“There is such a situation that Comrade Svoboda is under pressure”. The Soviet leadership and the settlement of relations with Czechoslovakia. May 1969

2019 ◽  
pp. 512-519
Author(s):  
Teymur Dzhalilov ◽  
Nikita Pivovarov

The published document is a part of the working record of The Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee on May 5, 1969. The employees of The Common Department of the CPSU Central Committee started writing such working records from the end of 1965. In contrast to the protocols, the working notes include speeches of the secretaries of the Central Committee, that allow to deeper analyze the reactions of the top party leadership, to understand their position regarding the political agenda. The peculiarity of the published document is that the Secretariat of the Central Committee did not deal with the most important foreign policy issues. It was the responsibility of the Politburo. However, it was at a meeting of the Secretariat of the Central Committee when Brezhnev raised the question of inviting G. Husák to Moscow. The latter replaced A. Dubček as the first Secretary of the Communist party of Czechoslovakia in April 1969. As follows from the document, Leonid Brezhnev tried to solve this issue at a meeting of the Politburo, but failed. However, even at the Secretariat of the Central Committee the Leonid Brezhnev’s initiative at the invitation of G. Husák was not supported. The published document reveals to us not only new facets in the mechanisms of decision-making in the CPSU Central Committee, the role of the Secretary General in this process, but also reflects the acute discussions within the Soviet government about the future of the world socialist systems.

ICR Journal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-114
Author(s):  
Surin Pitsuwan

Assalamu ‘Alaikum  wr. wb. Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim. Dear Professor Director, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am grateful for this opportunity to share with you some thoughts on the topic of the role of ASEAN nations in promoting peace and regional cooperation in Southeast Asia and the wider region of East Asia. I will be discussing concerns over non-interference, the situations in East Timor, Myanmar and Rohingyas, and also matters over Malacca Straits, and ASEAN’s relations with China, and South China Sea issues during my tenure of office as Secretary-General of ASEAN. I have been appointed as a Visiting Professor of the University of Malaya since the middle of last year (2013), but have not been able to fulfil my obligations due to other pressing responsibilities and engagements around the world. This morning my wife asked me “how many people would make up the audience you will be speaking to today?” I said, “I don’t know.” She responded, “Usually your audience is around twenty thousand!” She was referring to the political campaigns. Pak Syed Hamid Albar here (former Foreign Minister of Malaysia) knows well what political campaigns and academic exercises of this nature have in common and what makes them different.


Author(s):  
Enayat Allah Sharifi ◽  
Mahmoud Ramezani

Nowadays, according to the ungodly worldviews, most of the time governments strive to increase their power and interests based on realistic and neorealistic theories. They are also after their multilateral dominance and expanded empire. In these situations- where the world is in chaos and separation of ethics from politics comes to the fore thereby showing its impact at the international level- Islam considers ethics as the basis of politics and at the level of international relations, it also seeks to establish an ideal, spiritual and moral relationship. Therefore, by emphasizing the role of epistemological and ideological beliefs and divine worldview, Islam stresses the importance of intensifying political ethics within the field of international relations. These epistemological beliefs include monotheism, prophecy and apostleship of the divine prophets, the eschatology and resurrection. In this article, the plan is to concentrate on the common points of the divine religions through examining the verses, hadiths and traditions of the divine saints regarding the emphasis of Islam on this issue. Therefore, this study attempts to deepen the political ethics in the aspect of people's relations, as well as the relation among Muslim and non-Muslim governments based on the basic and epistemological beliefs of Islam. This will (hopefully) lead to the peaceful coexistence among the followers of the divine religions and it will also lead to a peaceful living without any war and conflict.


2020 ◽  
pp. 5-24
Author(s):  
Miro Haček ◽  
Simona Kukovič

In Europe and across the world, many countries are turning to deliberative democracy to reform their constitutions, and in many others this question is high on the political agenda. Such transformation also shuffles quite radically the role of the citizenry regarding constitutional changes. Traditionally such changes are the sole responsibility of elected officials in collaboration with experts. With the deliberative turn, many more actors may be involved in the designing of constitutions, from citizens both individually and collectively in the forms of informal associations to various civil society organisations. The main aim of this paper is to analyse potential of deliberative democracy in Slovenian national setting, therefore authors are analysing a) framework of constitution making dynamics and b) most successful deliberative democratic tools and opportunities developed so far on both national and sub-national levels of the Slovenian government. As deliberative democracy is well known political phenomenon, we will start not by yet another theoretical pandemonium, but with less-known Slovenian contribution to the global development of deliberative model.


