National Identity and the Teaching of History
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The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth As a Political Space: Its Unity and Complexity*
Chapter 8 The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a Political Space: Its Unity and Complexity* Satoshi Koyama Introduction The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita) was one of the largest states in early modern Europe. In the second half of the sixteenth century, after the union of Lublin (1569), the Polish-Lithuanian state covered an area of 815,000 square kilometres. It attained its greatest extent (990,000 square kilometres) in the first half of the seventeenth century. On the European continent there were only two larger countries than Poland-Lithuania: the Grand Duchy of Moscow (c.5,400,000 square kilometres) and the European territories of the Ottoman Empire (840,000 square kilometres). Therefore the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was the largest country in Latin-Christian Europe in the early modern period (Wyczański 1973: 17–8). In this paper I discuss the internal diversity of the Commonwealth in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and consider how such a huge territorial complex was politically organised and integrated. * This paper is a part of the results of the research which is grant-aided by the ‘Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research’ program of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in 2005–2007. - 137 - SATOSHI KOYAMA 1. The Internal Diversity of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Poland-Lithuania before the union of Lublin was a typical example of a composite monarchy in early modern Europe. ‘Composite state’ is the term used by H. G. Koenigsberger, who argued that most states in early modern Europe had been ‘composite states, including more than one country under the sovereignty of one ruler’ (Koenigsberger, 1978: 202). -
Lithuanian Voices
CHAPTER FIVE Lithuanian Voices 1. Lithuanian Letters in the U.S. The list of American works featuring Lithuanians is short; it apparently consists of three novels. However, for such a small nation, not a “global player” in Franzen’s words, three novels authored by Americans can be seen as sufficient and even impressive. After all, three American authors found Lithuanians interesting enough to make them the main characters of their works. Two of those works, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, became bestsellers and popularized the name of Lithuania in the U.S. and the world. The third work, Margaret Seebach’s That Man Donaleitis, although overlooked by critics and readers, nevertheless exists as a rare token of admiration for an obscure and oppressed people of the Russian empire. Many other small nations never made it to the pages of American texts. The best they could do was to present themselves to Americans in their own ethnic writing in English. However, the mere existence of such ethnic texts did not guarantee their success with the American audience. Ethnic groups from Eastern Europe for a long time presented little interest to Americans. As noted by Thomas Ferraro, autobiographical and biographical narratives of “immigrants from certain little-known places of Eastern Europe . did not attract much attention” (383). He mentions texts by a Czech, a Croatian, a Slovakian and a Pole written between 1904 and 1941, and explains the lack of attention to them from American public: “the groups they depict remained amorphous in the national imagination and did not seem to pose too much of a cultural threat” (383). -
Lithuanian Writers and the Establishment During Late Socialism: the Writers Union As a Place for Conformism Or Escape Vilius Ivanauskas
LITHUANIAN HISTORICAL STUDIES 15 2010 ISSN 1392-2343 PP. 51–78 LITHUANIAN WRITERS AND THE EStabLISHMENT DURING LatE SOCIALISM: THE WRITERS UNION AS A PLACE FOR CONFORMISM OR ESCAPE Vilius Ivanauskas ABSTRACT This article analyses how the changes in the dominant attitude of local Soviet writers were encouraged, screened or restricted by the Writers Union [WU] through mechanisms of planning, control and even through measures of creating a secure daily environment. The author looks at the tensions and conflicts between writers of different generations, observing less ideology in the younger generation than in their predecessors since the development and dissemination of national images among the declared values of communism were increasing. The union as a system covered both aspects – conformism and the escape (manoeuvre). Though the WU had a strong mechanism of control, it managed to ensure for the writers such a model of adaptation where even those, who were subject to restrictions, had a possibility of remaining within the official structure, through certain compromises, while actually avoiding involvement in dissident activities or samizdat publishing. Introduction In August 1940 a group of Lithuanian intellectuals, most of whom were writers, went off to Moscow “to bring back Stalin’s Sunshine”, at the same time asking for Lithuania to be incorporated into the USSR. Forty eight years later in early June 1988 a few members of the local literary elite joined the initial Sąjūdis Group and from thenceforth stood in the vanguard of the National Revival. These two historic moments, witnessing two contrary breaking points in history, when Lithuanian writers were active participants in events, naturally give rise to the question of how the status and role of writers and their relationship with the Soviet regime changed. -
