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HOW THE RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN WAR BROKE OUT – ON THE BACKSTAGE OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS FROM JAKUB KUMOCH’S PERSPECTIVE. Source material edited by Łukasz Adamski.

02 Mar 2023 Łukasz Adamski

This conversation between Igor Janke and Jakub Kumoch is an important source for research into the beginning of the Russian–Ukrainian war and the role of Polish diplomacy in the winter and spring of 2022. After all, it is not often that direct participants in high-level international talks share their memories of key historical moments, along with many important details and observations, less than a year after the events themselves. This is what Jakub Kumoch does – and he does it in a colourful way. A Polish political scientist and diplomat who has served as Poland's ambassador to Switzerland, Turkey and other countries, Kumoch was State Secretary for International Affairs...

International affairs

Anti-Polish World War II Narratives in the Russian Internet Media Space: a Case Study of the period December 2019 to April 2020

21 Aug 2022 Veranika Laputska

The article touches upon the anti-Polish narratives in the Russian Internet media space that appeared during the period between December 2019 and April 2020. An anti-Polish media campaign initiated by the speech of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin in December 2019 gradually unfolded into a large-scale information war that included multiple actors disseminating the relevant narratives. For the purpose of the study publication of the following segments of the Russian Internet were analyzed: Russia’s state and official sources, Russian main TV programs, Russian leading historical societies, Russian independent historians and their social media channels where applicable. Keywords: politics of memory, Poland, Russia, World War II, Vladimir Putin, Russian media, Internet discourse

The Clash of the Soviet-Russian and Nationalist Narrations of the Past

21 Aug 2022 Šarūnas Liekis

Formerly occupied states or modern national movements have to develop narratives of resisting invaders or occupiers in order to teach the young never to be defeated in the future. Narratives of resistance explain temporary or permanent failures by employing resistance storytelling, which puts forward compensatory and defensive mechanisms for repressed peoples. This article is a case study of the narratives of resistance in Lithuania. The article explores the Lithuanian anti-Soviet resistance, the pro-Soviet Lithuanian partisan groups, the Polish Home Army, or the Jewish partisans in Soviet partisan formations in the framework of narratives of resistance. Keywords: resistance, narratives, partisans, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Israel

Current Issues

Articles

History

National master narrative: vicissitudes of method

25 May 2021 Georgiy Kasianov

This article focuses on the historiographical, cultural and political phenomenon known as the national master narrative. Its cognitive, interpretative and explicatory potential is analysed together with its advantages and shortcomings. Drawing on Ukrainian historiography, the place of the national master narrative on the historiographical, cultural and political map is discussed. Its influence on the writing of history in modern Ukraine is also addressed. Keywords: national master narrative, essentialism, nation, Ukrainian historiography, analytical history

History

Histories of Nations and Borders: Critical Reflections Timothy Baycroft

25 May 2021 Timothy Baycroft

Examining the question of ‘which history’ of a nation emerges over time and why, this article interrogates the ways in which histories and borders come to acquire symbolic significance and become ‘national histories’ and ‘national borders’. It begins with a thorough analysis of the elements that contribute to and the forces which have an impact upon the development of national identity, national symbolism, and national memory. Then, drawing from a range of examples, it provides serious critical reflection on the work of historians and the nature of the questions that need to be asked in order truly to understand the processes of nation building and identity formation. Keywords: Borders, nationalism, memory, national history, identity, conflict

History

Russia and the US in the Mirrors of Academic Research

25 May 2021 Ivan Kurilla

The article offers a comparative analysis of Russian and American scholarship on each other states and society. The author overviews the study of US history in Russia, the study of Russian history in the US, the study of the history of Russian–American relations, and the discourse of each country on the contemporary political reality in the other. Both Russian and the US research agendas demonstrated some degree of dependence of the other country’s policies, they were engaged in a limited dialogue, but most heavily they were influenced by domestic politics. The author claims also that the image of Russia in the United States and the image of America in Russia play important roles in the home debates making it difficult to separate foreign policy from domestic disputes. Such a vantage point calls for the use of the social constructivist approach to the study of the US – Russian relations with its heavier focus on identity construction and nation-building. Key words: US – Russian relations, US History, Russian History, Study of the Other, Enemy Studies, Area Studies, Constructivism in IR

