Secret Societies Research Articles

Pushkin and the Polish question

The history of the Russo-Polish political relationship, from the Congress of Vienna settlement of 1815, which granted Russia a major part of the Duchy of Warsaw, to the failed Polish Uprising of 1830–1831, provides a context for the discussion of Pushkin’s view of the so-called Polish question. Pushkin argued that the two Slavic states, Russia and Poland, had been permanently at odds, and that their conflict should be seen as a familial dispute of two Slavic nations, in which Europe should not meddle. A historian Pushkin believed that Poland should accept Russia’s sovereignty and become absorbed by its neighbour; otherwise, it would pose a constant threat to Russia’s very existence and safety. He embraced the idea as early as the late 1810s under the influence of ideas promoted by Russian patriots and exemplified by writings of the Arzamas Society and the Union of Salvation members, the latter being an early secret society behind the Decembrist revolt. In this regard, we can also talk about N. Karamzin’s influence on Pushkin. Karamzin was known to have doggedly criticised the decision of the Emperor Alexander I to grant Poland a constitution and political autonomy.

Leadership Styles: A Vital Force for the Management of Vocational and Entrepreneurship Education for National Development

Vocational education has a great impact on entrepreneurship as vocational education is expected to emphasis the teaching of entrepreneurial skills and ways of thinking to prepare employees and would-be entrepreneurs. This paper examined the different leadership styles and draw out their implications for the dispensation of vocational entrepreneurship education in Nigeria for national development. Vocational entrepreneurship education has not been fully recognized in the country over the years and in effect it has been difficult to have adequate number of leaders in the few vocational institutions in the country. The success of vocational and entrepreneurship education is largely dependent on the quality of its leadership. It is regrettable to see that vocational and entrepreneurship education is fraught with problems which militate against its ability to produce adequate number and quality of skilled manpower required in our country. The paper identified shortage of funds and materials, staff is grossly inadequate and unqualified, problems of secret societies and drug addiction among students’, poor implementation of entrepreneurship curriculum, poor supervision and inspection of programme in Nigeria schools, the way leadership of schools literally reacts to and manage schools’ crises and the management and administration of vocational and entrepreneurship education to mention but a few out of its inherent problems. The paper suggested that the top and lower management cadres must be committed to work for the realization of the objectives of vocational and entrepreneurship studies at all levels. Also, it is necessary for the leadership to develop their own management skills and learn to adapt the right leadership style in order to win the cooperation of difficult individuals. Keywords: Leadership Styles, Management, Entrepreneurial Studies, Vocational Education, National Development DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/14-8-11 Publication date: April 30 th 2022

새로운 결사･집회의 출현과 淸 정부의 대응 — 1908년 「結社集會律」의 제정과 적용을 중심으로 —

This paper analyzes the Qing government"s response to the new non-governmental organizations in the late 19th century and early 20th century, focusing on the “law of Assembly and Association” established in 1908 and its application. Since the emergence of the new organization around the time of the Hundred Day’s Reform in 1898, it had expanded rapidly with the promotion of the New Policy. The initial activities of the organizations focused on public enlightenment and social reform, but a series of political incidents occurred in the early 20th century made their activities expand to the political domain. In addition, as the Qing emperor declared the preparation for establishing constitutional government in 1906, it led to an increase the number of organizations actively advocating political demands. Feeling burdened by this situation, the Qing government decided to adopt the way focusing on follow-up management by law instead of the existing ex ante party ban. As a result, the Law of Assembly and Association(LAA) was enacted in 1908. By the enactment of the LAA, with the exception of secret societies, all of the non-governmental organizations were legalized. However, the LAA stipulated the intervention of the state authorities in the establishment and operation of organizations, with especially focus on political organizations and their activities. In the process of actually applying the LAA, the characteristics of follow-up management become clear. The Ministry of Civil Affairs(MCA), which was the enforcement body of the LAA, relaxed the application of the LAA to organizations with academic and social purposes. But to organizations advocating political activities, the MCA tried to reduce their scope of activities through strict legal application. In short, the LAA allowed freedom of assembly and association in principle, but by distinguishing the application according to the characteristics of the organizations, actually, it aimed at assembly and association under the initiative of the government.

