“Balkanization” of National Memories and Identities Trauma:

Different Discourses on Holocaust “Victim – Perpetrator” Identity and Its Specific Political Functions in Ex-Yugoslavia States

Author(s): Danilo Trbojevic / Language(s): English / Issue: 09/2016

The politics of specific selective social/national memories in contrast with globally accepted and promoted pictures of the past happenings is always a very interesting field for anthropological research. This paper also deals with another social phenomenon — the political usage of the dead bodies, or “political lives of the dead bodies” of the Holocaust victims buried on ex-Yugoslavian territories. We will try to show and understand the process of changing political and historical context and its influence on the way Yugoslavia and, later, its independent states used history and traumatic social memory presentation to recreate new views on these happenings and, therefore, new national identities. Using this kind of analysis we will show how the “victim” and “perpetrator” identities were reconstructed and used in different ways and to different purposes. These recreated identities are supposed to be very important factors in the Euro integration, but also a part of the revisionism threat and power struggle in the Balkans today.

“BOURGEOIS” HISTORIANS AND THE COMMUNIST REGIME; BETWEEN COMPROMISE AND RESISTANCE

Author(s): Mihaela Denize / Language(s): English / Issue: XIII/2016

Our study deals with the Communist regime in its early phase and the category most affected by the changes in the political environment: the so-called "bourgeois" historians, who accomplished their career before the 23rd of August 1944. Using biographical episodes, we will try to discover how they understood the Romanian realities of that time and consequently, how they adapted to them. Stalin's death in 1953 marked the beginning of an era of reassessment both in politics and in history writing and therefore Dej’s approach towards the "bourgeois" historians significantly changed.

“Caint na ndaoine”. Język irlandzki jako precedens standaryzacji

Author(s): Carlo Ritchie / Language(s): English / Issue: 08/2016

Critics of the standardisation of the Irish language argue that the “modernisation” of the Irish orthography has been detrimental to the preservation of the various dialects that form native spoken Irish. The effects of standardisation on Irish consequently form an important precedent for language standardisation. The potential alienation of a language’s native speakers is an outcome of standardisation that is obviously destructive for a language community that exists in a minority. The issues that surround the movement for a standardised Plattdeutsch are similar to those faced in the standardisation of Modern Irish. Since the recognition by the European Union of Low German (Plattdeutsch) as a regional language in 1998, there has been newfound momentum in the movement for its reestablishment as a unified language of Northern Germany. One of the great difficulties of this movement however is the lack of any universal orthography due to the separate nature of the language’s dialects. Given the sociolinguistic similarities of these two (albeit unrelated languages), a study of the effects of the standardisation of Irish is useful for an assessment of the possibility of a standardised Plattdeutsch.

“Cherana Bulgara de loco nomine Acrida”. Documenti veneziani, riguardanti la presenza di schiavi bulgari nell’isola di Creta (1390–1415)

Author(s): Vassil Gjuzelev / Language(s): Italian / Issue: 1/2012

“Dobri Bošnjani” i “boni homines”

Author(s): Srecko M. Džaja / Language(s): Croatian / Publication Year: 0

Terminologija srednjovjekovne Bosne do danas je jedan od slabije istraženih aspekata bosanskog srednjovjekovlja. Naime u manjem broju radova se na kritički način i pomoću odgovarajućih povijesnih analogija nastoji objasniti značenje pojedinih pojmova srednjovjekovnog bosanskog feudalnog društva. Umjesto toga raširena je sklonost pojmove razumijevati prima vista [ako nije izričito drukčije naznačeno, kurziv kroz cjelokupni tekst S. M. Dž.] i stavljati ih u poželjan vlastiti kontekst ili im čak davati mitološka i čarobna značenja, kako to čine današnji bošnjački povjesničari i publicisti s pojmom dobrih Bošnjana. Po njihovu interpretiranju pridjevska sintagma “dobri Bošnjani” odnosi se na srednjovjekovne Bošnjane kao etnos u cjelini, jer “poštenje i dobrota Bošnjana bili su poslovični. To je razlog što su ih suvremenici nazivali Dobrim Bošnjanima” . Dakako, motivsko ishodište za tako visoku moralnu ocjenu jest postulat o odličnosti i nepretrgnutom kontinuitet između srednjovjekovnih Bošnjana i osmanskih Bošnjaka.

“Greek fire” and the Bulgarians in the Early Middle Ages

Author(s): Georgi N. Nikolov / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2010

“Havarie”: Reading East-German Society through the Violenc/se of Things

Author(s): Thomas Lindenberger / Language(s): English / Issue: 42-43/2016

“In ipsa silva longissima Bulgariae”: Western chroniclers of the Crusades and the Bulgarian forest

Author(s): Francesco Dall Aglio / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2010

“New Historical Demography” in Russia: evolution or a leap?

