Suchergebnisse

The author analyses Arendt's attempt at a rehabilitation of political thinking. He describes the influence of Greek and Roman practical philosophy on Arendt as well as her distancing from Martin Heidegger as a non-political thinker. In the end, the author offers an insight into the failure of the Western metaphysics of the political when confronted with the factuality of a specific political life. (SOI : SOEU: S. 65)

Croatia is the only postcommunist country in which the process of democratic transition coincided with the process of creating the state by means of a war. These three processes are in a special interaction: the transition enabled the realization of the state-building programme, which triggered off the war which, in turn, jeopardized the completion of both projects. The author illustrates the dynamics of the political changes in Croatia since the eighties, which started with the liberalization of political life and continued with two stages of democratic transition, before and after gaining independence. The Serbian insurgence and later an open aggression have somewhat hampered the transition and brought about the "ethnification" of politics. At the end the author analyses the pattern of the creation of democratic institutions which has been, in both stages (before and after the 1990 elections) under the control of the ruling political party. (SOI : PM: S. 99)

Branimir Altgayer was the most prominent Croatian of German nationality in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, but he was especially so during the period of the Independent State of Croatia. Altgayer was born December 8, 1897 in the town of Przekopane (Galicia), where his father (born in Osijek) served as an Austro-Hungarian cavalry lieutenant. Altgayer spent his childhood in Slavonia, where he was brought up in a Croatian cultural atmosphere. After completing Croatian public school in Kutjevo and Croatian Gymnasium in Osijek and Zemun, he attended an Austro-Hungarian cavalry cadet school in Moravia between 1912 and 1915. He was an officer (ensign) in the Austro-Hungarian army (after 1915) until the end of the first world war, serving on the Russian, Rumanian, and Italian fronts. He was wounded twice and decorated several times. In the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes he was a cavalry captain (first class) of the Royal army. Following four years of service, he resigned. He worked at various civilian occupations for a time, but returned to the military between 1924 and 1927. He was very active in the cultural and political life of the German minority of Osijek and Slavonia. He was selected to the united council of the German minority association, the Kulturbund of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (Schwäbisch-Deutscher Kulturbund), in December 1934. He was a prominent representative of the so-called Renewal movement (Erneuerungsbewegung), a radical current in the Kulturbund. Following a conflict between the old leaders of the Germans in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Renewalists which occasioned a split in the Kulturbund, Altgayer and the Renewalists are ejected from the Kulturbund for insubordination. At the beginning of 1936 he established a cultural and charitable organization for Germans of Slavonia in Osijek (Kultur-und Wohlfahrtsvereinigung der Deutschen in Slavonien). In January, 1939, he became a regional leader (Gauobmann) of the Germans in Slavonia (following the re-admittance of the Renewalists to the Kulturbund at the end of 1938). In early 1939, he leaves the Yugoslavian Radical Union, whose city councilor he was in Osijek, and joins the Croatian peasant party. After the creation of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in 1941, he was named leader of the German National Assembly for the NDH (Volksgruppenführer). From December 1941 he was director of state for the presidency of the NDH, but after January 1943 he was secretary of state for the same, and he was likewise promoted to the rank of reserve colonel in the Ustasha army. He was decorated by Leader of the Ustasha Dr. Ante Pavelic with the title "knight". For a short time in mid-1943 he went to the Eastern Front. At the end of the second world war he was deported to Yugoslavia from Austria by the British. In 1950, the district court of Zagreb sentenced him to death by firing squad. The sentence was carried out May 15, 1950. The investigative material of the Office of State Security (UDB-a) concerning Altgayer, especially the transcript of the trial from 1949, is an excellent source of information about the German minority in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia during the thirties and during the period of the Independent State of Croatia. (SOI : CSP: S. 638)

Newspaper articles about Hungary on the pages of Vjesnik in the period between 1945 and 1950 were relatively numerous, but dealt exclusively with political circumstances and relations. Three basic stereotypes could be seen in the writings about Hungary, and it is indicative that they were formed in a relatively short period of four years and that they were radically opposite to each other. The first one, in the period from the end of the World War Two up to the establishment of complete communist command in Hungary in the Fall of 1947, when the defeated forces and civil political groups were ascribed negative aspects of Hungarian life and relationship with Yugoslavia, with affirmation of all the activities connected with national democratic, communist orientation. The other, in the short period between the Fall of 1947 and Summer of 1948, when the articles about Hungarian themes had solely positive characteristics. The third, after the resolution of Information Bureau of the Cominform in Summer of 1948, when the newspaper pages on Hungary were again full of negative articles, but this time Hungarian communist leadership was blamed for all the negativities. The picture about Hungary which one could get from the newspapers was generally incomplete, oriented primarily to the political events. It obviously depended on political and ideological orientations of Yugoslav ruling communist circles. The information was in the service of achieving exclusively political goals, not to give thorough and complete information to the readers. (SOI : CSP: S. 518)

