Câteva consideraţii asupra politicii interbelice a Marii Britanii în zona baltică

Author(s): Bogdan-Alexandru Schipor / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 46/2009

Even though there are certain comparisons to the minor role that the states from the Eastern and South-Eastern Europe had in the British politics – in the hierarchy of the strategic interests and of the diplomacy in the inter-war period –, the Scandinavian and the Baltic areas had a second role, but not meaningless, because it implied some particularities not at all to be ignored in the future evolution of the power balance in the region. Further more, as a great naval power, Great Britain had a certain influence and prestige in Northern Europe, a unique rank at the end of the First World War. We can thus appreciate that from this position Great Britain was the main architect of the political construction during the inter-war period in the North-Eastern Europe, and the British naval presence seemed to reaffirm Britain’s statute as a leader in the Baltic area during the key-moments in the history of the Baltic states and Finland’s fight for independence, but also the role played in establishing the frontiers between the Baltic states and Poland in 1919-1923. Given the context, Great Britain, as a power with legitimate interests concerning peace and stability, wanted to create and preserve a power balance in the Baltic area, but also to avoid some political and military enjambments in the region, that they might not apply in the future. From this point of view, options were obvious. Great Britain tried to determine the deletion, as much as possible, of the conflict sources at the end of the war; further more, it also wanted to prevent one or more powers from imposing the hegemony over the region, by upholding the little and middle countries from the Baltic and Scandinavian areas to maintain peace and to face whether alone, whether together, the power tendencies of the influential states. We must underline that in the inter-war period there was a certain dose of skepticism in Great Britain concerning the viability of the Baltic countries. This feeling was loaded not only by the difficulties of their union in a collective construction of security, but also from the German and Russian’s constant essays of imposing their domination in the region. From this point of view, we can notice a certain difference of British attitude only in Finland’s case, a state which had little importance in London’s eyes, but whose military and strategic potentials were recognized in case of an eventual British-Russian conflict. Later on, at the end of the ‘30s, the Finnish politicians at least, still perceived the British attitude as a key decision for any security enjambment in Northern Europe, even though the idea of collective security was almost completely discredited and compromised during the period. Britain’s attitude was totally changed once with the Soviet-German pact on the 23rd of August 1939 and with the break out of the war in Europe. The viability of the little states seemed thus compromised for ever in the new context; but Gre

Ideologie comunistă şi istorie falsificată. Note pe marginea unei „cărţi” (Vasile Stati, Moldovenii din Ucraina)

Author(s): Petronel Zahariuc / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 46/2009

A discussion of the political and ideological context in which there appeared a work that, from beginning to end, contains mystifications of the historical realities in order to create new ethnic identities.

Isac Stârcea şi Popenii de pe Iubăneasa în veacul XVII

Author(s): Silviu Văcaru / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 46/2009

Unfortunately, few works have been written on Isac Stârcea, one of the copyists for whom we have less documents written by himself than documents in which he is mentioned. Assuming the beginning of his career around the age of 20, the author of the article concludes that he was born in the first half of the sixteenth century. He was the son of Pătraşcu Stârcea of Vascăuţi, brother of Constantin Stârcea, Alderman of Hotin and brother-in-law of Coste Băcioc, which made him, when Vasile Lupu ascended to the throne, relative of the latter. Additionally, the descent of Ion Stârcea, Alderman of Hotin, whose daughter Anghelina was married to Ion Stroici, father of Luca Stroici, High Chancellor, could be one of the causes that led the latter to bring young Isac to the High Chancellery of Moldavia. After learning to read and write, as apprentice to an older copyist, he wrote his first official act on February 5, 1603. Ordered by Ieremia Movilă and under the attentive supervision of the Chancellor, the pen of the young copyist wrote down on a beautiful parchment the tax exemption of a house in Iaşi belonging to St. Sava monastery. The following year, by the side of the Prince in Davideni, he wrote a new act. This act, we believe, marks the end of the copyist’s activity in the High Chancellery. From that moment on, we find him very rarely writing a document or signing and affixing the seal, as witness on different acts.

