National Liberation Research Articles

Aleksander Łappa (1802-1869) – ostatni marszałek szlachty guberni mińskiej z wyboru. Część II: Gubernialny marszałek szlachty (1859-1863)

Alexander Łappa held the rank of the Minsk Governorate Marshal of Nobility during a period of widespread social transformations in the Russian Empire and a national and political crisis in the Kingdom of Poland and the Western Governorates. Trying to promote his multifaceted program of reforms in the Belarusian-Lithuanian lands, he relied on deep dialogue with the liberal bureaucratic circles of the Imperial Government and, at the same time, rejected conspiratorial, armed and other kinds of adventurous forms of the national liberation struggle. The polarization among the nobles of the Minsk Governorate increased after the scandalous Noble Elections of 1862. It was aggravated after the outbreak of the January Uprising in the Kingdom of Poland and, connected with it, the growing repressive policy of the civil and military authorities. All of these factors caused Łappa to lose influence in the socio-political life of the nobility and voluntarily resign from his position as marshal.

Государственное устройство Имамата Шейха Мансура: основные черты и особенности становления властных структур

At the end of the XVIII century, the peoples of the North Caucasus began a national liberation struggle against the colonization policy of tsarism. The highlanders, led by the first Imam of the Caucasus, Sheikh Mansur, for the first time in Modern history, attempted to create a single. Caucasian Islamic state. Based on the analysis of scientific publications of domestic and foreign researchers, the author made an attempt to summarize the information available in them about the state structure of the Imamate Sheikh Mansur and highlight the main features and features of the formation of his power structures.

“Zapatista” as a Case of Impossible Identification: Subjectification in Rancière and the EZLN

The Zapatista movement that went public on January 1st, 1994, as a national liberation army occupying several towns in Chiapas, Mexico had long-lasting effects. Apart from inspiring other movements all over the world, the Zapatista movement introduced an alternative to the objective of taking political power through electoral victory or armed struggle. The alternative politics in question was based on equality that entailed a subjectification process. In this way, what allowed for the emergence of the alternative was, in Rancière's terms, politics as subject formation against the police order that attributes the proper places of the parts of society as well as defining the parts themselves. While there is a constant risk of cooptation of the moment of politics by the police order, the continuous subject formation through impossible identification in the Zapatista movement could make the movement the movement of all the excluded by reflecting the struggles of the other excluded groups into the movement and reflecting the movement into those other struggles. Key Words: Zapatista Movement, Jacques Rancière, Politics, Subjectification, Impossible Identification JEL Classification: H77, P32

Decolonization and the Cold War

Throughout the Cold War era, the United States and the Soviet Union frequently faced the dilemma of whether to recognize or to confer legitimacy upon armed insurgencies vying to overturn established civil authority. The superpower conflict, at once ideological and geopolitical, came to encompass the entire globe by the 1950s, with the Third World emerging as the chief zone of competition between the two superpowers--as well as the main source and site of non-state armed groups. The potential transformations of these armed groups into governments threatened to alter the prevailing balance of regional and global power. Policymakers in Washington and Moscow, consequently, needed to calculate carefully how the granting of de jure or de facto recognition to a particular armed insurgency, or the accordance of some form of legitimacy to it, might affect broader Cold War goals. Why did the United States and the Soviet Union, this essay asks, choose to recognize some insurgencies, deny recognition to others, and actively oppose still others? How, for their part, did these various armed, non-state actors seek to gain support, recognition, and legitimacy from one, or both, of the superpowers? What factors best explain their relative successes or failures in those endeavors? the present article explores those larger questions by focusing specifically on armed decolonization movements, arguably the most common and most consequential of the non-state, armed groups that emerged throughout the post-1945 period. In each of the cases examined here, the superpowers sought to shape the outcome of the decolonization struggle, offering, or withholding military support and diplomatic recognition as a weapon of influence. In each case, the aspiring national liberation movement deployed a combination of armed strength and diplomatic advocacy in a bid for legitimacy and recognition, seeing the support of one or both superpowers as instrumental to the overarching goal of full-fledged sovereignty and acceptance within the prevailing international state-based system.

