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After the reunification of Germany, the Bundeswehr had to take over the former East-German army (Nationale Volksarmee, NVA). The reduction in the numbers of military staff throughout Eastern Europe after the Cold War also made the task more difficult. Researchers from the Bundeswehr Institute of Social Sciences interviewed East-German soldiers immediately after reunification. They found that most of them were obedient followers whose professional skills were good, but who had no initiative. The strong influence of dogmatic communist ideology was also a problem. Many former East-German officers thought that West Germany also had one book of truth that taught them the new, correct understanding of history, politics and society.The East-German army was not popular among the population. The status of an officer in society was privileged and there were many of them – similar to the Soviet army, junior officers in the East-German army served in positions that in western armies are covered by non-commissioned officers. Conscripts were almost fully at the mercy of the officers.There were ca 42,000 officers in the NVA at the end of 1989. More than 99%of East-German officers were members of the Socialist Union Party of Germany. Approximately 10,000 political officers served in the NVA. Approximately 50,000 active servicemen, incl. 23,000 officers, were to be transferred according to the takeover plan.These servicemen were put on probation for two years, and once it was completed the 28-member Independent Committee selected those who were to be offered the opportunity to join the Bundeswehr career system. All political officers were the first to be let go, but generals, colonels (with a couple of exceptions) and all officers over 55 years ago were also released from duty. As for the remaining officers, everyone who was known to have cooperated with the secret services of East Germany was immediately fired. 30,000 of the 50,000 officers and non-commissioned officers transferred by the Bundeswehr soon resigned.
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The article explores the commemoration of fallen soldiers in West Germany since the end of World War II, focusing on the relation between the military and the society and drawing parallels to modern death cult. (Longer version of this abstract is included in the article, starting from p 199.)
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In the 25 years since their establishment the bilateral relations betweenRomania and Moldova have developed very sinuous, sometimes with very steepascents and descents. In this dynamic we can distinguish six periods, each withits own characteristics, which have been determined either by developments inthe home political life of the two countries, or by some external factors whichhave exercised and still exercises influence over the two Romanian states.As is clear from this brief history of recent political relations between Romaniaand Moldova, Bucharest has seen the creation of the second Romanian stateas a solution of its separation of the former Soviet empire. Romania has neverhad a paternalistic attitude of “big brother” to Moldova, which, however,is a historical province of his own, but treated it equally as any other statein accordance with international law. Romania could not also ignore thecommunity of Romanian culture and civilization linking the two countries.Romania has set its political conception and strategy towards Moldovastarting from just these affinities. In the first stage, Bucharest has set the majorobjectives of economic integration and the cultural and spiritual ties betweenthe two Romanian states. In the second phase, which begins with the accessionto the European Union, Romania has adapted its strategy in dealing withBessarabia by setting fundamental coordinates recognizing and promoting thespecific nature of these relationships and supporting the European dimensionof bilateral cooperation resulting from Moldova’s strategic objective of EUintegration.
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In post-Soviet Azerbaijan, national history underwent a certain revisionin which “friendship of peoples” ceased to be its central theme and wasreplaced by the images of Soviet-inspired national heroes, and fighters forindependence. At the same time, given the fact that building an independentAzerbaijan coincided with the Karabakh conflict, it is quite natural to expectthat these events would have had an impact on the texts included in the historytextbooks which, in their turn, are intended to rear patriots of their countrycapable of discerning “one’s own” from “others” and ready to take part in yetanother conflict when and if the need arises. A number of ethnic myths havesneaked in to the textbooks during the process of reviewing school programsand getting rid of the “dark stains” in Azerbaijani history. These myths aremade up to serve the official ideology of the already independent state. Themain creative group comprises professional historians, very often they are thespecialists of the History Institute of the National Academy of Sciences ofAzerbaijan, implementing the state order on developing history textbooks forsecondary schools. Schools are using only one version of narratives approvedby the Ministry of Education. New textbooks on national history in the post-Soviet period were first developed in the mid 90’s. These textbooks underwentupgrading only once, in early 2000, and these versions were published for eachgrade (from grade 5 to 11, i.e. for seven grades), and which schools are usingto this day. The role and place of independent Azerbaijan in the modern worldis determined, above all, within the Turkish world (certain resounds of panTurkism), while the central place among the states conventionally described asTurkish is assigned to Turkey – the major regional ally.
