Review of the monograph: Matiev T.Kh. The Mountain National Movement in Revolutions and the Civil War in the North Caucasus (1917–1921) (Nazran, 2020)

This article focuses on the analysis of the monograph by T.Kh. Matiev ”Mountain national movement in revolutions and the Civil War in the North Caucasus (1917–1921)”, published in 2020 in Nazran. This study presents an original and comprehensive approach and addresses one of the most difficult cases in the history of the North Caucasus of the 20th century – the origins of the Mountain Republic. The driving force behind the idea of a federation and the protection of the rights of mountain peoples was the young intellectuals of the North Caucasus. In this regard, the reviewer sees parallels with Jadidism in the Volga-Ural region, the activity of the Tatar intellectual youth of the early 20th century, the ideas of national and cultural autonomy. The Muslim peoples of the North Caucasus and the Tatars had much in common: one religious culture, a desire for modernization from educated groups and contradictions in society. Monograph by T.Kh. Matiev shows the multiethnic world of the Russian Empire, at the same time it points to the commonality of many issues and the need for their further scientific study.

Territorial and non-territorial arrangements in a multi-ethno-linguistic context

This article argues that the geographically dispersed distribution of the minorities in the Baltic republics (apart from the Poles in Lithuania and the Russians in Northeast Estonia) constitutes an objective obstacle to provision of territorially based minority rights. However, the potential alternatives to the territorial principle are also rarely adopted. The cultural autonomy model in Estonia and Latvia failed to be implemented in practice, while threshold rules (in respect of topographical bilingualism, for example) are in force only in Estonia, and there with the highest threshold in Europe (50%). The paper aims to explain the reluctance to adopt these solutions by reviewing the main factors that affect language policy implementation in general. It also considers the background to the debate over which languages need protection: the minority languages within the Baltic States or the titular languages themselves (Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian), which at the global level are small and vulnerable. In general, the strictness of language policies is in inverse relation to the size of the minorities, with Lithuania being the most liberal and Latvia the most restrictive.

SCULPTURAL TRADITIONALISM AND INNOVATION IN THE CLASSIC MAYA KINGDOM OF SAK TZ'I', MEXICO

In this article we analyze the content and form of 58 stone monuments at the archaeological site of Lacanjá Tzeltal, Chiapas, Mexico, which recent research confirms was a capital of the Classic Maya polity Sak Tz'i' (“White Dog”). Sak Tz'i' kings carried the title ajaw (“lord”) rather than the epithet k'uhul ajaw (“holy lord”) claimed by regional powers, implying that Sak Tz'i' was a lesser kingdom in terms of political authority. Lacanjá Tzeltal's corpus of sculptured stone, however, is explicitly divergent and indicates the community's marked cultural autonomy from other western Maya kingdoms. The sculptures demonstrate similarities with their neighbors in terms of form and iconographic and hieroglyphic content, underscoring Lacanjá Tzeltal artisans’ participation in the region's broader culture of monumental production. Nevertheless, sculptural experimentations demonstrate not only that lesser courts like Lacanjá Tzeltal were centers of innovation, but that the lords of Sak Tz'i' may have fostered such cultural distinction to underscore their independent political character. This study has broader implications for understanding interactions between major and secondary polities, artistic innovation, and the development of community identity in the Classic Maya world.

“Great Tartary” in the ethnogenesis of Don Cossacks

The article is devoted to the question of the Turkic peoples’ influence on the development of Don Cossacks. This issue is debatable among Russian historians. Since the beginning of the XVI century, there have been found archival documents confirming a constant ethno-cultural interaction. Tatars were among those who lived in the Don winter villages, and were often sent on special assignments as a delegate to Moscow. The process of their integration had both the format of blood-related ties with Don Cossacks, and the preservation of ethno-cultural autonomy and religion within the Tatar Stanitsa. On the example of the Burkhanovs Don Cossack family, archival data on the integration of Tatars into the Don “melting pot” is presented. The work is based on archival documents and scientific research of historians studying Don Cossacks. As a result of the conducted research, it was possible to identify the main directions of Tatars’ participation in the ethnogenesis of Don Cossacks, moreover, here was revealed the fact of migration to the Crimean Khanate and Turkey.

Cultural Activities/Facilities and the Media

This article reviews the 2019 international developments related to cultural activities and facilities as well as issues concerning media in the context of European minorities. Among the highlights are the preliminary views delivered by the UN Human Rights Committee concerning the cultural autonomy of the Sami indigenous peoples in Finland in Sanila-Aikio v. Finland and Käkkäläjärvi et al. v. Finland, the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages, and the EU Council Recommendation on a comprehensive approach to the teaching and learning of languages. The theme of biand multilingual education is enhanced within UNESCO, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, and the EU.

