Institute for Balkan Studies and Centre for Thracology

Abstract

This paper analyzes the relations between the communist parties of Yugoslavia and Italy during 1956, one of the most important years of the history of communism. The dissenting nature of those relations, which were based on the mutual wish to limit the Soviet hegemony within the global communist movement, is in the focus of this analysis. Finally, this paper aims to demonstrate how the roots of the close friendship between the two parties during the sixties and seventies can be traced back to 1956, and how the Yugoslav communists influenced or tried to influence their Italian counterparts.

Kingdom of Albania’s fascist regime considered education as one of the pillars of its policy in Kosovo and Metohija during World War II. With the aim of spreading and strengthening Albanian national identity and culture, several hundreds of educators were sent from the “Old Albania” to Kosovo and Metohija. The Italian occupation authorities were not supportive of the educational policy pursued by the officials in Tirana, which often resulted in disagreement between the two sides. After liberating the province in 1944, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia decided to keep the teachers and educators who misused their positions to serve the Greater Albania cause, as there was no available staff to replace them. The paper is based primarily on the unpublished sources from the Central State Archives of Albania in Tirana, the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Belgrade, the Archives of Serbia, and the Archives of Yugoslavia.

This paper is an attempt to understand both the significance and the meaning of the dolphin motif on funerary monuments of Upper Moesia. The wide distribution of this motif not only on monuments in Upper Moesia but also on the ones in neighboring provinces was discussed, as well as its possible courses from North Ital funerary art.

The surviving sources suggest that St Sava of Serbia was, as part of the programme of securing sacral legitimacy for the state and dynasty, setting the scene for the inclusion of his brother Stefan, the first-crowned Serbian king, among the saints. This part of the programme was not fully realized, but the focus of the cult was on the incorrupt relics. The cult of Stefan the First-Crowned was not rounded off until the seventeenth century, when the Patriarch Paisios wrote a vita and a service. The development of the cult over the centuries (from the 13th to the 20th century) was a direct reflection of changing historical circumstances and the prevailing ideology of rulership.

During recent years, the study of European televisions has rediscovered socialist television, and we have witnessed a rapid rise in scholarly interest in a new field of research: socialist television studies. On the whole, this recent body of literaturę presents two main new insights as compared to previous studies in the field of the history of Western television: on the one hand, it shows that European television during the Cold War was less heterogeneous than one may imagine when considering the political, economic and ideological split created by the Iron Curtain; on the other hand, it turns to and capitalizes on archives, mostly video, which have been inaccessible to the public. The interactions between Western and socialist mass culture are highlighted mainly with respect to the most popular TV programs: fiction and entertainment. The authors give us an extraordinary landscape of the Romanian socialist television. Unique in the Eastern part of Europe is the period of the early 1990s. Upon the fall of the communist regime, after almost 15 years of freezing, TVR found itself unable to move forward.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

L'entre-deux-guerres constitue une époque durant laquelle de nombreux efforts ont été faits dans les pays de la périphérie européenne afin de surmonter le retard économique et social, d'abolir, ou du moins surmonter, la pauvreté et de moderniser la société. L'auteur s'interroge sur le rôle de l'industrialisation dans les economics des États balkaniques et sur celui des politiques d'encouragement (en premier lieu le protectionnisme industriel) dans la recherche de voies devant conduire au « rattrapage » et à la modernisation de ces sociétés. Le rôle de l'État dans le développement industriel, les répercussions de ce nationalisme économique et les alternatives à une telle politique constituent les trois principaux thèmes de cette contribution.

These Field Notes present a fragmented and diachronic portrait of Athens through the mobilities of people and cultures, which, as they clashed, intersected, and syncretized, defined different aspects of the city. Fourteen short essays and an introduction provide glimpses into an Athens continuously marked by the movement of people, labor, crafts, and capital, from the ancient city-state to the contemporary metropolis, a telling of history that is posed against ethnocentric narratives of continuity of presence. Demonstrating a multitude of historiographical approaches and voices, the essays collected here are treated as ‘field notes’ because of their brevity in treating a nascent field of study of the Athenian built environment that crosses time periods and disciplines.

The latest results of the investigation of the royal tombs at the monastery of Studenica, Serbia, have inspired a reconsideration of the place of burial of some members of the Nemanjic family. There is further evidence that the tomb and sarcophagus of the ktetor, Stefan Nemanja, formed part of the original design for the church. Based on their construction and comparative material, it is assumed that the relics of St Symeon, upon their translation to Studenica, were laid in the sarcophagus from which they exuded myrrh. The myrrh-exuding of St Symeon is looked at against the broader background of cult practice in the Byzantine world.

This paper explores the reasons why ἡ Τοπειριτῶν πόλις obtained the Trajanic nomen gentilicium Οὐλπία in its title. The question arises since it appears on the municipal coin series minted for Topeiros at a particular moment in time, specifically in 212 AD. This coincides with an imperial visit which Caracalla and his mother Julia Domna paid in the city. The author argues that by using such propaganda gimmick, the local authority sought to attract the emperor’s attention to the privileges and most probably territorial extension granted byTrajan but later delayed by Hadrian. The lands in question had originally belonged to the neighboring city of Abdera. It appears that the town leaders of Topeiros succeeded, since an in scription dated to the reign of Maximinus Thrax (235-238) shows a vast extension of the municipality’s landhold eastwards.

The paper presents the reasons for the appearance of the Byzantine silver coin (basilikon) during the first half of the 14th century. The basilikon coin was introduced shortly before 1304 by Emperor Andronikos in direct imitation of the Venetian silver ducat (grosso). The new coin was designed to replace the Latin coinage on the borders of the Empire as a result of Paleologian economic reforms and politics.

