Suchergebnisse

The Polish national minority in the USSR, including the BSSR, was viewed from the aspect of state security as an unreliable, subversive element. In this regard, it had to be Sovietized and Russified. In the conditions of the BSSR, there was also a specificity of the solution of the Polish question: first, the Poles were subjected to Sovietization and Byelorussification, and then to Russification. It was not possible to fully implement the plan for Sovietization and depolonization of the region and thus turn the Polish national minority into a Soviet society of power. The cultural and national specificity of the Poles of the BSSR and especially in the Grodno region has been preserved. However, the Soviet legacy in relation to the Polish national minority in independent Belarus has survived, including in the post-Soviet imperial complex "Great Belarus", a character-istic complex of "small empires" for most of the former Soviet republics.

This article provides an overview of some of the most prevalent topics in post-Yugoslav memory politics as well as on some of the scholars working on these issues, focusing on the commemorative practices of the Second World War and the wars of the 1990s. Thirty years after the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's disintegration, the discourse of post-war memory politics continues to dominate nearly all of the successor states, even though two of them have seemingly left the past behind to join the European Union. While the wars of the 1990s created an entirely new memoryscape in the region, they also radically transformed the way in which each country commemorated the Second World War. Although the article examines in-depth the collective remembrance of sites of memory, such as Jasenovac, Bleiburg, and Knin, trends across the broader region are also addressed. The work of young scholars, as well as experienced researchers, who have introduced innovative approaches in memory studies in the former Yugoslavia, is highlighted to show how new studies focus on the cultural reproduction of dominant narratives in addition to top-down political discourse.

In June 2015 the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy announced an amendment to the Labour Code, which is the reaction to the prevalence of employment based on-fixed term contracts in Poland. The scale of this phenomenon is not observed in any other E. U. state. New regulations may result in a decrease in the share of fixed-term employees of the total number of employees to be observed in the last few years. The Ministry intends to replace the limit of the renewals of a job contract concluded with an employee (currently the second renewal of the contract results in the conclusion of a permanent job contract) with another restriction: the total duration of such contracts should not exceed 33 months. The problem of an excessive share of flexible forms of employment has been widely analysed in the literature in recent years. It has become the subject of studies in the area of economy and sociology as well as an issue addressed by labour law experts. The expansion of flexibility has also received criticism from the trade unions, which influenced the mass media discourse - it is enough to mention the popularity of the term 'junk contracts' since 2012. The author attempts to comprehensively analyse the problem of flexible forms of employment, which include such issues as: the reasons for their popularity among employers, the scale of the use of particular forms based on the available statistical data, the construction of protective regulations of domestic labour law in the light of the requirements resulting from the E. U. and the I. L. O. membership, as well as social and economic consequences of the use of flexible forms of employment.

The article is an attempt to look at post-socialist tower blocks and modernist housing from a contemporary perspective. It takes the context of post-communist Europe as the basis for analysis, citing Sofia as an example. On the basis of the literature and references to the messages of mass culture, it shows the specificity of a metropolitan neighborhood, and leads the reader to a proposal for a conceptualization of 'neighborhood' using the notion of a neighborhood circle. The empirical part presents the results of a questionnaire carried out by means of a nationwide online survey and by means of interviews carried out in three Polish locations: Poznań, Warsaw and Wronki. The collected empirical data are described from the point of view of selected themes related to the concept of 'neighborhood circles', and analyzed statistically. The recommendations indicate the need to ask further detailed questions and invite discussion, and not only among urban sociologists, on the condition of modernist mass housing from the point of view of building neighborly relations.

The author makes an attempt to describe the problem of developing the concept of risk assessment of people's deviant online behavior, especially regarding children and young adults in social networks. The article emphasises risk factors, vulnerability, and deviant patterns in the context of such phenomena as aggressive, asocial, auto-aggressive, self-mutilating, suicidal, risk-taking and victim online behavior. Such behavioural disorders that mostly derive from "New digital reality", definitely influence public security aspects and threaten the social sustainability. The novelty of the article is in an analysis of the spheres of social life where the government should adapt legislation to new realities of Russian society so as to decrease and prevent both deviant and delinquent behaviour.

