Gaspirali v. Il'minskii: Two identity projects for the muslims of the Russian Empire

As “music of commitment,” in the period from the late 1970s to the late 1980s rock music in Yugoslavia had an important purpose of providing a popular-cultural outlet for the unique forms of socio-cultural critique that engaged with the realities and problems of Yugoslav society. The three “music movements” that embodied the new rock’n’roll spirit – New Wave, New Primitives, and New Partisans – used rock music to critique the country's “new socialist culture,” with the purpose of helping to eliminate the disconnect between the ideal and the reality of socialist Yugoslavia. This paper examines the New Partisans as the most radical expression of music of commitment through the works of its most important rock bands: Bijelo dugme, Plavi orkestar, and Merlin. The paper's argument is that the New Partisans' socio-cultural engagement, animated by advocacy of Yugoslavism, was a counter-logic to the nationalist dissolution of a distinctly Yugoslav fabric of a socialist community in crisis. Thus, the movement's revolutionary “spirit of reconstruction” permeating its “poetics of the patriotic” was a mechanism of socio-cultural resistance to political, cultural and moral-ethical de-Yugoslavization of Yugoslav society. Its ultimate objective was to make the case that the only way into the future – if there was to be any – rested on strategic reanimation of the Partisan revolutionary past as the only viable socio-cultural foundation of the Yugoslav socialist community.     

Of oligarchs,orientalists, and cosmopolitans: how “Armenian” is rabiz music?

This paper examines the controversial music genre rabiz in relation to political and socio-economic developments in post-Soviet Armenia. Rabiz, an urban folk-pop genre characterized by melismatic singing and “oriental” embellishments, is a ubiquitous soundtrack to everyday life in the country, with lyrics commonly covering romance, male friendship, and family ties. Ethnographic observations suggest that its popularity draws on the affective appeal with which it captures common hardships and aspirations of post-socialist transition. In spite of this, rabiz is almost universally denounced by nationalist intellectuals and liberal citizens for foreign influences, sentimentality, consumerism, and conservatism. While for the cultured classes, the rejection of rabiz as “un-Armenian” is often an integral part of the construction of a virtuous self, the alternative conceptions of performers and fans reveal the polysemy of Armenianness as a moral category.     

Pantheon on a tablecloth: Yugoslav dictatorship and the confrontation of national symbols in Croatia (1929–1935)

This paper questions the effects of the state- and nation-building that occurred in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia during the 6 January Dictatorship (1929–1935) and points to the importance of symbols during this process. By using an ethno-symbolist approach and extending it to “banal nationalism,” the article analyzes some of the most prominent and influential symbols from within an everyday environment. Using the Croatian ethnic space as a framework, the article traces the population’s attitudes toward the Yugoslav national flag and representations of King Alexander – two of the most forced symbols in the centralized Yugoslav one state and one nation concept of nation-building. The regime possessed all the mechanisms of power necessary to impose these symbols, though most Croats clearly felt no connection to them. Despite severe penalties, they opposed the regime’s plans for national reconstruction of the country by displaying Croatian flags and various symbolic representations of Stjepan Radi? – as a martyr of the Croatian nation. By linking this problem to specific studies that deal with the development of nationalism, this paper outlines the struggle between Yugoslavism and Croatianism through acceptance and resistance toward the Yugoslav symbolism.     

Seasonal migration and symbolic power: the case of Muslim Meskhetians from Nasakirali

The repatriation and inclusion of Muslim Meskhetians, forcefully displaced by the Soviet government from Georgia to Central Asia during the 1940s, is still ongoing. In 1977, some Meskhetian families settled in the village of Nasakirali in western Georgia. The Soviet Georgian government built houses for the repatriates in a separate district, referred to as the “Island.” The location acquired a symbolic meaning for Meskhetians. After 40 years of repatriation, Meskhetians still remain “islanders:” isolated from the majority population, speaking a different language, practicing a different religion, and facing different employment opportunities. This study explores the coping mechanisms used by Muslim Meskhetians to sustain themselves and their families and improve their social conditions in a strictly Christian post-socialist country where “Islam is taken as a historical other.” The study primarily asks how employment/seasonal migration in Turkey changed the lives of Meskhetians by adapting their social, cultural, economic, and symbolic capital and became the only viable solution for overcoming social marginalization. The study explores how informality allows social mobility, changes gender attitudes, and helps “islanders” reach the “mainland” by becoming “Halal” – truthful and reliable. The study applies Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of “capital” and “symbolic power” for understanding Meskhetians’ informal economic practices.     