Domnul Ţării Rumâneşti în anul 1525 (II)

Author(s): Daniel Mirea / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 46/2009

After the death of voivode Neagoe Basarab (1521), the Romanian Country experiences for many years a period of acute political instability. In that context, in 1525, the country was ruled, simultaneously, for several months, by two rulers. This is considered a consequence of the situation of the forces engaged in the struggle for the throne. A balance of forces would be crystallized and maintained between April and September 1525 and would have made possible the emergence of such a special situation. The sources underlying the knowledge of these simultaneous rules are the internal documents of that year, but useful information is also provided by the documents of 1523-1524 and 1526. The subject of this study is the very analysis of that documentary evidence from a new perspective compared to the previous studies.

Securitatea şi cultele în perioada 1948-1958

Author(s): Sorin D. Ivănescu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 46/2009

Concerned with overcoming the economic and social crisis in Romania in early 1866, the Lascar Catargiu Government would also face a very serious political problem: the separatist movement in Moldavia. Aware of the Moldavian population’s state of mind, the participants in the conspiracy against Prince Cuza had been concerned, from the beginning of their association, to grant the movement they were preparing a national rather than a regional character. The fact that their precautions were justified will be proven during the weeks before the plebiscite for the election of Charles of Hohenzollern as head of the Romanian state. Even if there were considerable efforts to convince, especially the Moldavians, that not the Union, but the mismanagement of the country had affected the entire territory, and not just “the territory beyond Milcov”, the political leaders in Moldavia were already discussing, in the various meetings held, the possibility of returning to the situation before the year 1859. Paying attention to the unrest manifest in several towns, the authorities in Bucharest resorted to the appointment of central administration officials in the “rebelled” localities, a decision that would cause even more unrest. Without acting in a very coherent way, the supporters of the separatist movement aroused some interest even beyond the borders of the country, and found strong support - not at all lacking ulterior motive - with the Tsarist government. Despite this reality, from the perspective of outside intervention, one possible explanation for the movement that took place in Iaşi, on April 3, 1866 is, in our opinion, an exaggeration. The following article represents an attempt to prove this statement, as well as a development of some of the considerations made above.

Vizita ţarului Nicolae al II-lea la Constanţa (1914). Ecouri în presa europeană

Author(s): Claudiu-Lucian Topor / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 46/2009

Throughout the last decades of the XIXth century and the first years of the XXth century, the royal families in Bucharest and Petersburg kept and even strengthened their friendship. The visit of the emperor Nicholas II and the royal family to Constanta was a token of friendship which boosted the Romanian-Russian relations and represented the first significant event for the Romanian diplomacy after the Bucharest treaty (1913). The event took place in June 14th 1914 and was properly supervised. Sovereigns and ministers participated in the series of discussions in Constanta, Bucharest and Sinaia. The topic was the Balkan issue (free trade in the Straits, the Albanian issue, Romania’s relations with Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria), but the Romanian-Austro-Hungarian relations were avoided in these discussions. The visit of the emperor Nicholas II to Constanta bore significance as the sovereigns were allowed to take decisions of foreign policy in Bucharest and Sankt Petersburg. Consequently, the European mass-media was interested in the event, which was considered a sign of relaxation in Romania’s relations with the Triple Alliance and, at the same time, an incentive for concluding an agreement with Russia. The event maintained the media’s interest in the Romanian-Russian political relations until Romania went to the European war. The European newspapers anticipated the reorientation of Romania’s foreign policy and influenced the public opinion in favour of separation from the Triple Alliance. No one could doubt Romania would give up the old political agreements only by reading the European mass-media.

Unitatea românilor – serie istorică fundamentală

Author(s): Alexandru Zub / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 46/2009

The cultural and political unity of the Romanian people is a complex phenomenon, susceptible to various interpretations, including the always profitable serial theory of A. D. Xenopol. The author confronts this theory with the new historiographical data, especially with the politograms similarly systematized by Vlad Georgescu.