Lithuanian Literature in 1918–1940: the Dynamics of Influences and Originality
340 INTERLITT ERA RIA 2018, 23/2: 340–353 VANAGAITĖ Lithuanian Literature in 1918–1940: The Dynamics of Influences and Originality GITANA VANAGAITĖ Abstract. Lithuanian independence (1918–1940), which lasted for twenty- two years, and its symbolic center, the provisional capital Kaunas, have been very important for the country’s political, social, and cultural identity. In 1918, changes in the social, economic, and political status of an individual as well as transformations in the literary field followed the change of the political system. In what ways the relationship between the center and the periphery and the spheres of literary influences were altered by the new forms of life? Lithuania, the former geographic periphery of tsarist Russia, after the change of the political system became a geographical and cultural periphery of Europe. Nevertheless, political freedom provided an opportunity to use the dichotomy of center-periphery creatively. Lithuanian writers, who suddenly found them- selves living in Europe with old cultural traditions, tried to overcome the insignificance of their own literature, its shallow themes and problems by “borrowing” ideas and ways to express them. In fact, the imitation was not mechanical, so the new influences enabled writers to expand significantly the themes and forms of Lithuanian literature. The article examines the development of new cultural centers in inde- pendent Lithuania. It also discusses the avant-garde movement which emerged under the influence of Russian futurists and German expressionists. In addition, it focuses on individual authors, such as Antanas Vaičiulaitis, Kazys Binkis and Petras Cvirka, and the influence that affected their works. Keywords: center; periphery; literary influence; host culture Center and Periphery in Literature The word periphery translated from the Latin (peripherīa) means “a circle.” In turn, this Latin word is related to two Greek words, perí, which means “around,” and pherein – “to carry”. -
Darius Staliūnas HISTORIOGRAPHY of the LITHUANIAN NATIONAL
Darius Staliūnas HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE LITHUANIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT CHANGING PARADIGMS The beginning of Lithuanian national historiography and the topic of ‘National Revival’ The Lithuanian historical narrative was formed during the nineteenth century as a component part of a newly developing Lithuanian national discourse. One of the most important and most difficult tasks facing the construction of a modern Lithuanian identity was how to separate it from the Polish identity (as well as from its Russian counterpart, even though Russianness was not regarded as being so parlous for the ‘purification’ of national identity). It therefore comes as no surprise that Lithuanians construed their concept of history as an alternative to the Polish construction (and to a lesser degree to the Russian version). Most nineteenth-century Polish political movements, including schools of history, did not regard the Lithuanians as having any independent political future and so it is not surprising that they were inclined first and foremost to stress the benefits of Polish culture and civilisation in Lithuania’s past. The Lithuanians had no other option than using their authentic ethnic culture as a counterweight to Polish civilisation. Conceiving Lithuanian identity as primarily ethno-cultural values, a concept of Lithuanian history was construed accordingly. The history of Lithuania was considered to be Darius Staliūnas, ‘Historiography of the Lithuanian national movement. Changing paradigms’, in: Studies on National Movements, 1 (2013) pp. 160-182. http://snm.nise.eu Studies on National Movements, 1 (2013) | ARTICLES the history of (ethnic) Lithuanians. Topics connected with ‘national revival’ have clearly dominated in texts devoted to nineteenth-century history. -
Klaipedos Kr Dainos.Indd
Singing tradition of the Klaipėda region preserved in Lithuania and in the émigré communities In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was the Lithuanian songs of East Prussia that opened the way for Lithuanian language and culture into Western Europe. The elegiac folk poetry, with characteristically straightforward structure and plain subject matter, fascinated the enlightened minds of artists and scholars, kindling their imagination and providing inspiration for their own creative work. Certain ideas that originated in the Age of Enlightenment and gained currency in Western Europe, coupled with the nascent concern about the newly discovered yet already vanishing layer of traditional culture, lent an important impetus for preservation of that obsolescent culture. It was then that the Lithuanian songs were first recorded, published and researched. The network of Prussian clergymen who were the first collectors of folklore formed around Liudvikas Rėza (Ludwig Rhesa) (1776‒1840), a professor at the University of Königsberg, amassed a priceless repository of Lithuanian non-material culture, which kept growing by the effort of countless devout enthusiasts during the coming two hundred years. The present collection of Songs and Music from the Klaipėda Region is yet another contribution to this ever expanding repository. At long last we will have an opportunity to hear the real sound of what many of us have only known in the form of written down verses, notated melodies, and interpretations thereof. As a matter of fact, no sound recordings of authentic Prussian Lithuanian songs or instrumental music have been published in Lithuania in the course of the 20th century. On the other hand, there was no apparent lack of valuable materials preserved at folklore archives and informants who could have sung Lithuanian folk songs for the compilers of sound anthologies in the middle of 26 the 20th century. -
