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This article is the first publication of materials about Pakhta-Aral prison camp No. 29 for prisoners of war. The fate of prisoners of war (both Western and Eastern) remains largely unclear. One reason is because the camps for prisoners of war were subordinated to an extremely closed and classified structure – the GUPVI. To some extent, Pakhta-Aral was an untypical prison camp in the Soviet prison camp system. While most prison camps were established to support industry or resource extraction with labour, then a far smaller number of prison camps were connected to agriculture. The Pakhta-Aral camp was opened as a workforce supply for the cotton growing collective farms of Kazakhstan. Interestingly, archival data show that the need to supply the camp with food and clothes added some liberal aspects to camp life. Some researchers argue that prison camps were a model for the so-called ‘non-Gulag’ society, but the Pakhta-Aral camp shows that at least some civic practices were adopted where they helped to improve the functioning of the camp.
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In my paper I take a close look at the protest group, Femen, the circumstances of its creation, development and recent activities - initially in Ukraine, latterly also in Western Europe. I analyse the character of the group which belongs to the category of new social movements, and I present and analyse those indications of the activity of demonstrations of the movement based on what took place at street level. The object of my interest is also the issue of the appearance of the representatives of Femen in the media (new and traditional) and the influence of the pop culture on different aspects of its activity. I also question the issue of the employment of nudity in the public domain, and its connection with the usage of the expression of nationality against the background of other feminist movements.
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This article discusses issues concerning press text taboo during the national days of mourning after Józef Piłsudski’s death. The source of the material are texts printed in the daily press dated 13.05–19.05.1935. The article discusses both taboo on the formal plane (euphemisms of death and its various aspects), and taboo on a semantic plane (taboo subjects), as well as relationship between taboo and censorship (individual and institutional/public). Its aim is to collect and to analyse euphemisms connected with mourning in the press discourse in the 1930s, especially euphemisms of lexemes: corpse and death. The article discusses also the rhetorical function of taboo subjects defined in connection with Marshal Piłsudski’s death.
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Bullets fired after car refuses to stop at checkpoint, drawing ire of human rights activists.
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The text deals with the situation and presence of Polish literature in Slovenian literary circles in 2014. It analyses Slovenian translators’ choices concerning the selection of Polish authors, the frequency of publication, publishing houses and journals that deal with Polish literature.
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The text analyses the spread and the popularization of the Halloween holiday in Bulgaria. The invasion of foreign models and patterns, their quick adaptation to the contemporary urban environment is at the core of the discussions about the celebration of the foreign holiday, as well as in the discussions about the traditional, “ours” and “theirs”, urban and village, eastern and western, moral and satanic, etc. Is Halloween a holiday on Bulgarian grounds, how and to what extent the traditional holidays of the other nations can be emulated by the Bulgarians, does the Bulgarian mentality also experiences the foreign holidays as sacral, does it internalize their meaning and symbols or does it simply understand them as rejoicing – these are part of the questions discussed in the text. The analysis of the comments in the Internet forums, blogs, events, articles and sites, as well as the interviews with schoolchildren offer different points of view to these problems, connected with the contemporary individual approaches to the traditional – both native and foreign, as well as to the creation of festive events or experiences, disseminated as marketing products.
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Transition’s essential guide to this year’s entries from post-communist countries for Best Foreign Film (and many other categories) ahead of the 88th Academy Awards.
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The article is focused on three important aspects of intangible cultural heritage: the designation of intangible cultural heritage and the meanings imparted to it; the spheres of cultural activity within its scope, and the safeguarding measures which are implemented by the state. On the basis of the definitions and statements from UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, I offer an overview of the situation in Bulgaria: the growing usage of the new concept and the different contents attributed to it; the substantial discrepancies between the essence of intangible cultural heritage and the popular notions about it; some of the state’s cultural policies regarding the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage; and the increased media focus on these issues. In the analysis of the current situation, I draw on my comprehension and experience as a researcher and as an expert involved in the implementation of some of the state cultural policies in this sphere.
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This article offers the concept of folklore nostalgia, derived from Michael Herzfeld’s definition of structural nostalgia as an aspect of the broader notion of cultural intimacy. The concept is discussed in regards to the areas of fieldwork within Bulgarian ethnology and folkloristics. The aim of creating this juxtaposition is not to formulate theoretical propositions, but rather to discuss the extent to which and directions in which the use of this concept would be applicable for the methodology of anthropologically oriented disciplines. The place of the internet is of particular importance here as a ‘new’ field and, at the same time, a ‘new’ source for anthropological research. Studying the specific type of communication on the internet—the characteristics of which resemble the folk(lore) interaction—it is highly interesting to explore this private sphere where interpretations of the official discourse, as presented by the media, take place.
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This paper is dedicated to the legend of seven maidens connected to Yedi Kızlar Türbesi (the Tomb of the Seven Maidens) in Manisa, the Republic of Turkey. Two versions of the legend are discerned: one (pseudo)historical and one ritual-mythical. The author shows that the former version is not actually based on historical facts. The second version is compared to legends which were recorded among the Turks of the Eastern Rhodope Mountains in Bulgaria. In this way, the paper outlines similarities in how the Seven Maidens are depicted in both regions. A comparison with a legend from Ossetia confirms the hypothesis that the Seven Maidens were originally a personification of the Pleiades star cluster. Owing to its peripheral position in relation to central religious issues, this cult was preserved during the Christian (Byzantine) and Muslim (Ottoman) periods, thus providing an opportunity for a manifestation of religiosity among women.