Cambridge Apostles: Religion

In 1820 and at Cambridge University in England, a secret group or society called The Cambridge Apostles appeared and attracted many British learned or intellectuals of the 19th century. This paper gives a brief account of the group, the foundation, and the procedures of their meetings, to focus more on their religious identity. Cambridge Apostles with its liberal endeavor, based first on real Christian grounds with the founder who acknowledged himself as the Bishop of Gibraltar, however, the members or the apostles turned later to acquire, what was commonly known, the religious doubt and went to question the old established Christian institutions.

The Black Utopia: Secret Societies and Time Travel in W. E. B. Du Bois and Sutton E. Griggs

Abstract While prevailing scholarship on utopian fiction, attendant disproportionately to white authors, defines the utopia by way of its temporal or geographical separation from society, I argue that the under-theorized Black utopia is defined by the element of the secret society. The project taken up by Black utopian societies, such as the overlooked “secret societies” of W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and the eponymous shadow government of Sutton E. Griggs’s Imperium in Imperio (1899), are articulated but not represented by their respective texts, framed in retrospect and within their own foreclosure. Du Bois and Griggs participate, too, in the intellectual return of much Black writing from the dawn of the Jim Crow Era to the early years of Reconstruction, offering alternative histories that locate utopian potentiality in the project of Reconstruction while identifying the project’s failures. Ultimately, the foreclosure of utopian anti-racist potentiality is attributed by these texts to the incompatibility of Black solidarity with interpellation into (white) national subjectivity.

English

A total of 128 medicinal plant species belonging to 71 genera and 46 families were identified and used to treat 42 human ailments. Euphorbiaceae was the leading family with 14 species, followed by Rubiaceae and Leg-Caesalpiniaceae with 12 and 8 species, respectively. Seven species (Coffea stenophylla, Garcinia afzelii, Mitragyna stipulosa, Irvingia gabonensis, Milicia regia, Nauclea diderrichii and Nesogordonia papaverifera) are of conservation concern. Herbs are the highest followed by shrubs, trees, climbers and epiphytes. Leaves are the most used parts, followed by roots, fruits, stems, flowers, nuts, tubers and seeds. The highest calculated Relative Frequency of Citations Index (RFC) was for Musa sapientum, followed by Zingiber officinale, Anisophyllea laurina, Cola nitida, Nauclea latifolia, Tetracera potatoria Allophylus africanus, Cassia sieberiana and Termitomyces microcarpus. The highest Use Value index (UV) was calculated for Cola nitida (1.9) followed by Nauclea latifolia (1.56), Zingiber officinale (1.55) Ficus exasperata and Tetracera potatoria (1.44) respectively. Medicinal plants knowledge is strongly associated with the elderly in secret societies which are structured along gender lines. Plant use for medicinal reason actually addresses a significant part of the way of life and customs of the people living in this area and other rural locations in Sierra Leone. Key word: Medicinal plants, ethnobotany, indigenous technical knowledge, Sierra Leone forests.

Enstranglements: Performing Within, and Exiting From, the Arts-in-Health "Setting".

The following text explores performative art works commissioned within a specific “arts and health” cultural setting, namely that of a medical school within a British university. It examines the degree to which the professional autonomy of the artists (and curator) was “instrumentalized” and diminished as a result of having to fit into normative frames set by institutional agendas (in this case, that of “the neoliberal university”). We ask to what extent do such “entanglements,” feel more like “enstranglements,” suffocating the artist’s capacity to envision the world afresh or any differently? What kinds of pressures allow for certain kinds of “evidence” to be read and made visible, (and not others)? Are You Feeling Better? was a 2016 programme curated by Frances Williams, challenging simplistic expectations that the arts hold any automatic power of their own to make “things better” in healthcare. It included two performative projects – The Secret Society of Imperfect Nurses, by Anthony Schrag with student nurses at Kings College London, and Hiding in Plain Sight by Becky Shaw (plus film with Rose Butler) with doctoral researchers in nursing and midwifery. These projects were situated in a climate of United Kingdom National Health Service cuts and austerity measures where the advancement of social prescribing looks dangerously like the government abnegating responsibility and offering art as amelioration. The text therefore examines the critical “stage” on which these arts-health projects were performed and the extent to which critical reflection is welcomed within institutional contexts, how learning is framed, expressed aesthetically, as well as understood as art practice (as much as “education” or “learning”). It further examines how artistic projects might offer sites of resistance, rejection and mechanisms of support against constricting institutional norms and practices that seek to instrumentalise artistic works to their own ends.

