scholarly journals Antidote to Civil War?

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (2 (242)) ◽  
pp. 77-100
Author(s):  
Ioannis D. Stefanidis

This paper seeks to reopen the question of legitimacy, and in particular democratic legitimacy, as an important factor affecting the course of European ‘small states’ involved in World War II. It draws attention to previously neglected or understudied but crucial aspects of wartime legitimacy, eminently the role of recognition by foreign powers, the rhetoric of the ‘Big Three’ Allies regarding post-war Europe, and the relevance of democratic legitimacy as a powerful antidote to civil conflict during the period of transition into peacetime.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-135
Author(s):  
Ioannis D. Stefanidis

The experience of European small states involved in World War II varied widely. Not all of them entered the war as victims of aggression, and even those that did so did not necessarily share the same dire consequences of warfare and/or foreign occupation; they also exited the war in, sometimes dramatically different ways: a number of small states entered the post-war period relatively peacefully, other were plunged into civil war, while a third category experienced a measure of unrest short of civil strife. It is argued in this paper that, among the factors influencing the outcome of a European small state’s involvement in World War II, the political legitimacy of its government should not be underestimated. The impact of this factor was particularly felt during the sensitive transition period from war and/or occupation into peacetime. Reinterpreting existing material, it is further argued that, during the war, democratic legitimacy increasingly appeared to guarantee a safer ground for both withstanding wartime travails and achieving a relatively smooth restoration of free national institutions, without the risk of civil war.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
A. Yu. Timofeev

The article considers the perception of World War II in modern Serbian society. Despite the stability of Serbian-Russian shared historical memory, the attitudes of both countries towards World wars differ. There is a huge contrast in the perception of the First and Second World War in Russian and Serbian societies. For the Serbs the events of World War II are obscured by the memories of the Civil War, which broke out in the country immediately after the occupation in 1941 and continued several years after 1945. Over 70% of Yugoslavs killed during the Second World War were slaughtered by the citizens of former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The terror unleashed by Tito in the first postwar decade in 1944-1954 was proportionally bloodier than Stalin repressions in the postwar USSR. The number of emigrants from Yugoslavia after the establishment of the Tito's dictatorship was proportionally equal to the number of refugees from Russia after the Civil War (1,5-2% of prewar population). In the post-war years, open manipulations with the obvious facts of World War II took place in Tito's Yugoslavia. In the 1990s the memories repressed during the communist years were set free and publicly debated. After the fall of the one-party system the memory of World War II was devalued. The memory of the Russian-Serbian military fraternity forged during the World War II began to revive in Serbia due to the foreign policy changes in 2008. In October 2008 the President of Russia paid a visit to Serbia which began the process of (re) construction of World War II in Serbian historical memory. According to the public opinion surveys, a positive attitude towards Russia and Russians in Serbia strengthens the memories on general resistance to Nazism with memories of fratricide during the civil conflict events of 1941-1945 still dominating in Serbian society.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-3) ◽  
pp. 70-81
Author(s):  
David Ramiro Troitino ◽  
Tanel Kerikmae ◽  
Olga Shumilo

This article highlights the role of Charles de Gaulle in the history of united post-war Europe, his approaches to the internal and foreign French policies, also vetoing the membership of the United Kingdom in the European Community. The authors describe the emergence of De Gaulle as a politician, his uneasy relationship with Roosevelt and Churchill during World War II, also the roots of developing a “nationalistic” approach to regional policy after the end of the war. The article also considers the emergence of the Common Agricultural Policy (hereinafter - CAP), one of Charles de Gaulle’s biggest achievements in foreign policy, and the reasons for the Fouchet Plan defeat.


Author(s):  
Jennifer Coates

A distinctive feature of post-war Japanese cinema is the frequent recurrence of imagistic and narrative tropes and formulaic characterizations in female representations. These repetitions are important, Jennifer Coates asserts, because sentiments and behaviours forbidden during the war and post-war social and political changes were often articulated by or through the female image. Moving across major character types, from mothers to daughters, and schoolteachers to streetwalkers, Making Icons studies the role of the media in shaping the attitudes of the general public. Japanese cinema after defeat in the Asia Pacific War and World War II is shown to be an important ground where social experiences were explored, reworked, and eventually accepted or rejected by audiences emotionally invested in these repetitive materials. An examination of 600 films produced and distributed between 1945 and 1964, as well as numerous Japanese-language sources, forms the basis of this rigorous study. Making Icons draws on an art-historical iconographic analysis to explain how viewers derive meanings from images during this peak period of film production and attendance in Japan.


