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The thesis of this article is that the cultural (collective) memory at the current society is a part of the political power. The cultural (collective) memory is an “installed memory” which is needed for the creation of the own image of society. It justifies and legitimates the existence of power structure. The power takes care of the mold of the societies collective memory. From this point of view we may not perceive the cultural memory just as an implement for differentiation and right to the political existence of some concrete community. Because it is about and of something else, namely it is about power which must be served from the collective memory. The power rules the cultural memory and the power takes a decision what concrete have to be remembered and whatnot it means what have to be forgotten. The ideology of power plays an essential role in this process. The cultural memory is an “installed” memory because the government decides what kind of fulcrums to be imposed into it with the purpose of this memory to work in service of the power structures. The cultural memory also creates a special psychology in its bearers and this affects their behavior and perception of the world.
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Objective: The article identifies the main economic problems Poland faced as a result of its military involvement in the 1919–1921 Polish-Soviet War. Research Design & Methods: Source material including legal regulations, statistical data and pre- and post-war literature were analysed. Findings: Financing military operations replete with supplies took a tremendous effort, and the consequent hardship was shouldered by all of Poland’s citizens. The situation weighed particularly heavily on rural populations, which were compelled to provide recruits and food for the army and civilians alike. The war ultimately ushered in a period of hyperinflation. Implications / Recommendations: War places a huge burden on state finances. It contributes to a greater state interventionism and imposes various obligations on the citizens. Contribution: The analysis of main problems of Polish economy during the Polish-Soviet War may be used for comparative purposes when studying similar issues in other countries.
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Regional headlines: animal rights in Poland; war of words in Belarus; military games in Eastern Europe; informal payments in Moldova; and Turkmenistan dusts off Parthian past.
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The following article offers a different perspective on the Bulgarian dialectological researches from the late 19th century. Its main aria of interest focuses not just on the importance they have for exploring and learning the diversity of the vernacular from the above-mentioned time period, but also deals with their practical application in the educational process from the late 19th century. The article addresses the first attempts on implying dialectological methods as a component of mother tongue education and Bulgarian language teaching, as well on the first known initiatives to organize extracurricular language practices together with senior-class students by collecting dialect material in accordance with the educational content. It highly praises the merit of mother tongue teachers from the late 19th century regarding the description and collection of the then Bulgarian dialects.
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Between the mid-1940s and the late 1950s the centralization and ideologization of culture marginalized the schlager-song practice from pre-socialist times. Performing and listening to this musical genre was recognized by the authorities as a relic of the bourgeois past and was at the same time regarded as non-aesthetic by the professional composers. In the 1960s the generational change and the penetration of the new modern Western popular culture in Bulgaria altered the focus of the institutions of the regime. The old-fashioned pre-war schlager lost its political incorrectness to a significant extent and gradually became a convenient instrument in the hands of the institutions thus allowing to cover the attention of the elderly generations.
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Established in September 1980, NSZZ “Solidarność” was not only a trade union, but also a great social movement, and a school of democracy for its own members. Starting from the democratically elected works committees, through National Coordinating Commission, the apogee of this social movement was the 1st National Congress of Delegates of NSZZ “Solidarność” which took place in the autumn of 1981.
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Despite the fact that urban modernity and modernization in the Balkans has been a celebrated topic among social and cultural historians and historians of architecture and urban planning, the dimension of sound has been almost entirely absent from these discussions. The present paper is based on fresh research aiming to fill this gap. It initiates a comparative inquiry about the sonic environment of three Balkan capital cities (Belgrade, Sofia and Athens) during their transition to the industrial era. It offers a panorama of testimonies on the various dimensions, factors and actors creating and transforming the fin-de-siècle Balkan capitals’ soundscape (the role of climate and built environment, the natural and biological keynote sounds, the sounds of street vendors and musicians and the mechanical sounds of trams and motorcars). It finally demonstrates, through the example of the noisiest of the three cities, i.e. Athens, the importance of the “soundscape” as a field of signification and socio-cultural conflict in a transitional period for the Balkan city.
