Historical Truth Research Articles

George Black and the Wuksonovich Trial: Finding the Truth in History

George Black and the Wuksonovich Trial: Finding the Truth in History

Memory as a semiotic tool for formation of general human rights and the historical and national legal policy of the state

Remembering is positioned as a phenomenon that makes it possible to consolidate, preserve, and in the future - to reproduce the past experience of humanity and its repeated application in human life. The author demonstrates socially significant types of memory: historical memory, which preserves historical truth and even projects a historical need; social memory, which marks the values, findings, worldview institutions and guidelines of a social group as a certain symbolic capital; cultural memory, which includes the so- called "communicative tradition” of generations; the philosophical concept of memory, in which the processes of thinking, cognition and the spiritual essence of a person are reproduced. On this basis, it is proposed to develop memory as a semiotic device through which law as such and general human rights are formed, as well as the historical heritage of the nation and, accordingly, the nation­state. thus, it is about the importance of using the psychological method of memorization in the creation of law as a result of human thinking and understanding its impact on legal awareness and legal behavior; about demonstrating the influence of socio-cultural features and their ability to provide their own psychological strength of the history of the people; on proving that norms of behavior (in particular, rights) are born in the psyche of a person, are the result of his mental activity, and, accordingly, form the content, essence, meaning of the national legal policy with the reproduction of certain signals, signs, codes, messages intended for transmission, processing and storage (memorization) of various information of the people and the nation. That is, the position is substantiated that legal signs (archetypes, universals, symbols and other semiotic elements) are designed to preserve the national peculiarity and originality of legal culture, to form legal traditions as the basis of the legal policy of the state.

The Views of Representatives of the Party and Political Activists of the Kursk Province on the Change in the Social Structure of the Urban Population (1918–1921)

Relevance. At the present stage of development of the Russian Federation, the preservation of historical truth is one of the main directions of state policy. Statements about the need to return the state ideology allow us to judge the relevance of referring to the experience of the early Soviet period, when communist doctrine became the basis for the formation of a new model of the state, which subsequently achieved considerable success on the world stage in various fields. The urban population has become a pillar for revolutionary transformations, which arouses interest in studying the views of representatives of regional authorities on the problems of the development of the social structure of society.The purpose – to reveal the specifics of the evolution of the public views of the party and political activists of the region on the social composition of the urban population of the Kursk province from 1918 to 1921.Objectives: based on the analysis of archival documents, to identify general trends in the formation of the social structure of the urban population of the Kursk province.Methodology. In the process of working on the research, the basic principles of historical science were used: historicism, objectivity and consistency. General scientific methods were also applied (analysis, synthesis, induction and deduction, analytical method), special historical methods: historical-genetic, comparative-historical.Results. Based on the analysis of archival documents, the peculiarities of the formation of views on the image of the social composition of the Kursk province in the views of the Kursk communists of the first years of Soviet power are revealed.Conclusion. The political basis of the social structure of the urban population of the region was recognized by the proletarians, who were the mainstay in the revolutionary transformations of all spheres of public life. The party activists of the Kursk province perceived the provisions of the communist teachings as a key model for the formation of an urban community. The semi-proletariat, the petty bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, in the opinion of party leaders, should become part of the working people as the sole bearer of power. For the first time, women were considered as an equal part of the urban community in the field of state building.

The Feat of the Gunners of the 3rd Fighter Brigade in Defensive Battles on the Northern Face of the Kursk Bulge