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This article is dedicated to the New Age pilgrimages in Bulgaria in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It presents various types of pilgrim destinations: natural landmarks and cultural sites with a primarily religious character. Some specific aspects of the New Age pilgrimages in Bulgaria are outlined, such as the interest in ‘Thracian’ and ‘Proto-Bulgarian’ sites and beliefs, the influence of Dаnovism, and the inclusion of Orthodox religious centres in New Age sacred geography. The New Age pilgrimages are seen as a manifestation of postmodern religiosity, in which the leading idea is to acquire a personal experience of the respective sites of energy/power in the search for spiritual transformation.
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The paper is an attempt to study the production of cultural identity in the hospitality industry, based on materials from a specific archive: the online self-presentation of the restaurants offering national cuisine. The questions driving the investigation are: is there an established new standard, new consensus among the caterers what is the national cuisine and culinary heritage. And if the answer is affirmative, how does it relate to past standards and how are they communicated to the consuming audience. The analysis of the advertised meals or the units (of R. Barthes) and the menus or the syntactic systems (ibidem) makes possible to offer a few observations: 'the past', 'the authentic', 'the Bulgarian' quality is modelled on the pre-World War II Bulgarian peasant home. We witness an ongoing and dynamic process of constructing and naming the structures of the national cuisine and this process is, essentially, a bricolage, which leaves ample space for individual contributions. In contrast to popular nationalistic rhetorics, the national cuisine incorporates freely Turkish names and products, identified and accepted as "Bulgarian". The vocabulary of the national style is open, flexible, inventive and benignly contradictory (a restaurant offers "chorbadzhi saladlet with balsamic dressing") as with any living language.
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Leaving one’s homeland comes as a shock for an emigrant and his family. It is even more difficult when they decide to settle down in a country as far away from Poland as Australia is. Its exotic character, so different from European lifestyle conventions, can cause difficulties in adapting to the new culture and make the whole process last longer. Language and culture – the two elements closely connected with emigration are discussed in the article. On the one hand there is a need to preserve one’s own values, on the other, however at the same time, one must adapt to new values to avoid isolation.
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The Polish language keeps losing its position in comparison with other community languages. This is a result of new waves of immigrants arriving from China, Vietnam and Arabic countries. The article presents the current situation of Polish language in Australia referring first to the data gathered by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, then discussing factors that are crucial for language maintenance/shifting using the already existing models. The author divides the factors into ‘permanent’ and ‘dynamic,’ and then, in the second group he distinguishes between the factors that can or cannot be profiled. Such an approach reveals the areas where initiatives aimed at Polish language maintenance in Australia are most needed and can be the most effective.
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Organised education in Polish has existed in Australia since the middle of the last century. In terms of primary and secondary education, these extracurricular language classes are held mostly on Saturday mornings, rather than weekday afternoons. Some schools come under local Polish organisations such as Związek Polski (Polish Association), others are part of the Polska Macierz Szkolna (Polish Educational Society). There are also many independent schools which are governed by Parent Associations. These schools continue to gain in popularity – and have particularly done so in recent years. At tertiary level, the Polish language has also been offered at the Department of International Studies at Macquarie University in Sydney since the 1980s.
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In the article the subject of attention is the communication strategies of pupils in schools with Polish as the language of instruction in the Czech part of Cieszyn Silesia. The pupils know more than one language code – at a minimum, the local dialect, Polish and Czech, and they alternating between these codes in linguistic communication daily. The article presents excerpts from interviews with these pupils conducted by the authors (and researchers), in which the causes, methods and consequences of such specific communication strategies are revealed. The main triggers of code changes were found to be mainly changes of conversation topics and changes in the language of communication partners. The article also touches upon other issues: the conceptualization of the world through traditional dialect, the utility of dialects in the contemporary world of technological, scientific and cultural progress and the emergence of mixed supranational spoken languages, etc.
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The article treats the particular interweaving of continuity and discontinuity in tradition as a major paradox in Balkan cultures throughout centuries. Thus a paradigm in the cultural system is revealed as manifested in binary oppositions such as openness versus closeness, the East versus the West, the native as opposed to the foreign and the regional to the European, respectively. Certain clarification upon the age of Modernity and Europium of Balkan art creativity will be beneficial for the outlining of the unique essence of the cultural setting and the experience of Balkan men as a realization in a global world. As a key to the understanding of art and literature Europium is relevant to the disclosure of an aesthetic, spiritual and intellectual wealth and to the particular identity of the peoples on the peninsula. The article treats the particular interweaving of continuity and discontinuity in tradition as a major paradox in Balkan cultures throughout centuries. Thus a paradigm in the cultural system is revealed as manifested in binary oppositions such as openness versus closeness, the East versus the West, the native as opposed to the foreign and the regional to the European, respectively. Certain clarification upon the age of Modernity and Europium of Balkan art creativity will be beneficial for the outlining of the unique essence of the cultural setting and the experience of Balkan men as a realization in a global world. As a key to the understanding of art and literature, Europium is relevant to the disclosure of an aesthetic, spiritual and intellectual wealth and to the particular identity of the peoples on the peninsula.
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