scholarly journals Hybrid practices meet nation-state language policies: Transcarpathia in the twentieth century and today

Multilingua ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
István Csernicskó ◽  
Petteri Laihonen

AbstractFrom the early twentieth century to the present day, Transcarpathia has belonged to several states: the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy, Czechoslovakia, the Hungarian Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and finally to Ukraine. The status of what counts as a minority and a majority language has changed each time the state affiliation has been changed. Based on the long term research by Csernicskó, and on the one-month fieldwork carried out by Laihonen in 2012, our goal is to provide an autonomous critical account and discourse analysis of the linguistic situation in Transcarpathia. We draw examples especially from the linguistic landscape, which documents the hybrid practices difficult to catch with other means. Different nation states have aimed to evaluate certain languages over others. However, Transcarpathia has been too far away from different national centers and it has therefore remained a periphery. In the everyday life of Transcarpathians, ironies around language repertoires, standardization and heteroglossia come into the fore, especially in the current context. Such unexpected linguistic practices or “pre-nationalist” and “non-purist” ideologies offer a change to see how certain categories, such as language, have remained in their hybrid forms and are still clearly “in the making”.

Author(s):  
Johann P. Arnason ◽  
Marek Hrubec

Problems of social revolutions and/or transformations belong to the classical agenda of social inquiry, as well as to the most prominent real and potential challenges encountered by contemporary societies. Among revolutionary events of the last decades, particular attention has been drawn to the changes that unfolded at the turn of the 1990s and brought the supposedly bipolar (in fact incipiently multipolar) world to an end. The downfall of East Central European Communist regimes in 1989 and of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the beginning of a new era, originally characterised on the one hand by the relaxation of international tensions and on the other by the ascendancy of Western unilateralism. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the Soviet collapse prompts the authors of this book to reflect on revolutions and transformations, both from a long-term historical perspective and with regard to the post-Communist scene. The social changes unfolding in Eastern and Central Europe are not only epoch-making historical turns; their economic, social and political aspects, often confusing and unexpected, have also raised new questions and triggered debates about fundamental theoretical issues. Moreover, they have had a significant impact on developments elsewhere in the world, in both Western and developing countries.


2020 ◽  
pp. 70-86
Author(s):  
Gennady Estraikh

In the fall of 1956, a group of British Communists visited the Soviet Union. As did a number of other delegations and individual visitors of the time, they sought to examine the extent of progress of de-Stalinization in the political system and, in particular, to understand the status of Jews in post-Stalinist society. In their report, the delegation noted that among Jews of the older generation, including the one or two thousand who came to the Leningrad Synagogue to celebrate the festival of Simchat Torah, “the non-existence of a Yiddish paper was regarded as a deprivation and an injustice.”...


2006 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 131-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. McMahon

Events in South Asia in the 1950s and early 1960s had a long-term impact on the Cold War and on relations among the countries involved—China, India, Pakistan, the United States, and the Soviet Union. This article provides an overview of U.S. relations with South Asian countries during the early Cold War. It highlights the connections between U.S. policy priorities and commitments in South Asia on the one hand and developments in Tibet on the other. The article considers how U.S. policy priorities and actions in South Asia shaped, and were shaped by, China's reassertion of control over Tibet in the early 1950s and by the frictions that emerged between India and China in 1959 as a result of Beijing's brutal crackdown in Tibet.


1995 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 621-634 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmond J. Keller

The end of the cold war has coincided with, and in some cases fuelled, the politicisation of ethnically based nationalism, particularly in Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. The international political environment had previously been characterised by ideological competition and conflict between the United States on the one hand and the Soviet Union and Communist China on the other. Both of these ideological camps stressed the cohesion and viability of multi-ethnic nation-states, and as a matter of policy discouraged the representation of groups based upon a distinctive ethnic identity,1 a tendency reinforced in social science scholarship, which often focused on what was described as the process of national political integration. To the extent that it existed and was relevant, scholars generally agreed that ethnic solidarity was different from nationalism in that it did not require the creation of an ethnically pure nation-state. Today, however, the notion of the inviolability of certain internationally recognised entities is being seriously called into question as ethnic groups assert their right to self-determination up to, and including, separation from the multi-ethnic state.


Author(s):  
Tomasz Kamusella

This chapter focuses on the use of languages by Europe’s nation-states in the twentieth century, particularly after 1989. The ethnolinguistically homogeneous nation-state became the norm of legitimate statehood in Europe. At the level of rhetoric, the Soviet Union was an exception, but it was replaced by ethnolinguistic national polities. The idea of the normative isomorphism (tight spatial and symbolic overlapping) of language, nation, and state still obtains in Europe, as exemplified by the parallel breakups of Yugoslavia and its Serbo-Croatian language, so that each successor state (with the exception of Kosovo) has its own national language. The widespread normative insistence that languages should make nations and polities, and nation-states should make languages, is limited to Europe and parts of Asia, prevented elsewhere by the imposition of colonial languages. Interestingly, should the European Union persist in its official polyglotism, the normative thrust of ethnolinguistic nationalism may be blunted in the future.