Relevance lies in the need to preserve the historical truth about the events of the Great Patriotic War and one of its most important battles – the Battle of Kursk. Despite the significant historiographical groundwork, the generalization of the experience of fighting in the defense zone of the Central Front troops continues to be actively developed. The retrospective factography of participation in the battles of individual units and formations requires further clarification, researchers should pay attention to the restoration of the destinies and names of the heroes of the summer battles of 1943. Whose example continues to inspire the exploits of modern defenders of the Fatherland.Purpose. On the basis of documentary sources from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, to reveal the specifics of the organization of defensive battles at Teplov heights by the forces of the gunners of the 3rd fighter brigade.Objectives: to identify and study archival materials about the defensive battles of the 3rd Fighter Brigade on the northern face of the Kursk Bulge; to note the role of gunners in deterring the offensive of German troops on July 5-12, 1943; to determine the behavior of individual servicemen who distinguished themselves during the summer battles, to characterize the problems of establishing their destinies.Methodology. During the research, the author adhered to the principles of objectivity and historicism. The information revealed in the sources was systematized and analyzed, allowing to reveal the problems of using artillery in defensive battles during the Battle of Kursk.Results. The generalization of the experience of combat operations of the 3rd Fighter Brigade during defensive battles on the northern face of the Kursk Bulge indicates a well-thought-out and successfully implemented tactics of using individual artillery units in the organization of anti-tank defense.Conclusion. An example of the courage and bravery of the soldiers of the 3rd fighter Brigade during the battles at Teplovsky Heights testifies to their high moral and volitional qualities, as well as the rational alignment of forces and means at the occupied defense lines, which ensured the successful fulfillment of the combat tasks assigned to the gunners.

THE THEME OF THE DEPORTATION OF CRIMEAN TATARS IN POPULAR SONGS

In the article an attempt of the analysis of two songs composed and performed by Jamala, a Ukranian singer of Crimean Tatar origin, has been made. The songs under the study − ‘1944’ and ‘The way home’ – are both dedicated to the deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 forced many Crimean Tatars to leave the peninsula as protestors against Russian colonial regime were persecuted, threatened, killed. Jamala together with her dissident compatriots had to leave their ancestors’ land in 2014. Crimean Tatars including the singer’s grandparents underwent ruthless mass deportation in 1944. Jamala like other Crimean Tatars of her age represents the generation who were born in deportation, returned home and were doomed to experience the repeat of the forced exile. The singer knows the tragic collisions of her family history from her parents and grandparents who passed down to her their invaluable legacy − Crimean Tatar language, traditions, stories, memories, music, songs – the core of their identity. Jamala and her family are the witnesses and keepers of historical truth and authenticity which serves the foundation for the investigated texts.

Building characters in the Quranic storyAnalytical study of the selected models

The personality element in the Qur’anic story acquires its importance over the rest of the other elements, in terms of its presence in the structure of the Qur’anic story, and its diverse construction, and what gives this diversity and presence its importance is the realism of this narrative that we are dealing with and its historical truthfulness, which gives this diversity an aesthetic and cognitive function that lies in presenting . Therefore, the methodological framework of this study will depend on the stylistic approach, which is concerned with monitoring the relationships and methods of the Qur’anic narrative in its formation. What the study concluded is that the diagnosis in the Qur’anic story reveals the most prominent internal traits that characterize the personality, which reveal the scientific and cognitive dimension

Revisiting the Realism/Modernism Debate: Marxist Thought and the Ethics of Representation

In Utopian Generations: The Political Horizon of Twentieth-Century Literature (2005), Nicholas Brown remarks on the difference between realism and modernism as one that expresses a conflict between “a responsibility to historical truth” and “a fidelity to the formal energies released by the emergence of a form of subjectivity liberated (or alienated) from historical consciousness” (182). This raises several issues that might be useful for us to develop since, despite the emergence of diverse critical lines of thought since the development of postwar critical theory, realism and modernism have continued to affect the intricately interconnected modes of philosophical and political attitudes towards the relation between aesthetics and politics. Marxist thinkers, Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno, and Fredric Jameson, among others, explored the dichotomy of realism and modernism in terms of the dialectic of form and content. While they shared that there is an essentially inextricable relationship between literature and the underlying contradictions of our society, how they described the aesthetic expression of social contradictions was distinct, leaving the important question unanswered: “what does it mean to be ‘real’?” In this paper, I revisit the realism-modernism debate to explore this fundamental antagonism to see how these thinkers help clarify the following issues: what is realist form, and what are its features? How does realism negotiate the history of aesthetic forms? Are “formal energies,” as Brown puts it, by themselves an attempt to be free of “historical consciousness” or ones that, as form, highlight historical consciousness? And finally, how does realist form make political action possible? These questions also help us see what it means that the aesthetic choices of an older realism have been persistently replicated after modernism in the global periphery.