The Crises in Post-War Education in Cluj

"This article aims to analyse the education system in the city of Cluj during the post-war period, after World War 2, with a close focus on the period of time between 1944 and 1948. It's a period characterized by a series of successive crises resulting from political decisions. These decisions affected all levels of education, all ethnic and religious groups in the region, as well as the political opponents to the newly established communist regime of the Romanian Communist Party, primarily represented by these three political parties: the National Peasants' Party, the National Liberal Party, and the Socialist Party. Throughout the research into education within this time period, a combination of methods were used, including historical, comparative and statistical methods, and the sources used refer to both official and unofficial archived documents, contemporary press, and edited documents. Keywords: crises, communism, education, Cluj, democratization, reform"

On the True Men and Women, and Rebel Beetles: Utopia as Revolutionary Method and Practice in the Zapatista Tales of Subcomandante Marcos

In 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) took up arms in Mexico against the daily oppressions and injustices faced by Indigenous Mexicans in neo-colonial political systems and juridical orders tailored to their discrimination and economic exploitation. The EZLN soon broadened its demands from local Indigenous Mexicans to encompass other socials groups oppressed by global neoliberalism. The mestizo spokesperson of the EZLN, Subcomandante Marcos, accordingly employed a comprehensive communication strategy fundamentally involving storytelling and myth-making. This paper will outline a revolutionary utopian method capable of informing anti-colonial practices emerging from Marcos’ stories, which ultimately envisage a world capable of holding other worlds by reinvigorating democracy and enriching our current conceptions of justice.

OLD UKRAINIAN MYTHOLOGY IN OLEH OLZHYCH’S LYRICS

Ukrainian modernists, in particular Prague School poets, sought to actualize the old Ukrainian mythology in their writings and reinterpret it as a starting point for existence. Relying on the tradition of neoromanticism and neoclassicism, they created a unique style that reflected the experience of defeat in the national liberation war and emigration. This style was an attempt to form a new identity that would maintain continuity with the glorious past and meet the requirements of the time. The poets aimed to establish a new way of thinking that would influence the nation’s worldview, self-determination, and will to struggle. A scrupulous analysis of the elements from old Ukrainian mythology in Oleh Olzhych’s lyrics is crucial for a comprehensive interpretation of his texts. Oleh Olzhych’s poems are saturated with old Ukrainian mythological archetypes, images, and plots that have become a fundamental part of his literary model of the world. The published poems from his books “Pebble” (“Rin”, 1935), “Towers” (“Vezhi”, 1940), and “Pidzamcha” (1946), as well as works beyond these collections, have been analyzed with the use of mythocritical method. Mythologemes, being minimal semantic units of text referring to myths, are typically positioned prominently within the texts.
 The relevant archetypes and images in Oleh Olzhych’s lyrics include the Great Mother, the World Tree, a complex of solar imagery, mediators, and direct references to the gods and creatures of old Ukrainian myths. The old Ukrainian mythology in Oleh Olzhych’s poems accumulates ontological, existential, and value knowledge, appealing to the collective unconscious and being one of the formative components of his worldview.

African women’s trajectories and the Casa dos Estudantes do Império

ABSTRACT This article compares the trajectories of different women who crossed the Casa dos Estudantes do Império (CEI), a formal institution created in Lisbon by students from the colonies with the support of the Portuguese dictatorial regime in 1944, that became a platform for anti–colonialism. Due to the role played by the CEI in the political and social paths of the leaders of African national liberation movements, historiography has privileged masculine accounts. In contrast, the roles and lives of women linked to the CEI remain unexplored or approached from a vision of “methodological nationalism”, with few exceptions. Addressing these trajectories from a transnational and “Afro–Iberian” lens and through the scrutiny of several sources allows us to reflect on a diversity of gender, race, class, and political ideology. The final aim is to illuminate some aspects of the Afro–Iberian mosaic from a gendered and postcolonial perspective.

Some issues of the national liberation movement in Turkestan in the legacy of Mustafa Shokay

Relevance. The history of the Turkestan uprising in the works of Mustafa Shokay is rather poorly researched, especially the biographical writings that covered these processes were barely analysed. The Turkestan uprising of 1916 is a grey area in historiography, and the study of Mustafa Shokay's writings for the interpretation of those events is still relevant nowadays. Purpose. The purpose of this study is to investigate the writings of Mustafa Shokay for the interpretation of the 1916 uprising, to trace the processes and causes that followed, and to examine Mustafa Shokay's role in the Muslim faction - which was important in clarifying the issue. Methodology. The study used a variety of historical methods and approaches to analyse and select information regarding the issue of the uprising in Turkestan in the works of Mustafa Shokay. The research also made wide use of methods of analysis and synthesis, general methods of scientific cognition, and methods of empirical investigation. The historical-comparative, retrospective and abstractive methods made it possible to reconstruct and model the processes on the days before the uprising in Turkestan, and its consequences, in as much detail as possible. The study analysed Mustafa Shokay's work, his role in these processes, and his views on all the processes that occurred in Turkestan during the uprising. Results/Conclusions. Based on the results of the study, the following conclusions were made: the role of Mustafa Shokay in the Turkestan uprising of 1916 is implicit, his standpoint of this event is insufficiently studied by modern historians, which gives grounds to consider his writings as another important source for the coverage of those events. However, it is Mustafa Shokay's work in the 1916 uprising commission and his biographical notes from that time that provide valuable and complete information for a comprehensive consideration of the issue.

