The Idea of Civil Society in Russia

Many observers have paid close attention to a severe lack of genuine democratic tradition in Russian politics and society. Russian society is considered to be of a traditional type of civilization, opposed to modern capitalist in terms of civil society vs. submissive or servile society. In Russia, as in other traditional peasant societies under bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes and with no civil society, only various cliques and fractions struggling for higher office appeared.

Many Polish and Western authors saw premises for the Soviet totalitarianism in the Russian autocratic and collectivist traditions. Russian authors, however, saw the origin of Soviet despotism erroneously in the ideology of Western Marxist utopias. Jaroslaw Bratkiewicz noticed that the Russian reception of Marxism appealed first of all to common components of the Russian collectivist and autocratic consciousness. He saw that the Soviet dictatorship was consistent with the popular aspiration of the Russian people marked by oriental passivity. In Russia, the economy and social life were regulated and controlled by the omniponent State which only occasionally permitted for brief periods of "thaw" and limited, pro-Western liberalization.

So civil, democratic traditions in the Russian society, unlike the Western and even Polish societies, have been very weak. In Russia, soon after the French Revolution censorship forbade using the words "citizen" and even "society". Russia had no important tradition of liberalism, and the alienable rights of man were never appreciate there. Rather it was claimed that everyone is a servant of the State: the conservative-authoritarian tradition did not tolerate the spirit of citizen independent. "The Russian political culture", wrote the Soviet former Fiodor Burlatski, "did not tolerate pluralism of views or the responsibility of criticizing state functionaries. Only after 1905 was a small breach made in the wall. But even then it was not allowed in fact to criticize either tsar, tsardom, or the existing political system."

The term "civil society" was used also by Boris Chicherin (1824-1904), the main ideologist of liberal conservatism in Russia. Chicherin followed the essential points of Hegelian social philosophy. According to Andrzej Walicki, "he conceived of civil society as a sphere of conflicting private interests, that is, as sphere of economic freedom, individualism and privacy...he agreed with Hegel on inseparability of civil society and law, treating civil society as a "juridicial association" sitauted between the family and the state."

The Russian tradition of an omniponent state survived and was even intensified after the Bolshevik revolution, chiefly in the stalinist era. Undoubtedly the lack of a solid, organized civil society hampered the development of democracy, glasnosts, and vice versa. It was Antonio Gramsci, among others, who noticed great differences between Russia and Western Europe in these matters: "In Russia the state was everything and civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West there was a proper relation between the state and civil society, and when the state trembled the sturdy section of civil society was at onced revealed. The state was only an outer ditch, behind which was a powerful system of fortress and earthwork."

Sources: Eugeniusz Gorski. 1997. Civil Society, Pluralism, and Universalism. CRVP.

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Why Athens to be the Greek capital?

The choice of Athens as capital, a town dominated by the imposing ruins of the Parthenon and with its associations with the glories of the Periclean age but in the early 1830s little more than a dusty village, symbolised the cultural of orientation of the new state towards the classical past. It was only towards mid-century that interest developed in Greece's medieval, Byzantine past and attempts were made to link the classical, medieval and modern periods of Greek history in a theory of unbroken continuity. The fixation on the classical past was reflected in the great emphasis that was laid in the school and in the University of Athens on the study of the culture of ancient Greece and on the katharevousa, or purifying form of the language, a stilted construct that blighted the schooling of generations of children. 

Source: Richard Clogg. 2002. A concise history of Greece. Cambridge University Press.

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Financial Transition in ECA Countries

One of the key themes that run through the book is developed in the context of the chapters by De Laroisiere and Padoa-Schioppa. De Laroisier's chapter makes the point that ECA countries can no longer be considered as a homogenous group. A two-speed ECA clearly has emerged. The faster reformers - mainly the countries of Central Europe and the Baltics - are those countries that aspire to asced to the European Union (EU), an aspiration that is providing a major impetus to the reform effort. The other group - predominantly the countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia - are those countries that still have, even 10 years into the transition,  fundamental reforms to undertake in the financial sector. Padoa-Schioppa develops this teme further, stressing that even in the case of the fast reformers the catch-up process with the EU is not a simple one.