An Examination of the Koryŏ-Khitan Relations from the 10th to 12th Century through the Balance of Power System

International relations in East Asia from the 10th through the 12th centuries had been understood through a triangular relationship framework with the Khitan and the Song in a bipolar relationship and either Koryŏ or Western Xia as the third state. It is widely acknowledged that this framework has the advantage of simplifying international affairs under restricted conditions, which allows for an easy comprehension of the situation at the time. However, even the Song and the Khitan, which were considered to be major powers at the time, were merely two nations among equals. The period spanning the 10th to 12th centuries was not characterized by any single nation overpowering others. Consequently, the countries in East Asia during that time had to seek allies and strive for survival in response to the shifting international landscape. There are difficulties in understanding the international order of that era based solely on triangular relationships.The relationship between Koryŏ and the Khitan also did not lead to a situation where one country overpowered the other. Of course, there is a lot of room to believe that the Khitan has an overall advantage. However, as can be seen from the fact that the Khitans requested reinforcements from the Song to attack Koryŏ, the Khitans were also not confident that they were overpowering Koryŏ. Therefore, rather than confining the relationships among East Asian nations at the time within a rigid triangular framework, understanding the constantly shifting international situations at the time and the fact that all states prioritized their own security would bring us closer to the historical truth.

La farce tragique – une réécriture de l’absurdité historique des idéologies communistes et du grotesque des dictatures militaires africaines


 
 
 Matei Vișniec’s dramaturgy perhaps best illustrates the paradox that absurdity and tragic or grotesque farce most adequately depict the destiny of peoples whose history is marked by defeat, derision, and tragedy. The political situation in certain countries and totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe and Africa, characterized by genocide and inter-ethnic fighting, can hardly be a source of comedy, but the dramatic stakes of the tragic farce seem best suited to express the absurdity and regression of totalitarian ideologies. The comic turn amazes the viewer by its ability to conform the historical truth. In this article,1 2 I aim to identify not so much an ideological but mostly aesthetic, dramaturgical modus operandi of the tragic farce using a corpus consisting of texts by playwrights Matei Vișniec, Sonya Labou Tansi, and Koffi Kwahulé. 
 
 

Историческая память как категория конституционного права

Introduction. Historical memory is an integral part of national identity and defines the core values and principles of life in society. Legal norms in the text of the Constitution of Russia that consolidate the concept of historical development of the Russian state and establish new obligations of the state to honor the memory of defenders of the Fatherland, to ensure the protection of historical truth and to prevent belittling the significance of the people’s feat in defense of the Fatherland allow us to talk about the formation of a new category in the constitutional law – the category of historical memory. Theoretical analysis. General theoretical understanding of legal categories allows us to highlight such features as abstraction, universality, generality, objectivity, content, consistency. All these qualities are inherent in constitutional categories; their features also include a high degree of axiology and fundamental character, which, due to the properties of the Constitution as a basic political and legal act, define the relationship between the state, an individual and society as a whole. Empirical analysis. The analysis of the formation of national memory in pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods shows that the concept of historical memory was commonly ideological in nature. The concept of national history was absent in Constitution of the Russian Federation, adopted on December 12, 1993. The 2020 Amendments to the Constitution were also intended to correct this gap and include provisions aimed at creating the concept of historical memory Results. The concept of historical memory, as it is presented in the current version of the Constitution, is aimed at: establishing the idea of continuity in the development of the Russian state; justification for unity of the state, formed as a result of a thousand-year history; conditionality of spiritual and moral values by tradition; indication of the special role of the state in protecting historical memory.

