Eastern Bloc Countries Research Articles

Homo pavlovius: Cinema, Conditioning, and the Cold War Subject

Edward Hunter, the man popularly credited with coining the term brainwashing , had a deep appreciation of the power of his new construct. In his book on this new form of mind control, first published in 1951 and then expanded on in 1956, he referred often to the “eerie sensation” this term inspired in him. 1 Many Americans shared this sensation in the first decade of the Cold War. The fear and fascination surrounding the term brainwashing presumably stemmed from the conviction that in this uncanny phenomenon the totalitarian enemy revealed its true face. If a name was needed to accompany that face, Hunter supplied that as well. The ultimate source of the “eerie sensation” emanating from behind the Iron Curtain was identified by Hunter as Ivan Pavlov, the Nobel Prize‐winning scientist and inventor of the methods the Soviets and their allies were allegedly employing on American prisoners of war (POWs) in Korea, on prominent dissidents in Eastern bloc coun tries, and on a mass scale on their own citizens. Hunter saw evidence of a deep connection between the POW camps and Pavlov’s experiments on reflex condition ing, and he furthermore claimed that the “Chinese, as a race, are undergoing mind treatment inside a Great Pavlovian Wall.” 2 From the start the problems both with Hunter’s account of brainwashing and with his picture of Pavlov as the mastermind behind it were readily apparent. Not the least of these was that Pavlov had never been a Bolshevik, and his most impor tant research had been carried out before the Bolsheviks came to power. The exact nature of the relation between Pavlovian conditioning and brainwashing was also problematic, as was, some skeptics suggested, the entire concept of brainwashing. Despite such skepticism, Hunter’s construct proved remarkably resilient—attesting not just to the skill with which the journalist and intelligence operative had woven his account but also to the degree to which it tapped into deep undercurrents of anxiety in the contemporary public. Joost Meerloo, a Dutch psychiatrist who taught

Review: Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design by Greg Castillo

Book Review| September 01 2011 Review: Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design by Greg Castillo Greg Castillo. Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 2010, 312 pp., 97 b/w illus. $24.95, ISBN 9780816646920 Pat Kirkham Pat Kirkham Bard Graduate Center Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2011) 70 (3): 387–388. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2011.70.3.387 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Pat Kirkham; Review: Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design by Greg Castillo. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 September 2011; 70 (3): 387–388. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2011.70.3.387 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians Search Written in a lively and engaging manner, Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design is a major contribution to our understanding of Cold War propaganda, particularly as it played out in post—World War II Germany around issues of modern living and the availability of goods. Although the book focuses on the "soft power" of particular types of persuasion, the "hard" politics of the United States' effort to maintain world supremacy and the Eastern Bloc countries' attempt to counteract them underpins the exhibitions of model homes and furnishings discussed by Castillo. He situates the home and home furnishings at the center of the ideological battles between the United States and the USSR at a time when "America unleashed the largest international propaganda effort ever mounted in a time of peace" (24). Marshall Plan officials sought to persuade Europeans of the benefits of capitalism, characterized by an... You do not currently have access to this content.

When Formal Organisations Meet Informal Relations in Soviet Lithuania: Action Nets, Networks and Boundary Objects in the Construction of the Lithuanian Sea Museum

This study considers organisation in countries under the Soviet regime. The focus is on the creation of the Sea Museum in Klaipėda from the 1960s to the 1980s, a massive undertaking that required huge capital investments, use of rare foreign materials, cooperation between many different sectors (Soviet military, heritage preservation, seaport management, seagoing fishing vessels and zoos in Eastern bloc countries), and many innovations in designing the local sea aquarium system. The whole project was formally illegal: there was an all-union wide restriction on building so-called ‘spectator venues’. This article analyses the roles of formal and informal relations in the construction of the Sea Museum as a project concerning the public good. It suggests that the presence of informality did not undermine formal organising in the overtly centralised Soviet regime. Belonging to formal organisations was an important resource for actors who constructed action nets that went beyond the boundaries of these organisations. Although it is widely known that the successful functioning of formal organisations often depended on informal relations, this point raises complex questions about the identity and uniqueness of the Soviet system.