Relaţiile României comuniste cu U.R.S.S. în 1955. Aspecte culturale şi nonpolitice

Author(s): Paul Nistor / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 46/2009

ate and economy) between the Soviet Union and the Popular Republic of Romania were a perfect complementary image of the political ones. Through these connections, U.S.S.R. was empowering and ensuring its dominant influence on the Carpathian area, taking the role of guardian and censor upon everything that was happening inside the Romanian society. The Soviets had the advantage to enforce certain standards and criteria, giving strong advice and filtering all surveyed activities through an aggressive ideology. They were not regarded as true partners by the Romanians, but were instead transformed into undeniable false idols. In such areas as technique, science and economy, the Soviets clearly outshone the Romanians. However, the Soviets needed to extend this overwhelming influence to the social sciences as well, these being much more vulnerable to the Marxist-Leninist ideology. Whether they wanted it or not, Romanians were looked upon as living in a state of naive innocence and inferiority that only the Soviets could improve. The whole country was forced to live in permanent admiration towards everything that came from the U.S.S.R. and thus to adopt all models proposed by Moscow, without daring to criticize.

W SPRAWIE SPOKOJNIE. AUTOKOREKTA

Author(s): Magdalena Danielewiczowa / Language(s): Polish Issue: 01/2011

The author of the article criticizes the theses of her earlier work on spokojnie ‛calmly’. The user of the word compares two disjunctive courses of things; each of them is accompanied by certain knowledge and certain ignorance, although the knowledge of the negative operand of the disjunction is prevailed by the knowledge of the positive operand; so the point is not in valuing (as it was presented in the earlier work on spokojnie), but in judging of the factors involved in the hypothetical result. The epistemic peace (calm) appears when the knowledge of the negative operand is prevailed by the knowledge of the positive operand which is directly marked by the right- -hand-argument open by spokojnie.

OPERATOR ADNUMERATYWNY Z GÓRĄ

Author(s): Maciej Grochowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 01/2011

The lexical unit z górą ‛over’ is representative of both adnumerative operators and markers of approximation with a component ‛more than n’. This unit is pragmatically neutral, in contrast to other colloquial (mainly) elements of the sequence. The investigated unit opens the position, characterized semantically, of definite numeral expressions. The expressions defining the scale of difference between points of time and space are dominant in this position. Numeral expressions which define points of time, age and temperature are probably excluded. The unit z górą is internally inseparable; it is characterized by a linear order which varies in relation to its superordinate element. It can be the rheme of the utterance. The expression z górą is being investigated against the background of other adnumerative operators. There is a relation of exclusion between them.

KTOŚ TO ZNACZY KTO? O JĘZYKOWYM STATUSIE ROŚLIN

Author(s): Zofia Zaron / Language(s): Polish Issue: 01/2011

The presence of plants in the world is so obvious that it rarely becomes the object of reflection. Plants are simply there in our lives. We associate them with a field, a garden, a vase, different types of ceremonies etc. The author of this article is not interested in such a perception of plants, although it in a way confirms our objective attitude towards them (linguistic reflection of this attitude is attributing inflectional category of inanimate gender to the names of plants which is marked by formal requirements of the identity of accusative and nominative). The author does not agree with such a clearly mechanical (non-reflective) categorization of plants as inanimate beings, which is why she presents semantic-syntactic arguments proving, in her opinion, that plants belong to a common (including people and animals) world of living organisms, a world where every member is SOMEONE who acts.

CZY PRZYPOMNIEĆ SIĘ KOMUŚ TO ‛PRZYPOMNIEĆ KOMUŚ O SOBIE’?