In december 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. This fact can be considered to be the most significant geopolitical event of the second half of the 20th century. As a result of the collapse of the USSR, fifteen union republics – the main units of the administrative-political and national division of the Soviet federation – gained state sovereignty and independence. One of the most important results of this process was the creation of Russia (Russian Federation), which declared itself and was recognized as the main successor of the Soviet empire. The young state faced many difficulties, which – at the level of internal policy – include carrying out socio-political-economic transformation, overcoming the deep structural crisis inherited from the late USSR, or building modern durable democratic institutions and democratic political culture. This meant that the new Russian elites needed to make a radical system change and to develop new political mechanisms in the management of this enormous country. The article will present the main problems faced by Russia and its establishment in the 1990s, with many turning points and breakthrough moments, specific to countries undergoing intensive and multifaceted post-communist transformation. Due to the importance and the role of Russia in the international system, the directions and tendencies of changes taking place in this country are particularly important, especially from the perspective of post-Soviet states and the countries of the former socialist block.

The aim of the article is to present the specific nature of research on the issues of national relations in a totalitarian state based on the example of the lands of Central and Eastern Europe under the Soviet occupation from 1939-1941. In order to achieve this, the literature on the subject (in English and Polish) was reviewed as well as the most important methodological problems encountered by researchers. The research program was also outlined, along with a proposal for their conceptualization in the form of signalling the main aspects of the above-mentioned issues, including the specificity of the Soviet occupation of 1939-1941, social and ethnic relations in this area, and the Soviet nationalities policy. Several research methods and postulates were proposed, as well as perspectives and theoretical approaches that could facilitate the study of this complex and controversial subject, e.g., the interdisciplinary nature of research, methods of bottom-up formation of political attitudes of the population (the so-called "bottom-up" method), application of theories of the totalitarian state, and different theories of ethnicity. As a result, an interdisciplinary program of comparative studies of ethnic relations in Central and Eastern Europe under Soviet rule (1939-1941) was outlined, taking into account the transnational character of historical processes and the need to conduct micro historic analyses and case studies that would allow capturing of the diversity of ethnic relations and verify the effectiveness of the policy of the central Soviet authorities. The article argues that it seems obvious that the specificity of the analysed problematics can be properly grasped only by consideration it in the historical and theoretical context, adopting a comparative and transnational approach, from a micro-historical as well as everyday-life perspective that highlights the most important social factors which facilitated changes in interethnic relations.

The development of the information society has initiated the need for creating new instruments with the help of which the authorities can reach out to citizens. Therefore, cyberspace has recently become a place of activity of a number of entities including state and international organizations (together with the European Union). The result of this phenomenon is the creation of the so-called digital diplomacy as new quality in the so-called diplomacy of the EU. The EU diplomacy currently uses a number of e-tools, among others, Facebook, MySpace, Daily Motion, YouTube, etc. These tools are a very good method to improve and warm up the image of the Union in the international arena. This kind of diplomacy was only formed at the beginning of the twenty-first century and has a great prospect of development, thus, it is worth considering in which direction its evolution should follow. Digital diplomacy is a de facto response to the problem of the EU communication with the outside world and the growing number of Internet users.

The monography provides a comparative analysis of the constitutional review bodies' activities, their status and efficiency in different Post-Soviet States. It deals with the complex description of the constitutional provisions' compliance, the problems of legal mechanisms and stability, evolution of the local legislation. In this book the authors provide a detailed report of the constitutional review institutions' problems in the process of ensuring its legislative position. In this context we find in the research a description of the legal, political risks of the constitutional control in Post-Soviet States, its social perception and the predictability of its legal systems' development. This work integrates the unique structure of presentation and research materials. By the reflection of this type the authors lay the base for continuing further researches of constitutional review development dynamics in the countries of the region.