Urban Pattern Dichotomy in Tirana: Socio-spatial Impact of Liberalism

Transition from a centralized to a market economy yielded different responses from the former Eastern Bloc countries with economic performance directly affecting spatial composition of the cities. Post-socialist urban transformations across Central and Eastern Europe exhibit main, common features but always preserve singularities, characteristic of individual states. This paper, by using comparative methods and urban planning analyses, emphasizes differences in the degree of change for inner city areas under same transition conditions. Drawing on empirical evidence from Tirana, the paper stresses the fact that besides the obvious general change in the communism-inherited urban fabric, the degree of this change is predicated on the area's centrality and its pre-transitional urban pattern. It is pointed out that this spatial change follows a mutually interactive, parallel path with the socio-economic composition of the city. The peculiarity of Tirana stands in the fact that post-socialist socio-spatial transformations are better defined by Balkanization (implying individuality and hostility) rather than segregation (which implies clustering).

Conceptualising the Art of Communist Times

The relative neglect that art from the communist period of former Eastern Bloc countries suffers now has much to do with the dominant ideologies of the present and the consequent preconceptions and framings that have been retrospectively imposed. This article argues the need for critical analysis of such preconceptions and framings themselves, and of their ideological underpinnings. Three sections take up different modes of retrospective disposal of art from the communist Eastern Bloc: the first discusses divisions between the ‘official’ and the ‘unofficial’ made for such art; the second focuses on the overdetermination of the schism between pre‐1989 and post‐1989, or loosely the before and after of the 1980s; and the third analyses influential accounts of ‘totalitarian art’ which developed primarily in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The latter, it is argued, are not merely accounts of totalitarianism but are also totalistic themselves.

Abrupt transition of the northwestern Black Sea shelf ecosystem from a eutrophic to an alternative pristine state

Long-term (1960-2005) ecological data were used to identify a regime shift in the north- western Black Sea shelf and to assess whether it has recovered from its former eutrophic state. Fol- lowing the collapse of fish stocks and the population explosion of the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi between 1988 and 1991, anthropogenic P-PO4 loads from the River Danube dropped strongly in 1992-1993. This decline in P-PO4 levels was caused by reductions in fertilizer use and emissions from land-based point sources during the economic recession of former Eastern Bloc countries, as well as by the low discharge rate of the River Danube. Commencing in 1993, the phosphate limitation apparently maintained a low-energy, inefficient food web dominated by the dinoflagellate Noctiluca scintillans and jellyfish, and relatively low levels of phytoplankton, bacterioplankton, mesozoo- plankton and fish. This 'post-eutrophication' regime was markedly different from the classical phytoplankton-mesozooplankton-fish chain of the similarly low nutrient 'pre-eutrophication' regime prior to 1970. Therefore it appears that the food web can attain 2 alternative regimes during periods of low productivity of the ecosystem. The post-eutrophication state cannot be considered as a major improvement or restoration of the northwestern coastal ecosystem.

The Official Record and the Receptive Field: Zlatyu Boyadzhiev in Communist Times

This paper begins by observing that art from former Eastern Bloc countries which was celebrated and received official approval within the communist period tends to be neglected now. However, the role that such art played at the time was more complex than is currently presumed. By way of illustrating this, the paper first gives details of art policy during the communist period in Bulgaria, and then examines closely the reception of Zlatyu Boyadzhiev’s (19031976) highly regarded paintings in his lifetime. An account is given of the often unexpected ways in which his paintings (especially from the later period)were perceived as disturbing closelylinked aesthetic and ideological expectations, and how critics dealt with such perceptions.

The Politics of Travel and the Creation of a European Society

Reflecting on debates concerning the influx of Eastern Bloc travellers, refugees, and immigrants to East Germany in 1990, this contribution details the development and the legacy of the so-called “borders of friendship”, an open border project in the 1970s and 1980s between Eastern Bloc countries, which allowed citizens to travel without visa or passport. As early as 1972, tens of millions of citizens from Poland, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia were travelling to neighbouring countries, either in a genuine attempt to foster “friendship” between nations, but usually in order to pursue unorthodox pleasures. Contrary to commonplace views of life behind the “Iron Curtain”, travel was more liberal before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when changes precipitated by the sudden collapse of state socialism led to a rapid shift in both the discourse concerning and the practice of travel across Europe.