Author(s):  
Yuriy Makar

On December 22, 2017 the Ukrainian Diplomatic Service marked the 100thanniversary of its establishment and development. In dedication to such a momentous event, the Department of International Relations of Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University has published a book of IR Dept’s ardent activity since its establishment. It includes information both in Ukrainian and English on the backbone of the collective and their versatile activities, achievements and prospects for the future. The author delves into retracing the course of the history of Ukrainian Diplomacy formation and development. The author highlights the roots of its formation, reconsidering a long way of its development that coincided with the formation of basic elements of Ukrainian statehood that came into existence as a result of the war of national liberation – the Ukrainian Central Rada (the Central Council of Ukraine). Later, the Ukrainian or so-called State the Hetmanate was under study. The Directorat (Directory) of Ukraine, being a provisional collegiate revolutionary state committee of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, was given a thorough study. Of particular interest for the research are diplomatic activities of the West Ukrainian People`s Republic. Noteworthy, the author emphasizes on the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic’s foreign policy, forced by the Bolshevist Russia. A further important implication is both the challenges of the Ukrainian statehood establishing and Ukraine’s functioning as a state, first and foremost, stemmed from the immaturity and conscience-unawareness of the Ukrainian society, that, ultimately, has led to the fact, that throughout the twentieth century Ukraine as a statehood, being incorporated into the Soviet Union, could hardly be recognized as a sovereign state. Our research suggests that since the beginning of the Ukrainian Diplomacy establishment and its further evolution, it used to be unprecedentedly fabricated and forged. On a wider level, the research is devoted to centennial fight of Ukraine against Russian violence and aggression since the WWI, when in 1917 the Russian Bolsheviks, headed by Lenin, started real Russian war against Ukraine. Apropos, in the about-a-year-negotiation run, Ukraine, eventually, failed to become sovereign. Remarkably, Ukraine finally gained its independence just in late twentieth century. Nowadays, Russia still regards Ukraine as a part of its own strategic orbit,waging out a carrot-and-stick battle. Keywords: The Ukrainian People’s Republic, the State of Ukraine, the Hetmanate, the Direcorat (Directory) of Ukraine, the West Ukrainian People`s Republic, the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, Ukraine, the Bolshevist Russia, the Russian Federation, Ukrainian diplomacy


2021 ◽  
pp. 0957154X2110353
Author(s):  
Birk Engmann

In the mid-twentieth century in the Soviet Union, latent schizophrenia became an important concept and a matter of research and also of punitive psychiatry. This article investigates precursor concepts in early Russian psychiatry of the nineteenth century, and examines whether – as claimed in recent literature – Russian and Soviet research on latent schizophrenia was mainly influenced by the work of Eugen Bleuler.


2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (s1) ◽  
pp. 893-911
Author(s):  
Ilgar Seyidov

AbstractDuring the Soviet period, the media served as one of the main propagandist tools of the authoritarian regime, using a standardized and monotype media system across the Soviet Republics. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, 15 countries became independent. The transition from Soviet communism to capitalism has led to the reconstruction of economic, socio-cultural, and political systems. One of the most affected institutions in post-Soviet countries was the media. Media have played a supportive role during rough times, when there was, on the one hand, the struggle for liberation and sovereignty, and, on the other hand, the need for nation building. It has been almost 30 years since the Soviet Republics achieved independence, yet the media have not been freed from political control and continue to serve as ideological apparatuses of authoritarian regimes in post-Soviet countries. Freedom of speech and independent media are still under threat. The current study focuses on media use in Azerbaijan, one of the under-researched post-Soviet countries. The interviews for this study were conducted with 40 participants living in Nakhichevan and Baku. In-depth, semi-structured interview techniques were used as research method. Findings are discussed under six main themes in the conclusion.


2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 212-241
Author(s):  
Mathijs Pelkmans

AbstractMissionaries have flocked to the Kyrgyz Republic ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Evangelical-Pentecostal and Tablighi missions have been particularly active on what they conceive of as a fertile post-atheist frontier. But as these missions project their message of truth onto the frontier, the dangers of the frontier may overwhelm them. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork amongst foreign and local Tablighis and evangelical-Pentecostals, this article formulates an analytic of the frontier that highlights the affective and relational characteristics of missionary activities and their effects. This analytic explains why and how missionaries are attracted to the frontier, as well as some of the successes and failures of their expansionist efforts. In doing so, the article reveals the potency of instability, a feature that is particularly evident in missionary work, but also resonates with other frontier situations.


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