Author(s): Vladimir Vladimirov,Dmitriy Sarafanov,Anna Shchetinina / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

The article examines the main features of the “New Historical Demography” which developed in Russia during the 1990s. The authors analyze factors and trends in social science and the humanities that have influenced the formation of this new research strand and review the main problem issues related to its definition, status and methodology, as well as its impact on alterations in the primary source base, methods and tools of historical demographic inquiry. Modern Russian centers involved in “new historical demographic” research are presented in the European comparative perspective. The authors conclude that historical demography has become a driving force behind introducing computer technologies in historical research. The article notes certain successes of “New Historical Demography” in Russia, but emphasizes the need to shift from “extensive” to “intensive” development, and suggests integration with modern European historical demographic programs and the transition from local to pan-Russian databases as means to achieve this.

“Omladinskim snagama, radnijem brigadama...”

Author(s): Omer Hamzic / Language(s): Bosnian / Issue: 42/2016

In the first part of this paper, the author tried to prove that the cult of work among the young people, without which there is no their personal, nor the communal progress, can be revived and nurtured on the examples of the voluntary youth work. In this paper, the opinion dominates that the work and employment are the best means of proper education and preparation of a young men for life, which is the main positive achievement of the voluntary youth work in the Socialist Yugoslavia. This dimension of youth work actions should be positively valorized, although they were the factor of establishment and stabilization of a regime which can be to the great extent criticised and objected to. As a former youth officer and organizer, in the second part of the paper, the author puts forward his own memory and experience from the local labor action “Gracanica 77”, which had a number of specific features (not being of the local type) and achieved the significant results. It was the last labor action of such proportions in Gracanica, which was quickly forgotten. By this paper, the author made an effort to “return” it from oblivion.

“Parsimonia atque tenuitas apud veteres custodita sunt” Certain Aspects of Laws Preventing Extravagant Expenditures in Roman Law

Author(s): János Erdody / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2017

Sumptuary laws, the legislative measures of the Roman republic and early imperial era, were aiming to restrain extreme and extravagant expenditure via limiting the amount of money spent on feasts, games, funerals, weddings and other social events. Not much interest is shown in sumptuary laws: contemporary jurisprudence regards it as a limitation of property, a minority of authors deem these laws the results of a social legislation, whereas earlier secondary works put a stress on their historic impact. As a first step in the detailed research of the topic of sumptuary laws, this paper intends to give an outline of the actual content of these laws, in a chronological order. Such a primary source-based analyses could serve as the first step towards a better understanding of the Roman concept of limitation of property.

“Protejaţii valahi” ai regelui Vladislav II Jagiello de la 1492

Author(s): Alexandru Simon / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 1/2010

The Ottoman Empire constantly revealed its reluctance towards including Walachia and Moldavia at the same time as lands under joint Ottoman-Hungarian suzerainty in the treaties concluded with the kingdom. It was only after 1503 that this inclusion truly became a diplomatic custom, but still with much resistance from the Ottoman side. In this respect, though it does not stand for a diplomatic watershed, the source from 1492 brought here into discussion allows us to place such questions into different perspectives. At the same time, maybe in the first place, the source directs our attention south of the Danube lines

“Quantifying the Cult”. A GIS Approach Towards the Cult Places of the Thracians from the Iron Age

Author(s): Julia Tzvetkova / Language(s): English,Bulgarian / Issue: 20/2012

Тракийските култови места са обособени отдавна като самостоятелен изследователски обект в съвременната българска тракология. Многобройни изследвания разглеждат различни аспекти на тази проблематика. Често обаче интересът към тях е тясно, а понякога и емоционално, свързан с изследванията върху тракийската религия. Това води до формулирането на предположения, базирани на погрешна интерпретация или даже несъобразени с археологическите факти. Въпреки че съществуват някои опити за систематизация и типология на култовите места в Тракия, все още липсват обобщаващи изследвания в тази насока. В последните години броят на археологически проучваните култови места се увеличи значително в рамките на двата основни типа обекти – светилища на връх и ямни светилища. Това поставя отново въпросът за обективната интерпретация на новата информация и преосмислянето на някои вече добили популярност хипотези. Настоящият текст не претендира да обобщи новите археологически изследвания. Тук е представен един иновативен подход спрямо тракийските култови места чрез приложението на съвременните ГИС технологии за организиране на данните и пространствени анализи. Този подход цели създаването на солидна и систематизирана база, която фактологично да подплъти научните дирения относно интерпретацията и характеристиките на обектите, сакралната топография, както и детайлното очертаване на ролята на култовите места в селищната система и значението им в интегриращите процеси на тракийското общество.

“Revoluția silențioasă”: revizuirea identității naționale în Moldova Sovietică la apogeul „dezghețului” lui Hrușciov (1956-1957)

Author(s): Igor Casu / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 1/2015

“Salvific” Memory, “Enlightened” Oblivion: Spectral Traces of the Past in Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent (1800)

Author(s): Carmen-Veronica BORBELY / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2015

This study on Maria Edgeworth’s short novel of 1800 Castle Rackrent explores the dialectics between two types of memory—of the retentive or retrieval kind and of a productive, esemplastic type, through which analeptically and proleptically, retrospectively and prospectively, the past is exhumed out of the historical archive and subjected to ceaseless activities of interpretation and signification in the entwined present timeframes of the story’s narrator, editor and readers. In light of Terry Eagleton’s diagnosis of the idiosyncratic “bogginess” of Irish literature, the study argues that, like Seamus Heaney, the Irish national poet who transvalorised “bog,” turning it into the arch-meme of Ireland’s cultural horizons, Maria Edgeworth programmatically wrote in this mode, releasing “bog” from its ostracizing connotations and valorizing it as a trope of “salvific” memory and “enlightened” oblivion, which could foster processes of cultural (self-)awareness.

