scholarly journals History and Socio-Political Conditions of Preparation of the Polish Constitutions from 1919 to 1997

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 176
Author(s):  
Boris Kindyuk ◽  
Mykhailo Kelman ◽  
Vasyl Patlachuk ◽  
Olexander Patlachuk

The purpose of article deals with the study of history of preparation and the reasons for the adoption of the Polish Constitutions in the period from 1919 to 1997 years. Research methods: dialectical, chronological, comparative, system-structural. Main results. The article shows that the history of the preparation of the Polish Constitutions in the period from 1919 to 1997 years occurred under the conditions of constant changes of socio-political factors, which was reflected in the state system, political, economic and social relations, rights and freedoms of the population. It is proved that the history of Polish constitutionalism has evolved in a complex vector from the insignificant in volume and scientific level of the Little Constitution of 1919, which was adopted in conditions of armed confrontation with Soviet Russia, to the 1997 Constitution, which complies with European standards. The influence of the historical personality of Marshal Jozef Pilsudski was investigated, who became the sponsor of the rebirth of independent Poland on the history of the preparation and adoption of the Polish Constitutions of 1919, 1921 years and the Constitution of 1935 in which the President of the country was given dictatorial powers during the period of war. It is shown that the Constitution of 1952, which was written according to Soviet models and based on instructions received from Moscow, had to consolidate in Poland a socialist model in which the Polish United Workers Party had a leading role in society. It is shown that the collapse of the Soviet Union led to the elimination of the communist system in Poland, the rise to power of democratic forces, which resulted the adoption Constitution 1997. The peculiarity of the Constitutional process was the fact that for the first time in the history of Poland on 25th May 1997 a referendum was held regarding its adoption. The Constitution 1997 was adopted in the context of a transition from command-administrative to a democratic system of government, so its content is marked by a democratic nature that ensured the creation of private ownership of all means of production and free trade. The historical reasons of the drafting of the Polish Constitutions have undergone a complex dynamic, which is connected with political changes in the country, which is reflected in the content of the ideas, doctrinal views and Basic Laws. The practical significance of the study lies in the use of Polish historical experience in the development of event scenarios in Ukraine in order to prevent errors in modern state-making. Originality. A comprehensive study of the history of Polish constitutionalism, taking into account socio-political reasons. Article type: descriptive.

2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter H. Solomon

The Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia alike have had extremely low rates of acquittal in criminal cases, which conventional wisdom associates with an accusatorial bias. But other countries like Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, and France also have low rates of acquittal without the perception of bias. This article argues that the key difference lies in the presence or absence of pretrial screening—through the withdrawal of charges, diversion, and/or dispositions imposed by prosecutors. After a brief history of the low acquittal rate in Russia, the article documents the use of prosecutorial discretion to screen cases before trial in those four Western countries, especially through the exercise by prosecutors of quasi-judicial functions. The article goes on to demonstrate the absence of significant pretrial filtering of cases in Russia and to explore the implications for understanding the rate of acquittal.


Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Marianna Shakhnovich

By the end of the 1920s, more than 100 anti-religious museums had been opened in the Soviet Union. In addition, anti-religious departments appeared in the exhibitions of many local historical museums. In Moscow, the Central Anti-Religious Museum was opened in the Cathedral of the Strastnoi Monastery. At that time, the first museum promoting a comparative and historical approach to the study and presentation of religious artifacts was opened in Petrograd in 1922. The formation of Museum of Comparative Religion was based on the conjunction of the activities of the Petrograd Excursion Institute, the Academy of Sciences, and the Ethnographic department of Petrograd University. In this paper, based on archival materials, we analyze the methodological principles of the formation of the exhibitions at the newly founded museum, along with its themes, structure, and selection of exhibits. The Museum of Comparative Religion had a very short life before it was transformed into the Leningrad anti-religious museum, but its principles were inherited by the Museum of the History of Religion, which was opened in 1932.


2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-386 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Boldyrev ◽  
Martin Kragh

Research within the history of economic thought has focused only little on the development of economics under dictatorship. This paper attempts to show how a country with a relatively large and internationally established community of social scientists in the 1920s, the Soviet Union, was subjected to repression. We tell this story through the case of Isaak Il’ich Rubin, a prominent Russian economist and historian of economic thought, who in the late 1920s was denounced by rival scholars and repressed by the political system. By focusing not only on his life and work, but also on that of his opponents and institutional clashes, we show how the decline of a social science tradition in Russia and the USSR as well as the Stalinization of Soviet social sciences emerged as a process over time. We analyze the complex interplay of ideas, scholars, and their institutional context, and conclude that subsequent repression was arbitrary, suggesting that no clear survival or career strategy existed in the Stalinist system, due to a situation of fundamental uncertainty.


Author(s):  
Tomasz LANDMANN ◽  
Piotr BASTKOWSKI

The article attempts to analyse the practical examples of closer political, economic and military relations between Germany and Soviet Russia, and then the Soviet Union, in the years 1921-1926. The paper lays out the thesis that the closer German-Soviet political, economic and military relations, in the years 1921-1926, posed a significant threat to the security of the Second Polish Republic. To justify the above thesis both the literature and source materials were examined, including first of all the materials held in the Central Military Archives (Centralne Archiwum Wojskowe) in Warszawa-Rembertów. The materials gathered in the groups of records of the Second Department of the Polish Army High Command and the Collections of Russian records were found out to be of key importance. The collected archival materials made it possible to identify different planes of cooperation between the Germans and the Soviets in the discussed period and to establish to what extent the Polish military intelligence was aware of the feasibility and effects of such closer relations, resulting in a direct threat to the security of the Polish state. On the basis of the presented information it can be stated that the Polish military intelligence provided an accurate diagnosis of the examples of German-Soviet cooperation, often anti-Polish in its form and character. In the years 1921-1926, this cooperation was particularly intensified, posing a threat to the security of the Second Polish Republic and leading to negotiations regarding both the western and the eastern borders of Poland established after the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Riga.


