scholarly journals Interwar and Contemporary Poland. A Comparison of the Protection of Minority Rights in the Second and in the Third Polish Republics

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 407-422
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Witkowska-Chrzczonowicz

This paper is devoted to the problem of the protection of minority rights in Poland in the interwar period in comparison with the contemporary situation. On the one hand, before the Second World War Poland was a very heterogeneous country, inhabited for generations by multiple and internally diverse religious, national, ethnic, or linguistic minorities. On the other hand, contemporary Poland is a country in which national and ethnic minorities constitute only a few percent of the population, and the proportion of such minorities in Poland compared to other European countries is one of the lowest in Europe. The duties of the Polish authorities towards national minorities were determined by internal legal acts: decrees of the Chief of State, and above all the March Constitution and national law, as well as many international legal acts, for instance such as the so-called Little Treaty of Versailles. The second part of the paper discusses the contemporary situation of the minorities in Poland, for instance the situation of the national and ethnic minorities and the situation of sexual minorities.

2019 ◽  

With the benefit of hindsight, presenting the Treaty of Versailles as an example of ‘peace through law’ might seem like a provocation. And yet, the extreme variety and innovativeness of international procedural and substantial ‘experiments’ attempted as a result of the Treaty of Versailles and the other Paris Peace Treaties of 1919–1920 remain striking even today. While many of these ‘experiments’ had a lasting impact on international law and dispute settlement after the Second World War, and considerably broadened the very idea of ‘peace through law’, they have often disappeared from collective memories. Relying on both legal and historical research, this book provides a global overview of how the Paris Peace Treaties impacted on dispute resolution in the interwar period, both substantially and procedurally. The book’s accounts of several all-but-forgotten international tribunals and their case law include references to archival records and photographic illustrations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 370-386
Author(s):  
ANDREW DOWLING

Dictatorships, autocracies and authoritarian political systems must adapt if they wish to survive. The long-lasting dictatorship of Franco's Spain (1939–75) underwent a series of internal adaptations during its almost forty years of existence. The initial project of the Franco regime, which included the destruction of its social and political enemies, lasted until the end of the Second World War. The second phase, marked by a failed autarkic experiment, ended in 1959. The economic change that followed entailed a moderate opening in political terms, whilst maintaining a dictatorial apparatus. This article examines a further feature in the evolution of the Franco regime which initially sought to impose a monolithic national identity (Spanish) by means of the repression of its national minorities (Basque, Catalan, Galician and so on). Due to the absence of a violent political movement as existed in the Basque Country in the form of ETA, Catalonia is a particularly fruitful source to examine the shifts that took place in the Franco regime's policy towards Spain's historic nationalities. This article focuses on the intermediate spaces that appeared between overt opposition on the one hand and active collaboration on the other. This article assesses the evolving policy towards Catalan culture and identity during the dictatorship. I find three main phases in the regime's strategy: repression, followed by comparative tolerance with a final phase of the co-option of Catalan culture, for the purposes of regime legitimation.


Res Publica ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 36 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 361-380
Author(s):  
Paul Magnette

This paper examines the evolving ideological content of the concept of citizenship and particularly the challenges it faces as a consequence of the building of the European Union. From an epistemological point of view it is first argued that citizenship may be described as a dual concept: it is both a legal institution composed of the rights of the citizen as they are fixed at a certain moment of its history, and a normative ideal which embodies their political aspirations. As a result of this dual nature, citizenship is an essentially dynamicnotion, which is permanently evolving between a state of balance and change.  The history of this concept in contemporary political thought shows that, from the end of the second World War it had raised a synthesis of democratic, liberal and socialist values on the one hand, and that it was historically and logically bound to the Nation-State on the other hand. This double synthesis now seems to be contested, as the themes of the "crisis of the Nation State" and"crisis of the Welfare state" do indicate. The last part of this paper grapples with recent theoretical proposals of new forms of european citizenship, and argues that the concept of citizenship could be renovated and take its challenges into consideration by insisting on the duties and the procedures it contains.


Author(s):  
Anna D. Bertova ◽  

Prominent Japanese economist, specialist in colonial politics, a professor of Im­perial Tokyo University, Yanaihara Tadao (1893‒1961) was one of a few people who dared to oppose the aggressive policy of Japanese government before and during the Second World War. He developed his own view of patriotism and na­tionalism, regarding as a true patriot a person who wished for the moral develop­ment of his or her country and fought the injustice. In the years leading up to the war he stated the necessity of pacifism, calling every war evil in the ultimate, divine sense, developing at the same time the concept of the «just war» (gisen­ron), which can be considered good seen from the point of view of this, imper­fect life. Yanaihara’s theory of pacifism is, on one hand, the continuation of the one proposed by his spiritual teacher, the founder of the Non-Church movement, Uchimura Kanzo (1861‒1930); one the other hand, being a person of different historical period, directly witnessing the boundless spread of Japanese militarism and enormous hardships brought by the war, Yanaihara introduced a number of corrections to the idealistic theory of his teacher and proposed quite a specific explanation of the international situation and the state of affairs in Japan. Yanai­hara’s philosophical concepts influenced greatly both his contemporaries and successors of the pacifist ideas in postwar Japan, and contributed to the dis­cussion about interrelations of pacifism and patriotism, and also patriotism and religion.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-163
Author(s):  
O. Martynyuk ◽  
I. Zhytaryuk

