Miscellanea Posttotalitariana Wratislaviensia

Tytułem wprowadzenia

Agnieszka Matusiak — 2025-02-07

Liberalne Ja i prawicowe My w Polsce i w Rosji

Andrzej de Lazari — 2025-02-07

When on November 15, 1989, Lech Wałęsa began his speech in the US Congress with the phrase “My, Narod” and Jacek Kalabiński conveyed it in English as “We the People” (the words with which the American Constitution begins) congressmen gave him an ovation. But did they (Wałęsa and the congressmen) have the same idea in mind? I will try to show that they did not; and then I will analyze the difference between the perception of individualism and collectivism by the liberals and the Right.

Geneza i radykalizacja rosyjskiego tradycjonalizmu kulturowego (stan po rozpadzie ZSRR)

Marek Jedliński — 2025-02-07

The article discusses the genesis and radicalization of Russian cultural traditionalism after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the perspective of the problem of human freedom. The meaning of the word “tradition” is build upon the totality of impact on someone’s life on every level (even intimacy: sexuality, gender identity, women’s dignity). According to the author, the modern cultural traditionalism was created during the time of the Bolshevik government. After a short period of emancipation policy Bolsheviks restored the taboo and began persecution of people with different views. Contemporary Russian cultural traditionalism is responsible for the reluctance towards the West.

„Modernizacja” i „społeczeństwo obywatelskie”: bojowe zawołania epoki post-radzieckiej

Małgorzata Abassy — 2025-02-07

The concept of the words as “battle cries of an epoch” by Viktor Vinogradov constitutes theoretical frames for analyses of the changes that occur in linguistic-cultural space of Russia after 1991. The aim of the research is to create a linguistic map of the post-Soviet reality centered around the words: “modernization” and “civil society”. We will begin our reflections with a brief retrospective statement that the construction of the new order of the USSR, after the Bolshevik Revolution, began with a struggle for words. At that time, a new map of reality was created, in which some words were eliminated and others adopted changed semantics. The space of meanings defined the limits of the possibilities of the Soviet man. In the 1990s many of the earlier words lost their power to shape reality. The main hypotesis of this article is the statement that immediately after glasnost’ and perestroika, the words modernization and civil society became the main landmarks on the map of the new reality. The research material consists of the texts of the Messages to the Federal Assembly of Russian presidents: Boris Yeltsin, Dmitri Medvedev, and Vladimir Putin. The selection of the source material was made based on the criteria of rank, range, and repeatability.

Ludobójstwo to nie tylko fizyczna eksterminacja. Sowieckie zbrodnie na narodach Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej — refleksja prawnomiędzynarodowa

Tomasz Lachowski — 2025-02-07

Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959) understood crime of genocide as a series of actions resulting from a coordinated policy aimed at annihilating a given community by breaking down its political and social institutions, culture, religion or language, and therefore not only as an extermination in a purely physical sense. Although his concept was not fully reflected in the text of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, Lemkin assessed the criminal actions of the Soviet authorities committed against Ukrainians, Poles, or the nations of the Baltic states as genocide not in opposition to the above-mentioned UN Convention, but fully in accordance with its provisions. Therefore, the main aim of the paper is to analyze selected crimes of the Soviet Union as a crime of genocide in the light of international law, the result of which was to create a new “Soviet man” (homo sovieticus).

Ludność cywilna wobec konfliktów na Kaukazie (na przykładzie konfliktu w Górskim Karabachu w 2020 roku)

Krzysztof Fedorowicz — 2025-02-07

2020 and the so-called the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War marked a turning point in the recent history of the South Caucasus. It seemed that the legacy of the USSR was settled and that nothing else could be changed. It turned out, however, that even after 30 years of a relatively stable, specific “status quo” in the region, radical and fundamental changes may occur, the consequences of which will be felt for a long and painful time. The conflict contributed to the migration crisis. Little Armenia was faced with the need to protect over 100,000 refugees. The author personally acquainted himself with the fate of the civilian population on the spot.

Co objawiła kultura Białorusi na przełomie XX i XXI wieku

Barbara Barwa — 2025-02-07

The dynamics of the development of Belarusian culture at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries can be divided into stages: up to 1990 (restoration of the independence of Belarus); until 1996 (a coup under the beautiful name of a referendum); 2010 (Ploshcha); 2020 (The Revolution of Truth). Since 1990, Belarusian culture has created a solid foundation for the development of a democratic Belarusian society, and has gone fast to a new free art. At the same time, the church was revived. The Belarusian language turned from the natural language of communication into the language of the intelligentsia and culture: it became a cipher, a code of freedom, and acquired an elite status. After the repressions in 2010, creative people organized themselves, created many independent non-state cultural platforms, Belarusian language courses, educational programs, radio stations, websites, and much more. In 2020–2021 there was a powerful political and artistic explosion that showed Belarusians’ clear desire for freedom and democracy. Since 2020, powerful repressions against the figures and organizations of culture have been underway and a cultural battle has begun: not for life, but for death.

Slovak culture and literature after the Velvet Revolution of 1989

Mária Bátorová — 2025-02-07

In this study we will focus on the connection of culture and art with historical and political processes in the twentieth century, which to a great extent affected developments in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and the establishment of the independent Slovak Republic (1993). The complexity of Slovakia’s historical development provides sufficient discourses and ample artistic and literary works (of interest from a cultural point of view), which were the seismographs of this development, especially in the parallel culture, literature, and the visual (especially action) arts. We have tried, using specific works, to point out that free writers even under socialism were able to produce works that became a mirror of deviation and camouflage. The politics of the socialist system forced writers into internal emigration and onto the so-called “index” (blacklist), so that their works could not be published until after 1989. At the same time, we point out that some literary scholars – despite their own anchoring in solid academic institutions – respond to these publications and studies on the complex question of the existence of a parallel culture in a non-conceptual, ideological, and unscholar way.

Croatian cultural policy in transition: a quarter of a century lost

Snježana Banović — 2025-02-07

This article deals with the reasons, possible causes, and manifest missed opportunities due to which Croatian culture did not have a successful transition. It especially focusses on the mechanisms and instruments used by the relevant authorities in the Republic of Croatia when it comes to decision-making in the field of culture. Implicit decisions with no strategic documents allow those in charge of cultural systems to continuously avoid setting up strategic planning, carrying out an analysis of the present situation and introducing professional criteria into practice – not to mention the unavoidable continuity of a bad practice from the past. The absence of all this unavoidably leads to non-transparency, which introduces harmful mechanisms such as conflict of interest and clientelism as the dominant levers of action at the highest levels of all procedures. There are many reasons for such a model, the foremost being that, like all the countries that came into existence within the territory of the former Yugoslavia, in times of political upheaval and the introduction of multi-party systems following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the wars that ensued, Croatia too has missed its chance to develop culture as a space for the enrichment of society, for expanding horizons and promoting tolerance, instead orienting it towards the sphere of ideological and political control and (self-)censorship. Acting in the mentioned ways, cultural policy stakeholders in Croatia have so far failed to build trust in cultural value that would enable development, innovation, reform, continuity, inter-cultural dialogue, pluralism, diversity, and something that is nowadays essential, yet wilfully ignored – the development of cultural management.

Peace agreement between ethics and aesthetics: the effects of the war on the art and culture of memory (case of Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Nihad Kreševljaković — 2025-02-07

The siege of Sarajevo was the longest siege in contemporary human history. One of the characteristics of this period was an amazing response of artists to the situation they faced. As the result of that, artistic scene of Sarajevo in the period of 1992–1995 was one of the most interesting phenomena in all history of art in Bosnia and Herzegovina.