In the first decade of financial transition, governments - supported by the international financial institutions and bilateral aid progras - put considerable effort into the establishent of capital markets, particularly the stock market compnent. Such markets were viewed as being the cornerstone of market-based financial systems. Although infrastructure for most ECA stock markets are now poised to play an important role in the next decade of transition, or whether they are more likely to go into decline or be absorbed into larger international stock exchanges.

The role of the financial sector in all countries is of paramount importance. Banks are the inter-mediation agents between savings and investment, and only solid institutions are able to attract deposits and to channel them in a professional way toward productive opportunities. Efficiency of the banking sector and financial markets is a well-recognized fator of lasting growth.

Source: Alexander Fleming, Lajos Bokros, and Cari Votava. 2001. Financial transition in Europe and Central Asia: challenges of the new decade.

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Chronological Periods of Hungary

 Photo by www.merriam-webster.com/maps

The first period of Hungarian history in the Carpathian Basin (896-1301) was dominated by the dynasty of the chief conquering prince, Arpad. Under his successors, Hungarians accepted Latin Christianity and developed economic and political institutions following western European models but always modified them to suit their customs and local conditions. The hungarian feudal system resembled, but was not the same as, the French and German variants.

The next historical period, the roughly two hundred years between the death of Andrew II, the last Arpad, in 1301 and Hungary's defeat by the Ottomans in 1526, saw rulers from Bohemia, Bavaria, Luxemburg, Austria, Poland, and Naples on the throne of Hungary. The one exception to this stream of foreign rulers was the reign of Matthias I Corvinus of the Hunyadi family (1342-1382).

The First World War brought what Hungarians consider the third major catastrophe in their history. The Peace Treaty of Trianon detached from Hungary (excluding Croatia) 67 percent of the territory and 58 percent of her population. This loss, and reaction to the country's short-lived Communist regime in 1919, made inter-war Hungary revisionist and right wing. That under these circumstances Hungary gravitated into first Mussolini's, then Hitler's orbit was anything but surprising, and the country wound up on the losing side of the Second World War as well.

As did most countries in East-Central and Southeastern Europe, Hungary began its most recent historical period as a socialist state, under the thumbs of Stalin and his local satraps. A period of erroneous economic reforms, police terror, and all other features of typical Stalinist regimes led, finally, to the uprising of 1956.

Source: Peter F. Sugar, Peter Hanak, Tibor Frank. 1994. A History of Hungary. University of Chicago Press: USA.

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Sengketa Wilayah Slavonia Timur

Slavonia Timur adalah sebuah wilayah yang memiliki luas 850 mil persegi yang berada di wilayah timur negara Kroasia, berbatasan dengan Serbia. Daerah tersebut memiliki sejumlah potensi, antara lain industri ringan, pertanian, dan penghasil minyak paling utama pada masa Yugoslavia (menghasilkan 5.200 barrel minyak per hari pada dekade 1980an). Sebelum terjadi perang pada tahun 1991 Slavonia Timur menjadi tempat bagi 150.000 penduduk etnis Kroasia, Hungaria, dan muslim, serta 68.000 orang Serbia.

Pada tahun 1991 Slavonia Timur menjadi lokasi pertempuran antara etnis Kroasia dan Serbia. Paramiliter Serbia yang didukung oleh Tentara Yugoslavia Serbia (JNA) berperang melawan tentara Kroasia untuk merebut daerah tersebut. Vukovar, yang menjadi ibukota Slavonia Timur, diduduki oleh tentara Yugoslavia dalam agresi militer yang berlangsung selama empat bulan. Tentara Serbia Kroasia kemudian mengambilalih Slavonia Timur, memaksa ribuan orang Kroasia keluar dari daerah tersebut dan tinggal di kamp-kamp pengungsian, baik di dalam maupun di luar wilayah Kroasia. Pengadilan perang internasional di Den Haag, Belanda, mengajukan tuntutan kepada tiga orang pejabat penting JNA atas tuduhan telah melakukan pembunuhan lebih dari 200 tawanan Kroasia di luar kota Vukovar.

