Czesław Miłosz wobec przemocy i wojny

This article reviews Irena Grudzińska-Gross’s book Miłosz i długi cień wojny [Milosz and the Long Shadow of War], which was published by Pogranicze in 2020. The reviewer analyses the definition of violence and its relation to Polish narratives of wartime solidarity seen as heroism. To this end, she examines the work of Czesław Miłosz, written during the Second World War, and later texts thematising the war experience. An additional layer of the publication is the poet’s take on the Jewish question – both in the context of Miłosz’s poetic works and the subsequent discussions they provoked. The author, taking into account Miłosz’s autobiogeographical predispositions, also analyses the changing images of Warsaw in his works as a space where the poet spent most of the war. For this reason, she examines the poet’s attitude to the Warsaw Uprising and the public perception of his decision not to join the cause.

Podatek od zysków wojennych w polskim systemie danin jako źródło finansowania kosztów wojny polsko-bolszewickiej

The paper draws attention to one of the emergency taxes in the history of the Polish Treasury, i.e. a tax on war profits. It was levied under the Decree of 5 February 1919 on the Establishment of a Tax on War Profits. This levy introduced a concept which was developed in Europe and built on the First World War experience. In the reborn Poland, the tax was supposed to have two functions: fiscal — as a source of financing the extraordinary expenditure arising from the war against the Soviets and a social function — as an additional burden on those taxpayers who were able to accumulate wealth and earn substantial profits as a result of the First World War.

Religion, Patriotism and War Experience in Digitized Wartime Letters in Finland, 1939–44

This article examines religious and patriotic languages in digitized letters written by ordinary Finnish people in the Second World War. We combine qualitative and quantitative methods to analyse how religious and patriotic languages were used throughout the war years. Our findings show that the frequency of religious and patriotic vocabulary fluctuated widely during the war. Religious words were most notably connected to the intensity of the warfare, peaking during the periods of heated combat and dropping in the period of stationary warfare. Patriotic words were likewise common during the early periods of combat, but their use waned in the later war years. The analysis of words occurring in close proximity to the religious and patriotic words suggests that this was due to the different functions of the two languages. Religious parlance was essentially a vehicle of private emotional coping, while patriotic style gave a collective meaning to the sacrifices of the war. Religion and patriotism diverged during the war because the collective meaning of the war vanished but the need for emotional comfort persisted until its end.

Local Soviet nomenclature of the BSSR of late Stalinism (1945–1953)

The article examines the process of restoration and development of the nomenclature mechanism of personnel policy in the BSSR in the first post-war decade, which received the name «late Stalinism» in modern historiography. The main attention is paid to the leading employees of local government bodies – the executive committees of the Soviets of Working People’s Deputies. The article describes the main trends in the transformation of the organisation of nomenclature practice – centralisation and decentralisation. The main hierarchical levels of nomenclatures are highlighted (from the Central Committee of the all-Union Communist Party(b) – the CPSU to the district and city committees of the CP(b)B – CPB), their specific content is shown in the time dynamics. It is noted that the existing hierarchy of nomenclature positions in many respects more accurately than their official administrative status determined the real position of an employee in the structure of power and management. Initially the high level of renewal of the composition of the chairmen of local executive committees was replaced in the early 1950s by its relative stabilisation. They tried to appoint Communists with pre-war experience who had already been tested in various leadership positions to senior positions in the local structures of the state administration apparatus. The level of education played a role only at the district and city levels of the local administrative hierarchy, for its highest level – the chairmen of regional executive committees – the main importance was still the experience of leadership work. The work experience in the positions held and the general experience of managerial work increased somewhat, the level of education of the chairmen of district and city executive committees increased, which made it possible to move to a higher level of requirements in the selection of personnel (the availability of specialised higher, technical or agricultural, education).

The Emergence of the Western Welfare State

The chapter provides a perspective on the early development of the welfare state in the countries of the European cultural complex, including the European (English) settler nations. The focus is on the emergence of the institutions of social insurance since the 1880s until 1945. First, an overall picture of early collective solutions to social problems is presented, followed by a depiction and discussion of why state-initiated social insurance came about, why Germany was a forerunner, and why national authorities reacted differently to the new challenge of social policy. The second part of the chapter covers the phase of consolidation, expansion, and geographical diffusion of social insurance and protection legislation after the First World War. A comprehensive tabular overview of the first statutory social security schemes in the forty-two ILO member countries that had introduced at least three out of five insurance pillars by 1945 is included. The chapter ends with a brief look at the Second World War experience.

Moral Injury and the Psyche of Counterinsurgency

Public and clinical interest in a condition called moral injury – psychological distress resembling posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) but said to originate from shame, guilt, or transgression in war experience – explicitly links moral, psychological, and political dimensions of war-making in the context of the US’s post-9/11 wars. This article critically analyzes moral injury’s politics of psychological suffering, which tends to treat morality as a universal and apolitical terrain, by reading it against soldier narratives of combat experience. American soldiers’ accounts of US military violence in Iraq and Afghanistan suggest that embodied, affective, and technical dimensions of military experience constitute their own moral worlds that do not necessarily conform to moral injury’s narratives of individual transgression. These accounts show that the US’s counterinsurgency techniques produce Orientalist framings of threat and violence but also volatile and ambivalent battlefield moralities that critically comment on the ostensibly liberal and humane techniques of US war-making.

Defending Iran

Since the 1979 revolution, the ruling establishment of Iran has developed and articulated a defense strategy reflective of the country's Iran-Iraq war experience and its international isolation. Its asymmetrical warfare doctrine, use of irregular forces in military campaigns, deployment of ballistic missiles, use of fast naval vessels to harass and confuse adversaries, and finally development of a sophisticated cyber warfare capability, are all features of this unique defense strategy. Based on a wide range of primary sources in Persian, Arabic and English, Gawdat Bahgat and Anoushiravan Ehteshami offer a detailed and authoritative analysis of Iran's defense strategy. Additionally, this book provides a comparative analysis of the Islamic Republic's capabilities in relation to Israel and Saudi Arabia, its main regional adversaries. Framing Tehran's threat perceptions following the revolution within a wider historical context, this book will facilitate further analytical reflections on the country's changing role in the region, and its relations further afield, with the United States, Europe, Russia and China.

Noncity. Part 2

Andrey Bokov explores the Soviet space and its three stages, its stable characteristics and evolution of relationship between a city and a village. He evaluates the significance of production for Soviet cities and analyzes the evolution of the social structure of the Soviet society. Bokov highlights the changes in the role of Soviet architects and architectural language and the impact of the post-war experience of the West. The author identifies specific characteristics of post-Soviet cities of the RF and the relationship between business, power and society. He underlines the lack of systematic approach in the post-Soviet spatial and social development. He suggests possible ways for further transformation of the structure of the Russian space.