Despite an early surge in copper-ore mining during the sixth and fifth millennia BC (the ‘boom’), evidence for metal production in the Balkans dwindles in the fourth millennium (the ‘bust’). Here, the authors present new evidence for copper mining at Curak in south-west Serbia, c . 3800 cal BC, during this apparent downturn. By integrating field surveys, excavations and provenance analyses, they explore activity at the site, challenging the visibility bias in the archaeological record of this region for this key period. Rather than a societal collapse, the authors argue, fewer artefacts may instead reflect a widening Balkan sphere of influence.

The institution of appellation represented one of the basic principles of the organization of the Ottoman Empire, as well as one of the principal institutions of the Islamic legal system. It was based on the concept of a just rule, or in other words, the principles of legal security and universal access to justice for all subjects of a state. The decentralization process in the Ottoman Empire during the transitional period (XVII-XVIII centuries) caused a change in the relations between center and periphery. That stirred an abrupt expansion of the institution of appellation through the ?ik?yet (or ahk?m) administration, especially after 1742. This paper attempts to analyze the process of expansion of the institution of appellation and its real role in the Ottoman legal system. On the other hand, the goal of the research is also to position it inside the framework of the provincial proto-political struggles.

The paper explores the problem of the tomb of Queen Theodora, the first wife of King Stefan Decanski and mother of King and later Emperor Stefan Dusan, at the Banjska Monastery, a foundation of King Stefan Uros II Milutin. The tomb is the main topic of the charter King Dusan issued to this monastery. The paper minutely examines the previous research on the subject, including different identifications of the personages buried at Banjska. Special attention was accorded to the analysis of new sources, written and material, relevant to this problem. The author concludes that the transfer of Queen Theodora?s remains to Banjska, on the orders of King Dusan, was an ideologically motivated move. The tomb on the north side of the west bay is identified as Theodora?s. The author cautiously proposes that Konstantin, King Milutin?s younger son, might have also been interred at Banjska, in the north parekklesion along the narthex. The funerary program of Banjska is assessed from the perspective of traditional solutions and the reception of new models adopted from Byzantium.

The mythical origins of the story on the killing of elders asserts a presupposition that such a rite never existed as a common ritual practice among the Balkan peoples, to which their traditions testify. An analysis of the mythical aspect reveals the psychological roots of the tradition, the chief function and meaning of which lie not in factual, but in psychological reality. The account of the rite is a symbolical substitution for an actual ritual that satisfied a community's psychological and social needs for such meaning. Part of folk tradition primarily as a fictive invention, the ritual on the killing of elders clearly sends a message which forbids an act that would bring into question the social, moral and spiritual foundations of a community.

The paper reviews the development of the Bulgarian historiography of the First World War, which can be divided into three totally different periods. The publications from the 1920s and 1930s can be viewed as a product of a national school that is strongly marked with the trauma from the political catastrophes and unrealised national projects. The second period covers the Communist era or the totalitarian government of Bulgaria (September 9, 1944 - November 10, 1989) and includes an evolution from a total denial of the past historiographic schools, i.e. a complete ignoring of the topic of the ideological and political motives, to its gradual rehabilitation. In the last three decades, since there have been many jubilee celebrations of the World War I end and Bulgaria's participation in it, the interest of historians towards this topic has risen as well as acquirement of new research areas.

Sparadokos was a 5th-century BC Thracian dynast, who minted coins with his name but there is no written record of his reign. Based on two passages in Thucydides, he is believed to be a brother of the Odrysian king Sitalkes and, accordingly, Teres’ son. Thucydides mentions him as the father of Seuthes, Sitalkes’ nephew. However, the text of Thucydides does not indicate that Sitalkes and Sparadokos were brothers. The word ἀδελφιδοῦς “nephew” denotes both the brother’s son and the sister’s son, which allows the assumption that Sparadokos could have been a brother-in-law of Sitalkes, not his brother. The marriage between a daughter of Teres and Sparadokos could have formed an important political alliance with him as a powerful ruler in southern Thrace. The great influence his son Seuthes had in Sitalkes’ court, according to Thucydides, may indicate some undefined bond. Perhaps the lack of coinage of both Teres and Sitalkes is also an indication of two different ruling houses.

The paper explores particular aspects of the work of two 19th century historians (Jean-Alexandre Buchon and Spiridon Palauzov). The unifying link between them are the medieval Western European sources, suitable for the unfolding of peculiar theses and subordinated to the requirements of the epoch both in French society and in the Bulgarian pre-liberation period. The writings of French 17th century historian of Byzantium Charles Dufresne Du Cange and the chronicles of the Crusades and the Latin Empire serve as a pretext and a reliable historical basis, expanded and enriched by Jean-Alexandre Buchon (1791–1846) with the purpose of constructing a modern French identity. Devoted to eighteenth-century ideas and the Romantic movement in historiography, Buchon researched and published chronicles and other medieval sources. The conceptual transposition of this documents into a Bulgarian 19th century context proved to be a suitable basis for the Enlightenment search for historical ‘truth’. The case of Spiridon Palauzov (1818–1872), who used the medieval sources published by Buchon, reveals the way in which these documents can be interpreted in favor of the Bulgarian national cause. The union of Tsar Kaloyan (1197–1207) and the antipapal propaganda supported by Palauzov and applied to Bulgarian reality, served him as a verbal defense of Eastern Orthodoxy in search of a path to an independent Bulgarian Church in the 1860s.

09" Теория и практика на войната: трактатът De Velitatione Bellica и византийската стратегия на Източния фронт през Х в.Част първа: разузнавателни действия и маневриране преди главното сражение Николай Желев