Adaptation and Sinicization: Contemporary Religious Policy of the CPC Leadership

The article examines the key stages in the evolution of the ideological and political approaches of the CPC leadership to religious activity since the beginning of the 21st century. The main points of the study were the Chinese interpretations of the problems of “adaptation to a socialist society” and “Sinicization.” The author tries to identify the relationship between continuity and innovation in the religious policy of the Chinese authorities, taking into account the historical context of the ongoing changes and responses from religious circles. Based on the methods of discourse analysis, an attempt has been made to demonstrate multi-faceted complexity of the problem of “Sinicization” and to outline the contours of all-embracing balanced approach to the study of this topic. The fi rst part of the article examines the foundations of the policy of directing religion towards “conformity to socialist society” formulated under Jiang Zemin. The second part analyzes the main components of Xi Jinping’s concept of “Sinicization” of religions. Chinese believers are encouraged to interpret religious dogmas in accordance with the requirements of social progress and in the spirit of conformity with the best traditions of Chinese culture. The article examines the main directions of “Sinicization” adopted by offi cially recognized religions, covering the spheres of doctrine and liturgical practice, practical work with believers, and training programs for clergy. It is emphasized that the one-sided reduction of “Sinicization” to the state-sponsored policy of “repression” prevents researchers from looking deeper into historical and cultural aspects of the problem. It is concluded that “Sinicization” of religions will help to prevent socio-political marginalization of religions in the course of deep transformations of modern China.

Women in a Men’s Collective in the 1970s and 1980s

For many years, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra was an exclusively male organization despite the increasing number of women in Czechoslovakia joining the workforce. This paper, which is based on oral history interviews with members of the orchestra, the paper will attempt to identify the reasons why almost no women were employed there during the period of Czechoslovak Socialism and under what kind of conditions the only two female members worked. Through interpretation and depth analysis of the oral history interview with one of the two female musicians employed by the Philharmonic before 1989, the paper will primarily map the issue of how women reconciled work and family life, which was considered one of the main obstacles for female musicians, while also taking into consideration the Philharmonic’s prestige and its frequent tours abroad. The acquired experience of a female musician is interpreted within the context of male narratives and is embedded in the study’s theoretical framework. This framework is defined by the available research on women’s emancipation and transformations of the gender order of the Czechoslovak socialist society, as well as research comparing the career patterns of musicians (both female and male) and the inclusion of women in the world’s leading symphony orchestras.

Corps de femmes et maisons d’enfants dans Enfants du diable de Liliana Lazăr

Women Bodies and Children’s Homes in Liliana Lazar’s Enfants du diable [The Devil’s Children]. Many contemporary Romanian writers who chose French as a literary language seem to share a common interest in revisiting through fiction Romania’s relatively recent communist past, thus exposing the dysfunctionalities of the ‘multilaterally developed socialist society’ during the last years of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s dictatorship. In her novel, Enfants du diable (2016), Liliana Lazar’s merit is to emphasize the abusive nature of the Romanian totalitarian regime by exploring a topic which is normally less taken into account by post-communist Romanian fiction, namely the private body of women transformed into a public, even political body after the implementation of the Anti-abortion Decree 770/1966. Our aim is to examine the way in which Lazar’s book deals with this topic and its social and personal consequences, as well as its denunciation of a less evident form of the communist carceral system, namely the institutionalization of orphaned children. Keywords: communism, totalitarian regime, women’s body, orphanage, carceral system, Liliana Lazar, Nicolae Ceaușescu

Socialist idea and methods of constitutional implementation in 1918

This article demonstrates that socialism was the key political concept for the nascent Soviet constitutionalism. The matter is that the political-legal ideas of V. I. Lenin underlied the ideology of Bolshevism, which became the basis of the entire legal system of the Soviet state. The author traces the evolution of socialist ideas and their reception by the Russian social democracy. In the Bolshevik party, the idea of a socialist society has acquired rather utopian and radical forms than the initial European model. This was associated with the fact that socioeconomic, political and cultural conditions dictated certain framework for the implementation of socialism. The Communist Party had to establish the socialist principles and fundamentals of the Soviet society on the constitutional level. This led to robust debates on the issue in the constitutional commission. The discourse that emerged due to the adoption of the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1918 is poorly reflected in the scientific publications; therefore, the author provides brief biographical data of the key members of the constitutional commission. This allows correlating the political-legal ideas with the historical and personal contexts. It is worth noting that such concepts as “socialist society”, “association” and “union” underlie the comprehension of the essence of state and law. This served as the basis for further discussion of the goals and objectives of the councils, first steps, as well as rights and responsibilities of citizens.