English in Slovenia: status, functions, and features

ABSTRACTSlovenia, like many former Eastern bloc countries, is now coming to terms with the increasing popularity of English.Today English is the most widely used foreign language in Europe. It is used in business, education, science, the media, advertisements, music, graffiti, and in many other places, although its greatest use can be found in commerce, culture, science and education (Phillipson, 2003). The presence of English is felt more in some parts of Europe than in others, however. In the Scandinavian countries, for example, English manifests itself in all parts of society and the knowledge of English is so high that some consider it a second language (McArthur, 1996). In Eastern Europe, the acquisition and use of English has traditionally not been as widespread, although in recent years, the picture has changed greatly, as English has become more and more popular in what were formerly Eastern bloc countries.In many ways Slovenia has been following the trends in other Central and Eastern European countries. The influence of English has been growing since the Second World War and in particular after the end of the Cold War. Its influence has intensified even more after Slovenia became an independent country. Today, Slovenes feel both cautious and enthusiastic about English. There is extensive legislation to protect the Slovene language, while at the same time there is a ‘certain enthusiasm for both “western” ideas and the world language, English’ (Schlick, 2003: 4).

The Rhetoric of Pravda Editorials: A Diachronie Study of a Political Genre. Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm Slavic Studies, 33 by Ludmila P�ppel (review)

REVIEWS 73I seemto illustrate in facta strong case forbilingualism in Moldova - buta sortof sectoralbilingualism, in whichcertainlanguagestakeprevalencein particular settings. It should,however, be notedthatthe detailedethnographic and survey observations are often farmoreusefulthantheauthor'sreferences to game theory and languagecascades(pp. 31,50-52).The individual choicepremise forthesemodels runs counterto the explicitrelationalcharacterof the languagesas used in practice.Rather,individuals are continually confronted withstructures in languageuse,suchas setting-based normsofappropriatenessand network constraints. At thesame time,Ciscel does quiteconvincingly outlinehowindividuals manageto operateas widelyas possiblewithin theconstraints ofthiscomplexstructural environment (pp. 142-43). One of Ciscel's clearestexamplesof some individual agencyin resisting constraints appearsinthefactthateveryday languagepractice differs substantially fromofficial politicsand policy.Those ofall mother tongueslivingin Moldova tendto be quiteawareofthe'championship ofofficial patriotism' thatsurrounds theminthewordsofpoliticians, and tendtobe morepractical thanpurist in theireveryday languageuse. Whileofficial languagepolitics is strongly tied to power struggles in Moldova (pp. 53-57), Ciscel's surveys illustrate thatindividuallanguageuse and politicalstancesare less closely related thanonemight expect, and thata sortoflinguistic 'muddling through' is morethenormin everyday life.These insights on theactualpracticeof languageuse in mixedregions, alongwiththeimportance ofnetworks and context and thepersistence oflanguagehierarchies, providefruitful foundationsforfurther research. Those interested in thesesociolinguistic dynamics and prospects forpeacefullocal coexistence can learnmuchfrom thisbook. UCL Sherrill Strosghein Pöppel, Ludmila. TheRhetoric ofPravdaEditorials: A Diachronie Study ofa Political Genre. Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm Slavic Studies,33. Department ofSlavicLanguagesand Literatures, Stockholm,2007. 306 pp. Tables. Notes. Bi Biographical notes.Index.SEK 310.00(paperbac ,Stockholm University, bliography.Appendix. :k). lHE languageoí bovietjournalismchangedconsiderably Irom 1917 until thecollapseoftheSovietUnion in 1991.Based on no existing modelother thanthepre-Revolutionary oppositional and often underground press,Soviet journalism was largely starting from scratch. Moreover, thenewrepublic had to contendwithenormousunheavalsin thenost-Revolutionarv neriodthat 1 1 j 1 threatened itsveryexistence. Againstthisbackdrop,it is hardlysurprising thatthenewly forged journalistic style, catering toreaders manyofwhomhad onlyrecently becomeliterate, shouldbe fresh, innovative, stylistically all over theplace and above all unstable.Once things settled down,so too did the languageof the press.That thisstabilizing of the situation in the country coincided withtheriseofStalinresulted ina stylistically fixed languageofthe 732 SEER, 87, 4, OCTOBER 2OOg presswhosemainaimswereto glorify Stalin,denigrate hisperceivedopponentsand either grossly distort orhidefrom readersthebrutalrealities ofhis government. That theclimate offearinthecountry, toputitat itsmildest, discouraged stylistic innovationamongjournalistsis certainly the case, and this too contributed to the forging of a particular rigidity in style,thoughstylistic inflexibility is commonplaceand to a degreeessential fornewspapers anywherein anyculture ifjournalism is to 'work'.Without thebenefit ofstylistic shorthand - in effect journalistic clichés- readerswouldhavetofacetheir dailynewspaper as theymight a novel.Readerssimply do nothave timeto analysetheveracity orotherwise ofeach set-phrase theycomeacross,so that a Soviet cliché such as 'moguchaiasplochennost'[.. .] vokrugKommunisticheskoi partii'('themighty cohesion[.. .] surrounding the Communist party')(p. 152)is as trueor falseas thephrase'theWar on terror'. Readers mayormaynotagreewiththeassumptions embeddedin a givencliché,but theyknowmoreor lesswhatthenewspaperis referring to. Whethersuch clichés actually contribute tobrain-washing thereadership intobelieving what thesesetphrasessayis anotherquestion.Probably, somereadersdo, others do not.These questionslie at the heartof LudmilaPöppel's studyof the rhetoric ofPravda editorials from the1920sthrough the1950s. Pöppel's claim is thatover thisperiod 'the languageof revolution was gradually transformed intototalitarian language'(p. 255).While the actual substance ofthebookis a comprehensive, incisive, rigorously carriedoutand extremely useful study ofthecompendium ofrhetorical devicesemployed in Pravda editorials overtheperiod,theassertion thattheseriesofstylistic shifts constituted a transformation into'totalitarian' languageis perhapsopen to question.That theearlyrhetoric reflected thepost-Revolutionary conditions pertaining in thecountry is undoubtedly true.It is similarly uncontroversial to statethatthelanguageofthepressunderStalinreflected his dictatorial style.But to call thislatterstyle'totalitarian' is problematic. Surely,ifone wantedto givethislanguagea name,it wouldbe moreaccurateto call it something like'Stalinist' todistinguish itfrom thepresslanguagebothbefore and after Stalin. Since itsinitialuse in the 1950s,theterm'totalitarian' has fallenin and outoffashion among,chiefly, politicalscientists, who continue to disputeits meaning.Since the 1990sthewordhas enjoyedsomething of a revivalin particular amonghistorians and polemicists from theformer Sovietrepublics and Eastern bloccountries. In thislatest usage,thewordisoften employed in an undiscriminating sensetodescribe theentire Sovietperiod.Hereinliesthe mainproblem withtheword:itmeansdifferent things to different people. The difficulty withtheterm'totalitarian' as appliedtolanguageisthatitis liketheclichésPöppelso clinically dissects and classifies: itisnotan objective truth. Justas 'velichaishii triumf vsepobezhdaiushchego ucheniiamarksizmaleninizma '('the magnificent triumphof the all-conquering teachingsof Marxism-Leninism') (p. 49) is a boastfulassertion ratherthan a verifiable truth, so terms suchas 'totalitarian language'and,elsewhere, 'languede bois, totalitäre Sprache,thelanguageofdictatorship, nowamowa,novoiaz,Betonstil ,Lingua Sovietica'(p. 49) are political judgmentsratherthanlinguistic reviews 733 factsand belongmore properly to the genreofpublitsistika, perhapseven zhurnalisitika, thanstylistics, rhetoric or linguistics. Thisperhapsill-advised theoretical packaging shouldnot...