Managing furia latina: the making of a Romanian football system and style of play

This article investigates the creation of a Romanian football style and system of play, best espoused by the Romanian national teams of the 1990s. It does so by engaging the works of Virgil Economu (1896–1978), undoubtedly the leading Romanian practitioner in the field. The analysis develops around the notions of furia latina – Latin fury – and “élan” and traces their elaboration and implication at two different historical periods, the interwar and the postwar. Premised on these notions, Economu sought to develop a distinctly Romanian style of football play, one emphasizing speed and individual technique. The successes of Romanian football in the 1980s and early 1990s, the rise of the midfielder Gheorghe Hagi, and the popular meanings attached to them are all intimately connected with Economu’s contributions. Overall, my arguments document football’s crucial role for modern Romanian nationalism.     

National identity-building and the “Ustaša-nostalgia” in Croatia: the past that will not pass

Most scholarship on post-Communist Croatia claims that the first Croatian president, Franjo Tu?man, intentionally rehabilitated the legacy of the World War II (WWII) Croatian Usta?a and its Nazi-puppet state. The rehabilitation of the Usta?a has been linked to Tu?man’s national reconciliation politics that tended toward a particular “forgetting of the past.” The national reconciliation was conceptualized as a joint struggle of both the Croatian anti-fascist Partisan and the Croatian WWII fascist Usta?a successors to achieve Croatian independence. However, the existing scholarship does not offer a comprehensive explanation of the nexus between national reconciliation and the rehabilitation of the Usta?a. Hence, this article will present how “Usta?a-nostalgia” does not stem from Tu?man’s intentions, but rather from the morphological gap occurring in Tu?man’s nation-building idea. Namely, Tu?man’s condemnation of the entire idea of Yugoslavism and Yugoslavia eventually brought about the perception that any historical agent advocating the idea of an independent Croatia is better than any form of Croatian Yugoslavism. Finally, the article will present how contemporary Croatian society is still seeped in “Usta?a-nostalgia” due to the hesitation of the post-Tu?man Croatian politics to come to terms with the legacy of his national reconciliation politics.     

Book Reviews/Comptes rendus

This article examines a major instance of United States' (US) involvement in Zaïre during the 1970s and 1980s. The paper looks at an under-studied rural development scheme, known as the North Shaba Project/Projet du Nord Shaba (PNS), which was funded by USAID from 1976 to 1986.The PNS increased maize exports from northern Shaba (Katanga) to central and southern cities in the province and aimed to curtail workers’ discontent by providing cheap food for them. Its quantitative successes and “bottom-up” rhetoric led USAID officials to call the PNS an “obscured revolution”. Unlike its colonial precedents and its post-colonial contemporaries, the project attempted to integrate village farmers’ expertise in order to drive production and provide an opportunity to change existing patterns of “top-down” development. Yet, although anthropologists facilitated some significant intercultural exchanges, the project did not wholly rely on local farming techniques. Instead, the PNS's major outcome was to briefly address the Zaïrian regime's neglect of agricultural production, thus helping it survive despite the financial pressures it was under during the 1970s and the 1980s.     

President or Predator? The Social Construction of Donald Trump in a Divided America

ABSTRACT

During the presidential election, numerous women accused Donald Trump of sexual harassment and/or assault. Then a presidential candidate, he denied these complaints and said the women were all untruthful – a position he has continued to espouse. To explore “who the public believes,” we commissioned YouGov to conduct an opt-in online survey of a national sample of 1,000 Americans. Notably, half of Americans (51.0%) believed that “the women are telling the truth when they reported that Mr. Trump sexually harassed or assaulted them” versus 23.1% who sided with the president. Nearly two-thirds (64.9%) stated that it was unlikely that all the women were lying, and 3 in 5 Americans (60.5%) supported President Trump’s impeachment by the U.S. Congress if these accusations could be proven. Informed by research on political psychology (especially Haidt’s The Righteous Mind), the data are explored to see why Americans embrace divergent moral narratives – with some seeing Mr. Trump as a truthful president and others seeing him as a predator unworthy of the office he holds.     