Вопросы отражения исторических событий в сюжете и образная система произведения

The research aims to determine the role and significance of historical events and facts in the poetics of a literary work. Undoubtedly, any work is based to one degree or another on the factual material of our lives. It may have private or public significance. Often, such factual or historical materials become a way for a writer to visually illustrate a certain (main or secondary) idea. The paper analyzes the works in which the historical development of the country becomes the plot of the narrative. In the literary studies of the 20th century, such works were traditionally defined as historical novels. The scientific novelty of the research is connected with the need to specify the genre structure of the historical novel and to determine the aesthetic significance of the use of historical material in modern novels. This problem is connected with the need to comprehend the artistic and historical reality and historical truth in the plot of a literary work. As a result, it has been proved that the historical reality recreated by the writer in a particular work is not a mirror image of the historical path of the country and the people; in a literary work, it becomes the author’s subjective reaction to certain historical events.

Historiographic Metafiction: A Study of Susan Abulhawa’s The Blue Between Sky and Water

This article aims to show the application of historiographic metafiction in Susan Abulhawa’s The Blue Between Sky and Water (2016), highlighting the embodiment of historiographic metafictional characteristics in rewriting Palestinian history, exactly the Nakba (1948). Since Linda Hutcheon calls for revision of the past in order to rewrite history, Abulhawa’s work has granted her a place among postmodern literary authors since she does so. Such an aesthetic and resisting act aims at acknowledging falsity and prejudice practiced by both ends responsible of historical documentation: the winner and the looser. This study argues that metafictional techniques allow the author to re-visit the Nakba (1948), re-present the events and eventually allow readers to re-pen history. Simultaneously, the novel’s historiographic metafictional characteristics will be underscored including challenging one historical truth, blending history and fiction, using self-reflexive narration, narrating through an openly controlling narrator, and importing real and famous historical and political personalities. The findings show that historiographic metafiction is applicable in Abulhawa’s novel. Interestingly, this paper demonstrates how the author enlarges her scope of writing, by adding postmodern dimension to the political and historical issues she depicts.

TRANSFORMATION OF MAASAI- ABAGUSII CO-EXISTENCE DURING SECOND WORLD WAR AND THE DECOLONIZATION PERIOD (1939-1963)

documented historical truth and ongoing situation. This phenomenon can be attributed to the tendency of many communities to deliberately or inadvertently exploit ethnicity as a means to maintain their power and control in an environment marked by limited resources, fear, and bias. The prevalence of ethnic conflicts in this country is so extensive that there is scarcely any region where the issue has not emerged: Western, Rift Valley, Nyanza, Coast, Central, North Eastern, Eastern, and even Nairobi. It is crucial to thoroughly examine the historical framework of inter-community interactions when addressing ethnic and boundary conflicts in the present time. This aspect should not be underestimated in this particular situation. This research presents historical empirical facts that can be utilized to effectively control future conflicts between the Maasai and the Abagusi communities in Kenya. The main aim of this study was to investigate the changes in the relationship between the Maasai and Abagusii communities throughout the Second World War and the period of decolonization from 1939 to 1963. The objective of this study was to gather relevant information regarding the consequences of previous and possible ethnic conflicts on peace and sustainable development, as well as to identify strategies for both mitigating and managing such conflicts. The findings from this study have the potential to significantly enhance other research efforts on conflicts in Kenya, Africa, and beyond. The data was acquired from oral interviews, archival sources, and papers about inter-ethnic violence, as well as boundary and resource conflicts in Kenya.

Re-reading J.M. Coetzee’s Dusklands:

J.M. Coetzee’s Dusklands overtly offers more of a novelistic discourse than a political pontification. It presents two narratives – one about Eugene Dawn, working for the US government agency in Vietnam in the twentieth centruy and the other moves around Jacobus Coetzee in the eighteenth century, representing a threat to the cultural integrity and undermining true African culture and traditionalism. In the postcolonial and postmodernist contexts, crony capitalism and neocolonial incursions move in the framework set by the power-structure, mostly controlled by the corporate economy. War, not only military but also psychological, even in the postcolonial situations, turns into a power game for the capitalist countries by exercising imperialist hegemony over the economically backward Third World countries while simultaneously maximizing their monetary interest. This potential disposition of the imperial enterprise questions the versions of historical truth, arbitrarily used for silencing and Othering. In Dusklands, Coetzee presents a critical assessment of historical truth inherent in power relations. In varied degrees, war affects both the target victims and the ethically lived soldiers who are forcibly appointed to cause physical and mental damage. Through the portrayal of America’s war in Vietnam in the first segment of Dusklands and Afrikaner’s colonial incursions in South Africa in the second segment of the same text, Coetzee questions the versions of historical truth. This paper examines how J.M.Coetzee exhibits the dialectical process of the construction of knowledge which works as a counter discourse to the power relations controlled by the capitalist forces assuming the role of the imperialist hegemony and, under the subterfuge of globalization and modernity, turning Africa into an endless source of raw materials for the manufacturing factories of the First World countries.