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For nearly three-quarters of a century, anthropologists, alongside folklorists, sociologists, and others have steadily documented multiple processes of cultural revival and revitalization, amassing a rich body of evidence to testify to the flexibility and resilience of culture. This focus on successful revivals has generated a wide literature that parallels and supports the growing attention to identity and ethnicity as key concerns across the social sciences. In the following pages, I refer to this literature as I examine the limits of cultural revival in the post-Soviet Republic of Moldova, primarily the country’s folkloric movement, which is the subject of my doctoral research and first book. In this broader field of vision, there are questions to be asked: who is undertaking revival work? What are their goals? What are their methods? And – whether they succeed or fail – what are the conditions that enable this? Although I pose these questions in specific reference to post-Soviet Moldova, they could be asked of many communities, to advance our understanding of how collective identities are established, negotiated, and changed over time.
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Antal Lovas Kiss: The Impacts of the European Union accesion to the situation and economic, social structure of several settlements of the Region of Bihar
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This article aims at analyzing the key results and future prospects of the Eastern Partnership program of the European Union. Usually the criticism toward this initiative is based on two arguments: allegedly, it was the assertiveness of the EU which contributed to the Ukrainian crisis and increased a conflict potential with Russia. Besides, in the end Brussels was not able to deliver more in terms of Ukrainian, Moldovan and Georgian integration into the EU and to counterbalance the Russian foreign policy in the region. The author argues that the Eastern Partnership, driven by the “constitutive power of outsiders”, was an adequate answer to the socio-political changes which have occurred in East European countries. It gave them an opportunity, based on the principle of “more for more”, to include themselves in internal EU regimes without formal accession. On the other hand, the Eastern Partnership is currently facing two main challenges: Russian reaction to EU association agreements with Eastern neighbors as well as disintegration and corruption of the elites. Despite some disappointment of the Euro-enthusiasts and the devastating economic crisis in the region, it is still preserving the pro-European orientation and working on the association agenda. But, in the context of substantial problems with corruption, Brussels has now to apply the policy of “sticks” in order to discipline (and not only support or encourage) the neighborhood countries
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The article is focusing on the interplay between foreign policy agenda of the post-Soviet states at the one hand and internal policy developments in these countries at the other hand. One of the main explanations why the post-Soviet elites in non-Russian republics are pursuing the so-called multi-vectorialism in the foreign policy is that it serves as a strategy to maximize the most from having good relations both with East and West, and thus trying to perpetuate the monopoly of the power. Uzbekistan is a country in case, as Ukraine (and Moldova) is (or was) indeed also. At the same time, the special relations between the elites of post-Soviet countries and Moscow are very important in shaping the foreign policy agenda of these countries as a result of the Soviet legacy, i.e. the ties of the former Communist nomenklatura with Moscow are still playing a very important role in the most of the former Soviet republics. Another relevant variable in explaining the current state of affairs in the foreign and security issues of the post-Soviet states and the still dominant role of Russia is the fact that the West (NATO and EU especially) are not very successful in trying to limit Moscow’s ambitions in the “near abroad”. This is making the leaders of most NIS to be obedient to Russia’s pretensions in lack of real support from the West in order to counteract these neo-imperial claims from the part of the former metropolis.
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The article seeks to answer to the question: what defined people’s choice when they voted for the first time, in 1994, Aleksandr Lukashenko into office. While agreeing that there is a significant amount of research on this topic, the author aims to illuminate what exactly helped the electorate to navigate and choose between the nearly identical promises of social justice and well-being, which were made by all six candidates for the presidency in 1994. Correspondingly, the article explores key-texts created in the first years of the country’s independence (between 1991 and 1994) by the Belarusian Popular Front and its leader Zianon Paz’niak and by (and on behalf of)Aleksand Lukashenko, to date the only Belarusian President. As a result, an explanation that relies on the decoding of the voices represented by the candidates’ texts is offered. These voices were part of an ideology brought out by a new political discourse.
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This paper attempts to investigate how and why after a twelve-years period of stability Putinist social contract seemingly broke down and Russia stepped into a new period of uncertainty and crisis. The author underlines that, unwillingly, Medvedev’s presidency paved the way for the protests from the winter of 2011-2012 and fostered the regime’s crisis of legitimacy. Specifically, Medvedev’s relatively liberal rhetoric led to rising expectations among the ‘winners’ of first Putin-Medvedev era and to a growing gap between rhetoric and delivery. Moreover, the ‘Putin consensus’ was also fraying from below during the 2000s, given the population’s fading memory about the 1990s, flourishing of corruption, and migration becoming a hot issue in a booming economy and collapsing native demographics of Russian society. Finally, Putin made several crucial tactical mistakes in the run-up to the Duma elections of the 2011, failing to provide a coherent narrative for the elections, loosing some leading manipulators of the political system, and ousting some powerful regional bosses that ran powerful local machines which traditionally delivered the vote.