Identification of captured soldiers of the tsarist army based on nationality in Austria-Hungary, 1915: separation of Ukrainians

The article summarizes the process of identifying and separating Ukrainians from tsarist army soldiers who were captured by the Austrian-Hungarian forces. In 1915, such efforts were initiated by members of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine (ULU) who surveyed camp inmates and compiled a list of prisoners willing to move to a Ukrainian camp in Freistadt. The procedure was complex because many inmates supported the imperial ideology, including the Black Hundreds and Little Russians who exerted psychological pressure on the prisoners and attempted to prevent communication between the Ukrainians and the ULU envoys. The compiled lists of Ukrainian nationals laid long-lasting foundations for the ULU’s efforts to unite Ukrainians and establish a community of Ukrainian activists, albeit a small one, who were willing to risk their lives and carry out the difficult task of spreading national liberation ideas not only in POW camps, but also on Ukrainian lands in Russia. Owing to the ULU’s efforts, Ukrainian prisoners were transferred to the camp in Freistadt which was the center of Ukrainian life in 1915–1918.

Africans in London: Chronicle of the Union of West African Students

Research interest in the problems of the young generation of the countries of the African continent, including students, has noticeably increased over the last decades. The student youth, called the “conscience of the nation” in African countries, for a long time has been one of the most organized streams of the democratic movement and continues to play a prominent role in national processes. However, the student movement is a very complex and contradictory phenomenon, feeding numerous hotbeds and centers of intense search for national identity and struggle for their rights and freedoms. The authors of this article saw their task in an objective examination of the experience of one of the most famous and authoritative student organizations, mainly in the historical and cultural context. The article is dedicated to the history of the Union of West African Students’ Union (WASU) – one of the largest organizations of African students who lived and studied in Great Britain in the first half of the 20th century. The historical and cultural perspective of representation was not chosen by the authors of the article by chance. The activities of the WASU are closely connected with the problems of the national liberation movement in West Africa, though it also performed various tasks to protect the interests and rights of students in London and in the UK and therefore holds a key place in the history of the African Diaspora. The authors examine in detail the stages of the ideological and political formation and development of the WASU – from the Union of Students of African Descent, which existed in London at the turn of the second and the third decades of the 20th century, to the extinction of the WASU in the early 1960s. The authors show that for all its weaknesses, mistakes, theoretical immaturity and eclecticism of ideological attitudes, it was the WASU that had formed the anti-colonial agenda in Africa implemented during the national liberation struggle at the turn of 1950–60s in most countries on the continent. In a number of countries in West Africa, after the declaration of independence, former members and leaders of the Union came to power. Among them are Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972), Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904–1996), etc. The authors offer a new look at the phenomenon of African students, who were equally capable to fight for their interests and the interests of the nation and at the same time expressed conformist sentiments to the colonial authorities and post-colonial reality.

American evangelical nationalism: history, status quo, and outlook

Evangelical nationalism is a new manifestation of American nationalism in the twenty-first century. Internally, it advocates the integration of national identity and Christian faith, claiming that “America is a Christian nation”. Externally, it pursues the “America First” and isolationist foreign policy. The early religious, political and social activities of evangelicals were mainly embodied in the religious revival called the Great Awakening. The rise of the Moral Majority in the 1970s and 1980s represented an essential exercise in or attempt at evangelical nationalism. The election of Donald Trump as president in 2016 marked the development of conservatism, such as evangelicalism in the U.S., from a religiously conservative force to a full-blown nationalism. Evangelical nationalism rose in the context of response to dramatically changing internal and external environments, the adjustment of traditional conservative strategies, the revival of white racism, the interplay between civic and ethnic nationalism, and the crisis of modernity. On the one hand, the momentum of evangelical nationalism will diminish with the relative alleviation of conflicts both within and outside the U.S., the corresponding adjustment of conservative strategies, and especially the growth of the civic nationalist camp. On the other hand, from the perspective of “identity and ultimate belief”, although the identity problem characterized by the “culture war” will be relatively relieved with the mitigation of internal and external conditions, the United States, as a “Christian nation” underpinned by Christian culture and faith, will see evangelical nationalism resilient. Evangelical nationalism will continue to play an important role in the domestic and foreign affairs of the United States.