The Medieval Church in Caransebes and the Observance of the “Historical Truth” in the Documents of the Department of State Security of Romania

The research hereafter intends to establish how complex the Department of State Security (also known as Securitatea (DSS) was involved with the archaeological research in Romania during the eighties; this topic has been rather absent within recent historiographic studies. Having made this statement, it should be considered that some approaches have tackled the interferences of the official ideology in the interpretation of the archaeological data. The orthodoxy of some archaeologists can be justified by the continuous pressure from the DSS, or because of their status as collaborators of this institution of repression. The archaeological research from Caransebeș provides a relevant tool for understanding the mechanisms used by DSS to intervene in the middle of scientific debates, as a neutral judge; on the other hand, a series of documents from Arhiva Consiliului Național pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securității (ACNSAS) reveals further details that had been somewhat predicted by those archaeologists living within the respective period. The outcome of our research nevertheless overcomes all predictions the contemporary historians. The actual controversy regarding chronological and confessional ascriptions of Caransebeș disclosures was brutally altered by DSS, following its empirical principles of so-called historical truth. Those archaeologists refusing to obey and follow the principles established by DSS and of the official ideological framework had to face certain repercussions, from interdiction to proceed further archaeological prospecting to secret police surveillance, refusals to travel abroad, and close censorship for every study intended to be published in international magazines and other publications.

New Forms of Genocide Documentaries: The Duel and the Quiet Interview

This essay aims, first, to put forth two new forms of genocide documentaries: The Duel and the Quiet Interview (my terms). These forms emerged from two of the major non-Western catastrophes of twentieth-century Communism — the Cambodian autogenocide and the Chinese Maoist Revolution (respectively). In both the Duel and the Quiet Interview, the directors search for historical truth, which, in both societies, has been silenced, taboo-ized and censored for circa 40 years. Second, despite the obvious differences between their historical-traumatic-cultural contexts, and their addressees, I contend that both forms shed light on the failure of post-Holocaust Western paradigmatic literature – initiated most prominently by Felman and Laub (1992), Hilberg (1993), LaCapra (2001), Felman (2002) and Wieviorka (2006) - to recognize these non-Western catastrophes as an immanent part of the Age of Testimony. I further contend that both forms expand the ethical boundaries of trauma, trauma cinema studies and related fields of research. Finally, dealing with collaboration as an undertheorized subject position in the West, this essay calls for the constitution of collaboration studies alongside perpetrator studies.

UKRAINIAN STUDIES ACTUALITIES OF THE MODERN TEACHER’S PEDAGOGICAL CULTURE

The article substantiates, defines, and discloses the current Ukrainian studies of the teacher’s pedagogical culture in the context of modern political, social, and cultural issues of national education system formation in Ukraine. Attention is focused on the fact that the current mission of the New Ukrainian School education is to strengthen and develop the national idea, which is the lifeblood of state growth and the way to victory. Thus, it is necessary to form a pedagogical culture based on Ukrainian studies, which should be everywhere in educational, cultural, artistic, scientific, and information environments. It has been proven that the cult of culture, primarily national, must be perceived as a methodology of modern education. It should serve not only historical truth, intellectualization, and humanization of the personality but also be a safeguard, caution, and protection against expansion in the future, strengthening the Spirit of the People, which is our indomitable strength. It has been found that, when forming the personality of a teacher, lecturer, and their pedagogical culture, it is necessary to pay attention to two key aspects – professional and cultural, because the institution of higher education should provide not only “knowledge” competencies, but also create a cultural teacher. Pedagogical culture is formed two-dimensionally – concordantly and logically, sensually and rationally, humanely and realistically, with heart and mind. It is a kind of synthesis of soul and reason (intellect). It has been established that Ukrainian studies should be considered an essential component in the education content, which makes it sound, intellectual, humane, and national, strengthening the social processes of state-nation creation. Since educational Ukrainian-centrism will make it impossible for the rudiments of “cultural and educational imperialism” of Moscovites to manifest, which has always tried to destroy the national-historical life of Ukrainians, planting the ideology of little russia and statelessness. They can realize the highest civic task of education, which is to cultivate respect for one’s own “I,” one’s Kindred, People, Ukraine, to serve as a spiritual, socio-political factor of consolidation and development of the Nation.