No place for Peace-Mongers: Charlie Chaplin, Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and Czechoslovak Communist Propaganda

During the escalation of the Cold War, Hollywood stars were framed in Czechoslovak Communist propaganda as possessing two qualities. Firstly, they were perceived in this most Western Soviet satelli...

Religious Reestablishment in Post-Communist Polities

After the collapse of the atheistic Soviet Union and Communist party-dominated countries in Central and Eastern Europe, many analysts predicted that as new governments ushered in laws guaranteeing religious freedom, a new religious pluralism would result. Public opinion surveys conducted during the first years of postsocialism confirmed that throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet successor states, there was a resurgence in belief in God and life after death, as well as reports of increased levels of church attendance, particularly among the younger generations. Two decades after the collapse, however, post-communist countries have not become bastions of religious diversity or practice, and religious relations mirror those of a century past, when traditional ethnic churches dominated the landscape. How can we explain what appears to be religious reestablishment across the postcommunist countries? What developments have contributed to stalled progress in the realm of religious freedom? When the communist parties that controlled the Eastern bloc countries fell along with the Soviet Union and new “democratic” movements embarked on the mission of writing new constitutions and establishing representative institutions, many countries adopted legislation that significantly liberalized the field of religious freedom. Initially, this liberalization allowed for traditional

Roma rights on the world wide web

This article addresses contemporary Roma rights issues in Central and Eastern Europe by exploring the relationship between internet technologies and the discourses surrounding human rights and the post-socialist transition. Because the Roma are a transnational European minority ethnic group, they have been used as a 'test case' by western human rights groups to evaluate minority rights in post-socialist nations. The article highlights the role of new media technologies in redirecting concerns about the lack of human rights in Europe as a whole to the former Eastern bloc countries. It draws attention to the limits of western liberal discourses and new media technologies to redress racial and material discrimination against the Roma.

