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Ethnic Parties in the Czech RepublicWhile analyzing the Czech politics, especially the party system after the collapse of the communist system, we notice a conspicuous presence of ethnic parties. In the political landscape, we have Moravian parties which highlight the political significance of the north-eastern region of the Czech Republic as well as a multiethnic party called Coexistentia. Parties...
Catholics in Belarus: the Deconstruction of Polish Identity?The article discusses the transformations in the national identification of members of the younger generation of Catholics in Belarus through the context of the language changes resulting from the use of Belarussian in the Catholic Church and the increasing prestige attached to this language. The political transformations at the turn of the...
The Portrayal of National Identity in the Films of Małgorzata SzumowskaMałgorzata Szumowska is without a doubt one of a few Polish directors who has managed to distinguish herself on the European film market. Although, Szumowska is a cosmopolitan (in Ulf Hannerz’s terms), she does not forget about her Polish origins. On the contrary, she emphasizes contemporary Polish identity of her protagonists...
Non-citizens in Latvia: Is it a Real Problem?Following the restoration of independence in 1991, Latvia has introduced restrictive citizenship strategy involving citizenship only to those who had it before the Soviet occupation, and to their descendants. As a result, about one-third of the population in Latvia – the former citizens of the Soviet Union who had immigrated to Latvia during the Soviet...
„Down is Israel, Upstairs United States, and Refugees are Palestinians” – Activists, Integration Projects and Self-organization of Refugees in Rog’s Space in LjubljanaSince 2015 Slovenia has become an important place on the Balkan refugee route. From the transit country it transformed into a country where more and more refugees decide to settle their lives. The article describe the story of Second...
The Birth of the Polak-KatolikThe concept of the Polak-Katolik emerged in the form we know it today only at the very end of the 19th century. While there were many earlier ways to express the complicated relationship between Polish national belonging and Roman Catholicism, the distinctive pairing of two hyphenated nouns signified a new stage in the history of this entanglement. Geneza pojęcia Polak...
Dilemmas of Identity in the Zaporizhzhia OblastThis text is a review of Alla Karnaukh’s book. The review contains a brief overview of eight chapters of the book. The reviewer notes that this book fills a gap in the study of national and ethnic minorities in Berdiansk and the outskirts of Primorsk (Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine). From the Polish point of view it is a very useful book. According to the...
‘Optimism against all odds’: Polish National Identity in War Films of Jerzy PassendorferUsing archival sources, movie reviews, secondary sources and films, this article examines the cinema of Jerzy Passendorfer, the founding father of action movies genre in People’s Poland, but also the staunch supporter of Władysław Gomułka’s ‘Polish road to Socialism’ and General Mieczysław Moczar’s ultranationalist...
From The Noble Republic of Poland to the Fourth Republic: a Short Review of Polish Founding MythsThere is one type of political myths returning especially often in the Polish political space. This type of myth, founding myth, gains a lot of followers especially during social crises. The main aim of this article is to remind the most popular Polish founding myths together with their historical context...
Of Slaveholders and Renegades: Semantic Uncertainties in Volodymyr Antonovych’s Conversion to UkrainiannessIn an article published in the St. Petersburg-based Ukrainian language journal Osnova (Foundation) in 1862, Włodzimierz Antonowicz, formally the descendant of a Polish family from the landed gentry in Ukraine, declared that from then on he would consider himself a Ukrainian. In the present essay,...
Polishness in PracticeThere were two phases in the post-1989 Polish historical politics as projected abroad. The initially “normal” Poland gradually transformed itself around year 2004 into a Poland of suffering and redemption. An important role in that transformation was played by the reaction to the external vision of Poland’s role and fate during the Second World War, causing the “Holocaustization”...
National Imaginaries in the Podhale RegionThe article answers the question of the durability of national categories in local village discourses. By presenting the results of the research conducted using the ethnographic method in the villages of Podhale in the first years of the 21st century, it diagnoses the popularity of national ideas in their primordial form and argues that the reason behind the...
In Between. Two Home Countries in the Polish Language Press for Jewish Children in the Second Polish RepublicIn the interwar period in Poland the big Polish-language Jewish journals (Chwila, Nowy Dziennik and Nasz Przegląd) published supplements for children. Two of them (Chwilka and Dzienniczek dla Dzieci i Młodzieży [Diary for children and young people]) were typical magazines for children. The...
A National “Struggle for Survival”? – The Badeni Crisis of 1897 in Cisleithania’s German-language PressThis article observes the role of Cisleithania’s (i.e. the Austrian “half” of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy) Germanlanguage press in the so-called Badeni Crisis of 1897 which was triggered by the issuance of two language ordinances designed to make Czech, together with German, an equally valid...
In the Search for a National Idea: Krajowość in the Beginning of the Twentieth Century as an Attempt at “Lithuanian Poles’" IdeologyKrajowość as the national ideology of the “civil” (or “political”) type developed in Belarus and Lithuania at the beginning of the twentieth century. The adherents of krajowośćclaimed that all native inhabitants of historical Lithuania, disregarding their ethno-cultural...
Can Polishness be (Lexicographically) Defined?The author argues that the essence of Polishness (polskość) is found in the Polish language, that is, in the language system, as well as in texts written in Polish; hence, it should be possible to reproduce and define the very concept of Polishness. So far, it should be stressed, the definitions of the concept of Polishness found in dictionaries of the...
Masurians in the East Podolia: Memory, Identity and HeritageThe theme of this article is specific identity and memory of the Polish population in the selected villages of Khmelnytskyi Raion of Ukraine, with the second most numerous Polish population in Ukraine. The specificity of this Polish population results from a long habitation in the same territory. From the moment they arrived on Podolia until...
The Shaping of Polish Identity in the “Dziennik Kijowski” in 1914-1916The First World War was a real catalyst for the shaping of national identities in Eastern Europe. Like all wars, it aroused discussions about the future of peoples caught up in the conflict, especially those who did not possess their own statehood. The Polish nation was among them. How did its political elite respond to the beginning...
Roma - Others Everywhere. An Example of France and Other European CountriesWhy Europe treats Roma as “others” and why Europe is “foreign” to Roma? The starting point is the relationship of domination of one collective entity – European countries which are affiliated to the EU on the other countries (groups having the status of minorities, the most marginalized and discriminated). This dependence describes...
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