When honour sets sail: Southern European constitutional revolution and Guglielmo Pepe’s political trips towards Iberian Peninsula during Liberal Triennium (1820–1823)

ABSTRACT This article aims to frame Neapoltan general Guglielmo Pepe’s presence in Spain and Portugal after the deep revolutionary wave in Southern Europe in 1820–1. It was a conjunction, which was influenced by a positive perception towards soldiers and military elements, marked by the memory of Napoleonic Wars. First, the national honourable soldier-citizen image, which was forged since the 1790s, will be analysed. After Waterloo, political trips by the members of the “Liberal International” were continuous before, during and after revolutions inspired by the Cadiz Constitution, which in the Spanish and Portuguese cases lasted until 1823. These Iberian countries acted as crucial refuges for political émigrés and their subsequent exiles. Pepe was the most important revolutionary reference which visited them, fleeing from Naples, and trying to defend and expand European liberal-constitutional systems. His activity founding secret societies will be another focus of this article.

Józef Kowalewski’s Diary Entry on Secret Societies in China in the Beginning of the 19th Century.

The article provides a bibliographic commentary on O.M. Kovalevsky's entry in the Diary of Activities for 1832 regarding secret societies in China. This is one of the earliest mentions of this scientific problem in Russian Sinology. The source of the record is defined as a message in the missionary magazine Indo-Chinese Gleaner for 1818, which is an English translation of the text from the official Qing Peking Gazette for 1817. The author substantiates the attribution of the translation to the preacher of the London Missionary Society, W. Milne. His independent authorship should belong to the second part of the journal message listing the secret societies that existed and a short comment on their practice. We refer only to one of his entries in the Diary of Activities for 1832, dedicated to secret societies in China. A small entry in the available editions of this diary has remained without comment. This topic became popular in the middle of the XIX century on the eve of the Taiping Uprising and remains so in modern Chinese studies. The entry of Józef Kovalevski not only testifies to his keen sense of regional studies, but also points to possible, albeit not realized at the time, trends in future Chinese studies education. Kovalevski's record, in fact, introduces into scientific use a problem that really attracted the attention of domestic sinologists only in the XX century. The Indo-Chinese Gleaner original text source for Kowalewski’s diary record is attached.

From Society to Shehui : The Early Configuration of a Basic Concept in Modern China

Abstract: As a traditional term used in ancient Chinese, shiehwui mainly implied the gatherings and meetings related to folk festivals for the worship of and making offerings to shie , the gods of soil. The manifestation of shiehwui frequently was the target of condescension or outright condemnation from the government or Confucian elites. During the early dissemination of the western concept of Society into China, one factor that facilitated its entry was the Christian missionaries’ knowledge of traditional Chinese shie and hwui , especially the secret societies, which they applied to their translations from English into Chinese. When the modern concept of shakai (written as , the same Chinese characters), formulated in Japan, was imported into Chinese at the turn of the 20th century, it became blended with the old word of shiehwui, and found a connection to the daily life experience of the lower classes in traditional China. As a result, the new concept of Shehui in modern China possesses two kinds of connotations. On the one hand, it points toward the new direction of historical changes. On the other hand, it still retains the associations of condescension, dissatisfaction and anxiety that inform the perspective of the ruling class toward this term.

