Suchergebnisse

The present study investigates the participation of French women at war as reflected in documents, media, diaries. Women emancipation, pacifism, socialism, feminism, are but a few issues introduced with this study. The main purpose was to analyze the impact of interventionist state policies on women life in France, and to reveal its social, political and cultural outcomes that altogether generated the upheaval of the French Civilization.

The two documents which are the subject of the present study, made to share property in the event of divorce, help to form an image on various aspects of daily life, poorly known from other sources: household size, land property, earnings in marriage furniture, tools, animals, prices, food, secular and religious involvement of the private life etc. In addition to legal information, both inventories, which stood at the base of documents on which the property was to be divided, reveal another perspective on social history of Arad in the late eighteenth century.

By examining some of the letters Romanian volunteers in the International Brigades sent home during the Spanish Civil War, this article explores their authors' experience of the front-line hardships and of the challenges associated with the military life-style. The paper first provides a concise historical account of the Spanish Civil War, with a focus on the emergence of the international military groups, consisting of foreign combatants. It subsequently investigates the reasons that determined the Romanian volunteers to leave their country to fight in Spain, by examining their motivation in the intricate political and social context of interwar Romania. Finally, the article deals with the negative outcomes these letters had for their recipients, translated into the permanent harassment their families and close ones suffered because of this correspondence.

In this paper, we analyze the role and functions of the socialist enterprise, a place in which the interaction between power and society is strongly emphasized. Focusing on the last decade of communist rule, we have chosen as a case study an enterprise created in the late 70's: the Călăraşi Integrated Iron and Steel Works. We were interested in how the Romanian Communist Party was organized inside the enterprise and the duties of party organizations. Recruiting new party members, mobilizing workers were only two of the party organizations tasks within enterprises. These topics were, in many occasions, the focus points of the Party organizations reports. An important part of this study was devoted to activities organized within the socialist enterprise. Socialist emulation, cultural and artistic activities, sports occupied a central place in everyday life of the industrial workers. Especially in the last decade of communist domination, any event is a cause for celebration, this phenomenon being in contrast to the austerity imposed by the regime. In communist Romania, the socialist enterprise was, above all, one of the most important places of propaganda, domination and control.

This article presents the relation of East European artists with the Secret Police
institutions. While focused on the Romanian case, several examples from
Poland, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria help place the topic in a regional context.
The analysis includes both the viewpoint of the Secret Police on the artistic
world as such, as well as the gazes of artists on the reality of their time. The
conceptualization of artistic surveillance includes three types of examples: the
deconstruction of the officially fabricated reality, the focus on the details of the
everyday life forbidden by official propaganda, and the reflection of artists on the
secret police apparatus. The conclusions of this study show that the investigation
of artistic artifacts together with the secret police archives can help bring a new
perspective on the limits of domination exerted by the communist regime.

Starting from the case of Ion Irimescu, this article discusses the issue of continuity among Romanian visual artists before and after 1944. In this study, I argue that it was essential for the visual artists' survival and establishment as artists during the communist regime to enter into a clientpatron relationship. The existence of this relationship meant access for the artists to financial funds, promotion within the UAP, and protection from the measures, which the Securitate could have taken against them. This article is divided into four sections. Every section examines an episode from the life of Ion Irimescu. His interwar biography is presented in the first section, and his adaptation to the communist regime is the subject of the second part of this study. The last two parts analyse the factors which facilitated his confirmation and promotion as a state artist after 1944 and the relation of the artist with the Securitate.

This article discusses the case of Ion Grigorescu, and of his ambiguous relationship with the communist regime, which he registered through a form of "documentary realism". Through his "realgrams" Grigorescu documented real life experiences in an innovatory approach to the majority of Romanian artists of the time using photographs of his everyday environment, and being inspired by his social and political context. Grigorescu is thus an artist committed to the public space and assuming a critical stance without it being discursive, pedant or moralizing. The approach of this study is descriptive, based on the artists' artworks and self-descriptions, and seeking to situate Grigorescu's approach in the context of the communist regime and its transformation after 1990 into a democratic regime. The conclusions show that Grigorescu's artworks are anti-system, criticizing any establishment, no matter in which regime he finds himself. His contestation is specific to a committed artist that chooses to express his freedom of expression beyond his own studio.

This article intends to analyze the role of religion in the public sphere in Habermas's theory. Despite the fact that the concept has been launched in a book published in 1961, only in 2005 the well-known German thinker has dealt explicitly with this issue. Even the critics of his public sphere model do not mention the lack of religion from the whole paradigm. Some of Habermas writings related to religion prior to 2005 are discussed. The role of religion in the public sphere is, according to Habermas, related with the issue of religious freedom and the State- Church separation, a model opposed to French laicïté. For Habermas, the state must not only be neutral to the religious discourse, but it must also encourage the participation of political organizations to public life. Another issue that is discussed by Habermas is the relationship between religious majorities and minorities. Habermas does assume a middle position between laicïté and the refuse of the modernity-imposed borders between religion and politics. The article takes an insight into the way Charles Taylor deals with the role of religion in the public sphere, a helpful argument for showing that the debate on this issue is only at the beginning.

The recognition of the local collectivities and the essential role of democratic
society require the clear definition of the term "local collectivity", which would allow the
avoiding of ambiguities in its usage.
The defining element of the local territorial collectivities is the population, which
includes all inhabitants permanently living in the territorial perimeter of the local
collectivity.
There are identified criteria that allow the establishment of the individuals' belonging
to a specific local collectivity. This is very important because the individual's ability to be
part of a particular local collectivity gives him the opportunity to take part in local selfgovernment.
I insisted on the recognition of the local population as a subject of the local autonomy,
and not of the local public authorities elected by the population who are representatives of
the local territorial collectivities, while also examining the causes of the population's nonparticipation
in local public life.

Unlike in most Western contexts, women's emancipation in communist Romania was a
top down processes, part of the social change platform imposed by the Communist Party. And
unlike the Romanian political regimes that preceded communism, it was justified by the latter as "natural", with women presented as integrated in all everyday life activities. Permeating throughout all layers of society, this emancipation was performed through propaganda in the written press and cinematography, as the Party used varied means to promote a positive imaginary
of women in communism. However, the difference between the Party's propaganda on women and the reality of women during communism was not only striking but had a significant impact on women's status and role in Romania even after the fall of the communist regime.