THE POLISH RES PUBLICA of NATIONAL and ETHNIC Minorities from the PIASTS to the 20TH CENTURY
PRZEGLĄD ZACHODNI 2014, No. II MARCELI KOSMAN Poznań THE POLISH RES PUBLICA OF NATIONAL AND ETHNIC MINORITIES FROM THE PIASTS TO THE 20TH CENTURY Początki Polski [The Beginnings of Poland], a fundamental work by Henryk Łowmiański, is subtitled Z dziejów Słowian w I tysiącleciu n.e. [On the History of Slavs in the 1st Millennium A.D.]. Its sixth and final volume, divided into two parts, is also titled Poczatki Polski but subtitled Polityczne i społeczne procesy kształtowania się narodu do początku wieku XIV [Political and Social Processes of Nation Forma- tion till the Beginning of the 14th Century]1. The subtitle was changed because the last volume concerns the formation of the Piast state and emergence of the Polish nation. Originally, there were to be three volumes. The first volume starts as follows: The notion of the beginnings of Poland covers two issues: the genesis of the state and the genesis of the nation. The two issues are closely connected since a state is usually a product of a specific ethnic group and it is the state which, subsequently, has an impact on the transformation of its people into a higher organisational form, i.e. a nation.2 The final stage of those processes in Poland is relatively easily identifiable. It was at the turn of the 10th and 11th century when the name Poland was used for the first time to denote a country under the superior authority of the duke of Gniezno, and the country inhabitants, as attested in early historical sources.3 It is more difficult to determine the terminus a quo of the nation formation and the emergence of Po- land’s statehood. -
Contents/Sommaire
RANSYLVANIAN EVIEW Vol. XXIV T R No. 3 /REVUE DE TRANSYLVANIE Autumn 2015 Contents/Sommaire ROMANIAN ACADEMY Chairman: • Paradigms Academician Ionel-Valentin Vlad Between Religion and Science: Some Aspects Concerning Illness and Healing in Antiquity 3 CENTER FOR Simona Gabriela Bungãu TRANSYLVANIAN STUDIES Viorel-Cristian Popa Director: Academician Ioan-Aurel Pop Religion and Power in Ioan Petru Culianu’s View 19 Dorin David A Priest in the “Romanian Action”: Dr. Titus Mãlaiu 26 Maria Ghitta Aspects of Religiosity in the Social Institutions Operating in the Romanian Public Space 40 Ion Petricã Felicia Andrioni Religion and the Public Sphere: Transitional (Post-communist) Representations of the Uniate Community of Cluj-Napoca, between Religion and Politics 56 Codruþa Liana Cuceu Pilgrimage and Its Infrastructure in Post-communist Transylvania 70 Mircea Sergiu Moldovan From Double to Triple Minority: Romanian neo-Protestants from the Serbian Banat in the United States and Canada 85 Mircea Mãran Aleksandra Durić-Milovanović– • Tangencies La révolution hussite et l’affirmation du voïvodat de Transylvanie dans le contexte de la croisade tardive 98 Florian Dumitru Soporan Liana Lãpãdatu The Moldavian Lady On the cover: and the Elder Lords of the East 113 Solicitude, Silence... Mark Whelan (2014) Photo by ALIN BARBIR Alexandru Simon TR 3 2015.indd 1 11/13/2015 12:31:51 PM Violence in Northern Ireland 130 Corina Pãcurar Transylvanian Review continues the • Editorial Events tradition of Revue de Transylvanie, founded by Silviu Dragomir, which Romanian Capitalism: Out of the Frying Pan into was published in Cluj and then in Sibiu the Fire: Lessons in Dependency and Development 140 between 1934 and 1944. -
The Revival of Lithuanian Polyphonic Sutartinės Songs in the Late 20Th and Early 21St Century Daiva Račiūnaitė-Vyčinienė
The Revival of Lithuanian Polyphonic Sutartinės Songs in the Late 20th and Early 21st Century Daiva Račiūnaitė-Vyčinienė Introduction The ‘Neo-Folklore movement’ (in Lithuania, In contemporary ethnomusicology, attention is folkloro judėjimas, folkloro ansamblių judėjimas; increasingly paid to the defi nition of the terms in Latvia, folkloras absambļu kustība; in Estonia, ‘tradition’ and ‘innovation’. These defi nitions folklooriliikumine) is the term used in the Baltic include stability and mobility; repetition and contries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) to denote creativity; ‘fi rst’ and ‘second existence’1 and similar the increased interest in folklore tradition during concepts, and how these phenomena relate the 1970s and 80s. The term also ‘describes the to folklore traditions. Most of today’s musical practical forms of actualizing folklore in daily traditions can be described as ‘revival’. This term life and in the expressions of amateur art that is used widely yet ambiguously in research in have accompanied the spiritual awakening of the English language.2 The word is applied to the people and their fi ght for the restoration of the phenomena of revitalisation, recreation, independence at beginning of the 1990s’ (Klotiņš innovation, and transformation, these terms often 2002: 107). In Soviet times, the Lithuanian folklore being used synonymously and interchangeably.3 ensemble movement,5 one among thousands of its Nevertheless, there are some ethnomusicologists kind, was a form of resistance to denationalisation who take a purist approach, adhering to the and to other Soviet ideologies. Without this original meanings of these terms. The Swedish ethnic, cultural union there would not have been ethnomusicologist Ingrid Åkesson describes a Singing Revolution.6 three basic concepts that apply to the processes This movement encompassed a variety of of change in folklore, each with its own shade of folklore genres and styles, refl ecting the general meaning: ‘recreation’, ‘reshaping’/‘transformation’, revival and reinvigoration of folklore. -
