KAKO ŽIVJETI VLASTITI IDENTITET U PODIJELJENU DRUŠTVU I DISFUNKCIONALNOJ DRŽAVI

Author(s): Mladen Ančić / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1/2015

Kad je svojedobno Mirjana Kasapović prvi put formulirala svoje stajalište o Bosni i Hercegovini kao podijeljenu društvu i državi, izazvala je otpor u bošnjačkim akademskim krugovima, otpor koji se pretvorio u raspravu što se rastezla i razvlačila na internetskim i stranicama maloga broja tiskanih medija. No bila je to stvarno tek „bura u čaši vode" - rasprava je angažirala tek toliko ljudi da ih se može pobrojati na prste dviju ruku. Sve je to ostalo pokopano negdje na rubu društvenoga života - nekoliko bošnjačkih intelektualaca, uglavnom politologa, tri ili četiri hrvatska povjesničara i sociologa i, što je posebice važno uočiti, nijedan sudionik rasprave na srpskoj strani, razmjenjivali su misli i artikulirali pa onda branili stajališta koja se, bar na prvi pogled, odnose na ključne elemente društvenoga života Bosne i Hercegovine. Nitko se, međutim, izvan toga kruga nije čak ni „počešao po glavi" zbog toga i pokazao kakav-takav interes za tu raspravu.

Je li hrvatska vlast 1990-ih bila antisemitska?

Author(s): Andrijana Perković Paloš / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 2/2016

The main goal of this paper is to discuss whether the first President of the Republic of Croatia Franjo Tuđman and the Croatian leadership in the 1990s were anti-Semitic. The minimization of the number of Holocaust victims and Holocaust denial, which includes statements that the Holocaust was a myth or a hoax produced by the Jews, are considered to be driven by anti-Semitism. These theories were present in historiography and later in politics. The outburst of political anti-Semitism, according to Western historians, can be found in Eastern Bloc countries after the collapse of their communist regimes. Croatia began its journey towards democracy and independence within this framework. Even before he became Croatian president, Tuđman was a controversial person due to his book Horrors of War: Historical Reality and Philosophy, which some circles described as anti-Semitic. Some of his statements were misinterpreted and his policy of national reconciliation, which meant ironing out the half-century-old political divisions between the Croats, was perceived as the rehabilitation of the Ustasha regime and its Independent State of Croatia (NDH), which carried out genocide against the Serbs, the Jews, and the Roma during World War II. Such widespread perception, supported by Serbian propaganda, prolonged the establishment of the diplomatic relations between the Republic of Croatia and the State of Israel until 1997. The relations between the Croatian leadership, Croatian people in general, and the Jewish community in Croatia in the 1990s were, however, very positive. Some established members of the Jewish community held high-ranking positions in the Croatian leadership. An appeal made by Nenad Porges, president of the Jewish community of Zagreb, to all the Jews in the world, in which he claimed that the Croatian Government was not anti-Semitic, proves the stability of those relations and the support of the Jewish community to Croatia during the Greater-Serbian aggression.

Македонска Голгота. Спомени и изповеди от Ениджевардарско. С., Тангра ТанНакРа–ИК, 2009. 751 с.

Author(s): Divna Gotseva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1-2/2015

Book review

Николай Поппетров, Войн Божинов. Национално могъща и обединена България. Формациите на радикалната десница и националният въпрос. С., ИК „Гутенберг“, 2014. 273 с.

Author(s): Rumyana Parvanova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1-2/2015

Book review

Найден Геров и Драган Цанков в лабиринтите на въпроса: Българската уния

Author(s): Antoaneta Kirilova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3-4/2015

Based on known and newly found documents the author traces the specific actions taken by the Russian diplomacy to abolish the Bulgarian Union in the middle of the 19th century. The main role in this task was assigned to the Russian consular agent in Plovdiv Nayden Gerov. The article highlights the activity of N. Gerov and D. Tsankov and presents their opinions on how to solve the Bulgarian Church Issue showing clearly the difference in the positions of the two prominent figures of the Bulgarian national movement. One of them was a Russian diplomat who was obliged under his official position to follow Russia’s policy towards the Bulgarian-Greek religious strife, which coincided with his personal beliefs to solve the Issue within the traditional Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox. The other was a Bulgarian journalist, politician and public figure offering to Bulgarians a union with the Roman Catholic Church as the way out of the tangled religious issue. The author tries to give a reasoned answer to the question which is a major focus of this article: What did the Bulgarian union achieve for the national movement in the mid-19th century and in this sense – was it its well thought out, far-sighted and politically justified „alternative“?

