scholarly journals The Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and Today’s Challenges of a New Wall Constructing: Basees’ Reflection

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-298
Author(s):  
Olga Gomilko
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Practical Importance ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
Science And Education ◽  
Rational Knowledge ◽  
Modern Technologies ◽  
Theoretical Developments

The conference of the British Association of Slavic and Eastern European Studies (BASEES) in 2019 was dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the event that marked democracy triumph and liberation of communist authoritarianism. The focus was made on the factors of this victory, in particular on the role played in it by intellectuals of that time. The problem of scholars’ public activity was brought to the forefront by the thesis that achievements of science and education are not only theoretical developments and their successful assimilation in the form of knowledge, but also the level of influence science and education have in the society. Transition from instrumental rationality to rationality of values enhances practical importance of intellectual activity. Addressing this issue is particularly important in the context of crisis in the values ​​of liberal democracy and increasing distrust of rational knowledge and culture. Modern technologies of manipulating consciousness contribute to the strengthening of authoritarian regimes. Therefore, the experience of intellectuals under communist authoritarianism must teach contemporary scholars to uphold the values ​​of freedom and democracy and maintain social optimism. The discussion on the fall of the Berlin Wall proved that the scholars’ civic and academic positions reinforce each other, thereby forming a powerful defence against authoritarianism. However, the reincarnation of authoritarian sentiment nowadays provides grounds for accusing intellectuals of their inability to face up the challenges of the present. Among those challenges, we should mention forgetting the horribleness of old walls and illusions on benefits of constructing new ones.

English in Slovenia: status, functions, and features

English Today ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 28-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Špela MeŽek
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Bloc ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
World Language ◽  
Slovene Language ◽  
Science And Education ◽  
The Media ◽  
Eastern European Countries ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Education Science ◽  
Second World

ABSTRACTSlovenia, like many former Eastern bloc countries, is now coming to terms with the increasing popularity of English.Today English is the most widely used foreign language in Europe. It is used in business, education, science, the media, advertisements, music, graffiti, and in many other places, although its greatest use can be found in commerce, culture, science and education (Phillipson, 2003). The presence of English is felt more in some parts of Europe than in others, however. In the Scandinavian countries, for example, English manifests itself in all parts of society and the knowledge of English is so high that some consider it a second language (McArthur, 1996). In Eastern Europe, the acquisition and use of English has traditionally not been as widespread, although in recent years, the picture has changed greatly, as English has become more and more popular in what were formerly Eastern bloc countries.In many ways Slovenia has been following the trends in other Central and Eastern European countries. The influence of English has been growing since the Second World War and in particular after the end of the Cold War. Its influence has intensified even more after Slovenia became an independent country. Today, Slovenes feel both cautious and enthusiastic about English. There is extensive legislation to protect the Slovene language, while at the same time there is a ‘certain enthusiasm for both “western” ideas and the world language, English’ (Schlick, 2003: 4).

Remains of a Picnic: Post-Transition Hungary and Its Austro-Hungarian Past

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 255-291
Author(s):  
Márton Dornbach
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Complex Dynamics ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
The Past

It is difficult to imagine how collective memory might function without the watershed dates that structure our stories about the past. Almost by definition, however, such familiar milestones fail to capture the complex dynamics of the transition from one era to the next. A case in point is the dismantling of the Iron Curtain. As the anniversary commemorations of 2009 showed, this development came to be epitomized by the tearing down of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. One does not need to doubt the importance of this event to see that its sheer symbolic weight tends to obscure the intricacies of the Eastern European transition process. More often than not, accounts that foreground this turning point marginalize some sixty million Hungarians, Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks who embarked on the transition process well ahead of the citizens of East Germany.

scholarly journals Discourse of globalization

2006 ◽  
pp. 131-149
Author(s):  
Milan Balazic
Keyword(s):  
Market Economy ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Symbolic Order ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Proletarian Revolution

Since the fall of the Berlin wall, the process of globalization has been understood as a necessary fate. The myth of the almightiness of the market economy, liberalization and deregulation is revitalized. Before us, there is a phenomenon Lacan?s discourse of University, which in 20 century was firstly given as a Stalinist discourse and today is given as a neo-liberal discourse of globalization. From underneath og a seeming objectivity, a Master insists-either the Party and the Capital. Just as the utopia of the world proletarian revolution has fallen apart, the utopia of globalize capitalism and liberal democracy is also falling apart. The 9/11 event is opening opportunities for a construction of the field of social and political, out of the contour of the status quo. The coordinates of the possibility has changed and if we take the non-existence of the grand Autre on ourselves, then the contingence interference in the existent socio-symbolic order is possible.

scholarly journals Civil Society and Pro-Democracy Social Movements: Troubled Relations Within Authoritarian Regimes?