An Index of Child Well-Being in Europe

This is a comparison of child well-being in the 27 countries of the European Union and Norway and Iceland. It is based on 43 indicators forming 19 components derived from administrative and survey data around 2006. It covers seven domains: health, subjective well-being, personal relationships, material resources, education, behaviour and risks, housing and the environment. Comparisons are made of countries performance on each of the domains and components. Overall child well-being is highest in the Netherlands which is also the only country to perform in the top third of countries across all domains. Child well-being is worst in the former Eastern bloc countries with the exception of Slovenia. Lithuania performs in the bottom third on all domains. The United Kingdom does notably badly given its level of national wealth. The index is subjected to sensitivity analysis and analysis is undertaken to explain variations in child well-being. We find that there are positive associations between child well-being and spending on family benefits and services and GDP per capita, a negative association with inequality and no association with the prevalence of ‘broken’ families.

From psychoanalysis to epidemiology: autobiographical notes

From psychoanalysis to epidemiology: autobiographical notes

Julius Erich Wess

Julius Erich Wess

The Defense Policy of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic Since 1989: Stages, Milestones, Challenges, Priorities, and Lessons Learned

The end of the Cold War dramatically changed the perception of international security and the subsequent formulation of security and defense policies in both Western and Eastern bloc countries. The newly established political leadership in the formerly communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe had to struggle to adapt their defense policies to a new politico-strategic environment while dealing with the many challenges of democratic governance. Furthermore, the transformation of these states also required a transition from a centrally-planned economy to free market structures. The Czechoslovak Federal Republic (CSFR)—known since 1 January 1993 (after its peaceful dissolution) as the Czech Republic (CR)—was no exception to this process. The CSFR’s primary goal after the Velvet Revolution was to establish a liberal democracy and a free market economy in the light of Western political and economic values. Ensuring external and internal security has been always seen as an integral part of those overall objectives; thus, the key steps of the transition from communism in the Czech Republic were profoundly connected with security and defense policy formulation and its execution. This essay examines the main drivers shaping the defense policy of the CSFR and CR since 1989. It also charts its evolution in the form of defense sector reforms. This project also identifies the most important lessons learned, which may be useful for future defense policy formulation and execution in small and medium-size countries that are undergoing the process of military transformation as an integral part of their overall democratization. For the purpose of this project, “defense policy” is understood as a program for defending a country against its enemies and as a set of all necessary precautions taken by one state in order to safeguard and strengthen its external security. Defense policy is a process, with objectives and priorities. The political leadership of the CSFR and CR has always strived to adopt a liberal defense policy that reflects developments in the national and international security environment, national values and interests, and that

Democracy Performed—Setting the Record Straight: A Critical Response to "Performing Democracy—Bulgarian Music and Musicians in Transition" by Donna Buchanan