Wielkie deportacje środkowoeuropejskie z lat 1939-1950 w perspektywie aksjologicznej. Wyzwanie dla literatury

Author(s): Stefan Chwin / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2016

This article focuses on the basic question of what axiological perspectives are found in Polish and German deportation narratives from the second half of the twentieth century. Chwin also asks what kinds of axiological challenges mass deportation and expulsion has posed (and still poses) for literature. Numerous writers and chroniclers – witnesses as well as participants – have tackled the issue, and their writings continue to be published in Poland and in Germany. Chwin presents a preliminary typology of axiological perspectives that give direction to narratives of deportation in Polish and German literature of the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. He isolates the following basic perspectives: 1. the Nemmersdorf axiology, 2. the axiology of biographical recapitulation, 3. the axiology of deportation and of the ‘ideological fatherland’, 4. the axiology of historical recapitulation of deportation and 5. the axiology of ‘alternative history’. The article passes over the axiology of reconciliation in Polish literature after 1989 – a topic that deserves a separate study.

Geopolitical position of Poland - from time of partitions to the independence

Author(s): Jowita Brudnicka - Żółtaniecka / Language(s): English Issue: 23/2016

To understand contemporary geopolitics, especially Polish geopolitics you have to refer to the history. Polish geopolitical philosophy has flourished in a crucial period in the history of the country - the To understand contemporary geopolitics, especially Polish geopolitics you have to refer to the history. Polish geopolitical philosophy has flourished in a crucial period in the history of the country - the time of the fall of the First Republic and partitions. Sketch of Polish geopolitics is well composed into the broader plan of European thought. This is not just a simpple analitycal exercise. Article contains the suggestion, that the events, experiences and geopolitical configurations may exhibit amazing repeatability.

Словашката република – поглед от България (1939–1944)

Author(s): Nikolay Kochankov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1-2/2016

Bulgaria and Slovakia, as well as their diplomatic, military and political, economic and cultural relations are an integral part of the history of the Southeast Europe during the Second World War. The two countries and their relations are experiencing strong influence of a complex set of factors in the arbitration and the dominant role of German policy. German plans for world domination and a new order in Europe affect almost all aspects in the old continent life – state, international relations, economics, coexistence of different ethnical communities that are historically formed. In Central and Southeast Europe German policy led to the formation of a mosaic of allied, semi-independent and satellite regimes of Germany, on whose development and relations, it continues to affect the entire period of the war. The study of the relations between Bulgaria and Slovakia – bilateral and after the accession of both countries to the Tripartite Pact – allied, gives new perspectives on major events and developments in the war, but especially to the national-territorial problems in Central and Southeast Europe and attempts for their solving during the war years.

Интерпретациите на националсоциализма в германската историография

Author(s): Maria Koleva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1-2/2016

The article traces the development of German historiography after the Second World War until the 1980s on the problems of the politics of Nazi Germany. In this connection, the main concepts of the nature and objectives of German policy in Southeast Europe have been considered.

Зараждане, особености и основоположници на турския национализъм и зависимостта му от ислямски стереотипи: от младоосманците до Ататюрк

Author(s): Plamen Ivanov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 5-6/2016

Turkish nationalism is the ideology of the young Turks, through which they want to replace the “ideology” of the Ottoman Empire, built mainly on Islamic religion, and the imperial form of statehood. They aspire and succeed in consolidating nationalism as the official doctrine of the new republic and forming a new society. The Young Turks, along with the Kemalists, as well as nationalism, resort to secularism to overturn the Ottoman world and give the new state a different nature, as well as to show it modernized to the world, but in essence they cannot escape the long-lasting tradition of their country, in which Islam was a major factor shaping its identities. The socio-political Ottoman-Turkish culture is not of a typical European and Western type, where religionism is overthrown as an essential societal factor, and since Islam initially plays such a role far beyond that of a religion, the nationalist transformation is not carried out and maintained as a typical secular one but invariably carries traits of Islamic heritage, although it also desires and perceives important European traits and concepts. In all major nationalist projects traditional stereotypes are found such as: building the new nation as only Turkish, but also Muslim; the unity of the state, resembling the unity of a Turkish “millet”; the fight against once-large ethnic minorities carried out as a fight against “hostile” non- Muslims etc. They are also found in other important projects such as the construction of nationalism itself in the new country or the institution of new citizenship, where the approach is based mainly on a common culture and language, but by default, without official emphasis, understood as Turkish-ethnic, hence with an important Islamic element in it. Thus, even Kemalism, as the last edition of Turkish nationalism, cannot but transpose and impose an approach for the country and the nation with Islamic character, i.e. in favour of the main Turkish-Islamic social group in it, but in clear harm to the non-Islamic groups. Nevertheless, Kemalism, including as nationalism, has given to the country as much as possible a secular, pro-European, and pro-Western character since the time of the Ottoman Empire, while its impugnment over the last decade by the new strong tendency of political Islam in power poses a serious challenge and threat.