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This article examines and analyses the degree of succession among the settlements which existed in the pre-Ottoman and the Ottoman period in the northern hinterland of the city of Adrianople /Edirne/ in the period of 14th – 16th century; the changes in their status which occurred after the establishment of the new Ottoman authority and the demographic development changes of the Muslim and non-Muslim population in the settlements. The present survey highlights three settlements – Skutarion, Bukelon and Provaton which in the Middle Ages were part of a group of castles protecting Adrianople from the North. After the conquest of the Balkans and their inclusion into the Ottoman military – administrative system their status changed and the three castles were transformed into centers of administrative units. Our conclusions draw on the achievements of contemporary historiography and on information, found in unpublished Ottoman tax registers from the collections of the Ottoman archives in Istanbul (Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi).
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The Balkan Wars put an end to the Bulgarian presence in Salonica, but not to the Bulgarian imagination relative to the city. Almost until the second decade of the 20th c. Ottoman Salonica used to be a bigger, richer and more modern city than the Bulgarian capital. It evoked much feeling and interest among Bulgarians, who saw in it many economic, political and cultural opportunities. For Bulgarians, however, Salonica was primarily linked with their freedom fighting, so its image is dominated by themes of death and self-sacrifice, of fear and courage, of prisons and concentration camps. To them it is simultaneously a city of prisons and a city of light, a city of youth and nostalgia, of education and pogrom, of economic opportunity and wasted effort.
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In the past one feels at home. One comes from that home, where the ones before him are, to go back one day and become one of them, a home for those that are to come. Think of it, that home is in one and one is that home. That’s why the past is cozy. Our awareness of the past is rooted in memory. Memory permeates all aspects of our life. Even our present is largely dedicated to memory, insofar as we spend a great part of it in fortifying our ties with the past. Our memory of the past is an indispensable condition for our sense of identity. We need the collective memory, i.e. the recollections of others, in order to affirm our own recollections, and in this way give them value. The opposite is also fully true, for life is fundamentally dialogical and the discovery of self is unthinkable without the others. If memory and history are processes penetrating the past, the vestiges of the past would put one on the track of processes that have produced that past. Often such traces are sparse, which makes them all the more valuable. Sometimes a few old photographs are the only remnants that have remained in place of one’s roots. In other cases only recollections replace places left long ago. Well, such places don’t have to be outstanding in order to be unforgettable. For many Bulgarians Salonica is just that kind of place. But Salonica is not some ordinary, unremarkable and insignificant city.
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В этой работе мы представим терминологическое дистинктивное значение понятия „мифологика”, учрежденного французским антропологом Клодом Леви-Строссом. Понятие „мифологика” будет интерпретироваться в контексте странствующих мифологических мотивов, присутствующих в коллективном бессознательном (брошенный ребенок, герой-подкидыш, герой совершающий инцест, миф о рождении героя, культурный герой). Надстройка „героика” относится к героям сербской героической народной поэзии и мифологическим моделям, с которыми они были объединены. Следовательно, методом работы является сравнительный мифоанализ древной поэзии. Предметом будут модели и вариации, общие для античной, средневековой и сербской народной поэзии. Цель работы – показать, как эти мотивы развиваются с точки зрения сербского устного творчества. Тема относится к мотиву „брошенного ребенка”, а в связи с двумя песнями о Находе Симеуне, которые были собраны Вуком Стефановичем Караджичем.
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The exposition analyzes the semantics of Thracian vessels of precious metal; an attempt was made to discuss their function in the context of sacred mysterious logos; a reinterpretation of the ritual symposial practices characteristic of the Orphic communities of Thracian political elites is proposed. Precisely because of their sacred functions, vessels of precious metal with inscriptions are found in the funerals and treasures of the aristocratic elite. They function in a certain way in the symposium rituals during the ruler’s symposia, and such practices in Thrace, are part of the Orphic religion and are associated with aristocratic political elites. There are several reasons for this topic: There is discussion in the literature and there is still a lack of a systematic and consistent thesis about the function of precious metal vessels in the Thracian cultural model. Despite the fundamental research of Al. Foul, the connection between the Thracian basic model of Orphism as aristocratic ideology and its projections in artifacts and folk narratives has not yet been sought. No effort was made to illuminate the function of the Thracian sacral artifacts in parallel with the Greek orphic sources.
