scholarly journals Croatian Interwar Cultural Memory and Disabled War Veterans

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-211
Author(s):  
Sandra Cvikić ◽  
◽  
Ljiljana Dobrovšak ◽  

In the contemporary international scholarly community cultural memory related to the First World War as a research field and subject area is extensively problematized and studied by social sciences and humanities. Based on the available surveyed scholarly production, it is evident that Croatian cultural memory of the First World War is an under-researched subject. This paper therefore presents preliminary findings of conducted qualitative sociological research into the development of the post-First World War cultural memory in Croatia in the interwar period. The research provides an insight into how Croatian disabled war veterans (de)constructed post-war cultural memory inside a newly formed multiethnic state of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), and to which extent it was connected to national and ethnic. The discourse and discursive practices developed by Croatian disabled war veterans are analyzed in selected newspapers (Nezavisnost, Hrvatski invalid, Ratni invalid, Vojni invalid) published in the period 1920–1924. The article uses post-modernist sociological fallibilistic Foucauldian methodology of discourse analysis and Foucault’s understanding of modernist societies, which is based on the research into how the language appropriates specific discourses developed by certain groups in addition to the prevalent discursive practices. Both methodology and theory are used to explain the findings in the framework of what Wolfgang Schivelbusch calls ‘culture of defeat’. The research concludes that difficult post-war political, social and economic circumstances profoundly shaped the way in which the collective memory of the First World War was (de)constructed by post-war disabled veterans in Croatia and subsequently induced collective amnesia thus helping to create the culture of forgetting.

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 488-514
Author(s):  
Udith Dematagoda

This article explores Wyndham Lewis's experience of the First World War, and its influence on his varied artistic output. It interrogates how Lewis's initial ambivalence towards an emergent technological society shifted through direct encounters with mechanized warfare, and speculates on the effect of these upon his post-war writing and criticism. By contrasting Lewis's thought against that of his Italian Futurist contemporaries, I will demonstrate the centrality of their divergent conceptions of masculinity in accounting for this opposition – and how Lewis's critique of technological society prefigures contemporary opposition towards the post-humanist philosophy of Accelerationism.


Author(s):  
Igor Lyubchyk

The research issue peculiarities of wide Russian propaganda among the most Western ethnographic group – Lemkies is revealed in the article. The character and orientation of Russian and Soviet agitation through the social, religious and social movements aimed at supporting Russian identity in the region are traced. Tragic pages during the First World War were Thalrogian prisons for Lemkas, which actually swept Lemkivshchyna through Muscovophilian influences. Agitation for Russian Orthodoxy has provoked frequent cases of sharp conflicts between Lemkas. In general, attempts by moskvophile agitators to impose russian identity on the Orthodox rite were failed. Taking advantage of the complex socio-economic situation of Lemkos, Russian campaigners began to promote moving to the USSR. Another stage of Russian propaganda among Lemkos began with the onset of the Second World War. Throughout the territory of the Galician Lemkivshchyna, Soviet propaganda for resettlement to the USSR began rather quickly. During the dramatic events of the Second World War and the post-war period, despite the outbreaks of the liberation movement, among the Lemkoswere manifestations of political sympathies oriented toward the USSR. Keywords: borderlands, Lemkivshchyna, Lemky, Lemkivsky schism, Moskvophile, Orthodoxy, agitation, ethnopolitics


Balcanica ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 107-133
Author(s):  
Dimitrije Djordjevic

This paper discusses the occupation of Serbia during the First World War by Austro-Hungarian forces. The first partial occupation was short-lived as the Serbian army repelled the aggressors after the Battle of Kolubara in late 1914, but the second one lasted from fall 1915 until the end of the Great War. The Austro-Hungarian occupation zone in Serbia covered the largest share of Serbia?s territory and it was organised in the shape of the Military Governorate on the pattern of Austro-Hungarian occupation of part of Poland. The invaders did not reach a clear decision as to what to do with Serbian territory in post-war period and that gave rise to considerable frictions between Austro-Hungarian and German interests in the Balkans, then between Austrian and Hungarian interests and, finally, between military and civilian authorities within Military Governorate. Throughout the occupation Serbia was exposed to ruthless economic exploitation and her population suffered much both from devastation and from large-scale repression (including deportations, internments and denationalisation) on the part of the occupation regime.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 184-191
Author(s):  
Philip Ross Bullock ◽  
Sofia Permiakova ◽  
Gesa Stedman

This introduction offers a survey of some important critical approaches to the ways in which the First World War and its aftermath have been studied, conceptualized, represented and commemorated. In particular, it notes recent scholarly interest in issues of gender, as well as a focus on widening the geographical range of the conflict beyond a dominant European paradigm. A recurrent theme is the emergence of new types of modernity in the post-war era, and the ways in which literature and the arts do not merely reflect that modernity, but actively shape and constitute it.


