Tensions of Transnationalism: Youth Rebellion, State Backlash, and 1968 in Poland

2020 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 1232-1259
Author(s):  
Malgorzata Fidelis
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Alternative Interpretation ◽  
The State ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
National Community ◽  
Dominant Narratives

Abstract This article looks at Polish students who attempted to challenge the communist state’s hegemony with their own alternative interpretation of leftist politics during the pivotal era of the global sixties. This challenge culminated in student and youth demonstrations in March 1968 and the state’s violent reaction. In contrast to dominant narratives that depict 1968 in Poland and Eastern Europe as primarily shaped by the domestic political context, this article shows Polish students not simply as protesters against a “totalitarian” regime, but as active participants in a contemporary global search for a new kind of leftism. This quest involved turning away from the state as a potential vehicle for a socialist transformation, reformulating ideas of justice and solidarity, and engaging in leftist conversations across borders. The concept of transnational imagination is central to this discussion as both the young people and the state projected different visions of transnational solidarities and were influenced by crises happening elsewhere, including the Vietnam War and the Six-Day War in the Middle East. In Poland, the communist regime deployed and weaponized the transnational imagination against the protesters by launching a powerful antisemitic campaign. Stigmatizing protesters as Zionists and foreign agents alien to the Polish national community, the campaign solidified the racialized understanding of the “Polish nation,” which had lasting political consequences, including the shape of oppositional politics in the 1970s and 1980s.

Staging Patriotism: Popular Responses to Solidarność in Soviet Ukraine, 1980-1981

Slavic Review ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 824-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zbigniew Wojnowski
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The State ◽  
Soviet State ◽  
The Right ◽  
Dominant Narratives ◽  
Public Forums

Zbigniew Wojnowski explores Soviet popular responses to Solidarity during the early 1980s, focusing in particular on Ukraine and its western borderlands. Shifting emphasis from internal Soviet dynamics to transnational interactions in eastern Europe, Wojnowski challenges dominant narratives of late Soviet and Ukrainian history. Whereas Alexei Yurchak maintains that members of the “last Soviet generation” were essentially indifferent to the Soviet state and its ideology, popular responses to Solidarity suggest that, in some contexts at least, Soviet citizens still engaged with the state in active and meaningful ways during the early 1980s. Drawing on the rhetoric of Soviet patriotism in various public forums, many residents of Ukraine claimed the right to comment on official policies. In this sense, the types of citizenship that had developed in the USSR after 1945 survived into the early 1980s. Most surprisingly, perhaps, Soviet patriotism provided a crucial source of vitality for Leonid Brezhnev's regime even in Ukraine's western borderlands, which have often been seen as the “least Soviet” part of the USSR.

scholarly journals The Implementation of State Policy of Power Cleaning in the Conditions of Political Transformation: Experience of Ukraine and Countries of Central and Eastern Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 405-421
Author(s):  
Valentyna Goshovska ◽  
Volodymyr Goshovskyi ◽  
Liudmyla Dubchak
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
The State ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Administration System ◽  
The Public ◽  
Wide Range

The article analyzes the problems of realization of the state policy of power cleaning in the countries of Central-Eastern Europe (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Baltic countries), and in particular in Ukraine. It has been found that in various countries this step in the public administration was taken since the fall of the communist regime. However, everywhere it was carried out by its own rules. The attention is drawn to the fact that the power cleaning through lustration should be ensured in the light of a wide range of threats that pertain to the human rights sphere and the principle of the presumption of innocence. This was relevant for every state that embarked on the path of transformational change to the implementation of a state policy of power cleaning. None of the countries that have taken such a political step in the public administration system went this route easily (there were both claims to the laws with subsequent legislative initiatives to amend them, and suits to courts of various instances to restore human and citizen’s rights and freedoms). However, there were also positive consequences, which resulted in the cleaning of the authorities of the respective countries from the influences of interested pro-communist political forces, which hindered democratic transformations in the states. Regarding the characteristics of the state policy of power cleaning by lustration in Ukraine, which began only in 2014, we drew attention to the fact that it had a different meaning: it was not aimed at combating the communist past, but at overthrowing the current political regime of “Yanukovych times”. There were some problems, which reflected the emergence of relevant issues in such events of the public administration system, which caused criticism from a number of external international human rights organizations (for example, the Venice Commission), and led to massive claims to courts of various instances aimed to restore of claimants' rights. Also the article draws attention to the fact that lustration, as a mechanism of power cleaning, is an appropriate political step on the way to democratization of society and overcoming the negative consequences of the activity of undemocratic political regimes. However, its implementation requires a prudent approach to defining the principles of legal regulation, the establishment of appropriate institutions to ensure the implementation of lustration and guaranteeing the protection of human and citizen's rights and freedoms from political persecution.  Keywords: sustainable development, public policy, cleaning of power, lustration, protection of human and citizen's rights and freedoms.

‘Urfi marriage, an Egyptian Version of Cohabitation?

1970 ◽  
pp. 64-69
Author(s):  
Ikran Eum
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Young People ◽  
The State ◽  
Sexual Desires ◽  
Lower Social Class ◽  
State Pension

In Egypt, the term ‘urfi2 in relation to marriage means literally “customary” marriage, something that has always existed in Egypt but nowadays tends mostly to be secretly practiced among young people. Traditionally, according to Abaza,3 ‘urfi marriage took place not only for practical purposes (such as enabling widows to remarry while keeping the state pension of their deceased husbands), but also as a way of matchmaking across classes (since men from the upper classes use ‘urfi marriage as a way of marrying a second wife from a lower social class). In this way a man could satisfy his sexual desires while retaining his honor by preserving his marriage to the first wife and his position in the community to which he belonged, and keeping his second marriage secret.