2022 Expedition to Mali

The 2022 field season (January 23 – February 23) turned out to be very productive: we managed to clarify the history of Dogon migrations from the Mande Country to the Bandiagara Highlands. We received quite complete information on the prophet Abirɛ, who predicted the return of Dogon to their historical homeland and completely new information about Bozo and Bambara puppets. Finally, we acquired many interesting artifacts for the State Museum of Oriental Arts. Due to the inability to arrive to the Dogon Country, it was decided to focus on the area of the city of Bougouni (Sikasso region) in southern Mali and on the Mande Country (regions of Koulikoro and Kayes, from the city of Kangaba in the west to Bamako in the east). Two magnificent, beautifully attributed works of traditional Bambara art were acquired in Bougouni for the collection of the State Museum of Oriental Arts: “Monkey” (Warabilen) and “Wild buffalo” (Sigi; Sigifin) masks. During the expedition, new and very significant data were obtained on the migrations of the Dogon from the Mande Country to the Bandiagara Highlands. A lot of information has now been accumulated regarding how the Dogon came to their new homeland. They were published, including in Russian. But the Manding oral traditions about the exodus of Dogon are still little known. We have partially succeeded in making up for this shortcoming. Oral historical traditions about the exodus of the Dogon from the Mande Country are changeable, internally contradictory and extremely unstable narratives with confused chronology, filled with omissions and vague allusions. However, some conclusions can still be drawn: there is almost no doubt that the root cause of the Dogon leaving for the lifeless rocks of Bandiagara was some kind of difficult and bloody conflict, accompanied by numerous victims. It is also clear that there were several waves of resettlement, and the last Dogon left for the highlands in the middle of the second half of the 19th century. It was also possible to find out that the Bambara and Bozo puppets are not at all a secularized popular theater. The puppet society is associated with the Koré secret society, and is perhaps one of the most powerful Bambara societies, which in this case refers to three ethnic groups: the Bambara proper, the Bozo (Dogon partners in a marriage-prohibitive joking relations) and the Marka (Soninké). Ceremonies involving puppets are completely sacred (only members of the Society take part in them), semi-sacred (only men take part in them), and, finally, publicly available — everyone, including women and children, takes part in them.

Freedom of association of judges in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Freedom of association is one of the fundamental freedoms and is considered one of the necessary elements of a free society. Isolated from other members of the community, an individual would have little chance of successfully resisting the arbitrariness of the ruler, or fighting for social changes that he deems justified. Although judges are also entitled to this right, the very nature of the judicial office may call for establishing certain restrictions on the exercise of this right in order to protect the dignity of the judicial office and public confidence in the independence and impartiality of the judiciary. The first part of the paper focuses on the importance of exercising the freedom of association of judicial office holders. Special attention will be drawn to the role that professional associations of judges play in preserving the independence of the judiciary and improving its position, as well as protecting the rule of law and a democratic order. After referring to relevant provisions of international documents and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, the author analyzes the restrictions on the freedom of association of judges adopted in various national legislations. Special attention will be given to the justifiability of prohibiting judges from joining political parties, and the dilemmas arising from the membership of judges in secret societies, i.e. other organizations operating on similar grounds. The second part of the paper focuses on the legal framework of the freedom of association of judges in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the justifiability of restrictions imposed on the exercise of this right.

The Mexican university anti-communist front (1955—1973). The influence of the Catholic Church and the struggle for control of the university environment

This article examines the history of the emergence and activities of the Mexican University Anti-Communist Front (Frente Universitario Anticomunista, FUA), a right-wing Catholic youth organization which was formed in Puebla. Based on sources from the personal archive of the second president of the FUA, Manuel Antonio Diaz Cid, as well as on the documents of the Catholic Church, publications in the press and memoirs of contemporaries of the events, the author of the article aims to identify the ideological base of the FUA and determine the main methods of struggle of this organization with ideological opponents. Founded under the patronage of church figures in Puebla, the FUA was a hybrid social organization, combining elements of an open and secret society. Using loud slogans about the fight against communism as a facade, FUA members set themselves quite practical goals, which consisted in establishing control over the university environment and influencing politics in the region. However, the FUA's strategies of struggle proved ineffective in the context of the gradual liberalization and secularization of university space that took place in Mexico in the middle of 20th century.