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murad Nasibov
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Organic Solidarity ◽  
Mechanical Solidarity ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Conceptual Relationship

This article tries to conceptually lay down the troubled relations between civil society and social movements within authoritarian regimes. This is done by, first, bringing clarity to the conceptual relationship between civil society and social movement and, then, applying it to the authoritarian context, still theoretically. Following the “hints” of the Eastern European intellectuals of the late 1970s and the 1980s and building on the appropriation of Durkheim’s differentiation between mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity, the article distinguishes two types of solidarity: associative solidarity and action and collective solidarity and action. Civil society is proposed to emerge on associative solidarities (and their actions), while social movements build on collective solidarities (and their actions). Furthermore, associative and collective actions are identified to be progressive and transgressive, respectively. Consequently, the proposed theoretical account is applied theoretically to the authoritarian context and several hypotheses are proposed on the relationship between civil society and pro-democracy movement within authoritarian regimes.

Carnival Time: Russian Higher Education and Science in the Postmodern Era

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3-1) ◽  
pp. 77-94
Author(s):  
Petr Orekhovsky ◽  
◽  
Vladimir Razumov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
University Teaching ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
Academic Communities ◽  
Society Of The Spectacle ◽  
Russian Higher Education ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
Research Organizations ◽  
Science And Education ◽  
Important Sign ◽  
The University

Since the end of the twentieth Century to the present, society has been undergoing deep systemic changes, which are accompanied by crisis phenomena. But the crisis affects society as a whole and science and education, as its components, in different ways. What hopes of the society should be associated with science and education? Communities of intellectuals (universities) go through the following stages in their formation: classical, modern, postmodern. Postmodernism brings polycentrism, fragmentation, deconstruction, stylization, collage, modeling and simulacra, and serialization to universities and research organizations. If classical and modernist views on intellectuals and Universities assumed that their activities were aimed at producing new knowledge and a new person, the postmodern transformation significantly changed academic communities and their environment. In order to better understand the essence of what happened, the authors refer to the phenomenon of carnival in the interpretation of M. M. Bakhtin. The most important sign of carnival is that everything is not what it seems. According to the sophists of antiquity, intellectual activity becomes a paid service. Is it appropriate to say that in a modern University teaching becomes a form of spiritual prostitution? Yes, it is appropriate, provided that the carnival of what is happening in the Russian University of the XXI century is determined by the change of roles and priorities of teachers, students, and support staff. The intensity and specificity of the carnival in a particular University depends on the specifics of the decision about the purpose of the University: issuance (sale) of a state-issued diploma, production of knowledge and/or training of qualified specialists. A serious external factor that reduces the authority of teachers and scientists is strengthening of trends towards relatively autonomous development of technologies and technics, which is clearly expressed in the phenomenon of the “revolution of interfaces”. Society is also changing, becoming the “society of the spectacle”, where the development of science, theater and professional sports has more and more similar characteristics. The crisis in science and education has always been a feature of postmodernism, an existential problem of intellectuals, which leads many of them to leave the walls of universities and scientific institutions.

scholarly journals New Central and East-European Cinema

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Stojanova
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
East European ◽  
European Cinema ◽  
Short Films ◽  
History Of

UNE NOUVELLE EUROPE: THE DOUBLE QUEST OF NEW CENTRAL AND EAST-EUROPEAN CINEMA The Berlin Wall collapsed some eight years ago, along with the repressive totalitarian Communist regimes it came to symbolise, thus neatly wrapping up half a century in the history of Eastern Europe. Little has reached our shores, however, about the effects on everyday life of this unprecedented change, brought about by mostly "velvet" revolutions across the region. In March of this year Cinémathèque Québécoise launched Une Nouvelle Europe: A Panorama of Central and Eastern European Cinema, featuring 28 feature and 5 short films from 8 countries.(1) The selection was also presented in Toronto (Cinematheque Ontario, April 4-May 1, 1997) and in Vancouver (Pacific Cinematheque, March 22-May 1), under the title A New Europe: Reeling After The Fall. The organisation of the event was an arduous and time consuming task. It took more than a year and a...

