Mezi Pacem in terris, liturgickou obnovou a přemýšlením o církvi umírající.

Author(s): Tomáš Petráček / Language(s): Czech Issue: 35/2020

This study examines the effects of so called normalisation during the 1970s and 1980s on the the ological context, which it understands both as a discipline of the theoretical humanities and as educational framework for cultivating and developing pastoral practice. From this perspective, the author proceeds to map out and elucidate both the targeted political weakening of the domestic methodological debate on theology, which had developed in the 1960s alongside and in contact with its foreign counterparts, and the gradual metamorphosis of state influence to the point where it inhibited all practical development of pastoral practice. It also traces changes in the context of ter tiary education, as well as the situation and debates within the unofficial structures of the so called hidden church. Finally, it examines details of the Czech situation, in particular the often unofficial theological discussions of the 1970s and 1980s, which reflect the specific consequences of the Com munist regime’s suppression of free debate, especially in the Catholic Church. The article concludes by drawing attention to the dangers of certain ideological residues of ‘normalisation’ that persist in the Church to this day.

Zachovat kontinuitu evangelické teologie – za jakou cenu?

Author(s): Peter Moreé / Language(s): Czech Issue: 35/2020

This study focuses on the ‘normalisation’ of the Comenius Protestant Theological Faculty in Prague. The author argues that it was undertaken here in a different manner than at other academic institu tions. This is particularly evident in the context of turnover, insofar as no changes were made to the party faithful [kádr] who made up the theological faculty after 1969. As a consequence, the faculty came to act as proxies of the regime’s normalisation policy. The author claims moreover that it was the students who most vocally opposed the changes made under normalisation, at least until 1974, when they protested against the expulsion of several parish priests from church services. For several of the protesters, this resulted in their own expulsion from the department. The decision to do so was made by government authorities, but its implementation was carried out by faculty adminis trators – that is to say, by professors who had been committed to the process of democratisation up to 1968, but who now called for obedience to the normalisation regime. Inevitably, such behaviour led to their discrediting and the weakening of their authority in evangelical circles. Meanwhile, these same members of the theology faculty emphasized that socialist society is a better guarantor of justice than the capitalist establishment, a position which deepened the crisis in the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren and undermined the relevancy of the faculty in the eyes of their students.

The Future of Hungary in the New International Order after World War II

Author(s): András Ludányi / Language(s): English Issue: 18/2020

Partium – Borders, Ethnic Groups and Territorial Development

Author(s): Ernő-Loránd Szabadi / Language(s): English Issue: 18/2020

The Women’s International Democratic Federation, the Global South and the Cold War

Author(s): Minja Bujaković / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

The Women’s International Democratic Federation, the Global South and the Cold War: Defending the Rights of Women of the Whole World? By Yulia Gradskova. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021. 212 pp.

Konflikt w parafii prawosławnej w Siemiatyczach w latach 1986–1988

Author(s): Piotr Chomik / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2022

The early 1980s brought many social and political changes to Poland. These changes greatly impacted the functioning and existence of the Orthodox Church in Poland, especially in the Bialystok region. Both the Orthodox Church authorities and the faithful had to adopt a specific attitude towards social changes and find a place for themselves in this new, dynamic situation. The stance of the Orthodox Church hierarchy in Poland and its believers on the changes in Poland in the 1980s is still an insufficiently researched issue.Parish conflicts within the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church after World War II were nothing unusual. The most serious conflict was between the hierarchy and the clergy in 1944–1946, mainly in Bielsk Podlaski, and concerning Church jurisdiction over the sur- rounding parishes. The conflict in the parish of Sts Peter and Paul at Siemiatycze erupted over the appointment of a new parish priest after former priest Włodzimierz Doroszkiewicz had left the parish. This brought about a mutual correspondence between the Office for Religious Affairs on the one side and the Metropolitan of Warsaw and All Poland Basil and the parishioners of Siemiatycze on the other. Each side saw the situation differently, and the successive appointments of new parish priests did not bring a solution to the conflict. In early 1987, the parishioners formed the so-called “Civic Committee of the Parishioners of the Orthodox Church in Siemiatycze”.The conflict was resolved in March 1988, after Father Andrzej Jakimiuk was appointed parish priest, most probably after the Office for Religious Affairs took action. This thesis, however, requires confirmation in archival documents.