Author(s):  
Andrew Glazzard

Holmes’s words to Watson at the end of ‘His Last Bow’ (1917) express an idea of warfare that sits uneasily with our contemporary perception of the First World War. Today we are accustomed to associate that war with the horrors of the Western Front: the battles of the Somme (1916) and Passchendaele (1917) loom large in our cultural memory as paradigms of unnecessary bloodshed and strategic incompetence. But this was not how Conan Doyle saw it – and he saw the Western Front at first hand, while both his brother, Brigadier-General Innes ‘Duff’ Doyle, and his son Kingsley were in the thick of the action. At the invitation of the War Office, Doyle toured the British, Italian and French Fronts in 1916, and the Australian Front in 1918, using his authority as Deputy Lieutenant of Surrey to don an improvised khaki uniform ‘which was something between that of a Colonel and Brigadier, with silver roses instead of stars or crowns upon the shoulder-states’.1


Author(s):  
Kathryn N. Jones ◽  
Carol Tully ◽  
Heather Williams

This chapter analyses the new interpretative frameworks offered by travel narratives published between the late 1980s and the present day. As a prelude, the chapter offers a snapshot of the ‘lost decades’ of the interwar and post-war years, when travel accounts on Wales were far less frequent than before the First World War. It explores how the trope of a hidden, undiscovered and unknown Wales has proven to be surprisingly persistent, with the continued common portrayal of Wales as a quasi-invisible unknown quantity, a peripheral site of inspiration and alterity. Once Wales resurfaced in mainstream Continental travel writing in the 1980s, it was viewed as an entity and often a country in its own right. Yet paradoxically, Wales’s increasing accessibility, through the proliferation of dedicated guidebooks and travel websites as well as improvements to its travel infrastructure, also led to the atomization and fragmentation of visions of Wales and modes of experiencing the nation. These include a sensory or physical ‘consumption’ of Wales, the ‘internationalization’ of Wales for a global visitor and a shift away from engagement with the Welsh language and its cultures, leading to their neutralization and dilution.


Author(s):  
George Gotsiridze

The work discusses the legacy of the First World War - its positive and negative sides - which played an important role in the formation of the world processes in the post-war period and still preserves its viability.The actuality of the problem is backed by the fact that the relationship of the Trans-caucasian countries with the outer world is still problematic nowadays. We witness how the world’s political and economic map is changing and technical-scientific progress is tangible. In the conditions of the accelerated global processes, a general political, economic and cultural area is being formed, and a new world order is being formed with its difficulties, social catastrophes or cataclysms, conflicts, divergence and integration. At this time, it is of utmost importance to analyze historical problems from the past and seek ways to resolve them in the political relations of the South Caucasus, as in their attitude towards the outside world, understanding that unity is a necessary guarantee of strengthening the statehood of each country and that the perception of the Transcaucasia by the rest of the world as a unified political and economic sphere will simplify the Euro - Atlantic integration. The issue is discussed from the new humanitarian perspectives, which gives us the opportunity to determine the national verticals from experience received centuries ago, around which local or regional political consciousness should be unified in order to satisfy the national interests of each country in the Transcaucasia through closer cooperation.


1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-462
Author(s):  
Carol A. Lockwood

The English rural myth suggested that being close to the rhythms of nature, as opposed to being immersed in the irritations and pollution of city life, would create a settled, healthy, content, and loyal population. By the inter-war period the rural myth depicted an appealing image of self-sufficient, independent peasants living an uncomplicated lifestyle based on agricultural pursuits. In the aftermath of the First World War this picture of a golden countryside was popular and admired by social reformers, members of the government, and the general public. The coalition government incorporated this myth into its post-war social legislation and created in 1919 a land settlement scheme for newly demobilized soldiers aimed at establishing a new base of smallholding agricultural workers to populate the countryside. The myth may have been appealing, but it turned out to be economically not self-sustaining and politically it got little more than lip service. A myth cannot be attained through mere legislation. This article examines the land settlement scheme in East Sussex during the inter-war period and argues that even in an area seemingly well-suited to such a program, the scheme was neither practical nor successful in its attempt to put the myth into practice.


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Fantauzzo

In March and December 1917 the British Empire won two much-needed victories in Mesopotamia and Palestine: Baghdad and Jerusalem. Both cities were steeped in biblical and oriental lore and both victories happened in a year that had been otherwise disastrous. Throughout the British Empire the press, public, and politicians debated the importance of the two successes, focusing on the effect they would have on the empire’s prestige, the Allies’ war strategy, and the post-war Middle East. Far from being overwhelmed by the ‘romance’ of the fighting in the Middle East, the press’s and public’s response reveals a remarkably well-informed, sophisticated, and occasionally combative debate about the empire’s Middle Eastern war effort.


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