The Saami and the Karen — common experience and differences: a comparative perspective

This paper offers a comparative perspective on a specific issue of the indigenous peoples of the Saami and the Karen. The groups being compared are from Europe and Asia, selected on the basis of their particular circumstances of living in more than one State. However, while the Saami are a relatively well-treated people that enjoy a form of cultural autonomy; the Karen are in a far worse situation with regard to their legal position as well as actual living conditions. The authors examine the cultural, political, and legal aspects of the Saami and the Karen situations and compare their common experience and aspirations. The article attempts to answer the question as to what the similarities and differences between the two indigenous peoples are and what lessons can be learned by those peoples that may be helpful in realizing their aspirations.

ПРАКСА УСТАВНОГ СУДА РЕПУБЛИКЕ ХРВАТСКЕ У ОБЛАСТИ ПРАВА НАЦИОНАЛНИХ МАЊИНА, СА ПОСЕБНИМ ОСВРТОМ НА ЈЕЗИЧКА ПРАВА СРПСКЕ ЗАЈЕДНИЦЕ У ХРВАТСКОЈ

In the period from 2000 to the present day, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia has often faced the challenge of deciding on politically sensitive topics, especially when it comes to the need to protect the rights of both traditional and so-called “new” minority communities (which emerged from the constituent nations of the former Yugoslavia by the formation of new independent nation-states). The cases that occur in court practice are diverse, but mainly refer to cultural autonomy, representation of persons belonging to national minorities in local or regional representative bodies and equal representation in the public sector, as well as (official) use of language and script. The submitters of constitutional complaints, and the initiators of the procedures for assessing the constitutionality and legality of general legal acts, were guided by various motives; and the question is whether these motives influenced the work of the constitutional court, or in other words, whether the court remained faithful to its original role of protecting the basic, timeless values of the constitutional order of Croatia or was guided by current party policy programs. In addition to the general presentation of the legal regulation of minority rights, and the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court in Croatia, the paper analyzes cases related to the language rights of “new” minority communities, focusing on the arguments of both “parties” in the procedure and the constitutional court, as well. The goal of this paper is to present the practice of the Constitutional Court of Croatia in the field of language rights of national minorities through specific constitutional court cases, with special reference to the consistency of the court’s argumentation.

Traditional weaving cultures in a global market: The case of Zapotec weavers

Carpets woven in Mexico today use design elements found at historical sites in the vicinity of their manufacture, and local Indigenous weaving techniques function within an unbroken line of traditional familial wisdom. The weaving culture of the Zapotec Nation of Oaxaca now exists at the juncture of multivalent competing visual, economic and cultural mediators, which makes for a compelling case study to examine the impacts of globalization, as well as the preservation of creative and cultural autonomy. This article describes site visits to Zapotec weaving ateliers, and also examines the history of Zapotec weaving traditions, and contemporary community engagement within these (now globalized) processes. The methodology employed is an object-based exploration of a Zapotec weaving. Fieldwork was conducted in the winter of 2019. It included an ethnographic observation of master Zapotec weavers within their ateliers; an observation of the original design inspirations at pre-Columbian architectural sites; artefact observation at the Museo Textil de Oaxaca; as well as practice-led natural dye research. Textile weaving is a natural site for the study of political agency and ‘cultural citizenship’, as it functions within a structure that safeguards traditional knowledge, as well as collectivizes local labourers within production flows.

Continuity in Discontinuity: The Recurrent Motif of Cultural Autonomy in the Development of Czech Sociology of Culture

This article analyses the development of the sociology of culture in Czechia. Its focus is on the sociology of the arts and cultural sociology, which, it is argued, are connected through the notion of the relative autonomy of cultural structures. While the Czech sociology of culture may have been rendered less dynamic by the lack of a critical mass of sociologists specialising in this area and by the country’s frequent political upheavals and its isolation from the international circulation of ideas, it has experienced moments of considerable vitality. Three periods in the development of the field are identified here, each of them marked by a movement toward a stronger and more sociologically adequate conceptualisation of cultural autonomy: (1) from the diffuse culturalism of the field’s founding figures to the functionalist theory of the interwar sociologist Inocenc Arnošt Bláha, whose view of the relationship between art and society was influenced by the work of the Prague School of Structuralism; (2) from the cultural reductionism of Marxist-Leninist theory after 1948 to the eclectic sociology of culture and the arts of the late socialist period; (3) from the demise of this transitional form of a sociology of culture in the 1990s to the increasingly internationalised but also heterogeneous landscape of the 2010s, which is constituted by a semi-institutionalised centre of cultural sociology at Brno and small groups or individuals in Prague and other academic locales. The thread of continuity in an otherwise discontinuous historical development is found in the recurrent motif of the relative autonomy of culture which the Czech sociology of culture absorbed through its exposure to art and literary theory.