2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Espírito-Santo ◽  
André Freire ◽  
Sofia Serra-Silva

Although the presence of women has been increasing in several parliaments around the world, we still do not know much about the consequences that their presence has for policy representation. Relying on a rich comparative dataset on prospective MPs’ policy preferences in 12 countries and 87 political parties collected between 2006 and 2012 within the Comparative Candidates Survey, this article aims to understand how political parties interplay with prospective MPs’ sex to affect the latter’s policy preferences. Our results show that the descriptive representation of women makes a difference for policy representation, (i) mainly (though not only) when issues that particularly affect women are at stake and (ii) only concerning issues around which political parties do not yet have settled positions (i.e. uncrystallized issues). There are therefore empirical grounds to support an imposed representation of minority groups to deal with issues that are new on the political agenda.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


Author(s):  
Herman T. Salton

This chapter assesses the role of the Department of Political Affairs (DPA) in the Rwanda genocide. It situates DPA within the Secretariat of the early 1990s, explains the importance given to it by Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali, and analyses the department’s reaction to the crisis. The DPA’s role in monitoring the Arusha Peace Agreements and in providing the ‘political’ analysis of the Rwandan context is also reviewed, as is Boutros-Ghali’s desire for a powerful ‘political’ department to be juxtaposed to member states’ preference for peacekeeping and DPKO. The chapter also considers the leadership change of March 1994 when, a month before the genocide, Marrack Goulding took over the whole of DPA.


Toxins ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 321
Author(s):  
Dobri Ivanov ◽  
Galina Yaneva ◽  
Irina Potoroko ◽  
Diana G. Ivanova

The fascinating world of lichens draws the attention of the researchers because of the numerous properties of lichens used traditionally and, in modern times, as a raw material for medicines and in the perfumery industry, for food and spices, for fodder, as dyes, and for other various purposes all over the world. However, lichens being widespread symbiotic entities between fungi and photosynthetic partners may acquire toxic features due to either the fungi, algae, or cyano-procaryotes producing toxins. By this way, several common lichens acquire toxic features. In this survey, recent data about the ecology, phytogenetics, and biology of some lichens with respect to the associated toxin-producing cyanoprokaryotes in different habitats around the world are discussed. Special attention is paid to the common toxins, called microcystin and nodularin, produced mainly by the Nostoc species. The effective application of a series of modern research methods to approach the issue of lichen toxicity as contributed by the cyanophotobiont partner is emphasized.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172110026
Author(s):  
Kurt Weyland

Responding to Rueda’s questions, this essay explains the political-strategic approach (PSA) to populism and highlights its analytical strengths, which have become even more important with the emergence of populist governments across the world. PSA identifies populism’s core by emphasizing the central role of personalistic leaders who tend to operate in opportunistic ways, rather than consistently pursuing programmatic or ideological orientations. PSA is especially useful nowadays, when scholars’ most urgent task is to elucidate the political strategies of populist chief executives and their problematic repercussions, especially populism’s threat to democracy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (11) ◽  
pp. 1290-1308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandrine Ricci ◽  
Manon Bergeron

Québec university communities are facing intensified pressure to address the incidence of sexual violence on campus. The ESSIMU ( Enquête Sexualité, Sécurité et Interactions en Milieu Universitaire) survey (2016) revealed that one third of respondents (students and employees from six universities, all genders combined) reported having experienced at least one form of sexual violence since arriving at university, committed by someone affiliated with the same university. As the issue is becoming increasingly institutionalized, a process that often erodes activism, this article highlights the role feminist activism has played in placing sexual violence on university campuses on the political agenda. From the dual perspective of feminist activists and researchers on the ESSIMU team, the article explores the backdrop of this mobilization, and the network of feminist resistance that fostered the ESSIMU study, itself a significant contribution to the increased recognition of sexual violence in universities. It also considers the role of university and government institutions in (re)producing such violence and the role of media in making it a public issue.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hou Yuxin

Abstract The Wukan Incident attracted extensive attention both in China and around the world, and has been interpreted from many different perspectives. In both the media and academia, the focus has very much been on the temporal level of the Incident. The political and legal dimensions, as well as the implications of the Incident in terms of human rights have all been pored over. However, what all of these discussions have overlooked is the role played by religious force during the Incident. The village of Wukan has a history of over four hundred years, and is deeply influenced by the religious beliefs of its people. Within both the system of religious beliefs and in everyday life in the village, the divine immortal Zhenxiu Xianweng and the religious rite of casting shengbei have a powerful influence. In times of peace, Xianweng and casting shengbei work to bestow good fortune, wealth and longevity on both the village itself, and the individuals who live there. During the Wukan Incident, they had a harmonizing influence, and helped to unify and protect the people. Looking at the specific roles played by religion throughout the Wukan Incident will not only enable us to develop a more meaningful understanding of the cultural nature and the complexity of the Incident itself, it will also enrich our understanding, on a divine level, of innovations in social management.


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