Ironic inversions: Geographical and political islands in F.C. Delius’ Stroll from Rostock to Syracuse (1995)

The paper analyses Friedrich Christian Delius’ story Der Spaziergang von Rostock nach Syrakus (1995) in the context of island discourses and the discursive construction of insular spaces. It argues that, in a satirical adaptation of Seume’s Stroll to Syracuse (1803), Delius reconceptualises the Mediterranean island of Sicily as the traditionalplace of longing in German travel literature since the 18th century by contrasting it to the political ‘island’ of the GDR. He constructs the socialist state as a place of yearning and develops a counter-discourse to the established European island imaginary.

The Citizenship Amendment Act 2019: An Insight through Constitutional and Secularism Perspective

The primary endeavor of this paper is to illuminate the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 through the constitution and human rights jurisprudence perspective. In this paper, an attempt has been made to propose a different interpretation of the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 which not only infracts constitutional values but also legalized the hate against minorities, especially Muslims. India—as a nation state—has always cherished and remained concerned about its secular and democratic character. Since independence, India has maintained its global position as a responsible and humane society to protect minorities’ rights and social justice. Shockingly, the legislative development that had taken place in the recent past has questioned India’s commitment toward the certain principle of human rights, democratic values, and secularism which are the hallmark of the Constitution of India. The Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 has put religion as a pre-requisite qualification if someone is desirous to apply for Indian citizenship which is purely a violation of the basic ethos of the constitution. The idea of India as envisioned by the framers of the Indian constitution as a democratic, secular, and socialist state and anything that contrary to its basic structure is unconstitutional. The contentious legislation whether unconstitutional or not needs to be examined through the prism of constitutional law and fundamental norms of human rights. In this research exercise, a modest attempt is made to examine all merits and demerits of this antagonistic citizenship legislation. Throughout the paper, the effort has been given to sustain the notion that India cannot be a republic founded on discrimination, hate, and a pervasive sense of fear.

Prawa podstawowe w systemie konstytucyjnym Niemieckiej Republiki Demokratycznej

The German Democratic Republic, as a state of real socialism, guaranteed its citizens, in addition to classical individual fundamental rights, also collective rights. Their use was made conditional, depending on the fulfilment of obligations specified in the Constitution. In the GDR, there were no independent bodies and mechanisms to protect the rights of citizens. Constitutional system of fundamental rights was primarily serving the good of the community and the development of a modern socialist state.

Autorytarne sterowanie szkołą wyższą jako determinanta zarządzania i finansowania szkolnictwa wyższego w PRL

The article concerns a system of reforms of higher education in Poland in a time of Polish People’s Republic, in 1945–1989, which is adequate to top-down imposed and strictly respected Soviet patterns that were in force in all spheres of political, economic, and cultural life. The authors analyse a system of managing and financing of universities on the basis of legal regulations that indicated a direction, character, and a scope of activities set for universities by communist authorities in order to “build a socialist state and educate new intelligentsia”. The article also considers the issue of central control of university’s activities system separation of education from research bureaucratization and parametrization of all levels of education, top-down employment levels and structuring, closure to international exchange and inefficient financing, and asset management, which in consequence led universities to collapse at the end of 1980s.

Border and Memory in the village of Koshovice

This article focuses on the village of Koshovice, Albania, where its residents are part of the officially recognized Greek minority. The local perceptions of the community are discussed as linked to the Albanian-Greek border and its presence in the collective memory. After the borderline creation in 1913, local residents were divided between the two neighboring countries. The ethnographic data collected underline the experiences and the everyday practices of the villagers of Koshovice, especially during the period of the Albanian socialist state between 1945 and 1991, when the border became almost impenetrable. The article then discusses the changes after the fall of socialism and the opening of the border in the early 1990s, especially showing how the local borderland communities are still connected nowadays to each other despite the inter-state division.

Traditions Can Be Changed

Whether and to what extent African states and societies have been able to break away from colonial impact is a still contentious issue. Harald Barre considers newspapers and academic activism in Tanzania as forums in which the project of an independent African nation was shaped through heated debates. Examining the changing discourses on race and gender in the 1960s and 1970s, he reveals that equating difference with inequality in the national narrative was fiercely contested. Pervasive images rooted in colonialism were thus challenged and in some cases fundamentally transformed by journalists, students, (inter)national scholars, (inter)national events and the promise of an egalitarian socialist state.

PAŃSTWOWY FUNDUSZ ZIEMI JAKO PRAWNY INSTRUMENT POLITYKI AGRARNEJ STALINOWSKIEGO PAŃSTWA W POLSCE W LATACH 1944–1956

The article attempts to discuss the legal and institutional issues related to the use of the State Land Fund (SLF) as a fundamental instrument of the postwar agrarian and land policy in Poland. First of all, an attempt was made to indicate the normative basis for its implementation and to reconstruct the legal character of the institution in question. Reconstruction of the legal essence of the State Land Fund shows the divergences formulated in this regard by the proponents of the doctrine of agricultural and financial law. The evolution of functions performed by the fund in the framework of the agrarian policy of the socialist state, and changes made in the model of administration of this institution, have contributed to the emergence of different evaluations. It seems that the institutional specificity of the SLF was determined primarily by the doctrinal or systemic basis of the Stalinist agricultural policy.

The wall unit: State policy and the emergence of fashion in People’s Poland

Consumption in modern, capitalist countries is studied through the lens of fashion. We claim that it is fruitful to apply the concept of fashion to an analysis of consumption in a modern socialist country. By using the example of the wall unit, we discuss the emergence of fashion through the mechanism of state policy in Poland under the Communist regime. The socialist state was responsible for the propagation and implementation of modernity. The idea of progress was internalized by citizens and enacted by social emulation. Additionally, our study reveals that social class was a means of determining different attitudes toward fashion: members of the working class saw value in imitation and exact copying (revealing a monocentric approach to fashion) while the middle class engaged in a polycentric approach, that is, they valued individual creativity, mixed various styles, and were inspired by trends from western countries.