“Saznanja”, Časopis za historiju, br. 6

Author(s): Jasmin Jajcevic / Language(s): Bosnian / Issue: 42/2016

Review of: “Saznanja”, Časopis za historiju, br. 6

“Slavni dvor kraljevstva u Trstivnici” (Ponovno o proglašenju Bosne kraljevstvom 1377.)

Author(s): Dubravko Lovrenovic / Language(s): Croatian / Publication Year: 0

The act of proclaiming the Bosnian Kingdom in 1377, which had been preceded by the reform of the royal chancellery of Tvrtko I Kotromanić in the spirit of the diplomatic norms of the ruling Serbian chancellery, resulted in applying these norms in the field of sacral and political representation in the creation of the new state and to its end in 1463. This is particularly apparent in the arengae of Cyrillic charters related to the correspondence between Bosnian rulers and Dubrovnik, the closest and most important ecclesiastical, political and economic partner of the Medieval Bosnian State. Of course that ecclesiastical-law terminology was not mechanically adopted, and was not a decorative element of documents, but rather had the goal of serving a fundamental purpose: to describe the new juridical, ecclesiastical and ideological reality that had emerged with the transformation of Bosnian bannats in the kingdom; this is most completely represented in the arenga as a key part of the document containing political actuality and propagating state ideas and the virtue of monarchy. Th e introduction of the Raška arenga with its ecclesiastical language and new system of ecclesiastical political ideas indicates the transformation of the ruling ideology of Kotromanićes from the ruler-autocrat model represented by the identification of ban Stjepan II, Prince Vladislav and Tvrtko I Kotromanić with Saint Gregory Wonderworker in the ruler-autocrat model, whose foundation was in the dynastic holiness of Serbian Orthodox Nemanjićes. This new system of state ideas was supported by the syntagms which, with the greater part of them copied from Serbian diplomatic material as of 1377, embellished the Bosnian royal and governmental documents: „...“ Nevertheless, this does not mean that the Medieval Bosnian Kingdom became only a “branch” of the Serbian Kingdom and did not have its own political and cultural identity. On the contrary, the endeavors are still present attributing this specific Slavic political formation first to the embodiment of the national spirit, the Croatian people – the so-called Ruler Trpimirovićes – and then even to the Serbian ruling dynasty of Nemanjićes before they were painted over by the integral political programs of the second half of the XIX century, when the question Whose is Bosnia? was asked; rather, the stronghold is in the historical science conducted under the principle: Sine ira et studio. Th us, without hatred and biasness, fairly, objectively and justly. For the historiography of the open horizon to the past and to the future. Of course, this is within the premises which Ryszard Kapuściński discusses.

“Statistical Assimilation” in the Hungarian Kingdom 1880-1910

Author(s): György Kövér / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2016

During the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy the official censuses on the Cisleithanian side inquired about the colloquial or everyday language (Umgangssprache), whereas the Hungarian census focused on the „mother tongue” (Muttersprache). In the Hungarian Kingdom between 1880 and 1910, however, the relevant question changed. In 1880 it was formulated as “What is your mother tongue?”, whereas from 1900 onwards, probably in an attempt to reproduce the question formulated on the Cisleithanian side, it was “What is your mother tongue, that is, the language you consider as yours, the language in which you are most fluent and like to speak?”. Can it possibly be a pure accident that the ratio of those with Hungarian as their mother tongue happened to break through the magic 50% threshold value exactly in 1900, and that such ratio reached nearly 55% by 1910? The main question of this paper: what is the “statistical contribution” to these “results” considered as a “successful Hungarian assimilation”? The answer we try to give with the help “changing the scale”, it means on country and county level, both.

“The Things We Are”: Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things and the Science of Man

Author(s): Katrin Berndt / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

The aim of this article is to examine the influence of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy on Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things (1992) with a particular focus on its references to thenatural and life sciences. The essay argues that the novel allegorizes two central themesof the eighteenth-century Science of Man: it stresses the social nature of human beings,and it aims for a comprehensive portrayal of human nature whose different aspects aredepicted in explicit connection with one another. The article shows that Gray employs the emancipatory framework of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy in order to communicate an idealistic belief in the possibility of gradual improvement of society.

“There can be no ecology without an adequate anthropology” (LS 118). Which man can take care of our common home?

Author(s): Alberto Piola / Language(s): English / Issue: 23/2016

One of the underlying thesis of Laudato si’ is the close link between anthropology and ecology. Pope Francis calls for an ecological conversion, which involves an adequate anthropology based on an authentic interpretation of man’s creation in God’s likeness. Only the man who sees himself and acts as guardian, and not as a tyrant, can take care of our common home.