Beyond Outrage: Approaching Arts Controversy in Postcommunist Poland

In recent decades, public disagreements over artistic expression have emerged as a key feature of contemporary democratic culture. This has also been the case in the formerly communist countries of East and Central Europe such as Poland where persistent arts controversy has become a central component of the postcommunist era. This article explores the characteristics of postcommunist Poland’s arts conflicts, how they relate to other models of contemporary arts controversy, and what might be deemed their specific “postcommunist” qualities. It also looks into the evolution of how arts controversy has been understood and interpreted in Poland after 1989—from the 1990s’ scandalous outrage with mostly visual arts, through the decisive cultural and political turning points of the following decade, up to the debates of recent years about controversial theatre productions like Golgota Picnic (2014), the public sphere and the outcomes of postcommunist transformation.

Preferred Leader Behaviour in the Business Sector of Lithuania: Follower Diversity Perspective

Leadership roles in sustaining effective management have recently become paramount due to the need to keep up with the fast technical and societal developments. Moreover, business sectors in the postcommunist transformation settings are facing distinct leadership challenges suggesting a different pattern of leadership behaviour. The main contribution of this study was to build on follower-centric approach in leadership and investigate followers’ diversity in regard to leader behaviour preferences as a means to benchmark followers’ attitudes in the post-communist country still undergoing societal cultural shift. The purpose of the study was to investigate the leadership behaviours in Lithuanian cultural context. This study used 129 responses to the Leader Behaviour Description Questionnaire XII in order to identify the followers’ preferences of the leadership behaviour. ANOVA and correlation analyses were used to identify how followers’ age, level of education, and gender are related to leadership behaviour. The results indicated significant differences in regard to gender and education level of the follower towards the desired leader behaviour. However, the age of the follower did not affect leader behaviour preferences. This indicates that followers in Lithuania have diverse attitudes towards perception of effective leadership. Studying leader behaviour within the context of the followers’ socio-demographic characteristics contributes to the increase of knowledge about leadership behaviour in post-communist emerging economies.

Towards perpetual neoliberalism in education: The Slovak path to postcommunist transformation

Slovak education policy is an example of the kind of transformations occurring in the education spheres of postcommunist countries. While at the end of the 1990s, it seemed that education policy was still attempting to ensure that Slovakia caught up with education levels in western countries, the period that followed brought with it a shift towards neoliberalization of the education sector and towards the economization of education. Slovakia’s entry into the EU was accompanied by the total assimilation of the neoliberal agenda within education and since then it can be said that Slovak education policy has followed a path towards so-called perpetual neoliberalism. The aim of this article is to show how education policy has developed within Slovak politics, in terms of how it is gradually adapting to neoliberal ideas. The article analyzes government documents from 1998 onwards, particularly Slovak government programs, which document the process of neoliberalization in education.

European Integration of Postcommunist States: Safe Future or Evolutionary Trap?

The article discusses the complexities of postcommunist transformation of Central and Eastern European states and their further development in the European Union. First of all, the author considers the phenomenon of postcommunist transformation, its internal logic and causes that determined different paths of postcommunist countries' development. Later the attention is focused on the development of postcommunist states that have entered the EU. The most important challenges for these countries that have chosen the path of European integration are singled out. It is evaluated how these challenges have been dealt with since the entry to the EU. Although the main focus of article is the whole region, the situation of Lithuania is analyzed in more detail. Judging from the present trends, one may conclude that the latter country (along with some other postcommunist EU member states) may remain in an economic periphery of Europe distinguished by political instability, distrust of political institutions and increasing "social deficit."

Media Use in Estonia

The article gives an overview of general trends in media use in Estonia over the last 15 years, making some comparisons with Nordic countries. Since the beginning of postcommunist transformation in 1991, the media landscape in Estonia has faced substantial changes. A completely renewed media system has emerged, characterized by a diversity of channels, formats, and contents. Not only the media themselves, but also the patterns of media use among audiences, their habits and expectations, have gone through a process of radical change. Changes in the Estonian media landscape have some aspects in common with many other European countries, such as the impact of emerging new media and global TV; others are specific features of transition to a market economy and democratic political order. Besides discussing general trends, the article gives insights into some audience- related aspects of changes, more specifically age and ethnicity.