Dwa filmowe epizody z życia Allana Charlesa Elgarta

Author(s): Karol Szymański / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2022

The article, based on archival sources, is devoted to Allan Elgart, an American who in the mid-1960s decided to study film directing in the country from behind the Iron Curtain. First, in 1964, as part of a Fulbright Foundation scholarship program, he came to Poland intending to study at the State Film School in Łódź. However, he could not undertake studies due to his lack of knowledge of the Polish language and bureaucratic obstacles. At the same time – being a suspect of passing information on to American intelligence – he was surrounded by a security service network, which resulted in his leaving Poland after less than a year of stay. Paradoxically, he completed his film studies in 1965–1969, in another country of “people’s democracy” – at the FAMU in Czechoslovakia, where he encountered liberal political changes, a different organisational culture and a different attitude to “foreign exchange students”. At that time, he made three interesting student films, in which you can look for reminiscences of the then Czechoslovak new wave, including an emancipatory film about young homosexuals and their life problems: My time is your time is our time – there is no time.

Persisting Abscences: The Socio-political Dynamics of a Desaparecido in Post-dictatorial Brazil

Author(s): Luis Eduardo Quintão Guerra / Language(s): English Issue: 13/2021

The construction of memories following the last Brazilian dictatorship is as plural as the number of social actors implicated and as fluid as political circumstances can be. From investments on institutionalized forgetting to the creation of policies of memory, governmental initiatives affected the way society processed the acts of terror perpetrated by the military regime (1964–1985). The development of such initiatives, however, cannot be understood without accounting for the persistent struggle of victims’ relatives and human rights’ advocates. This paper aims to reflect on the Brazilian post-dictatorial mnemonic conflicts by observing how different levels of memory interacted with the political sphere in the process of coping with political disappearance. Drawing on relatives’ testimonies regarding the disappearance of Fernando Santa Cruz and the institutional mechanisms developed by different governments, this text intends to demonstrate how State-sponsored absences during the dictatorship are constantly being (re)constructed according to social and political circumstances of the present.

Czechoslovakia, Eastern Bloc and Expert Missions to Africa

Author(s): Mikuláš Pešta / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2021

As this introductory study argues, state socialist experts dispatched for Africa during the Cold War were an important current in global transfers of knowledge. The paper introduces the scholarship on socialist experts and their relations to international organizations, modernization theory and the concept of development. Furthermore, it also delves into the personal experience of the experts in the place of their positioning and how they affected and were affected by the environment they were sent to. The paper thus summarizes the state of art and explores the possibilities of where the research might go from here.

Schools and Professors Abroad:

Author(s): Constantin Katsakioris / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2021

As part of its new international policy toward the Third World since the second half of the 1950s, the Soviet Union began developing a number of tertiary-level educational institutions in Asian and African countries. This article provides an outline of Moscow’s activity in this field from India and Cambodia to Algeria and Mali. It examines the objectives of the Soviet Union and the receiving states, looks at the achievements and limits of their cooperation, and argues for the importance of these mostly technical training institutions in the development of the receiving countries. At the same time, this article explores the educational and cultural work of Soviet professors serving in these schools, showing that both these professors and the schools became part and parcel of the Soviet Union’s friendly ties with selected Asian and African countries.

„Nem is tudtam, mi az, hogy Gulag”. Túlélők sorsa a családi emlékezetben

Author(s): András Murai,Brigitta Németh / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 11/2022

The aim of the present paper is to explore the transmission of the experiences of the Gulag-survivors in their families. The fate of the Hungarians who had been deported to Soviet labour camps was a taboo during the Kádár regime. Survivors, trying to protect their family members as well as themselves, did not even talk to their own families about the horrible experience they had gone through. How could their descendants learn about the stories of their parents? What sign used in their families referred to their parents’ experience in the Soviet forced labour camps? In order to find out the answers to these questions, we conducted several interviews with the children of Gulag-survivors, who are now in their 60s and 70s. During Socialism, parents, who had been to the Gulag were extremely cautious and silent about most of the things they had experienced. However, there were certain signs, which their children interpreted later in their adulthood as hidden references to the Gulag, such as the expression “captivity”, the use of Russian language, keeping in touch with their former fellow prisoners, and the stigmatisation of their families in their living environment.

Działalność Prezydium Gromadzkiej Rady Narodowej w Górnej Woli (1954–1957)

Author(s): Jarosław Stulczewski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 22/2022

 The District (Gromadzka) People’s Council in Górna Wola was formed as a result of the administrative reform in 1954. It comprised the villages of Wilamów, Tarnówka and Rzepiszew, now being part of Szadek municipality. The Council implemented its resolutions through its presidium, which was a collegiate executive and managing body. The competencies of the District Council included the passing of the annual district budget, appointing and revoking village administrators, collecting taxes, organization of agricultural work, road construction and education. Teofil Kwiatyszek was the chairman of the Presidium of the District People’s Council in Górna Wola throughout all its existence up to 31 December 1957, when it was liquidated.