Did Stalin Wish a Federation in the Balkans? The End of the Federal Idea in Bulgarian-Yugoslav Relations

Author(s): Dimitar Petkov / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2016

The analysis of some written sources and the estimation of Stalin’s political behaviour bring to the conclusion that in the Balkan politics of the Soviet leader did not exist real wish and targeted actions towards creating a communist federative union in the Balkan peninsula, despite the fact that many historians support the opposite opinion – that the Soviet leader aimed at establishing such federation. Stalin used the federative idea to understand in details and to use the contradictions between the Balkan countries with communist rule on the question of federation. With this manipulative policy Stalin wanted to strengthen the role of Moscow in the relationships between the Balkan communist states as part of the main strategy – the creation of a block of countries in Eastern Europe under the power of Kremlin. The article shows how the federative idea came down from the Balkan political stage. This process occurred after the famous Soviet-Yugoslav-Bulgarian meeting on February 10, 1948 in the Kremlin and it was connected with the outbreak of the Soviet-Yugoslav conflict in 1948. The article also reveals how the communist leaders in the Balkans did not understand the manipulative policy of Stalin on the question of federation.

Aspects de la politique bulgare dans les Balkans dans le contexte de la préparation et l’exécution de CSCE

Author(s): Irina Grigorova / Language(s): French Issue: 3-4/2017

Despite the popular feature of Bulgaria as the most faithful satellite of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Sofia used cleverly different mechanisms to attract Moscow’s support to ensure national security. One of them was the emphasis on the image of the most loyal Soviet ally, and in the practice of Bulgarian diplomacy one could see the subtle impact by referring to common goals with the global strategic plans of the USSR. The article highlights some of the outstanding issues on the Balkans and follows the arguments that the Bulgarian political leadership handled, as well as the acceptable compromises it was willing to make to ensure Soviet support in favor of national interests in the years of the preparation and conduct of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Corruption as day-to-day routine

Author(s): Momchil Metodiev / Language(s): English Issue: 45-46/2018

Russia – full spectrum revisionist? What the Kremlin’s exploitation of the Belarusian political crisis teaches us about the nature of Russia’s confrontation with the West

Author(s): Michał Klonowski,Michał Słowikowski / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

The political crisis in Belarus, provoked by public dissatisfaction with the fraudulent presidential election in August 2020, has entailed a number of consequences for the international status of Belarus. On the one hand, there was a rapprochement with Russia and, on the other, Belarus found itself in a state of Cold War with the West. The reasons for this state of affairs should be seen primarily in the attitude of Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who perceived the social protests as a serious threat to his illegitimate rule and, at the same time, inspired by the West. The threat of losing power caused him to turn to Russia for help, which was given to him. Russia was guided primarily in this case by its own fears, which concerned: the threat of losing control over a geopolitically important region, the shrinking of the area considered to be a zone of exclusive interests in favour of the West, the prospects of the successful democratisation of Belarus and the transmission of the virus of democracy to the Russian political system. Lukashenka, still unsure of his position and Russia’s support, has taken steps to strengthen the Kremlin’s loyalty. To this end, he continued to take anti-Western actions, aware that his closest ally in the Kremlin was the Siloviks group, which was the most influential group of the Kremlin’s elite and at the same time responsible for the Russian confrontation with the West. From Russia’s point of view, the Belarus-Russia conflict has become a platform for a whole spectrum of revisionist activities: offensive, defensive and isolationist. At the same time, Belarus and its conflict with the West have become part of information warfare against the West, as a part of which the Kremlin was generating tension in the capitals of European countries and the United States. Russia was interested in keeping this going as long as possible, which was not necessarily in line with Lukashenka’s own expectations.

