Suchergebnisse

On the political-legal plane, the direct consequence of the May coup organized by Józef Piłsudski in 1926 was an amendment of the March constitution of 1921. The above amendment was commonly referred to as the August amendment from the name of the month in which the two laws changing the constitution had been passed (2 August 1926). The core of the August amendment consisted in a strengthening of the position of the executive organs of the state at the expense of the Diet and the senate. The president obtained the right to dissolve parliament before the end of its term, following the motion of the ministers' council. Moreover, the president obtained the prerogatives to pass resolutions with the power of parliamentary laws and obtained new budgetary prerogatives. Parliament, on the other hand, became restricted as regards its powers to pass a no confidence vote towards the Ministers' Council or any individual minister. The political conceptions implemented by the interwar government aimed at doing away with the principle of a tri-partite division of state power in favor of a concentration of power in the hands of the state's president. The above conception had been fully realized in the new constitution of the Republic of Poland of 1935.

his paper aims to illustrate how institutionalized education has been a significant identity management strategy for an ethnic group in Romania. After its foundation in 1872, the University of Kolozsvár (Cluj) was regarded as a provincial higher education establishment within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, meant to satisfy merely regional demands. Although legally the two Hungarian universities (in Budapest and Kolozsvar) were considered equal in rank, government and society gave priority to the first one. It is only over time that the University of Kolozsvár proved its utility. This change of image resulted in a leading position, especially at the start of the twentieth century. After the outbreak of the World War I, the activity of the University witnessed disruptions due to the drafting of many professors and students into the Army. The end of the the war not only meant the achievement of 'national unity' for Romania, but also generated significant changes for Ferenc József University, beginning with the process of dismissing minorities from the public sector and replacing them with Romanians. After the Second Vienna Award, the University of Cluj became Hungarian once again. The historical lesson of the inter-war period on the treatment of minorities had to be prevented from repeating itself, and within the new geopolitical context the USSR seemed the guarantor for the final resolution of the ethnic rivalries and resentments. In this ideological context, on 29 May 1945 two royal decrees sanctioned the functioning of two distinct universities in Cluj; the Hungarian university János Bolyai officially opened its doors. The preservation of a representative higher education institution for the Hungarian minority in Cluj, adapted to the new political realities, was achieved. But after Stalin's death in 1953 the feelings of 'national specificity' resurged, and national histories were re-individualized and reconstructed. The events in Budapest in the autumn of 1956 offered further reasons for central authorities to rethink the 'national domain'. In the years to come, propaganda insisted on the futility of institutional separation between the Romanian and Hungarian students in Cluj. Hence, a meeting of the unification commissions, held in 1959 led to the fusion of the two universities. This evolution of the University of Cluj shows the constraints, openings, compromises, and 'avatars' of the most important institution of higher education in Transylvania, which continues to function as a source of symbolic prestige and social capital for both Hungarians and Romanians.

Events of August'91 as an expression of political disobidience in the process of shaping civil conduct, "Kultura i edukacja. Culture and Education" 2016, nr 4 (114), pp. 125-139 , 2016 Civil disobedience is the attitude which in the 20th century proved to be the only effective form of resistance to authoritarian regimes. So it was in the case of the events of August '91 when the Soviet society objected to the activities of the State Committee on the State of Emergency. It would not have been possible without the reform programme known as perestroika initiated by the last USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Thanks to perestroika and the accompanying glasnost-transparency of sociopolitical life-the previously apathetic and alienated Soviet society felt responsible for their own life and for the fate of the State. By opposing the rebels through pas sive resistance, the citizens proved to the leaders of their own country, to the world, and above all, to themselves that they were aware of their rights and responsibilities. The process of sociopolitical socialization stimulated the development of civil society in the Soviet Union.