Author(s): Jolanta Chojak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 01/2011

The author’s subject of interest are the language units formed by the verbal sequence przypomnieć ‛to remind’. Her attention is focused on the linguistic status of the expressions się ‛oneself’ and o sobie ‛of oneself’, the relationships between them, as well as the interpretation of the instrumental case position of the predicate in question. The author distinguishes the following language units: two agentive verbs implicating intentionality: [ktoś] przypomniał [kogoś] [komuś] ‛[sbi] reminded [sbj] of [sbk]’ and [ktoś] przypomniał się [komuś] [z czymś] ‛[sbi] did something in order to get [sbj’s] attention on [sth]’, and the language unit defined as a causative-agentive verb, which has two operative variants: [ktoś] przypomniał [się] // [o sobie] [komuś] [czymś] // [w czymś]. The word się (as well as o sobie) indicates the object position of the predicate, and the instrumental case is the marker of the agentive operation.

DEKAPITACJA ZDAŃ WE WSPÓŁCZESNEJ POLSZCZYŹNIE. O POLSKICH ODPOWIEDNIKACH ROSYJSKICH KONSTRUKCJI BEZORZECZENIOWYCH

Author(s): Daniel Weiss / Language(s): Polish Issue: 01/2011

In the article I examine utterances without finite verbs in different varieties of contemporary Polish, notably in new genres of internet communication (blogs and forums), colloquial usage and narrative texts. This subject is motivated by the behavior of colloquial Russian which allows the omission of finite verbs far more freely than colloquial Polish does. The study attempts to seize some crucial factors either favoring or blocking the emergence of verbless sentences in the abovementioned Polish varieties. Anaphoric ellipsis, missing copulae and grammatical vagueness are not taken into account. The article is mainly based on data collected through Google searches and my own observation of colloquial usage. Its principal results may be summarized in the following way: 1. The omission of finite verbs is much more restricted in Polish spontaneous speech than in its Russian counterpart; we observe however the rise of new verbless structures strongly reminiscent of colloquial Russian in Polish internet communication. 2. The degree of explicitness/ vaguess or ambiguity does not seem to have an impact on the acceptability of a given construction with missing verb. 3. The narrative register proves to be more favorable for the omission of verbs of movement and communication than the discourse register.

O KONSTRUKCJACH TYPU SĄD SĄDEM, A SPRAWIEDLIWOŚĆ MUSI BYĆ PO NASZEJ STRONIE

Author(s): Adam Dobaczewski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 01/2011

The subject of this article is the Polish construction Nnom Ninstr (a/ale)_ ‛Nnom Ninstr (but)_’ (where N is obligatorily fi lled by identical lexical forms). The construction is contrasted with similar nominative-instrumental structures interpreted as tautological predications with ellipsis of copula. However, the structure Nnom Ninstr mentioned in the title is recognized as a separate language unit. The author proposes its tentative semantic interpretation based on the data from Polish language corpora.

WIEDZA I WSZECHWIEDZA. CZY CZŁOWIEK MOŻE MIEĆ WOLNĄ WOLĘ, JEŚLI BÓG WIE WSZYSTKO?

Author(s): Piotr Sobotka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 01/2011

Taking the logical-linguistic point of view, the author considers the question of the relationship between God’s foreknowledge and the possibility of free decision-making by a human being. Different solutions of the problem being discussed (whether men are determined in their actions by the foreknowledge of God) were offered by philosophers of the Middle Ages (including Boethius, Peter Abelard, Thomas Aquinas) but also by contemporary ones (Søren Kierkegaard, Arthur Schopenhauer, Alvin Plantinga) as well as logicians (e.g. A.N. Prior). The author makes a critical overview of these solutions and suggests his own approach to the problem in question, rooted in the scholastic philosophy. God, as an Omniscient Being, is – as Boethius said – a Timeless Being, so His act of knowing is well beyond the time. God’s foreknowledge does not affect our actions, because they (understood as the objects of His knowledge) are first in ‛ontological’ order. The truth conditions of a sentence The Socrates’ father, Sophroniscos, was born in the first half of the 5th century BC are associated with two events that took place at different points of time. This does not mean that the phrase came to be true only after Sophroniscos had beget Socrates, nor Sophroniscos – due to one of the truth conditions of the sentence in question – was forced to beget Socrates in the second half of the 5th century BC. This view also forms the foreknowledge of God: for Him both the birth of Sophroniscos and the birth of Socrates are simultaneous.