War and the Willingness to Resist and Fight in Ukraine

ABSTRACT This study explores the effects of Russia's use of military force on the Ukrainian willingness to fight and resist. We find assumptions from the theoretical literature on the willingness to fight of limited relevance. Instead, our analysis suggests that Ukrainian willingness to fight and resist correlates with (1) a growth in Ukrainian civic nationalism; (2) an increase in trust in Ukrainian political institutions, particularly the Ukrainian armed forces; and (3) a spread of the impressions that Ukraine is not alone in its struggle. We find little difference based on region and gender, but some on education and income.

British Edition of the Monroe Doctrine versus ‘Com- munist Militarism’: Collisions between the USSR and the UK in Eastern Countries in the mid-1920s

The new US foreign policy concept in the Western hemisphere introduced by the American President J. Monroe in December 1823 has become a milestone both in the country’s history and in the theory and practice of international relations in general. For Great Britain, the principles of the Monroe Doctrine acquired new relevance after the end of the First World War. The prospect of unfettered Bolshevik expansion into British colonies and dependent territories in Asia and Africa became a matter of particular concern for the UK ruling circles. It was this threat that forced the military and political elites of Great Britain to turn to the experience of their overseas counterparts and develop a set of measures that can be described as the British edition of the Monroe Doctrine. These measures were directed right against the Bolsheviks’ attempts to revolutionize the national liberation movement and to use it to undermine the ‘colonial rear’ of the imperialist powers. British decision-makers interpreted these attempts as a Bolsheviks’ endeavor to revive the foreign policy practices of the Russian Empire and denoted them as ‘communist militarism’. It is through the lens of the collision of the British edition of the Monroe Doctrine and the concept of ‘communist militarism’ that this study examines the dynamics of the Soviet-British confrontation in Central Asia in the mid-1920s. Special attention is paid to the struggle that took place between the two countries in Iran (Persia), Afghanistan, northwest India, Xinjiang and Tibet. This competition for influence over local rulers took a variety of forms: from information and propaganda campaigns to rivalry in the field of infrastructure and logistics projects. At the same time, it was accompanied by a constant clash of interests of various factions within the USSR and Great Britain, which prevented them from pursuing a coherent policy in the region. Together, these circumstances endowed the Soviet-British rivalry in Central Asia in the 1920s with a number of unique features that does not allow it to be interpreted as just yet another round of the ‘Great Game’.

‘To Defend the Nicaraguan Revolution is to defend Mexico’: Mexican solidarity with the Sandinista Revolution, 1974-82

ABSTRACT In the 1970s, a broad range of leftist dissidents in Mexico, from labour organisers to communists to gay liberation activists, took inspiration from and expressed their support for the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) of Nicaragua. This essay examines Sandinista solidarity in Mexico City in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, to shed new light on the contested meanings of ‘revolution’ in Mexico’s politics, society, and culture in the late Cold War period. Sandinismo resonated powerfully in Mexico for activists and politicians alike, for reasons having to do with Mexico’s own revolutionary history, as well as domestic and diplomatic challenges it faced in the present.

Planning in the Shadow of China

This article considers the influence of Maoist China on Tunisian development theory in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The shadow—or brilliant light—of the Chinese experience was evident in Tunisia by the late 1950s, where wide-scale agrarian reform within the People's Republic and the use of cooperatives and labor-intensive agricultural technologies to rationalize the use and allocation of labor were immensely impacting foreign technical attaches, young Tunisian economists and agronomists, and people at the periphery of state planning and within the state-funded university system and research centers. In reading these proposals against the grain, this article situates them in their social and political context and the constraints that context imposed: a hewing away from outright enthusiasm for Communist China within the state-funded research centers, and a warmer embrace within more independent fora. It also situates those discussions amid a Tunisian milieu wherein China was increasingly embraced for its support of Algerian national liberation, its own national liberation war, with its experience seen as a third way for the Third World against the industrial-heavy experience of the USSR.