The present article covers topics of life, scientific, pedagogical and social activities of the famous Romanian mathematician Simoin Stoilov (1887-1961), professor of Chernivtsi and Bucharest universities. Stoilov was working at Chernivtsi University during 1923-1939 (at this interwar period Chernivtsi region was a part of royal Romania. The article is aimed on the occasion of honoring professors’ memory and his managerial abilities in the selection of scientific and pedagogical staff to ensure the educational process and research in Chernivtsi University in the interwar period. In addition, it is noted that Simoin Stoilov has made a significant contribution to the development of mathematical science, in particular he is the founder of the Romanian school of complex analysis and the theory of topological analysis of analytic functions; the main directions of his research are: partial differential equation; set theory; general theory of real functions and topology; topological theory of analytic functions; issues of philosophy and foundation of mathematics, scientific research methods, Lenin’s theory of cognition. The article focuses on the active socio-political and state activities of Simoin Stoilov in terms of restoring scientific and cultural ties after the Second World War.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-59
Author(s):  
Éric Alliez ◽  
Maurizio Lazzarato

Abstract In the aftermath of the Second World War, revolutionary movements remained dependent on Leninist theories and practices in their attempts to grasp the new relationship between war and capital. Yet these theories and practices failed to address the global “cold civil war” represented by the events of 1968. This article will show that in the 1970s this task was not undertaken by “professional revolutionaries” or in their Maoist discourse of “protracted war” and its “generalized Clauzewitzian strategy.” Rather, the problem was addressed by Michel Foucault, on the one hand, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, on the other. Each produced a radical break in the conception of war and of its constitutive relationship with capitalism, taking up the confrontation with Clausewitz to reverse the famous formula such that war was not to be understood as the continuation of politics (which determines its ends). Politics was, on the contrary, to be understood as an element and strategic modality of the whole constituted by war. The ambition of la pensée 68, as represented by Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari, was not to make this reversal into a simple permutation of the formula's terms, but rather to develop a radical critique of the concepts of “war” and “politics” presupposed by Clausewitz's formula.


2017 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 87
Author(s):  
Bergur Rønne Moberg

<p><strong>Úrtak</strong></p><p>Greinin viðger ‘týðingar’spurdómar í stuttsøguni „Grylen“ (1957) eftir William Heinesen. Søgan tekur støði í einum elligomlum føstulávintssiði í Føroyum – at ganga grýla – sum doyði út beint fyri seinna heimsbardaga. Í søguni hjá Williami verður grýlan til ein dionýsiskan figur kallaður Grylen, sum er ólýsandi og ímyndar orðloysi. Greinin vísir, hvussu metatilvitaða frásøgufólkið letur seg hugkveikja av hesum fyribrigdi  við  áhaldandi at umringja tað við nýggjum myndum. Týdda grýlan verður greinað sum 1) eitt ontologiskt tulkingartilvitað frásøgufólk og sum 2) eitt eyðkenni við bókmentamentan í  útjaðaranum. Stuttsøgan fær skap sum ein navngevingargongd av einari undantaksveru, og tað er við støði í hesum botnloysi, at frásøgufólkið tulkar og týðir grýluna til eitt listaligt úttrykk. Grylen umboðar eina rest, sum dregur seg undan modernaðum mannagongdum. Við støði í hugsanum hjá Franco Moretti og Andreas Huyssen verður týðingin samstundis knýtt at landafrøðiliga útjaðaranum, sum skapar ein serligan tørv á týðing í royndini at minka um munin millum ‘miðdepil’ og ‘útjaðara’. Í hesum samteksti umboðar Grylen og oyggin Stapa eitt mentanarligt eftirsleip, sum verður gjørt til eina styrki. Hetta ’writing back’ brúkar føroyskan miðaldarsið og fornaldarligt evni sum Dionysos til at seta spurning við hegemoniska(n) modernitet og modernismu og við hvat er miðdepil og hvat er útjaðari.</p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong>A</strong><strong>bstract</strong></p><p>This analysis addresses the issue of translation in William Heinesen’s short story „Grylen“ (1957). It is a story of an old Dionysiac Faroese ritual, which died out around The Second World War. The narrator sets himself the task of transplanting this Dionysos into modern fiction.  Due  to  the  muteness  of  the  Gryla the literary connection to the myth can only be established by virtue of interpretation as demonstrated as an explicit mediation of the mythical silence. The muteness appear as a matter of interpretation while being encircled in  conflicting  images.  Focus  is  partly  given on the interpreted Gryla as a complex question of ontological interpretation and partly as an expression of cultural translation linked to aesthetic development in the geographical periphery. Due to the muteness of the Gryla, the whole story appears as a course of naming the nameless forces that work within Dunald, who is the one having the Gryla. Based on Franco Moretti’s og Andreas Huyssen’s notion of ‘centre and periphery’, the question of translation is connected to the Faroe Island as a non­metropolitan culture. Due to the cultural backlog in the periphery there is a special need for translations caused by the discrepancy between the trans­atlantic modernity and a minor culture as the Faroese still close to nature and the oral tradition. In response to the cultural backlog the dynamics of translation become a privileged perspective creating connections between   modern   and   premodern   aspects. The Faroese reaction represents an alternative modernity and an alternative (geo)modernism writing back to a rule­based hegemonic modernity an modernism in order to give an account of the encounter with another world, which evades direct contact and brings into question what is periphery and what is centre.</p><p> </p>