International affairs

The irresistible appeal of playing on a global chessboard

25 May 2021 Ernest Wyciszkiewicz

International relations suffer from a plethora of pseudo-theoretical approaches. Some of these approaches claim the right not only to explain but also to shape the international reality. These will quite often become instrumental in the legitimization of a given state’s policies. Nuances, caveats, and an awareness of limitations give way to simplicity, unambiguity and self-confidence. The aim of this article is to critically deconstruct certain ways of thinking about inter-state relations and international policy that are usually attributed to advocates of geopolitics and naïve realism. What makes vague but attractive geopolitical jargon, belief in determinism, enchantment with maps and admiration for the ‘concert of powers’ so popular, and what consequences might the adoption of geopolitical assumptions have for contemporary political practice? The popular mono-causal approaches that are full of hasty but firm generalizations about the laws of history have the upper hand over pluralist ones that look for a multitude of usually inconclusive explanations. The reason for this might not simply be analytical laziness; the fact is that the aforementioned popular, simplistic, even trivial observations dressed in quasi-scientific costume serve as a convenient source of legitimacy for revisionist leaders who wish to be seen as defenders of the status quo. Keywords: geopolitics, determinism, concert of powers, maps, legitimization

International affairs

History

How to avoid the genocide trap Genocide as a concept in historiography and social sciences

25 May 2021 Klaus Bachmann

This article argues that instead of using inconsistent and often tautological ad hoc definitions from social sciences and the humanities, the legal notion of genocide as it emerges from the Genocide Convention and the jurisprudence of international criminal tribunals should also be applied to historical atrocities. This helps to prevent the inflationary use of the term ‘genocide’, whose inevitable consequence is that this term is voided of any meaning. Using instead the legal concept makes it possible to disentangle genocidal from non-genocidal violence and to prevent this notion from becoming obsolete. Three examples from German colonial history in Africa illustrate the need for such an approach. Key words: genocide, war crimes, German, Africa, Schutztruppen, colonial, international criminal tribunals

History

‘It is terrible that we have such a low level of historical knowledge’: Interview with Sergey Mironenko

25 May 2021 admin a

Biographical note Sergey Mironenko, Head of Research of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). Historian, PhD in Historical Sciences, Professor, Associate Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). Director of GARF since May 1992. Head of Research at GARF since March 2016. A Panel Member of the Federal Archival Agency of Russia. Head of the 19th to early 20th century Russian History Department at the Faculty of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University. Member of the editorial boards of the journals ‘Istoricheskiy Arkhiv’ (History Archive), ‘Rodina’ (Motherland), and ‘Voyenno-Istoricheskiy Zhurnal’ (Military Historical Journal).[1] [1] Quoted from the GARF website: Mironenko Sergej Vladimirovič Naučnyj rukovoditelʹ Gosudarstvennogo archiva Rossijskoj Federacii < https://statearchive.ru/446> [accessed September 28, 2021]

History

Why AREI

25 May 2021 Łukasz Adamski

Veritas est adequatio rei et intellectus – this is how St Thomas formulated the definition of truth in his treatise ‘De Veritate’. Truth is the correspondence between a thing and a judgment, or, to explain it in another way, the correspondence between our judgment and the actual state of affairs. This so-called correspondence definition, which goes back to Aristotle, has formed the basis of Europeans’ thinking about the world for centuries, from ancient times onwards, and has inspired them to discover ways of approaching the truth. What is more, it is still shared by a considerable number of philosophers as well as by the overwhelming part of humanity, which usually intuitively takes for granted the existence of the truth as well as untruth or lies. This is the foundation on which European civilisation has grown. St. Thomas’s definition has, of course, important epistemological implications: it assumes that truth as such objectively exists; it is not merely a product of human minds or our senses; it is not dependent on subjective factors such as cultural conditions or the existence of a social consensus as to what that truth is. Aquinas’ adequatio ret et intellectus is a denial of Pilate’s doubt: quod est veritas.

History

Marek Kornat, Mariusz Wołos. Józef Beck. Biografia. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2020.

25 May 2021 Dušan Segeš

It is difficult to imagine narratives on the period preceding the Second World War that do not include Józef Beck. As minister for foreign affairs, he was not just a key figure in Polish diplomacy; because of the important role that he played at a critical moment in global history, historiography pays much greater attention to him than it does to other representatives of the political elite of the Second Polish Republic.

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