Wybory do Sejmu PRL (18 października 1985)

Author(s): Jarosław Stulczewski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 22/2022

Elections to the Sejm of the People's Republic of Poland (October 18, 1985)

THE THIRD ROAD POLICY: EUROCOMMUNISM AND ITS YUGOSLAV ASSESSMENT

Author(s): Milivoj Bešlin,Petar Žarković,Srđan Milošević / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2022

This paper deals with a critical stage in the dissolution of the Soviet Communist (Bolshevik) Party’s domination in the Communist commonwealth. The gradual emancipation of European Communist parties, starting with Yugoslavia (1948), through the developments that caused the Soviet interventions in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968), gave birth to independent strategies of political struggle, autonomous from Moscow’s ideological centre, which were implemented by the largest Communist parties in Western Europe. The attempts aimed at the syncretism of the communist platform, and ideas of political rights and adapting to the parliamentary regime resulted in the “Third Road” movement, which strove to unify the positive experiences of the two ideologically opposed sides of the Cold War international constellation. Although it was a belated and, eventually – purely ideological concept, the movement itself and the idea of Eurocommunism has remained as an important testimony of an attempt at finding new paths in the struggle for a more just society.

Modern Europe – forged in the Gdańsk Shipyard

Author(s): Basil Kerski / Language(s): English Issue: 05 (53)/2022

In recent years Polish collective memory has becometoo focused on the military traditions of freedom andindependence fighters. This approach overlooks the thinkingand achievements of the 1970s and 1980s, which were the resultof peaceful social movements. By opting for non-violence,the ten-million-strong Solidarity movement, Solidarność,chose a difficult, but in the end effective, path.

Становление и развёртывание движения шестидесятников и советская политика идеологизации, русификации культурнообразовательного пространства украинцев: конец 1950-х – 1960-е гг.

Author(s): Nadezhda Kindrachuk / Language(s): Russian Issue: 3/2022

This article examines the Soviet policy of ideologization and, russification of the cultural and educational space of the Ukrainian nation in the late 1950s – 1960s and characterizes the formation and development of the movement of the Sixtiers. Despite the comprehensive control of the Soviet totalitarian state over human thinking, the young creative Ukrainian activist continued to be a living intellectual force that was able to adequately analyze socio-political processes in Ukraine and sought radical change in society at that time. This period was marked by the emergence of the Sixtiers – a new generation of Ukrainian national intelligentsia, who defended the national language, education and culture, freedom of artistic creativity. Despite the difficult socio-political circumstances of the time, a significant cultural progress took place in the creative life of the Ukrainian SSR, saturated with a diverse range of views, ideas and aspirations. In Ukraine, there was an irreversible process of national self-determination of Ukrainians through the cultural and educational space. Nonconformist sentiments in Ukrainian environment began a gradual transition to new democratic norms and standards in the life of the Ukrainian nation.

Németek Magyarországon 1950–1970

Author(s): Bence Ament-Kovács / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

Tóth, Ágnes: Németek Magyarországon 1950–1970. [Germans in Hungary 1950–1970]. Budapest. Társadalomtudományi Kutatóközpont – Argumentum Kiadó. 2020. 578. ISBN 978-963-446-819-6

Invázió a Disznó-öbölben és az Amerika-közi kapcsolatok feszültségei

Author(s): Dániel Farkas / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2023

The article analyses the planning and execution of the landing of the CIA-backed Cuban exile brigade between April 17–19, 1961. The focus rests on those elements of the CIA plans which prove that the planning of the operation was heavily influenced by the perception of the U.S. officials about the possible support for or opposition to the operation by other members of the Inter-American system. These perceptions emerged as important after the change of the plans in November 1960 from clandestine to open invasion. After the change of administration, these perceptions influenced Kennedy to curb direct U.S. support for the landing party in the plans. The existing sources prove that these perceptions of Latin-American belligerency led to misunderstandings between the White House and the CIA about the scale of support and the very nature of the operation during the last months of the planning, and contributed directly to its disaster.

De-Stalinisation as a postulate of freedom

Author(s): Mariusz Maszkiewicz / Language(s): English Issue: 06 (54)/2022

Stalinisation – just like the system ofthe Third Reich – was a source of the greatest tragedyof Europe in the 20th century. It meant deprivation offreedom, forced labour camps (the Gulag), prosecutionand massive suffering of millions of people livingin Central and Eastern Europe. In its Sovietform, totalitarianism has Stalin’s face.

„Posągi dawnych mieszkańców” i imperium rozrywki

Author(s): Wacław Forajter / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2022

The text focuses on the analysis of themes related to Indigenous Americans in the best-selling novel by Alfred Szklarski. The image of Native Americans presented in it is ambivalent. On the one hand, Szklarski, replicating epic tropes, refers to the theme of “vanishing Indians” from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and expresses regret for the lost past. On the other hand, he situates them in the context of Wild West shows and “ethnographic exhibitions”, which, during the time depicted in his book, expressed the triumph of Western knowledge and strength over “wildness”.