Nation Branding:

MedienJournal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Gisela K. Cánepa
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
The State ◽  
Nation Branding ◽  
Great Opportunity ◽  
National Community ◽  
Neoliberal Governmentality ◽  
Entrepreneurial Spirit

Nation branding plays a central role within neoliberal governmentality, operating as a technology of power in the configuration of emerging cultural and political formations such as national identity, citizenship and the state. The discussion of the advertising spot Perú, Nebraska  released as part of the Nation Branding campaign Marca Perú  in May of 2011, constitutes a great opportunity to: (i) argue about the way in which audiovisual advertisement products, designed as performative devises, operate as technologies of power; and (ii) problematize the terms in which it founds a new social contract for the Peruvian multicultural national community. This analysis will allow me to approach neoliberalism as a cultural regime in order to discuss the ideological nature of the uncontested celebratory discourse that has emerged in Perú and which explains the economic growth of the last decades as the outcome of a national entrepreneurial spirit that would be distinctive of Peruvian cultural identity.

EDUCATING YOUNG PEOPLE IN PRESERVING THE MEMORY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 83-88
Author(s):  
Davlatbek Qudratov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The State ◽  
World War ◽  
Educational Activities ◽  
Soviet State ◽  
Military Mobilization ◽  
Second World

The article analyzes the state of schools and education in General during the Second World war. The slogan "Everything for the front, everything for victory!" defined the goal not only of all military mobilization activities of the Soviet state, but also became the center of all organizational, ideological, cultural and educational activities of the party and state bodies of Uzbekistan.

ELECTION SYSTEM OF THE REPUBLIC OF KAZAKHSTAN

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daria Kozlova
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
The State ◽  
Participation Rates ◽  
High Participation ◽  
Election System ◽  
The Republic

This article discusses the general characteristics of the electoral system of Kazakhstan by the example of elections of the President of the Republic, the Senate of the Parliament of Kazakhstan and deputies of the Mazhilis. The features of dividing this system into majority and proportional are also disclosed. The article analyzes the features of the appointment and conduct of elections and the principles on which they are based. It is also shown how the active activity of the state in the field of legal education of young people and their familiarization with the electoral system affects the high participation rates of citizens in elections.

Explaining Peaceful Change in Central and Eastern Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Tabachnik ◽  
Benjamin Miller
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
State Capacity ◽  
The State ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Soviet System ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Independent Variables ◽  
Two Independent Variables

This chapter explains the process of peaceful change in Central and Eastern Europe following the demise of the Soviet system. It also explains the failure of peaceful change in the Balkans and some post-Soviet countries, such as the Ukrainian conflict in 2014. The chapter accounts for the conditions for peaceful change and for the variation between peaceful and violent change by the state-to-nation theory. The two independent variables suggested by the theory are the level of state capacity and congruence—namely the compatibility between state borders and the national identities of the countries at stake. Moreover, according to the theory, great-power engagement serves as an intervening variable and in some conditions, as explained in the chapter, may help with peaceful change.

scholarly journals School and Shaping Students’ Identities: A Report on the Studies into Youth in the Silesian Voivodeship

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Alina Szczurek-Boruta
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social Resources ◽  
The State ◽  
Educational Activities ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
School Year ◽  
Social And Economic Development ◽  
Two Stages

The identity of young people, and the state of a school’s fulfilment of its tasks, as presented in the article, are based on the results of the author’s own field explorations carried out in the school year 2003/2004 and repeated in the same territory of the Silesian Voivodeship in the zone of intensive social and economic development in 2016/2017. The results of the research conducted have shown that schools brought young people with different personal and social resources, and living in different historical and socio-cultural contexts, to a similar value of identity capital. The study, conducted in two stages with an interval of 13 years, has revealed the greatest shifts in the following areas: extension of the range of interactions (change 13.2%); ambivalence (change 8.1%); revitalization (change 7.7%); and ethos (change 6.8%). The least change occurred in the provision of offers of identification (1.7% change). A slight decline was noted in the extension of the developmental moratorium (1.5% change). The identified, described and empirically verified tasks of a school form a specific map of educational activities, which can be successfully used as a matrix to describe and interpret a school’s participation in the shaping of young people’s identities.

Bulgarian Turkish Emigration and Return

1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 342-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darina Vasileva
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Total Population ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethnic Conflicts ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
Lasting Effect ◽  
History Of

The history of the emigration of Bulgarian Muslim Turks to Turkey is more than a century old. The violation of the human rights of ethnic Turks by the totalitarian regime during the 1980s resulted in the most massive and unpredictable migration wave ever seen in that history. This article examines the complexity of factors and motivations of the 1989 emigration which included almost half of the ethnic Turks living in Bulgaria and constituting until that time 9 percent of the total population. The author considers the strong and long-lasting effect of this emigration—followed by the subsequent return of half of the emigrants after the fall of the regime—both on Bulgaria's economy and on the political life of the society. The article aims also at providing a better understanding of the character of ethnic conflicts in posttotalitarian Eastern Europe.

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