‘A type of a literary Cheka agent’: G. Benn on S. Tretiakov’s Berlin lectures

The article examines an incident in the history of Russo-German literary relations — the lectures delivered by a LEF (Leſt Front for Arts) leader Sergey Tretiakov in Germany (1930–1931) and their reception by German literary circles. Along with ecstatic feedback from leſtist writers, Tretiakov’s appearance provoked criticism from a more conservative public. It is to the criticism of the lecture from the viewpoint of ‘art for art’s sake’ that Gottfried Benn devotes his radio broadcast of ‘The New Literary Season’ (1931), subjected to a detailed analysis in this article. Although contesting Tretiakov’s views of the relationship between literature and politics, as well as offering their slightly cartoonish depiction, Benn provides a fairly detailed description of thetheses; it becomes an important source of information about the contents of Tretiakov’s lectures since one of them was never published. Comparing Benn’s rendering of Tretiakov’s ideas with other publications by Tretiakov, the author discovers that Benn presents an accurate summary of Tretiakov’s critical views on Russian classics and the role of a writer in a Socialist society.

Creating a Socialist Society and Quantification in the USSR

When it came to power, the Bolshevik government based the legitimacy of its action on the scientific nature of its decisions, figures being a core element. Political decisions were to be based on science, for the well-being of everyone and the fulfilment of the communist plan to create a new society and human being. Statistics, an information and decision-support tool, became now also an instrument of power to prove the soundness of state action. This raised severe tensions and repression, between statisticians following recommendations of international statistics congresses, and the new government. For the duty of statisticians was to formulate a new theory of statistics and new methods and tools. Characterizing some of these, the chapter carves out the specific nature of the Soviet Union.

Problems of legal regulation of employee depression

Problem setting. When organizing an incentive-bonus system at the enterprise, along with determining the source of bonuses, indicators and conditions of bonuses, establishing the amount of bonuses and terms of bonuses, the grounds for depreciation of employees are established. Analysis of resent researches and publications. Most researchers who have studied bonuses have also paid attention to the problem of depressing employees. Among them A.Yu. Pasherstnik, O.D. Zaykin, S.S. Karinsky, R.Z. Livshits, OI Protsevsky, MI Kuchma, V.Ya. Gotz, P.D. Пилипенко, В.І. Prokopenko, VG Rotan and others. However, the problems that exist in this area determine the relevance of the topic, and their research - timely and practically necessary.Article’s main body. Due to the entry into the market economy, employers rejected almost everything that was proclaimed by the socialist society, although the principles of bonuses remained the same. If we look from the standpoint of compliance with the employee's right to timely and full payment, some approaches to bonuses should be found to violate the rights of the employee, especially the right to receive wages in full. We are talking about non-payment of bonuses for violation of labor discipline.Conclusions and prospects for the development. Each type of bonuses - conditioned and not conditioned by the system of remuneration - has its official purpose, which indicates its legal specificity. The bonuses set by the remuneration system include a clear system of guarantees for their payment, so they are more objective than other bonuses and meet the objectives of material incentives. Bonuses that are not determined by the pay system, leave more opportunities to encourage individual labor contributions of the employee, are more subjective.

Knowledge Application and Improvement Ideas for In-service Social Work Professionals

Social work professionals are an indispensable force for building a harmonious socialist society as well as strengthening and innovating social management. This article analyzed the salary, job satisfaction, and knowledge application of social work professionals in Nanjing (NJ) by means of a survey questionnaire and found that although most professional social workers are relatively satisfied with their jobs in addition to the effective application of their knowledge, a certain percentage of the respondents reported that the knowledge that they had learned at school were not consistent with the actual needs of work, which affected their income levels and job satisfactions. For this reason, it is suggested that a variety of measures should be taken to improve the quality of professional education of social work and enhance the competitiveness as well as the recognition of the social work profession.

The Church

This chapter examines how the East German government commemorated the firebombing of Dresden at the end of World War II. Religious spaces and musical institutions became central to the state’s antifascist propaganda as commemorative rituals for the firebombing took shape in the early 1950s. On the tenth anniversary of the attack, in 1955, local politicians participated in a grand reopening ceremony of the city’s oldest church, consecrated with performances of Rudolf Mauersberger’s Dresdner Requiem (1947/1948). Annual performances of this work allowed congregants to maintain ties to the Lutheran faith in a socialist society, and created a context for the expression of narratives about the firebombing that could not be voiced openly in public spaces. Drawing on performers’ testimonies, audience accounts, and Mauersberger’s revisions to the score, this chapter demonstrates how the Dresdner Requiem served as an outlet for grief in postwar Dresden.