2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Rosoux ◽  
Laurence van Ypersele

This article examines the gradual deconstruction of the Belgian national identity. Is it possible to speak of a de facto differentiation or even ‘federalization’ of the so-called ‘national past’ in Belgium? How do Belgians choose to remember and forget this past? To contribute to an understanding of these issues, the article considers two very different episodes of Belgian history, namely the First World War and the colonization of the Congo. On the one hand, the memory of the First World War appears to provide the template for memory conflicts in Belgium, and thus informs the memories of other tragedies such as the Second World War. On the other hand, the memory of the colonial past remains much more consensual – providing a more nuanced picture of competing views on the past. Beyond the differences between the ways in which these episodes are officially portrayed, the same fundamental trend may be observed: the gradual fragmentation of a supposedly smooth and reliable national version of history.


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 340-346
Author(s):  
Iveta Dabašinskienė

The most important and biggest railway station in Telšiai as a part of one of the first railroads Kretinga – Telšiai – Kužiai built in the interwar period is examined in this article. A variety of elements of the station’s infrastructure with special attention to passenger stations, houses for railway workers and warehouses (pakhauze) are revealed in the article. The significance of Lietūkis warehouses founded in the territory of the station and their connections with the railroad are discussed. Moreover, the arrangement of Telšiai Station buildings in the territory are analyzed and compared to the preserved site plan of the station and photo of the situation dated back to the Second World War taken by Germans from the air. While comparing the available sources, urban developments of the station area are discussed. The analysis material is based on archival sources, the interwar documentary publications and research of the location. Straipsnyje nagrinėjama vienos pirmųjų tarpukariu tiestos geležinkelio trasos Kretinga–Telšiai–Kužiai svarbiausia ir didžiausia stotis Telšiuose. Atskleidžiama šios stoties infrastruktūros elementų įvairovė, ypatingas dėmesys skiriamas keleivių rūmams, geležinkelininkų gyvenamiesiems namams, prekių sandėliams (pakhauzams). Aptariama stoties teritorijoje įsteigto Lietūkio sandėlių reikšmė ir sąsajos su geležinkelininkų. Analizuojamas Telšių stoties pastatų išdėstymas teritorijoje, lyginamas su išlikusiu šios stoties situacijos planu bei Antrojo pasaulinio karo metų vokiečių užfiksuota toponuotrauka iš oro. Lyginant turimus šaltinius, aptariami urbanistiniai stoties teritorijos pokyčiai. Rengiant straipsnį remiasi archyviniais šaltiniais, dokumentinėmis tarpukario publikacijomis, vietos tyrimais.


2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 472-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan J. Díaz Benítez

The secret supply of the German Navy during the Second World War has scarcely been studied until now. The goal of this article is to study one of the more active supply areas of the Etappendienst at the beginning of the war, the one known as Etappe Kanaren, as part of the Grossetappe Spanien-Portugal. In this research primary sources from German Naval War Command have been consulted. Among the main conclusions, it should be pointed out, on the one hand, the intense activity to support the Kriegsmarine during the first years of the war, despite the distance from mainland Spain and the British pressure, which finally stopped the supply operations. On the other hand, we have confirmed the active role of the Spanish government in relation to the Etappendienst: Spanish authorities allowed the supply operations, but pressure from the Allies forced the Spanish government to impede these activities.


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