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The ethnic political mobilizations, which were originally led by the non-titularnations of the Soviet republics, traced different paths at their latter phase, afterthe collapse of the USSR in particular; the emerging of de facto independentstates inside de jure newly-established states (Moldova and Georgia), thepolitical reconciliation by forming autonomy (Moldova and Ukraine), theuprising of the inter-state war (Azerbaijan and Armenia), and the ethnic tensiontoward improvement of minority rights (Lithuania and Estonia). The four casestudiespresented in this paper demonstrate that rich material and immaterialresources increased the sustainability of ethnic political mobilization. Thesustainability was an important factor in achieving de facto independentstates after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This paper emphasizes that thesematerial and immaterial resources were not valid for the mobilization untilthe appearance of political opportunity and political will for collective actionby social political organizations. The political mobilization in Transnistrianot had only rich resources, but strong political will among associates towardregional independence. The political actors discovered the resources, suppliedthe resources to the participants of collective action, motivated them towardpolitical activity and increased the potentiality of immaterial resources.
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The paper focuses on the myth of ‘Holy Russia,’ as restored and promoted by the Russian Orthodox Church under Patriarch Kirill (Gundiaev), and explores the new imagining identities and spatial configurations generated by this myth. While before ‘Holy Russia’ was a metaphor, associated with relics, deposited in Russian monasteries and churches, Kirill ‘geo-politicized’ it, informing it with practical political meaning, and as such it is viewed as including Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and on many occasions Moldova, and less often – Kazakhstan. The paper discusses the metaphor of ‘Holy Russia’ as a geopolitical utopia, as a postcolonial invention, and as a method of mental mapping. It uncovers Kirill’s modernist philosophy of history, based on Messianic meta-narrations of enslavement and subsequent liberation. As such, ‘Holy Russia’ does not stop colonial practices, but perpetuates them in many aspects. It continues the ‘internal re-colonization’ of the Russian population by ‘re-churchizing’ it, and by claiming to be the cultural center of the Western civilization.
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This article discusses the evolution and main trends of the post-Communist political regime in the Republic of Moldova. The author’s argument is based on the premise that two opposing tendencies can be discerned in Moldova’s politics between 1990 and 2012. The first was defined by a ‘neo-Communist’ resistance and revival, while the second offered a democratic and reformist perspective, currently epitomized by the project of European integration. The author provides a comprehensive overview of the political transformations during the last two decades, focusing on Moldova’s successive governments and electoral cycles in the post-independence period. A special emphasis is placed upon the uneven, fragile and contested nature of the fledgling democratic processes, constantly weakened or thwarted by geopolitical uncertainty, corruption and the uneasy balance between political pluralism and post-totalitarian tendencies. The author’s conclusion is that Moldova’s lack of progress in comparison with its neighbors was due, on the one hand, to the persistence of ‘totalitarian mentalities’ and, on the other, to the nature of the country’s transition to democracy, which was plagued by the exponential growth of social inequalities, the aggressive and generalized corruption on all levels of society, by a state with politicized and inefficient institutions and by an incompetent and immoral political elite.
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In the paper the author analyzes different Russian international identities of the post-Soviet period. Stressing that the Russian identity discourse cannot be simply reduced to the Soviet one, the paper emphasizes the plurality of Russia’s identity discourses. At the same time the menu of Russian foreign policy identities to a large extent depends upon a variety of international structures in which Russia may imagine to engage with. The paper suggests that there are four possible types (models) of the international society, which different Russian identities might be inscribed in. The author seeks to explain the range of Russian international identities by the variety of the patterns of international society which co-exist and offer alternative policy strategies for Moscow.
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The article focuses on the debates situation of post-soviet modernization and transformation of Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani economy failed to become a market economy, and remains instead predominantly based on the extraction and sale of oil and natural gas. Cities are being ruralised instead of the urbanization of rural areas. In its turn, industrialization ended together with the Soviet Union. A more or less tangible individualization and fragmentation of social life are not part of the history of post-Soviet Azerbaijan either. The political and economic systems of Azerbaijan are an imitation of a modern state. It is an example of a simulacrum state and a total imitation of modern political institutions and relations. In other words: The political regime in Azerbaijan is a complex of imitative practices, relations and “institutional camouflages” that enable a broad international presentation of Azerbaijan, effectively privatized by a small group of people, as a modern state that exists in reality.
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