2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 575-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew H. Ciscel

The politics of language identity have figured heavily in the history of the people of the Republic of Moldova. Indeed the region's status as a province of Russia, Romania, and then the Soviet Union over the past 200 years has consistently been justified and, at least partially, manipulated on the basis of language issues. At the center of these struggles over language and power has been the linguistic and cultural identity of the region's autochthonous ethnicity and current demographic majority, the Moldovans. In dispute is the degree to which these Moldovans are culturally, historically, and linguistically related to the other Moldovans and Romanians across the Prut River in Romania. Under imperial Russia from 1812 to 1918 and Soviet Russia from 1944 to 1991, a proto-Moldovan identity that eschewed connections to Romania and emphasized contact with Slavic peoples was promoted in the region. Meanwhile, experts from Romania and the West have regularly argued that the eastern Moldovans are indistinguishable, historically, culturally, and linguistically, from their Romanian cousins.


Author(s):  
Bakytzhan B. Aktailak ◽  
Tlegen S. Sadykov ◽  
Ganizhamal I. Kushenova ◽  
Kairat K. Battalov ◽  
Ainur P. Aliakbarova

Hasan Oraltay is a Kazakh figure abroad, researcher of the national liberation movement, historian, publicist, author of works in Turkish, Kazakh, English, German and other languages, honorary professor of the International Kazakh-Turkish University. He devoted all his life to serving for the benefit of the Kazakh people. In the 20th century, the Kazakhs of East Turkestan waged a liberation struggle for their freedom and independence. Hasan Oraltay wrote a chronicle of the life of the Kazakhs, persecuted by the totalitarian communist system in their homeland and gained freedom in the West. His writings highlight the history of the Alash national intelligentsia and all the pressing problems of Kazakhstan. The scientific novelty of the research is determined by the fact that the article deals with the writer's and, as is known, the historical role of Hasan Oraltay, from the perspective that the Kazakhs of East Turkestan, picking a pen, declared the first swallow of the national liberation struggle to the world. Half a century ago, his first book was published in the Turkish city of Izmir “On the way to freedom. Kazakh Turks of East Turkestan”. Until the last period of his life, all works written and organised by him were devoted to urgent problems concerning the Kazakh people, for the Kazakh past and future. Radio Azattyk (RL/RFE) was the first to speak about the uprising of Kazakh youth against the Soviet system in December of 1986. Later, Hassan Oraltay published in the Western press various articles about the December events, collections and books, in which he assessed the protest mood in Soviet Kazakhstan. The practical significance of the study is determined by the fact that for 27 years of service in Azattyk, Hasan Oraltay constantly raised the urgent problems of Kazakhs in the Soviet Union. The study collected all information on the ideas of independence


Author(s):  
Nikolai Krementsov

The history of eugenics in Russia has attracted relatively little scholarly attention. Eugenics garnered a warm reception among Russian hygienists and public health doctors. This article is concerned with the rise and fall of medical genetics in Soviet Russia and identifies three key components of eugenics. It further proceeds with the discussion of eugenics in revolutionary society and mentions that Russian eugenics' life span, institutional and disciplinary composition, patronage pattern, and research foci differed substantially from those in other countries. It discusses the relative weight of structures and historic contingencies in shaping the history of eugenics during the three distinct periods of its existence in Russia. It also mentions the relative role of international contacts and local traditions in molding Russian eugenics' institutions and activities.


1975 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lane

In the sociological literature, the study of inter-ethnic relations has been dominated either by the problem of the black-white conflict in the U.S.A. or by the controversy over whether social relations in colonial and excolonial countries are ‘pluralistic’. The history of the Soviet Union provides quite a different context in which various ethnic groups, each with peculiar traditions and languages and at various levels of social, political and economic development, have interacted one with another. Study of the Soviet Union enables one to compare the role of Marxist-Leninist ideology in an ethnically mixed community with the usual examples of the impact of religious and ‘imperialist’ belief systems, and it may help to clarify whether ‘ethnic group’ is a useful analytical category or whether ‘ethnic relations’ can be explained in terms of the more traditional classifications of class, status and power.


Feminismo/s ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
Katharina Wiedlack

This article follows the socialist activist Louise Thompson (later Patterson) and the writer Dorothy West on their infamous journey to Soviet Russia to shoot a film about North American anti-Black racism in 1932. The film about the US history of racial oppression was ultimately never made, but the women stayed in the Soviet Union for several months, travelling to the Soviet republics, meeting famous Soviets, and experiencing Soviet modernization. Looking at the travel writings, correspondence, and memoirs of Thompson and West through the lens of intersectionality, this article analyses the women’s distinctly gendered experiences and their experience of socialist women’s liberation movements. It argues that a close reading of the literary writing, travel notes, letters, and memoirs and their biographical trajectories after they returned to the United States reveals how their experiences in the Soviet Union created a feminist consciousness within the two women that crucially altered their political and personal views of Black women’s agency and significantly altered their life trajectories.


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