Student movements in Kosova (1981): academic or nationalist?

The 1980s caught Albanians in Kosova in interesting social, political, and psychological circumstances. Two diametrically opposed dogmatic dilemmas took shape: “illegal groups” – considerably supported by students – demanded the proclamation of the Republic of Kosova and/or Kosova’s unification with Albania. On the other side of the spectrum, “modernists” – gathering, among others, the political and academic elites – pushed for the improvement of rights of Kosovars guaranteed under the “brotherhood and unity” concept advocated within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). This paper outlines the nature of demonstrations that took place in March and April 1981 and the corresponding responses of political and academic elites. Stretching beyond symbolic academic reasons – demands for better food and dormitory conditions – the study points to the intense commitment of the students to their demands, often articulated in nationalistic terms. Was it inevitable that the structure of the SFRY would lead to those living in Kosova as a non-Slavic majority in a federation of “Southern Slavs” to articulate demands for national self-rule? It is necessary to highlight these political and social complexities through analytical approaches in order to track the students’ goals and to reexamine assumptions behind the “modernist” agenda. In that vein, the paper analyzes the conceptual connections and differences between student reactions and modernists’ positions during the historical period under discussion here.     

Cuba: heading for a new development and political model – an introduction

Cuba, this iconic revolutionary island which has brought so much hope to the Third World and, at one point, worry for a nuclear World War III, is going through a process of change never seen since Fidel Castro led his revolutionary forces to triumph around New Year’s of 1959. Yet, 10 years into the change process, led by the younger Castro Raúl (now 85), nobody can really forecast where the country will end up in socio-economic and political terms. In this TWQ subsection, two economists and three political scientists – two Cubans and three European Cuba watchers – analyse the reforms and their possible outcome.     

“Zdravljica” – toast to a cosmopolitan nation anthem quality in the Slovenian context

As with many states, in the case of Slovenia two songs principally contend for the position of national anthem. In this case an apparent ideological gulf masks perhaps a more essential temperamental divide: the bellicose army song versus the happy drinking “all together?…?” number. Vacillation between “Zdravljica” (“A Toast”) and “Naprej zastava slave,” (“Forward, Flag of Glory”) might be taken as reflecting the ambivalence with regard to potentially hostile others one reads attributed to Jesus Christ in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke: who's not with me is against me/who's not against me is with me. The 1989 adoption of “Zdravljica” (lyrics courtesy of Slovenia's national poet France Pre?eren) is strongly suggestive of an outward looking state, one hoping for a place in a cosmopolitan Europe. “Naprej zastava slave” has remained the anthem of the Slovenian army and so is far from being discarded for the purpose of asserting Slovenian national aspirations. Perhaps retaining it in this minor role has been necessary because “Zdravljica” is a song which – at least as it is presently sung – de-emphasises national aspiration to a degree unusual for the anthem genre. In a crossroads of Europe dominated historically by the national (or imperial) aspirations of larger and more powerful political entities, “Zdravljica” is a song which tests the limits of what an anthem can be by holding out a hope of rising above the national.     

A home of one’s own: women and home ownership in the borderlands of post-apartheid South Africa and Lesotho

This study explores women’s practice of acquiring, “growing” and multiplying a “home of one’s own” in the borderlands of the Free State province of South Africa and Lesotho. It shows how a home of one’s own confirms that one is a person proper (motho, p. batho), thus distinguishable from any other entity (ntho, p. dintho). A woman establishes a home of one’s own as a domain of autonomy (ha ka) where she can reproduce persons for whom she provides a home (heso). After her death, such a home remains an incubator of personhood. As a process of apprehending self, this gendered practice does not necessarily require men’s involvement, which is important in a social landscape of many female-headed households. Their gendered conception of residential property, alongside the possibility to let or sell homes, enables women to support theirs and others’ aspirations as the crisis of unemployment in the borderlands deepens.     