scholarly journals “Europeans without Euros”: Alternative Narratives of Europe’s ‘New Happiness’

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Williams
Keyword(s):  
Eastern European ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
The Family ◽  
East West

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, belles paroles such as ‘Europe without borders’ and ‘the family of European nations’ announced in discourse - if not in reality – the ‘reunification of Europe.’ However, as the years of perpetual transition wore on, many Eastern European writers and intellectuals began to suggest Anschluss as a more appropriate description of East-West rapprochement. In fiction and in feuilletons, these writers and intellectuals pointed to the fact that while communism may have become water over the dam, generations of Eastern Europeans, unable to find their feet in the new circumstances, were drowning in the flood of Europe’s ‘new happiness.’ This paper considers Dubravka Ugrešić’s novel Ministarstvo boli (The Ministry of Pain, 2004) and Milan Kundera’s L’ignorance (Ignorance, 2000) as alternative narratives of the post-Wende years; attempts to articulate the experiences of those whom Svetlana Boym would call “Europeans without euros.”

scholarly journals LEGAL REGIME FOR THE RESULTS OF INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITIES WITHIN BUDGETARY INSTITUTIONS IN SCIENCE AND EDUCATION

2019 ◽  
pp. 144-151
Author(s):  
V. A. SAVINYKH
Keyword(s):  
General Rule ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Legal Regime ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
Operational Management ◽  
The Status ◽  
Science And Education ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right ◽  
Intellectual Activities

Is a budget institution in the field of science and education independently entitled without the consent of the founder to dispose of the exclusive rights to the results of intellectual activity belonging to it? The status of the institution as a «holder» of the founder’s property makes one think about the need to apply, by analogy of the law, the provisions governing the right of operational management to relations regarding the disposal of the institution with its exclusive rights. Given the fact that the prerequisites for introducing the consent of the founder as a necessary condition for disposing of the valuable property the institution are equally applicable both to objects of real rights and exclusive rights to the results of intellectual activity. However, the author justifies the inadmissibility of the application by analogy of the law of the provisions of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation limiting the powers of the budget institution to dispose of the property assigned to it on the right of operational management, indicating that there is no regulation gap that would require replenishment. In this regard, the author comes to the conclusion that, as a general rule, a budget institution has the right to independently manage its exclusive rights to the results of intellectual activity without the founder’s consent.

scholarly journals Rhetorical Entrapment in EU–Turkey Relations

2021 ◽  
pp. 139-156
Author(s):  
Frank Schimmelfennig
Keyword(s):  
European Community ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Eu Enlargement ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Member States ◽  
Starting Position ◽  
Eu Membership ◽  
Rhetorical Action ◽  
Accession Process ◽  
Eastern European Countries

AbstractThis chapter describes and applies the rhetorical action approach to EU–Turkey relations. Generally, rhetorical entrapment denotes the mechanism by which actors are compelled to act in conformance with their prior argumentative commitments. In the context of EU enlargement, member states have committed themselves to enlargement norms and promises in line with the fundamental purpose and values of the EU (such as pan-European community building, liberal democracy and supranationalism). Rhetorical entrapment played an important role in bringing about Eastern enlargement when the Eastern European countries faced significant resistance among the old member states. Finally, the chapter analyzes the rhetorical entrapment mechanism in the accession process of Turkey, which had an even more unfavorable starting position. As long as Turkey progressed on meeting the official political criteria for EU membership, however, the opponents of Turkish membership were bound by their normative commitment and felt compelled to decide in favor of accession negotiations. The rhetorical entrapment mechanism also elucidates why accession negotiations began to stall soon after their start. The opponents of Turkish membership were released from the rhetorical trap when Turkey failed to heed its own promises and honor its own obligations as a candidate state.

Dance and Eastern Europe

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bojana Kunst
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The Self ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
The Difference

The chapter focuses on the relation between dance and politics in Eastern European contemporary dance, especially after 1990. Transition, which was the key political and economic term after the fall of the Berlin Wall, also deeply influences the (self-)understanding of Eastern European dance as a delayed practice. The chapter stresses that a decisive difference between these different geopolitical contexts is not an aesthetic one, but is the difference in the ways that performance works are contextualized, institutionalized, and professionalized. Several contemporary dance artists from Eastern Europe have politicized their practices through disclosing the complexity of the position of being in-between. In this sense they do not only critically address the hegemonic aspect of Western contemporary dance (as having a privilege of present), but also critically reaffirm their own history and practice.

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