WHAT PRICE LITHUANIAN INDEPENDENCE? By
NOT FOR WITHOUT WRITER'SPUBLICATIOICONSENT INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD ILN AFEAIRS Vilnius Lithuania April ii, 1990 WHAT PRICE LITHUANIAN INDEPENDENCE? by Ina Navazelskis Saturday, March 31, was a beautiful spring day in Vilnius. The sun shone; a gusty, warm breeze blew. People were out shopping or strolling along Gediminas Prospect, Vilnius' central boulevard. Life looked normal. It was, however,-far from that. It was on this balmy spring day that Mikhail Gorbachev delivered his most stinging written rebuke yet to the Lithuanian leadership. Almost three weeks to the day after the Lithuanians declared independence, Gorbachev warned of "grave consequences" if the Lithuanian parliament refused to revoke all the laws, declarations, resolutions and appeals that it had passed in the interim. Gorbachev's primary target, of course, was the declaration of independence itself, or as the Lithuanians call it, the "reestablishment" of the independent statehood of Lithuania. The Lithuanians have been calling for negotiations with Moscow ever since they passed this act on March ii. Gorbachev now stipulated he would sit down at the negotiating table only if the Lithuanians [evoked it. "The current Lithuanian leadership is not listening to the voice of reason, Gorbachev' s ultimatum to the Lithuanian Parliament began. It was totally ignoring the decisions of the extraordinary third session of the Soviet People's Congress held in mid-March (which condemned all the Lithuanian moves) and was "carrying out actions which conflict with the Constitution of the Soviet Union, and which, in the view of the entire Union, are openly provocational and insulting." Ins Navszelskis, a journalist, hes written extensively about East European and Soviet ffairs. -
Country Profile Lithuania
Country Profile Lithuania Last updated: February 2020 This profile was prepared and updated by Audronė Rimkutė (Vilnius University). The opinions expressed in this profile are those of the author and are not official statements of the government or of the Compendium editors. It is based on official and non-official sources addressing current cultural policy issues. Additional national cultural policy profiles are available on: http://www.culturalpolicies.net If the entire profile or relevant parts of it are reproduced in print or in electronic form including in a translated version, for whatever purpose, a specific request has to be addressed to the Association of the Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends. Such reproduction must be accompanied by the standard reference below, as well as by the name of the author of the profile. Standard Reference: Association of the Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends, "Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends," 20th edition 2020. Available under:<https://www.culturalpolicies.net>>. ISSN: 2222-7334. 1 1. Cultural policy system ..................................................................................................................................... 4 1.1. Objectives, main features and background ....................................................................................... 4 1.2. Domestic governance system .............................................................................................................. 7 1.2.1. Organisational organigram .............................................................................................................. -
Baltic Literary and Cultural History, 7,5 Hp, an BAL 740: Baltisk Litteratur- Och Kulturhistoria, 7,5 Högskolepoäng, SC
STOCKHOLMS UNIVERSITET Institutionen för slaviska och baltiska språk, finska, nederländska och tyska Avdelningen för baltiska språk Spring term 2019 Course Information and Literature List BAL 740: Baltic Literary and Cultural History, 7,5 hp, AN BAL 740: Baltisk litteratur- och kulturhistoria, 7,5 högskolepoäng, SC Welcome to the course Baltic Literary and Cultural History, 7,5 hp! This handout provides information about course content and structure, as well as a literature list. The last page contains an excerpt from the Swedish Higher Education Act, where you can read about the general learning goals that are relevant for higher education. Course Content and Structure The Course Baltic Literary and Cultural History consists of a detailed review of Baltic history of literature, cultural history and ancient Baltic religions, and an advanced analysis of significant cultural manifestations and major contemporary authors. The course consists of a general obligatory part and an elective part, where the student chooses a specific topic within the field of Baltic history and literature and cultural history in cooperation with the examiner. Learning Outcomes Having completed the course the student has demonstrated an ability to: - Acquire advanced knowledge about Baltic history of literature and cultural history - Formulate a theoretical discussion on the development and conditions pertaining to Baltic history of literature and cultural history Grades and Forms of Examination Grades are given according to a criterion referenced seven-point scale: A-E are passing grades, and Fx-F are failing grades. A student who has received a grade of E or higher may not take the test again in order to get a higher grade.