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The paper presents the extremely interesting bronze coin of the types of round shield // two-handled cup (kypsele, kotyle, diota) (Fig. 1a–1b) discovered in 1996 during the archaeological excavations of the Thracian settlement located in the area of Adzhiyska Vodenitsa near the village (now a town) of Vetren, Septemvri Municipality, better known as “Emporion Pistiros”. Grounded on both informative types known as parasema, the author tries to interpret (issuer and time of minting) this unique bronze issue – an allusion of the Odrysian Royal court from the first half of the 4th c. BC under Seuthes II, Kotys I and their successors via the unambiguous presence of the cult cup – the kypsele or kotyle decorating the reverses of their coins.
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In an inscription found near Brashlyan, in the territory of the town of Malko Tarnovo, South-East Bugaria, a new attestation of Apollo’s epithet – namely Ταδηνος, appears. It goes about a dedicatory inscription cut on a fragmentarily preserved altar. The epithet Ταδηνος is well known from both Greek and Latin inscriptions. The present paper offers a new linguistic analysis of this local cult name according to the modern theoretical standards. The morpheme /ΤΑΔ/ is typical in Thracian. And there is an alomorph /TAZ/, the two morphemes having the same meaning. Both morphemes are well attested in Greek as well. In our case the initial form of Ταδηνος would be *ταδ-σ-, then / ταδ-ζ-/, then two sigmas replacing the two deltas in /ταδδ-/ should be expected: after assimilation or assimilation with /ζ/. Thus the Thracian Ταδηνος would mean: “the one who arranges”. The linguistic argumentation presented here is to confront a recently published hypothesis which interprets Apollo’s epithet in relation with mining suggesting a meaning of “shining”. Although the Strandzha Mountain is known for its metal deposits, Ταδηνος has nothing to do with such activities.
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The paper presents the still limited evidence on consumption of seafood by the native Thracian population of Aegean Thrace before the establishment of the Greek colonies in the area. Remains of various shellfish (shallow- and deep-water species) from several sites indicate that the local population knew how and where to collect it. The sites where evidence for the consumption of shellfish was found include the LBA – EIA inland settlement at Kastri on Thasos, the late 8th – early 7th c. BC coastal settlement below the later Parian apoikia on Thasos, the LBA – EIA hilltop settlement at Asar tepe, as well as the Samothracian apoikia of Zone (fig. 1). The pre-Greek settlement below the polis of Thasos is the source of a large amount of shellfish remains. However, such were not discovered in the upper strata associated with the Archaic Greek polis. The situation compares to that at Archaic Syracuse where stable isotop analysis of bones from the cemetery at Scala Greca indicates little if any seafood in the diet.
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When Ptolemy I became ruler of Egypt (306 BC), he continued to have interests in Thrace and Asia Minor where Lysimachus, its ruler, married his daughter Arsinoe II. Most likely, their wedding was fixed with certain benefits, which led to the permanent presence of the Ptolemy in Southern Thrace. In fact, the whole 3rd century was marked by the presence of the Ptolemies in Thrace. This for sure, but also for some other unclear reasons facilitated the spreading of the Egyptian cults in that region. Several Egyptian deities, mainly Isis and Sarapis, but some other deities in relation with them, were found on various documents attesting their presence in Thrace from the Hellenistic period to the end of the Roman Era. Harpocrates, the presumed son of Isis and Sarapis in Greco-roman period, was one of those deities. Unlike his divine parents, he was a synnaos theos and his cult spread on a different manner. According to the monuments he was more likely worshiped because of his qualities as savior god and his magical competences. The study will examine the existing documentation and will discuss the mechanisms of spreading of the Harpocrates cult in Ancient Thrace from the Hellenistic period onward.
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