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The report is devoted to research about of the most discussed problems in historiography: the reasons, which led to that the Tsarist Government to sale Alaska in 1867 to the USA. On the analyses of historical documents and scientific literature the author pick out 16 such reasons and factors including e.g. natural, economic, and military. In scientific Russian historiography the most popular is the last, i.e. the military factor, which was connected to the threat of American (and British) occupation of Alaska. Some authors have added that in the middle of the nineteenth century the penetration of American and British traders, miners, whalers, and smugglers increased into the territory of Alaska. It is true that such a prominent researcher, as Academician N. N. Bolkhovitinov, has recently pointed out also other reason for the Alaska’s sale: continental (but not maritime) character of Russian colonization. In the author’s point of view, the main fundamental factor was not the military threat from foreign powers for the Russian colonies in America but the politarism, i.e. socio-economical system that dominated in Russia during almost all of its history (but not the feudalism and socialism, as most historians have believed). The politarism has based on the supreme right of the state to the main means of production and the workforce. The peculiarity of this socio-economical system has helped to explain the insignificance of the Russian population in Alaska, the weak Russian trade fleet, non effective economics, and lastly the continental character of Russian colonization. The relative conservatism and the backwardness of the politaristic empire and its colonies very clearly manifested itself in the clash with the more dynamic Anglo-American capitalistic colonization of the North Pacific during the second half of the nineteenth century. The theory of politarism has also made it possible to explain why the state in the person of Tsar decided the Alaska problem, ignoring interests and rights of the Russian-American Company (which ruled the colonies since 1799), people living in the colonies, and the public opinion in Russia.
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Abstract. A large body of literature has been devoted to the development of conflicts, their causes, and consequences for politics and society. However, much less attention has been paid to public opinion on the matter. To fill this void in the literature, this article seeks to understand why people consider the existence of several ethnic groups as a source of conflicts. It focuses on Romania – a multiethnic society with experience in interethnic conflicts – and uses individual-level data from a survey conducted in 2012. It uses statistical quantitative analysis (binary logistic regression) to test whether factors associated with group belonging, political attitudes, social confidence, the frequency of news followed in the media, and sociodemographic features shape popular attitudes.
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Abstract. Politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina have stagnated for years because local politicians have rarely agreed on important reforms. Among the factors that account for this situation is the constitution, which was an annex of the Dayton Peace Agreement of 1995, and which introduced a system that allows the three “constitutive ethnic groups” – Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), Serbs and Croats – various veto-rights in decision-making. In addition, the constitution discriminates against citizens who do not belong to one of these three groups. Although most observers and politicians agree on the shortcomings of the “Dayton Constitution”, in recent years several constitutional reform efforts have failed. The article analyses the role of the European Union in these efforts, examines the policy approaches and instruments that were applied by the EU to support the reform process since 2006, and points out that the EU has only reluctantly applied the instrument of conditionality in the process.
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