on the topic, the author has used the archival fund of the Center for Bulgarian Studies, which is stored in the Scientific Archive of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, information from websites and his personal observations. The stimulated and controlled upsurge of Bulgarian studies abroad during the period of socialism and its decline in the conditions of democratization is explained primarily by the direct connection between the Bulgarian state policy, on the one hand, and the Bulgarian studies, on the other. The topic of the historical Bulgarian studies abroad poses the question of the boundaries in the research on Bulgarian history. The boundaries imposed between the states by big politics, but also those established by the various professional and personal backgrounds and realizations of the historians, has resulted in a multitude of historical interpretations of the past. Therefore, the question of whether a history “without borders” is possible cannot get a positive answer. The common subjects and topics of research connect historians abroad and those in Bulgaria, and entail the need for their better mutual information and communication. The “external” viewpoints of the past sometimes confirm the “inner” ones, but in other cases they offer important correctives, such as: rethinking of the “closed” national visions of Bulgarian history; its more successful inclusion into the regional and world historical processes; enhancing the links of history with other sciences and the interdisciplinarity of research.
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The investigation in question is recorded in a series of thirty-eight register entries on a case of financial malfeasance in recently-conquered Ottoman Egypt that was investigated by officials from Ottoman Syria. This case appears in the oldest existing mühimme defteri, a register of important affairs of the Ottoman Empire, and provides detailed information about how the Ottomans governed their provinces. It lists many of the taxes and revenues collected by the Ottomans and discusses the most important treasury personnel in the province and the documents they created. It also describes how the Ottoman state worked to control those personnel even at a distance and to induce these officials to adhere to concepts of just imperial rule. The article describes the issues in the case and identifies the provincial officials involved in the investigation, the documents they were supposed to collect or create, and the procedures they were commanded to follow. The conclusion examines the implications of the case for our understanding of the place of Syria and Egypt within the wider Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century. This episode presents an instance of the Ottoman integration of newly conquered lands in a period when records are fairly plentiful (in contrast to the conquest of Rumeli, where most of our evidence comes from chronicles written at a later date). Beyond that, this case illuminates the whole issue of how an empire operates and challenges the stereotype of general Ottoman oppression of the conquered territories.
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The text contains elements from the history of the town of Pirdop and its` surroundings during the 19-th century. The codex of the local church community has been studied in detail. The accounting within was noted for two decades by the hand of the local notable, Simon. It starts from the decoration of the new church and further on contains data on the functioning of the church community as a microcredit institution. The core of local notable families was examined, as they were the leaders of the church community. More recent pre-Liberation ethnographic documentation, gathered by the teacher Simeon Aldov (Serdanov) was examined from a general anthropological, „patrimonial“, socioeconomical, ecological and geographical point of view in the frame of the region. Robbery and crime, local political unrest and their consequences have been mentioned in a cholistic perspective, in the spirit of local and regional studies.
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Nowadays in Istanbul, Turkey, there is a Bulgarian colony, which was created after the Second Balkan War and the First World War. It was not related to the Bulgarians in Constantinople from the times of the Bulgarian National Revival, but through the Foundation of Bulgarian Orthodox Churches in Istanbul as established, it was their legal successor. The Foundation was also the formal owner of that part of the Bulgarian exarchal properties in Turkey which the Turkish State returned. Lifting the schism was an act of international and internal political importance. This act put an end to the use of the Exarchy as a mean to unite all the Bulgarians within the borders of a new Bulgaria according to the Treaty of San Stefano. In essence, this was a retreat from the national ideal. The conditions for lifting the schism, the closing of the Exarchal Vicegerency and the unresolved status of the Bulgarian Church Community deprived the Bulgarians in the Republic of Turkey of Bulgarian representation on church affairs and predetermined their remaining within the diocese of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. This issue has consequences even nowadays.
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This article gives an insight into the industrialization and colonization processes of northern Scandinavia. Urbanization due to industrialization is a vital part of the perspective, and brings us into an industrial mega system in Swedish Lapland in the late nineteenth century based on iron ore export. It was to be connected to the industrial centre of Europe, especially the Ruhrgebiet of Germany, and paved the way for a new kind of urban development in peripheral Europe – the industrial network town. The history and foundation of the Norwegian harbour town Narvik is vital for gaining insight into this mega system. By studying Narvik we can envisage particularities of, and similarities and differences between Norway and Sweden when it comes to their urban economic foundations, urban development/planning regimes, and the relations between the municipalities, the modern nation states and the dominating companies. Even the development of a uniquely Scandinavian identity connected with the labour movement and the development of a post-war social democrat order visibly results from the new industries. Thus the common Swedish-Norwegian figure of the rallar – something like navvy or construction worker – has a significant place in this study, and the use of the figure in addition to later processes of memory creation, both within the Norwegian and Swedish labour movements, is addressed.
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This article analyzes different social practices of denunciation of informality through the analysis of cinematic discourses in Eastern European societies. More precisely, two case studies have been chosen, the Romanian and the Bulgarian one, due to their shared communist past and due to the large protests against the corrupt elite and social injustice, that took place in both countries during the last decade. Therefore, we will discuss what type of references and representations of the communist past related to practices of corruption can be found in four recent Romanians and Bulgarian films. These Romanian (Cristi Puiu, Cigarettes and coffee, 2004; Alexandru Solomon, Kapitalism our improved formula, 2010) and Bulgarian (Kristina Grozeva, Petar Valchanov, Gloria, 2016; Vesela Kazakova, Mina Mileva, The Beast Is Still Alive, 2016) films that address corruption will be studied comparatively from a theoretical perspective situated at the intersection of pragmatic sociology and memory studies, in order to show the local specificity of this type of denunciation and the circulation of certain discourses.
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