It is Ukraine,not Russia — Irish told in Kiev

Musa Carullah Bigi. Uzun Günlerde Oruc: Ictihad Kitabi. Editor Yusuf Uralgiray. Ankara: Kazan Türkleri Kültür Ve Yardimlasma Dernegi, 1975. pp. 243. 50 TL (A reprint of Uzun Kunlerde Ruze. Kazan: Umid, 1911).

Baymirza Hayit. Turkestan im Herzen Euroasiens. Köln: Studien vertag, 1980, pp. 308.

Lev. Bykovsky. Solomon I. Goldeman: A Portrait of a Politician and Educator (1885–1974). A Chapter in Ukrainian Jewish Relations. New York, Toronto, Munich: Ukrainian Historical Association, 1980. pp. 98. $8.00.

Kenneth C. Farmer, Ukrainian Nationalism in the Post‐Stalin Era: Myth, Symbols and Ideology in Soviet Nationalities Policy. The Hague, Boston and London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1980. Pp. 241. $35.00.

Vasyl Veryha. Dorohamy Druhoi svitovoi viiny. Legendy pro uchast ukraintsiv u Varshavskomu povstani 1944 p. ta pro Ukrainsku Dyviziiu “Halychyna”. Toronto: Novyi Shliakh, 1980. Pp. 259.

Pohrom v Ukraini: 1972–1979 (Zoshyty ukrains'koko samvydavu, No. 1), Su?asnist, 1980. Pp. 312. Zupynit’ kryvosuddia! Sprava Levka Lukianenka (Zoshyty ukrains'koko samvydavu, No. 3). Su?asnist, 1980. Pp. 264.

Mykola Rudenko. Ekonomkhni monolohy. Introduction by Petro Hryhorenko. Su?asnist, 1978. Pp. 199.

Ivan Franko. The Master's Jests. Translated by Roman Tatchyn. New York: Shev‐chenko Scientific Society, 1979. Pp. 133. $10.00

Sidney Heitman. The Soviet Germans in the USSR Today. Köln: Bundesinstitut für ostwissenschaftliche und internationale Studien, 1980. Pp. 135.

Ivan Maistrenko. Natsional'naia politika KPSS v ee istoricheskom razvitii. Munich: Su?asnist, 1978. Pp. 224.

Alexander Podrabinek. Punitive Medicine. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Karoma, 1980. Pp. 223. $12.95, cloth.

Bohdan Wytwycky. The Other Holocaust: Marty Circles of Hell. Washington, D.C.: A Research project of “The Nowak Report,” 1980. Pp. 96.

John F. Besemeres. Socialist Population Politics: The Political Implications of Demographic Trends in the USSR and Eastern Europe. White Plains, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1980. Pp. 384. $25.00.

Peter J. Potichnyj, ed. Poland and Ukraine: Past and Present. Edmonton, Toronto: The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1980. Pp. 364. $14.95. Distributed by the University of Toronto Press.

Alvin Marcus Fountain II. Roman Dmowski: Party, Tactics Ideology 1895–1907. No. 60. Boulder Col.: East European Quarterly, 1980. Pp. XIII, 240. $16.00. Distributed by Columbia University Press, New York.

Stavro Skendi. Balkan Cultural Studies. East European Monographs, 72. Boulder, Colo.: East European Quarterly, 1980. Pp. x, 278. $20.00. Distributed by Columbia University Press, New York.

Josef Kalvoda. Czechoslovakia's Role in Soviet Strategy. Washington: University Press of America, 1978. Pp. ix, 381. $8.75.

Joseph Held, ed. The Modernization of Agriculture: Rural Transformation in Hungary, 1848–1975. East European Monographs, no. 63. Boulder, Colo.: East European Quarterly, 1980. Pp. 400. $19.50. Distributed by Columbia University Press, New York.

Zsuzsa Ferge. A Society in the Making: Hungarian Social and Societal Policy 1945–75. White Plains, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe Inc. 1980. Pp 288. $22.50.