Mothers and Children of the Republic of Srpska: Locating Nationalism in Pronatalist Discourse in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract Two phenomena have been present in multiethnic/multinational Bosnia and Herzegovina since its independence from SFR Yugoslavia: massive depopulation and strong nationalism(s). Although nationalism influences which nation/ethnic group should produce and how, the links connecting these nationalistic ideologies and pronatalist population policies in the country/entity have been, almost paradoxically, left on the margins of the previous studies. This paper asks to what extent nationalist ideologies are present in the pronatalist population policy discourse in the Serb-dominated entity Republic of Srpska and what nationalism it is. After developing Spectrum of Nationalism(s), a framework underlined by Siniša Malešević’s views on nationalism and ethnicity as ideologies, the paper provides an overview of Bosnia’s demographic processes and brief insights into Republic of Srpska pronatalist policies through a semi-structured literature review. Keeping in mind that media profoundly influences public opinion, discursively moulding policy debates, two most recent cases of pronatalist campaigns and programs in the Republic of Srpska: Let Our Children Be Born and National Programme of Demographic Revival, are analysed via critical discourse analysis (CDA). Selected media articles predominantly cover the period from 2018 onwards, concentrating on the commentaries of the ruling SNSD political nomenklatura. The analysis displays the powerful influence of nationalism on the discourse on population policies. However, on the spectrum of nationalism(s), civic nationalism seems only to be pro forma defined, while in RS’s reality, the abovementioned path has continued toward an ethnonationalism direction.

COMMENTARY – THE POST‐GLOBALIZATION OF SOUTH ASIA

Ironic as it may seem, one of the major victims of America's diplomatic retreat from Pakistan has been India. China has filled the void of U.S. disengagement, solidifying its grip on Pakistan and locking India in a two‐front vise that it cannot cope with on its own. India has no choice but to reach out for alliances with liberal nations it shunned in its Non‐Aligned days. This radical policy shift is capped, however, by the ideological constraints of Modi's BJPism. That is the main reason why India has refused to abort its military and economic ties with Russia. A similar anti‐liberalism led Imran Khan, the ex‐prime minister of Pakistan, to seek an anti‐Western accord with Russia. Conversely, Pakistan's current leadership is trying hard to repair its U.S. relations. Following the lead of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, this extended commentary favors robust U.S. engagement with all of South Asia but qualifies that case by stressing that the wrong kind of engagement would end up serving the cause of Sino‐authoritarianism. What is needed is moral realism, which avoids the ethical blight of both Kissingeresque realism and globalist irrealism. Pakistan is ripe for this post‐globalist realism because it affords no clean and neat “right” choices yet is far too important to abandon. Such cases compel us to search for lesser evils: the best available bad choices we can locate.

Military cartography of Serbian lands during the last Austro-Turkish war (1788–1791)

The Austro-Turkish War of 1788–1791 has not yet been properly reflected in scientific literature despite the fact that in a certain way this last conflict between the Ottomans and the Holy Roman Empire „awakened the Balkans” and became a catalyst for the national liberation movement of the Serbs, which gained strength at the beginning of the 19th century. The territory of modern Serbia became a central theater of military actions in this difficult positional war, and those were the Serbs who ensured the success of many military operations of the Austrian troops. The war of 1788–1791 belonged to those conflicts, the history of which was written, so to speak, „in real time”, and this in many ways created certain stereotypes in the reproduction of the pattern of military actions. The one-sidedness and stereotyped nature of the narrative sources can be compensated by using large cartographic material – both published and stored in the archives of Austria, Hungary, Turkey, Ukraine, Russia, etc. Serbia as a theater of military actions is depicted on most of these maps and military topographical plans developed in the last quarter of the 18th century, but, with the exception of the Josephinian Land Survey, none of them have become the object of even cataloging and classification, not to mention its careful studying. Therefore, the00 proposed article is the first comprehensive attempt to summarize the information about cartographic sources regarding Serbian lands during the Austro-Turkish War of 1788–1791. As additional sources, to verify historical and geographical information, military topographical descriptions of Serbian lands compiled by the Austrian administration and periodicals of the war period were used.

Women in leftist rebel movements

In the late twentieth century, women’s significant involvement in leftist rebel movements in Nicaragua and El Salvador challenged traditional gender roles in the male-dominated sphere of guerrilla warfare. This research paper examines the driving forces behind this surge in women’s participation in the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN). Structural changes, including shifts in land ownership and economic disparities, created opportunities for women to escape traditional domestic roles and engage in revolutionary activities. Decades of repressive dictatorships and increasing inequality further motivated women to join these movements.