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This text inquires into the problem of cadenced step as the disciplinary technique of the body, according to theories of Marcel Mauss and Michel Foucault. Author explores historical core of military body techniques in social context, developed by Dutch army reformers Counts of Nassau during 1590s and refined by the Prussian military in 1740s. Author interprets cadenced step inside framework of shifting paradigm of power, as Foucault analyses the sequence of three stages of power emerging during european Early modernity.

The present paper aims to compare the approaches of the Bush and Obama administrations towards the role of nuclear weapons in the United States security strategy. The author focuses on the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) reports from 2001 and 2010, employing a detailed comparative analysis of their respective content as well as their implications. The analysis concentrates on broader conceptual issues as well as on the very concrete steps related to specific elements of the United States strategic arsenal. The author argues that the current political discourse, which attributes a nearly revolutionary character to the approach of the Obama administration to the United States nuclear policy, does not fully match the actual dimension of the change between the NPR of 2001 and that of 2010. In fact, the evolution of the United States nuclear strategy maintains its own dynamics in many aspects. Adapted from the source document.

With reference to ideas presented in the theory of media malaise, the article aims to assess the role of negative campaigning in Czech elections and to analyse how it is perceived by voters, how it correlates with electoral preferences, and other important variables. The analysis is based on data from the Czech Election Survey 2010. The author draws from the causal relationship formulated in the above mentioned theory, according to which the effect of the news media and their emphasis on negative news and negativity contribute to growing political cynicism among citizens. Negative and conflicting media news, which are even more intense during election campaigns, activate the spiral of public cynicism and cause public trust in political actors to fall, as well as alignment and voter turnout (Cappella and Jamieson 1997). The author attempts to test the hypothesis: The more people watch the media and the more they are exposed to election campaign coverage, the greater is their political cynicism. Adapted from the source document.

The aim of the article is to introduce contemporary Russian discussion on the USSR and Russia in broader political and publicist context. Both positive and negative interpretations of the Russian/Soviet history will be presented. The text does not pretend to provide exhaustive list of the particular "schools" and "movements" nor does it offer historical dynamics or institutional background of the discussion. The author rather intends to single out certain basic schemes and arguments that circulate in the discussions, place them in broader frames and anticipate their potential political consequences. Particularly, the text concentrates on various versions of the patriotic thinking that has been receiving broad popularity in today Russia. As the author is convinced, due familiarity with the contemporary Russian debate may help to better understand Russian internal as well as foreign policy nowadays: as it becomes clear, rise of patriotism in academia, society and politics are inseparable phenomena. Secondly, some of the arguments promoted by the contemporary Russian authors may enrich Western (non-Russian) sovietology and debate on socialist experiments as such. Last but not least, both content and form of the Russian academic discussion convincingly point at cultural conditionality of social and historical sciences. To some extent the discussion reminds perpetual Russian debate on national identity; cardinally new context in which it takes place however justifies attention paid to it.

The aim of the article is to explore how the results of the U. S. subprime mortgage crisis influenced economic policy of governments in highly developed countries. It analyses consequences of a state intervention especially for government budgets and a rise of government debts. Then the article discusses the point of view of the Austrian school. Austrian economists argue a state is not an economic subject and its fiscal policy is very dangerous for effective allocation of the available resources of production's factors. They advocate a society with a small government and liberal economic policy. The author believes that Austrian approach to economic problems is more realistic and more pertinent than the approach of those, who demand more government intervention. Adapted from the source document.

The article deals with the 1938 treatise History of the All- Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), abbreviated AUCP(b) - an official treatise from the Stalin era of the USSR which was published on a mass scale. The author puts his reflections in two contexts: 1. the internal Marxist dispute over "orthodoxy", which Stalin resolved by publishing (and co-authoring) this "canonical book", and 2. the myth-forming context, which shows how totalitarian regimes present themselves with their "canonical books". He considers publications preceding the analyzed book, which after Lenin's death included texts by Grigory Zinoviev, Nikolai Bukharin and Leon Trotsky. Then he considers the actual book, focusing in more detail on the absence of two topics and concepts - the state and culture. He pays particular attention to the chapter on dialectic and historical materialism written by Stalin, which completes the simplistic interpretations in the so-called Stalinist Marxism. Like L. Kolakowski, he concludes that the entire Stalinist concept is naturalistic (meaning the naive naturalism of the late 19th century: Marxism guarantees a "scientific world view") and naively nomothetic (all fundamental claims have the form of unquestionable laws).

This paper focuses on "The Philadelphia Negro": a community study that stands at the start of American social research. This somewhat forgotten empirical study from 1899 describes the historical conditions and the economic and social causes and circumstances behind the formation and existence of the "Seventh Ward", a slum neighbourhood in Philadelphia inhabited by African-Americans. The study used survey and other methods of observation and analysis of historical, economic and social data. The study was written by the erudite Harvard University graduate William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, an African-American, and an economist, historian and sociologist. Using primary and secondary literature and archive sources this paper shows that Du Bois was the author of the first empirical social research study in the United States. It looks at his life, his research, and his opinions on racial issues. He created a programme of research on the African-American population and from 1898 to 1910 he headed the first school of sociology on the American continent at the University of Atlanta. He published the results of scientific analyses of the lives of African-Americans in the south of the United States in sixteen volumes of the Atlanta University Studies. Racial prejudices among the American sociological elites prevented both Du Bois and his work from receiving the attention they rightly deserve.