NEW WORLD ECONOMIC ORDER: TRENDS AND DEVELOPMENTS

The global economic and political trends accelerate the process leading to global economic restructuring and the formation of a new world economic order. There are different approaches and understanding of the problem of restructuring the world economy. Some believe that there is some kind of shadow “Elite of Power” in the world, which holds in its hands a controlling stake in the entire world economy, forms the main world processes, appoints and removes national governments, unleashes wars, sets prices, determines the priority areas of science and the courses of national currencies. Such interpretations have historical roots and testify to the existence at different times of all kinds of secret societies or castes of "initiates" who carefully guarded the secrets of power and knowledge, playing a key role in the most important episodes in the history of mankind, starting with the French Revolution and the victory of the Bolsheviks in Russia in October 1917 and ending with the confrontation of the superpowers, etc. Our task is not to reveal the essence of secret societies and their role in world civilization. More important is the task of identifying the main outlines of the structure known as the world government, which began to emerge at the end of the last century. The Bilderberg Club founded in 1954 with the help of the global political, financial and industrial elite can serve as a prototype for such a government. In 1973, the Trilateral Commission was formed with the dominant role of the "troika": the USA, Britain and Japan.

American Catholics, the Revolutions of 1848, and the Politics of the early 1850s

American Catholics during the 1850s expressed deep concerns about the legacy of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, fearing that radicalism was spreading to the United States and would harm both the Church and the state. This paper explores the reception of Fr. Antonio Bresciani’s novel The Jew of Verona (translated and published in 1853) in the diocesan newspapers of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Charleston, South Carolina. Both papers reacted to the book in a similar fashion and used it as a lens to understand domestic politics. Bresciani’s themes of international conspiracy and the dangers of secret societies resonated with Catholics in both dioceses and led some to propose a Catholic conservative alliance to prevent the spread of radical revolution. Fears of revolution, then, drove the American Catholic responses in these dioceses even as sectional concerns ripped the nation apart.

ИДЕОЛОГИЧЕСКАЯ НАПРАВЛЕННОСТЬ ПОНЯТИЯ «ЕСТЕСТВЕННЫЕ НАУКИ» В СОВЕТСКОЙ ИСТОРИОГРАФИИ ДЕКАБРИСТСКОГО ДВИЖЕНИЯ СЕРЕДИНЫ 1950-х гг.

The article examines culturally determined meanings of the “natural sciences” concept in the mid-1950s Soviet historiography of the Decembrists. The theoretical and methodological basis of the work is connotative semiotics, developed by the French semiologist Roland Barthes. It is shown that the concept of natural sciences in the Soviet historiography of Decembrism has not only a direct denotative meaning, referring to the activity of obtaining verified knowledge about nature. This concept within the Soviet culture of the mid-20th century had an additional connotative semantic level. The narrative of Soviet historians about the study of nature by members of secret societies connoted, within the Soviet cultural code, the idea of the undoubted revolutionary nature of the Decembrists. Thanks to these connotations, the main goal of the Soviet historical narrative was achieved — the confirmation of Lenin’s thesis about the Decembrists as the first Russian revolutionaries who started the work that the Bolsheviks had completed. The study of the connotative semantics of the concept of natural sciences based on the semiotic approach allows us to speak about the mechanism of the conceptualization of Decembrism in Soviet historiography. Conceptualization was carried out at the level of a secondary sign system due to intertextual connections. The historical narrative through the signs of the active subject, applied aspect of natural science research, materialism, enlightenment, atheism was correlated with texts precedent for Soviet culture. Due to these correlations, the story about the Decembrists acquired an additional semantic level. The theoretical and methodological apparatus of semiotics is quite applicable to the history of concepts, since it allows reading semantics at all levels of the text — both denotative and connotative. Semiotics provides precise tools for analyzing the semantics of concepts in the context of their parent culture.

The Influence of Historiography and Public Discourse on the Murder of the Family of Nicholas II on the Content of Historical Video Games

This study is devoted to the influence of the historiography of the murder of the family of Nicholas II and the discourse generated by it on images in historical video games. We have chosen Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Russia as a specific research case. The methodology of the work is built through a combination of comparative and structural analysis. The empirical base of the study is funded by attracting original game content and rare literature, including the works of representatives of the white emigration. The author comes to the conclusion that the creators of the game used a number of historiographic concepts as the primary basis for the plot of the work, suggesting the involvement of secret societies of a global nature in the regicide. However, they refused to address such elements of "conspiracy" trends in historiography, such as the ritual nature of the crime, the interest of external actors in the destruction of the Russian Empire, as well as the models of socio-economic and cultural development associated with it. The latter was primarily due to marketing considerations, the structure of the target audience and the desire to avoid accusations of inciting anti-Semitism.