Already during the existence of first Yugoslavia, there occurred the secession of Boka Kotorska from Dalmatia, i. e. Croatia. During the entire World War II, the expression "Montenegro and Boka Kotorska" was in use, but towards the end of WW II "Boka Kotorska" was simply dropped from the syntagma. This was accompanied by all sorts of pressures on Croatian populace there. There are numerous cases of imprisonments and murders of Croats from Boka at the end of war and during the immediate years after. The fate of Oslav Smodlaka, a photographer from Tivat, best illustrates the difficulties that Croats experienced there. Smodlaka was recognized by historiography as a Croat assassinated at the end of war. Actually, he was killed in 1949. Simply because he refused to relocate, he was declared state enemy, tortured to the point of turning gray in one single night, and finally killed. He left a spouse and an eleven-month daughter. The fate of O. Smodlaka served as a disciplining measure for the rest of Croats in Boka, who lived under a permanent fear and oppression. (SOI : CSP: S. 385)

The author claims that all major efforts concerning European security have always been linked with the end of a war. Thus the end of the cold war has been marked with the expansion of NATO and an attempt to create a new security. By analysing the political scope of the expansion, the military and strategic framework, the Russian reactions, and the economic significance, the author comes to the conclusion that the expansion is not conducive to the establishment of an integral system of European security. The purpose of this development by Clinton's team was primarily to outline the new European borders (the key aspect of Clinton's foreign policy) and, in the future, to create the conditions for further expansion and admittance of new members. Only in the remote future, through constant expansion and links with other European organisations, NATO could turn into the central system of European security. (SOI : PM: S. 97)

This article deals with a previously unknown list of Ante Pavelic's recorded speeches which were confiscated in 1945. This list was also made at the end od 1945. In 1962 the Museum of the Yugoslav People's Revolution in Belgrade took possession of these recordings. The Croatian State Archive is asking for their return. (SOI : CSP: S. 555)

The author presents the last days of the World War Two in the Independent State of Croatia, with a special emphasis on political and military situation at the end of 1944 and beginning of 1945, as well as the development of the war situation in May 1945. The list of the most important published sources and literature is also included. (SOI : CSP: S. 505)

Due to the increasing globalization and the danger of reducing all beings to things, it is central to point out again and again that a human being is not a thing among other things, and that the appreciation and realization of their life requires nurturing and cultivating the variety of human knowledge pertinent to different spheres of the historical world of life. Thus, the relevance and the role of practical philosophy is gaining significance regarding the - to the historical Being - proper understanding and fulfilIment of human potentials in today's world. (SOI : PM: S. 25) + The author first defines the various facets of globalization in today's world and emphasizes the key changes that are stepping up and intensifying communication among peoples, nations, and cultures all over the world. However, parallel to this there are other pressing problems: from the ecological crisis, to the realization of human rights, to the anomie of life and work. All this proves that globalization is not only an economic and technical but, ultimately, practically an ethic/political issue. Along the lines of Hegel's philosophy of world history and Aristotle's practical philosophy, the author has come to view the contemporary globalization as a step forward of world civilization, i.e. as a possibility of the realization of freedom and good life. Globalization, of course, scares people with its unpredictability and the erratic development of "global society" which (in line with Beck's distinction between the First and the Second Modernism) today is represented as a society of nation-states on the one hand, and as a "global society of transnational actors" on the other

The author analyses the concept of neo-classicism in contemporary political philosophy. The study begins with a description of contemporary neo-classic developments and continues with a precise delineation of Plato's and Aristotle's philosophy of politics. In the end, the author concludes that the antiquity-inspired philosophy of politics today has the corrective function to steer liberal society towards community. (SOI : PM: S. 156)

The analysis has shown that both approaches are legitimate and useful in understanding and maintaining democracy. Of course, the interactional approaches are more complex, as well as more important and more vital for understanding democracy. The analysis has shown how political culture (democratic legitimation or political trust, support for civil freedoms, satisfaction with the functioning of democracy, etc.) often depend on the elements of the very political structure (party systems and coalition models, election patterns, patterns of democracy, positions in power structure, etc.). Political culture is autonomous in relation to political structure, but frequently its role greatly depends on the relations among political actors and the variables of the political culture itself. The analysis has also demonstrated how these investigations into the interaction (combined effects) between political culture and structure are extremely sophisticated and that in the future they are going to become the most fruitful part of political science, making possible not only a deeper understanding of the "dynamic regularities" in the functioning of democracy but also the attempts at its "innovative sustainment" and gradual development. (SOI : PM: S. 131) + The purpose of this essay is to prove the connection among political culture, political structure and democracy. All the arguments pointing to such a connection have been analysed within the framework of two fundamental approaches to the relationship between culture and structure i.e. within the framework of the classical approach to their correspondence (which claims - primarily in line with the functional theory of culture - that there is a functional concordance between culture and structure, that democracy is mirrored by the civic political culture, i.e. that "culture is a structure's way of life", that culture determines the structure) and the contemporary interactional approach (in which - primarily in line with the theory of culture "as meaning" or "social functioning" - complex relations among various cultural variables and structural variables are analysed as well as their combined effect on democracy as the consequence of these relations). The latter approach considers democracy not as a "fixed condition" but rather as a dynamic phenomenon or the end result of the combined interactional relationships between culture and structure