Democracy Performed? Setting the Record Straight: A Critical Response to Performing Democracy? B ulgarian Music and Musicians in Transition byDonna Buchanan Gregory Myers and Anna Levy The publication Performing Democracy?Bulgarian Music and Music ians in Transition byUniversity of Illinois ethnomusicologist Donna Buchanan should be awelcome occasion; not only does itdocument the musical lifeof a country that receives scant attention in Western schol arly circles, but its appearance coincided with Bulgaria's auspicious entry into the European Union along with Romania on January 1, 2007. 150 PerspectivesofNew Music Buchanan's ethnomusicological skills are superb, especially when describing folk instruments and their tunings, and her reportage of the rise of the professional folk music ensembles is first class. In this, her book makes a real contribution to the study of Bulgaria's music. But her ethnomusicological focus is, ironically, part of themuch larger and more serious problem with this book. For too long Bulgaria's musical heritage has been the sole purview of the ethnomusicologist, to the complete exclusion of any serious consideration of its long-standing and active role in the modernist musical movements of the twentieth century. Thus the country has been shrouded by myth?one perpetuated by the popularity in theWest of groups like Le mystere des voix Bulgares?as a mystical agrarian society bereft of any artmusic traditions. Bulgaria's musical reality is quite the opposite. Along with its former Eastern Bloc allies, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Romania, and to a much greater extent than the former Soviet Union, Bulgaria not only kept abreast of new musical trends following World War II, but was an active participant in these varied musical developments. Bulgaria's avant-garde produced music that, by any standard, should be considered to be on the cutting edge of Western musical thinking within the broader context of contemporary Europe. Buchanan's study ignores these developments. Instead of offering a substantive and comprehensive survey of Bulgarian music and musicians, as her title promises, Buchanan has produced a dated and lopsided study that only perpetuates the cozy myths about this small Balkan nation. She attempts to cover nearly every aspect of Bulgarian life: cultural, political, social, musical, and so forth, all set against the backdrop of the origins of Bulgaria's professional folkmusic ensembles. The result is a series of mistakes, discrepancies, and wrong conclusions, four hundred pages of unwieldy political diatribes, naive and gratuitous homilies, historical recollections, and personal travel log, all unevenly juxtaposed and mixed inwith unimpeachable ethnomusicology.1 While the daily chronicling of the author's trials and tribulations of field research in any of the former Eastern Bloc countries can only elicit empathy, even a certain nostalgia, for the 'bad old days' from those of us who have experienced it, a scholarly publication is hardly the place for such personal reminiscences, especially one that sports such an all-encompassing tide as Buchanan's. The University of Chicago Press must also share some of the criticism, for they do not have any Bulgarian scholars on the editorial board of this ethnomusicological series.2 Had there been such outside oversight, many of themonograph's inherent problems might have been avoided. The book's packaging is also unsatisfactory; there are no illustrations in Democracy Performed 151 the paperback edition, and too few musical examples. Instead of illustrations,we are presented with pages ofwordy descriptions. Buchanan's problems begin with the very title, Performing Demo cracy, and the accompanying mission statement: Indeed, more than in any other East European country, Bulgaria's professional ensemble musicians acted as vibrant, celebrated icons of their country's democratization, both at home and abroad. While the tides of recent political change were marked elsewhere by gov ernmental figures such as Havel, Gorbachev, and Walesa, in Bul garia the performance activities and styles of groups such as Balkana, Bulgari, Ivo Papazov and His Wedding Orchestra, and the State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir associated with the recordings and tours known as Le mystere des voix Bulgares func tioned not only as prominent harbingers, but as agents of political transition.3 To include Bulgaria's village musicians among the great political reformers of the 1980s and 1990s is not only...

Ballerinas and Pixies: a Genealogy of the Changing Female Gymnastics Body

Until the late 1960s, women's artistic gymnastics consisted of mature women performing gentle ballet-type exercises that were emotionally expressive and graceful. During the 1970s, however, the gymnasts' performances and bodies changed dramatically. Young and sexually undeveloped gymnasts began to execute acrobatic- and risk-driven routines that consisted of complex air-bound combinations of gymnastics elements. The trend to acrobatics emerged in the former Soviet Union. Within this specific political context, a highly competitive, ambitious and ingenious sporting atmosphere fostered the development of the acrobatic trend in the Eastern Bloc countries and later in the West. Analyses of the 1964 and 1975 International Code of Points (Code) and specific descriptions of the physical appearance and winning floor routine of Czechoslovakian Vera Caslavska at the 1968 Olympic Games and that of Romanian Nadia Comaneci at the 1976 Games, demonstrate the differing gymnastics styles. Interviews, academic literature, popular texts and Internet sites help explain the developments. Michel Foucault's genealogical research methodology and ‘analytic’ of modern relations of power assist in this pursuit, revealing a particular history of social change.

Secularism and Christianity: Caritas in the Thought of Gianni Vattimo and Pope Benedict XVI

In the aftermath of the fall of the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe for a generation, with the subsequent accession of former Eastern Bloc countries to the European Union and the drastic changes within the demographics of Western Europe, Europe has witnessed an unparalleled intensity of debates about its own identity. The question of religion and its role in modern, secular European, societies has emerged as a virtually ubiquitous component of these debates. Although the renewed controversy about the role of religion in European public life is a multi-layered and complex phenomenon, the discussions inevitably allude, often implicitly, to the function of Christianity in the construal of European identities.