Sepanjang tahun 1995 tentara Kroasia menjalankan aksi ofensif untuk merebut kembali wilayah yang dikuasai oleh Serbia, kecuali Slavonia Timur. Basic Agreement on the Region of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja, and Western Sirmium (atau Erdut Agreement) yang berlaku sejak tanggal 12 November 1995 memberikan integrasi damai atas wilayah Slavonia Timur kepada pihak Kroasia. Erdut Agreement tersebut meminta Dewan Keamanan utuk menetapkan pemerintahan transisi atau membantu pelaksanaan perjanjian tersebut. PBB menindaklanjuti permintaan tersebut dengan membentuk UN Transitional Administration for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja, and Western Sirmium (UNTAES) pad tanggal 15 Januari 1996 melalui Resolusi Dewan Keamanan PBB No. 1037.

Referensi:
Peaceful Stabilization Force (SFOR) (1997). Bosnia Country Handbook. DIANE Publishing.

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The Royal City of Novi Sad

 Petrovaradin Fortress

Novi Sad is a city situated in Vojvodina Province, Serbia. It is the administrative center of the province. Novi Sad placed on the second largest city in the country after Beograd.

Since it was founded in 1694, Novi Sad became the center of Serbian culture and earned its nickname "Serbian Athens". At present, Novi Sad is one of large industrial and financial centers of the Serbian economy, and is also a notable construction site in the region.

Ratzen Stadt (1745)

At the outset of Hasburg rule near the end of the 17th century, people of Orthodox faith were forbidden from residing in Petrovaradin, thus Serbs were largely unable to build homes there. Because of this event, a new settlement was founded in 1694 on the left bank of the River Danube. The initial name of this settlement was Serb City (Ratzen Stadt). Another name used for the settlement was Petrovaradinski Sanac. In 1718, the inhabitants of the village of Almas were resettled to Petrovaradinski Sanac, where they found Almaski Kraj (the Almas quarter).

According to 1720 data the population of Ratzen Stadt was composed of 112 Serbian, 14 German, and 5 Hungarian houses. The settlement officially gained the present name Novi Sad in 1748 when it became a "free royal city". The edict that made Novi Sad a free royal city was proclaimed on 1 February 1748 as Maria Theresa (Queen of Hungary, Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Rama, Galicia, Lodomeria, Carinthia) gave the city rights.

Jovan Jovanovic Zmaj Grammar School (est. 1810)

Today Novi Sad is the economic center of Vojvodina Province. It is also one of the largest economic and cultural centers in Serbia and the former Yugoslavia.

Profile

Name: 

City of Novi Sad
Country: 

Serbia
Province: 

Vojvodina
District: 

South Backa
Area: 

699 kilometers-square
Time zone: 

CET (UTC+1)
Coordinates: 

45 15 N, 19 51 E
Website: 

www.novisad.rs

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Political Parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina

A. Multi-ethnic parties

Greens of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnian Party
Citizens' Democratic Party
Liberal Democratic Party
Pensioners' Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Workers' Communist Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Democratic youth movement
 Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina
 Our Party

B.Bosniaks

Bosnian-Herzegovinian Patriotic Party-Sefer Halilović
Party of Democratic Action
Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina
Democratic People's Community

C.Serbs

Democratic Party of the Republika Srpska
Party of Democratic Progress
Democratic People's Alliance
Alliance of Independent Social Democrats
Pensioners' Party of the Republika Srpska
Serbian Democratic Party
Serbian People's Alliance of the Republika Srpska
Serbian Radical Party of the Republika Srpska
Socialist Party of the Republika Srpska
League of People's Rebirth

D.Croats

Christian Democrats
Croatian Christian Democratic Union
Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Croatian Democratic Union 1990
Croatian Party of Rights
Croatian Peasant Party
Croatian Right Bloc
New Croatian Initiative
People's Party Work for Betterment

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