Robert F. Byrnes, ed. Communal Families in the Balkans: The Zadruga; Essays by Philip E. Mosely and Essays in His Honor. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976. Pp. xxvii, 285.

Warren F. Mazek, ed. Slovene Economy in the Eighties. New York: Society for Slovene Studies, 1981. Pp. v, 49.

Joseph D. Dwyer, ed. Russia, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe: A Survey of Holdings at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University, Hoover Institution Press, c. 1980. Pp. 233.

Paul S. Shoup. The East European and Soviet Data Handbook: Political, Social, and Developmental Indicators, 1945–1975. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. Pp. 481. $40.00.     

Between history and nation: Paul Robert Magocsi and the rewriting of Ukrainian history

“Getting history wrong is an essential factor in the formation of a nation,” wrote Ernest Renan, basing this observation on his analysis of the nation-building experience in nineteenth-century Europe (qtd. in Eric Hobsbawm, On History. New York: New York Press, 1997: 270; for a different translation of the same sentiment, see Ernest Renan, “What is a Nation,” in Nationalism in Europe from 1815 to the Present: A Reader. Ed. Stuart Woolf. London: Routledge, 1996: 50). Many historians today tend to agree with Renan's statement and are doing their best to “get history right” as they search for alternatives to national history. More often than not they face an uphill battle in that regard, both within and outside their profession.     

Disrupting Daesh: Measuring Takedown of Online Terrorist Material and Its Impacts

Abstract

This article contributes to public and policy debates on the value of social media disruption activity with respect to terrorist material. In particular, it explores aggressive account and content takedown, with the aim of accurately measuring this activity and its impacts. The major emphasis of the analysis is the so-called Islamic State (IS) and disruption of their online activity, but a catchall “Other Jihadi” category is also utilized for comparison purposes. Our findings challenge the notion that Twitter remains a conducive space for pro-IS accounts and communities to flourish. However, not all jihadists on Twitter are subject to the same high levels of disruption as IS, and we show that there is differential disruption taking place. IS’s and other jihadists’ online activity was never solely restricted to Twitter; it is just one node in a wider jihadist social media ecology. This is described and some preliminary analysis of disruption trends in this area supplied too.     

Russian Central Government Budgeting and Public Sector Reform Discourses: Paradigms,Hybrids, and a “Third Way”

ABSTRACT

This study explores how public sector reform discourses are reflected in Russian central government budgeting. Through the lenses of institutional logics, Russian central government budgeting is considered to be a social institution that is influenced by rivaling reform paradigms: Public Administration, New Public Management (NPM), the Neo-Weberian State, and New Public Governance. Although NPM has dominated the agenda during the last decade, all four have been presented in “talks” and “decisions” regarding government budgeting. The empirical evidence illustrates that the implementation of management accounting techniques in the Russian public sector has coincided with and contradicted the construction of the Russian version of bureaucratic governance, which is referred to as the vertical of power. Having been accompanied by participatory mechanisms and a re-evaluation of the Soviet legacy, the reforms have created prerequisites for various outcomes at the level of budgeting practices: conflicts, as in the UK, and hybridization, as in Finland.     

The Benefits of Globalization: Why More for South Korea than Mexico?

ABSTRACT

This article examines the arguments for globalization and analyzes Mexico’s “maquiladora experience,” which indicates that globalization alone does not bring about a higher standard of living. The primary reason that Mexico has not benefitted as much as might be expected from globalization has to do with the poor quality of its governance, referring especially to public administration. This assertion is supported by a comparison of Mexico and South Korea. In explaining South Korea’s greater success, Political Elasticity (PE) theory is introduced, suggesting that political power needs to become elastic in two meanings of this word: a “rubber band” meaning (referring to the ability of leaders to delegate power without losing or diminishing it) and “a balloon meaning” (having to do with the ability of leaders to reliably influence the behavior of the general public). Based upon studies of rural and industrial development, South Korea is shown to be more politically elastic than Mexico. This article concludes by examining the lessons that Mexico can learn from Korea’s experience.