CZŁOWIEK SIĘ RODZI NA PRACĘ, A PTAK NA LATANIE. SEMANTYCZNO-SKŁADNIOWE A KONTEKSTOWE WŁAŚCIWOŚCI LEKSEMU PRACOWAĆ

Author(s): Katarzyna Dróżdż-Łuszczyk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 01/2011

The article is devoted to semantic-syntactic analysis of the lexeme pracować ‛to work’. The author’s aim is to verify the hypothesis, suggested in the title, of the relationship between being human and the necessity of working, as well as to collect arguments to take a stance on the polysemy of the word pracować postulated in dictionaries. The analysis of the syntactic positions and the performed semantic tests allow to describe following components of the meaning of the examined verb: 1) there is somebody (a human being) who notices the purposefulness of his/her actions; 2) the actions include making changes to the object; 3) the changes are intentional and regarded as good, useful or desirable. All these components prove that one should link the work with the human being. A full answer to the question of the meaning of the verb pracować – according to the author – will become possible only after a contrastive analysis of the verb in question and the verb robić coś ‛to do something’. However, it is possible – on the basis of the analysis – to question the polysemy of the verb pracować suggested in dictionaries.

Słowa i słówka

Author(s): D. S. / Language(s): Polish Issue: 01/2011

KŁOPOT Z KŁOPOTEM

Author(s): Adam Bednarek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 01/2011

The aim of this sketch is to analyze the semantics of the lexical units X jest zakłopotany Y-em ‛X is confused by Y’ and X ma kłopot z Y-em ‛X is in trouble with Y’. The author begins by establishing that there is no synonymic relation between the two units in question. Then, he takes up the semantic relation between Polish lexemes kłopot ‛trouble’ and problem ‛problem’. The author assumes that there is a hyponymy between them, and that the notion of discomfort is what makes them different from one another. The semantic analysis of the units X jest zakłopotany Y-em and X ma kłopot z Y-em shows that both items imply the need for X’s specific behavior. This feature differentiates them (especially the first one) from the unit X jest zażenowany Y-em ‛X is embarrassed with Y’. The final result of the discussion is a proposition of two tentative explications of the examined units. The initial hypothesis of the hyponymy between examined units has not been confirmed.

OPRÓCZ – JAKA TO CZĘŚĆ MOWY? ROZMYŚLANIA NA MARGINESIE ANDRZEJA BOGUSŁAWSKIEGO STUDIUM O ZNACZENIU ROSYJSKIEGO KROME

Author(s): Jadwiga Wajszczuk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 01/2011

The starting point for the study of the Polish oprócz ‛except’ in this article is Andrzej Bogusławski’s study of 2008 of the Russian krome. He recognizes the metatextual nature of this operator. Regarding it as a word having only one meaning, contrary to the ambiguity widely attributed to it (cf. exclusive and inclusive meaning of krome/oprócz), the author suggests an explication of its meaning in logical terms. The author of this article is most interested in the difficulty of classifying krome/oprócz as a part of speech. From the formal perspective, it is undoubtedly a preposition, but it seems to collide with its metatextual nature. The author attempts to solve this dilemma by indicating that oprócz is ‛a typical thematizer’, i.e. a prepositional operator representing a whole metatextual statement which allows to differentiate already known rhematic information from a new rheme or a range of new rhemes.

PRÓBA ROZRÓŻNIENIA KONSTRUKCJI PARENTETYCZNYCH Z WYRAŻENIEM JAK

Author(s): Marzena Stępień / Language(s): Polish Issue: 01/2011

The subject of the article are the Polish constructions _, jak + Vf, _ ‛_, as sb + Vf, _’. The aim of this research is to answer the question of how to distinguish two types of parentheticals with jak ‛as’, that is _, jak + Vf, _ and _, tak jak + Vf, _ ‛_, as sb + Vf before, _’. The investigation involves an attempt to determine which verbs may substitute the variable Vf, and whether they share any common semantic component.