The Macedonian Question through the Eyes of Foreign Researchers

Author(s): Slavi Slavov / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2023

Review of “Foreign Honorary Members of the Macedonian Scientific Institute (1923– 1947)”

Tabuji padajo - učimo se dialoga : LTI - Lingua Tertii Imperii in LIT - Lingua Imperii Titi

Author(s): Jože Dežman / Language(s): Slovenian Issue: 1-2/2017

LIT—Lingua Imperii Titi is the deformed language of Titoism. With it, the communist minority tried to control the majority. In this article, it is emphasized on the examples of mass killing sites and graves that the Titoist elite is trying to conceal the crimes of Titoism, which is why most casualties of the Second World War and the revolution became taboo. LIT has falsely presented communists to be national heroes as the only heroes from the Partisan movement. LIT claims and emphasizes that a majority of the population followed Titoism. However, more than half of the casualties of the Second World War and the revolution became taboo, and Titoism repressed more than half of the population. Those who contributed to the fall of Titoism with non-violent resistance remained forgotten. The resistance of the threatened farmers in the village of Srednja vas in Bohinj is described as an example of the resistance of farmers.

Опити за разрешаване на езиковия спор с Република Македония (1995 – началото на 1997 година)

Author(s): Krasimira Todorova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2023

This article aims to examine the policy of the cabinet of Zhan Videnov on the language dispute with the Republic of Macedonia by focusing on the diplomatic activity of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in terms of its approach to the problem, the way of conducting negotiations and the choice of negotiation strategy. For this purpose the analytical method is applied. The problem in bilateral relations arose during the administration of Prof. Lyuben Berov (December 30, 1992 – November 17, 1994) in connection with the dispute in which language to sign bilateral documents, and it blocked Bulgarian-Macedonian contacts for a long time. The first attempt to unblock the language dispute was made in 1995–1996. The article shows that the government of Zhan Videnov was consistent in its policy towards the Republic of Macedonia. In its attempts to resolve the language dispute it demonstrated continuity with the previous government and insisted on the formula that documents should be signed “in the official languages”. The draft declaration and its defence is analyzed in detail and is assessed as successful. The conclusion is that the government almost succeeded in unblocking the bilateral relations, but lacked the political time to complete the second round of negotiations and sign the final document. A comparison is made with the Joint Declaration signed in 1999 between Bulgaria and the Republic of Macedonia, and it is found that, although different, it contains the most important elements of the project advocated by the cabinet of Zhan Videnov.

Montenegrin-Bulgarian relations before and during the First Balkan War

Author(s): Aleksandar Stamatović / Language(s): English Issue: 3-4/2023

This paper deals with Montenegrin-Bulgarian relations before the First Balkan War that Montenegro and Bulgaria waged against Turkey together with their allies Serbia and Greece. Montenegrin-Bulgarian relations went from 1878 to 1912, mainly became better and better. These two states had no territorial or global conceptual conflicts of interest. Both were aware that they would have to go to war with Turkey to liberate the Balkans from five centuries of Ottoman occupation. This concept had an emotional character. Unlike the relations between the two countries, both were Slavic, so it was insisted on that detail, which was promoted by the mutual protector and ally Russia. The unfolding of events at the end of the First Balkan War, and immediately after it, as well as the fact that Montenegro was ethnically closer to Serbia than Bulgaria, committed it to go to war against Bulgaria in 1913, although Montenegro did not benefit from that war.

The Stance of the Great European Powers on the Creation of Albania and the Question of Scutari in 1913

Author(s): Saša Knežević,Boris Vukićević / Language(s): English Issue: 3-4/2023

The paper explores how the international policy addressed the Albanian question during the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913. The paper sheds light on the dynamics of relations between the Powers just before the onset of the World War I and points to the course a small country’s ambitions were dealt with under the European Concert, the last stand of whose was the Scutari crisis of 1912/13. It discusses one of the major debates during the Balkan Wars, the fate of Scutari. In order to present the impact of the European Powers’ diplomacy and its modus operandi, the article brings in light the unpublished British historical records from the Public Record Office, published diplomatic documents, the contemporary press that covered these events and relevant books and articles on the matter. The article proves that, despite being part of different alliances, the Great Powers were not eager to clash in regard to interests of a small Balkan country, and that all military efforts of Montenegro were, from the very beginning, futile and diplomatically groundless.

Soviet Bloc, Power Struggle, and Social Changes in Syria (mid-1950s – mid-1960s)

Author(s): Nadya Filipova / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2024