СИМВОЛИКА ТАЙНЫХ ОБЩЕСТВ В СОЧИНСКОМ «ДЕНДРАРИИ»

Sochi "Dendrariy" is a well-known tourist site, an example of landscape art, a scientific center for the introduction of subtropical plants on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus. The park was founded in 1892 and is famous for its arboretum collection. The symbolism of the historical part of the "Dendrariy" is also interesting. The park was created as a private property, and showed the interests, views and preferences of its founder. It was not intended for the general public. The founder of the park, S.N. Khudekov, was a versatile person, an expert in gardening, choreographic and fine arts. He successfully used the highly artistic fountains, sculptures and vases of A. Durenne, inscribing the heritage of French culture in his romantic park. Therefore, sphinxes, chimeras, zodiac signs, gods of ancient Roman mythology could be seen in the Russian Caucasus at the end of the XIX century. The author's interpretation of the semantics of various elements of park sculpture and architecture, regarding various theosophical views of secret societies is given in the article. The meaning of such symbols and signs is diverse, as shown by previous studies. The connection of the objects of study with each other in space and their orientation relative to the sides of the light turns attention. The author does not exclude an accidental coincidence, since there is no information about the founder of the park belonging to Freemasonry. The preserved park is rightfully an object of historical and cultural heritage. He is able to create a certain mood, evokes themes for philosophical reflection as a true work of art. A certain preparation of the audience-listeners is required to perceive the information transmitted by the work of art, in accordance with the above.

'Faceless monster, secret society': Women's experiences navigating the administrative burden of Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Previous research has indicated that administrative burdens are particularly high in personalised funding schemes such as the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), because these schemes are predicated on very high levels of self-advocacy. Administrative burdens tend to be inequitably distributed, thereby entrenching existing social inequalities. This is the first study to look at the lived experiences of administrative burden within the NDIS explicitly-and particularly those of women, who are underrepresented within the scheme. The research involved qualitative interviews with 30 women with disability who were either NDIS participants or had considered applying for the NDIS. We argue that like other marginalised groups, women with disability are experiencing significant administrative burdens within the NDIS, which are barriers to obtaining sufficient disability support. Based on this finding, we recommend the NDIS implement a gender strategy, as well as address burdensome administrative processes in general.

Institutional dynamics and forest use practices in the Santchou Landscape of Cameroon

Forest-linked institutions are rapidly changing in sub-Saharan Africa – suggesting the need for renewed evidence. While growing qualitative evidence suggests changes in forest-linked institutions, there is the dearth of quantitative evidence on the extent of change in institutions and how this shapes forest use practices. To stem this knowledge gap, we draw from a representative sample of 200 forest-dependent households around the Santchou forest landscape, complemented by key informant interviews (N = 17) and focus group discussions (N = 11). We quantitatively analyzed changes in forest-linked institutions and their effects on forest use practices using a two-stage least square (2SLS) approach with heteroscedasticity-based instruments. We corroborate the evidence with thematic analysis ad narratives. We first identified and characterized the structural and functional attributes of forest-linked institutions, and then estimate the effect of structural and functional changes on forest use practices. The results suggest the following: First, traditional council and secret society exhibit similar functional attributes and are dominant forest-linked institutions in the Santchou landscape. Second, endogenously-rooted institutional structures and processes have an exogenous origin. Institutions which were hitherto not designed to regulate forest use have installed themselves as influential regulators of forest use. Third, more than half of the customs and norms have changed over time; some are in a state of dormancy, others have witnessed numerical increase, and others have declined. Functional attributes negatively and significantly explain forest use practices; however, the effect varies between attributes. Finally, farm-based occupation significantly intensifies the level of forest dependency. Future studies are required to uncover the extent to which the different types of farm practices influence forest use practices. From a policy standpoint, emphasis should be placed on the promotion of cultivable NTFPs to complement and reverse the current positive association with farm-based occupation.