Orientalist Studies on the Authenticity of Prophetic Hadiths

This article focuses on analyzing Orientalist arguments against hadith in the phase of Western skepticism. In this study, hadith is the subject and the main basis of discussion. The progress of Islamic civilization in the past has been an attraction for orientalists in studying Islam to subjugate Islamic civilization. This made hadith one of the targets of the orientalists' studies since it is one of the sources of Islamic epistemology. The skepticism of the early generation of orientalists claimed that hadith is a collection of anecdotes. This description will be explained using the library research method, focusing on the argumentation of orientalists in the phase of Western skepticism. The author analyses the data using content analysis. The author finds that there is a misunderstanding in the argumentation of the early generation of orientalists, and the argumentation is weak in terms of methodological and historical truth.

The Epoch that Did Not Happen. The Poem of the Perished and Its Relationship to History

It is difficult to exclude the expression of socialist realism in Lithuanian literature because of a deep coup d’état of intellectual values caused after the Soviets occupied Lithuania in 1940, in a System collapsing and masking political facts. Then, a year later, when the German occupation started, all the horrors of the Soviet occupation revealed their reality, the grip of censorship fell, and a call to the nation began... At that time, Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas (1893-1967) created a poem which would become a great historical exception from the poetry of the Soviet era, which, after the return of the Red Army in 1944 “folded its wings” against propaganda and censorship legitimising the occupation, and against the introduction of the dogma of socialist realism in literature. The fate of Putinas’ poem became exceptional, breaking destinies by circulating in the underground and remaining anonymous, as the author could not name himself for the sake of survival in literature, spreading from the partisans’ movement to the American Lithuanian press. It is worth taking note of three factors: a) the relevance of the courage of the poem’s insights, which are constantly reborn at the non-end of the story; b) the controversy of the relationship between the poem and the author in the era of “socialist realism” and the uncertainty of that era, which penetrated even the life of a famous writer, fearing the openness of historical truth, c) significance of the creation date of the poem “Vivos plango. Mortuos voco” (1943), its spontaneous spread, concealment of authorship and the circumstances of its returned relevance in the present, which speak of its phenomenon, overshadowing the ineffectiveness of the “socialist realism” introduced by the Soviets in the context of Lithuanian literature.

History, Horror, and Peak TV: Experimental History Series

Despite being a disreputable genre, horror remains a staple in cinemas and has become increasingly prominent on TV, a medium that has, until recently, been considered inferior to film. Now, a maligned genre and a previously discredited medium are producing some of the most original and engaging histories currently seen on screen. Lovecraft Country (HBO, 2020), Them (Amazon Prime, 2021–), and The Terror (AMC, 2018–2019) are experimental histories of the Peak TV period that effectively weave together historical truths with fantasy. The way the audience physically reacts to the “bounded” horrors in these shows shapes their response to the “unbounded” historical horrors with which they appear alongside. While history and horror might be considered unusual bedfellows, adding horror to a period setting does not automatically void an onscreen historical representation; instead, the resulting unorthodox history can complicate the audience’s understanding of the past and their reaction to it. Anthology and limited series formats are particularly suited to this form of history making, as they maintain an atmosphere of dread while allowing ample time for character development and the construction of narratively complex historical storylines.