Author(s):  
Aleksandr Davydov ◽  
Olesya Balandina

The article studies aspects of the Soviet outreach during World War II. The tool of such outreach was the Soviet Information Bureau, established on June 24, 1941. The authors focus on main directions of the operation of the Bureau. The novelty of the authors’ findings lies in the fact that canonical texts of the Soviet Information Bureau were actually censored by Joseph Stalin himself. The article questions the significance of the underlying patterns for the development of domestic media content. The authors study how Stalin managed the media with the help of reports. The study is relevant, as it reveals and argues the key role of Marxist ideologemes, contained in the reports, as the dominant factor defining the whole complex of newspaper and journal sources. Upon studying Stalin’s notes, the authors conclude that the tenet of exceptional progressivity of Soviet socialist society was unquestionable for its leader. The argument on the excellence of the society and the proof of extreme reactivity of the opposing regime that cast shadow on the perfect society are connected with a complete perversion of facts. The article also contains the authors’ investigation into information expansion organized by Soviet Information Bureau in the international arena during the studied period. According to the researchers, the expansion was aimed at creating a springboard to launch an agenda offensive in the post-war period. The authors conclude that Bureau’s campaigns never succeeded despite major financial and labour investments due to deep ideological motivation: the majority of Soviet people, as well as most foreigners had no trust towards Soviet media.


Author(s):  
Bruce A. Forster ◽  
Jessica D. Forster

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This paper provides an introduction to the concepts of governance and state weakness, fragility or failure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Selected indices of performance are presented with an emphasis on Sub-Saharan Africa. As noted by the 2005 UK Commission for Africa &ldquo;The most extreme breakdown of governance is war.&rdquo; The paper discusses the concepts and definitions of civil conflict and civil war, and the prevalence of civil war in Sub &ndash;Saharan Africa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Among the costs of civil war are the people who are displaced due to their fear for life amidst the conflict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If displaced persons exit the country they become refugees. The paper provides an introduction to the evolution of international humanitarian law since World War II to protect non-combatants, including refugees.</span></span></p>


Politik ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ove Korsgaard

After World War II, there was broad consensus that schools in Denmark should educate for democracy. But there was no consensus on the role of the state: Should the state ensure that everyone receives a democratic education? Or should the state ensure pluralism, and remain neutral in relation to different life philosophies? Or must both the state and citizens develop a knowledgeable stance in relation to democracy’s fundamental dilemmas? It was without doubt the liberal position that became most influential in post-war Danish educational policy. The core of this strategy was that in a democracy the state should adopt a neutral stance towards the various philosophies of life. However, with the values-political turn of recent years the liberal position is now in retreat. This new trend became clear in 2000, with the then Minister of Education Margrethe Vestager’s manifesto Values in the Real World, in which she stressed that „Now more than ever we need to put in words just what attitudes and values we hold in common“. And the present government has focused on the same issue since 2001, and has commissioned among other things a literary canon, a cultural canon and a democracy canon. The activist values policies of recent years have once again given rise to a number of questions concerning democratic upbringing and the role of the state in efforts to strengthen society’s cohesiveness. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-219
Author(s):  
Ekanerina P. Aristova ◽  

The article explores the famous work of M. M. Zoshchenko «Before Sunrise». The story, written during the World War II, is presented by the author as anti-fascist. The theme of the story is the formation of his own «I», psychological motives that encourage one to agree with suffering and violence or to fight them. Fascism in the perception of the author is a complete defeat in the fight against brutality and cruelty, a fear of fight with suffering. Zoshchenko refers to science as a bright hope to prove the existence of consciousness conquering the irrational nature of the soul. The story was a part of the war and post-war era: writers and philosophers (H. Arendt, J. P. Sartre, K. Popper and others) actively discussed the nature of totalitarian regimes, the reasons for their support, the role of personal perception in their affirmation, the possibility of individual rather than collective defining the good, the role of rationality destroying the individual for the sake of universal rational laws and at the same time encouraging individualism and critical thinking. The question of the role of individual consciousness is shown as one of the ancient questions of European philosophy, answered differently in the traditions of Platonism and Christianity. M. M. Zoshchenko is more a humanist writer who paid attention to the individual experience of a person. Trying to show that the triumph of consciousness can be a personal choice he discusses the role of artistic creativity, the nature of neurosis in experiences of many art geniuses. Zoshchenko is trying to make his story a clear demonstration of the possibility of combining the triumph of reason with the sincerity of personal artistic style and hence personal choice in favor of reason.


Author(s):  
Ruslan Rustamovich Ibragimov ◽  
Aivaz Minnegosmanovich Fazliev ◽  
Chulpan Khamitovna Samatova ◽  
Boturzhon Khamidovich Alimov

The objective of the research was to study Russian State and Orthodox church relations in the context of world war II and the early post-war years. The line of this article is due to the important role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the history, modern political and cultural life of Russia. In this sense, the period of State-Church relations in the USSR during world war II, known in Russia as a great patriotic war, is of great scientific interest because it was the time when the government was forced to make adjustments to its religion policy. Methodologically based on a wide range of documentary sources, the authors of the article have identified the place and role of the Russian Orthodox Church in the foreign policy of the USSR during the approach. In this sense, it is felt that the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in building relations with the allies of the anti-Hitler coalition and its place in the expansion of the Soviet political system in Eastern Europe was of paramount importance as a foreign policy factor.


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