This is the first monograph on the history of the Rudari people of Romania and the first mapping of their settlements. The Rudari are a population which has traditionally inhabited the Balkan area and much of Central Europe. Many of them do not know the Romani language but speak Romanian dialects and today make a living out of carving wooden household items, although their Slavic name alludes to mining. Indeed, the Rudari were for centuries gold-prospectors and gold-washers working for the Crown of Wallachia and were administrated as slaves by a monastery situated on the auriferous Olt river. The authors have reconstructed the fascinating history of this ethnic group for a period of 500 years until the 19th century when gold-panning went in decline due to the exhaustion of the reserves of alluvial gold.
Per oltre quarant’anni, la scrittura della storia nei paesi dell’Europa orientaleè stata fortemente condizionata dagli imperativi ideologici e propagandisticidei regimi comunisti. La storia, più di ogni altra disciplina umanistica, offrivagiustifi cazioni, e quindi legittimità, al potere. Indagare il rapporto tra storia epotere in questo ambito signifi ca tanto addentrarsi nella storia dei socialismireali e dei loro obiettivi – strategie, tattiche, tra rotture con il passato e continuità– quanto approfondire il rapporto che storici ed istituzioni di ricercaintrattenevano con la politica.I saggi presentati in questo volume si concentrano su alcuni aspetti cruciali delrapporto tra Clio e dittature comuniste, dal signifi cato del mestiere di storicoall’interno di realtà che spingevano a cercare accomodamenti e compromessicon il regime – pena la marginalizzazione o la persecuzione –, all’analisidell’interazione delle storiografi e e della loro evoluzione in relazione ai rispettivicontesti istituzionali, all’uso pubblico della storia e dei miti storici da partedei regimi comunisti.
West European leaders had good reasons to oppose US Vietnam war policy. It threatened to alter the global balance of power while igniting unrest at home. Such turbulence led to a radicalized political atmosphere domestically. In this new environment, the “New Left” established a powerful foothold among the “68-generation”. In many West European countries the new radical left rejected the older Socialist and Communist parties in favor of more radical political alternatives.
In Sweden the Social Democratic government struggled to maintain a workable relationship with Washington while at the same time placating domestic anti-war opinion – thus preventing this issue from being hijacked by the far left. How did the Swedish Social Democrats resolve this dilemma?
Although this is the most written-about episode in Swedish postwar diplomacy, this is the first book to scrutinize the impact of Sweden's Vietnam War policy on its domestic politics.
Järnridåns snabba söndervittrande rubbade på många av de självklarheter som det nordiska samarbetet och själva föreställningen om Norden byggt på under kalla kriget. De nordiska länderna skulle finna sin plats i ett Europa vars karta ritades om. De skulle navigera i förhållande till en accelererande europeisk integration och de baltiska ländernas självständighetsprocess. Vad skedde med det nordiska samarbetet under denna period? I vilken mån samarbetade länderna kring dessa frågor och i vilken grad föreställde man sig en gemensam framtid för Norden i det nya Europa?
Denna publikation dokumenterar ett vittnesseminarium om det nordiska samarbetet i kalla krigets kölvatten, som arrangerades den 2 juni 2015. Deltagarna Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, Mats Hellström och Pär Stenbäck var centrala nordiska aktörer under perioden 1989–95.
Seminariet och publikationen är resultatet av ett samarbete mellan Samtidshistoriska institutet vid Södertörns högskola och Centrum för Norden-studier vid Helsingfors universitet.
Social media has created new public spheres that provide alternative sources of social and political authority. Such “digital authority” has conventionally been interpreted in metric terms, without qualitative distinctions. Based on Twitter data from four different Swedish state agencies during the first 15 months of the COVID-19 crisis, this paper looks at the different kinds of modes of interaction Twitter enables and their impact on state agencies digital authority. Theoretically this paper applies Valentin Voloshinov's classical theory on reported speech, developed in the 1920s, to the concept of digital authority in the Twitter-sphere of the 2020s. Besides these theoretical contributions to media and communication studies, the main findings are that retweets are generally used to affirm and spread information thus strengthening the digital authority of the origin of the tweet whilst replies and quote-tweets are used to undermine the credibility of the sender and the content of the original tweet, often by resorting to irony. As the COVID-19 crisis prolongs, we observe increasing share of critical commentary and diminishing overall attention to government actors in Sweden. The roles of different state agencies are mirrored by the type of interaction they generate. This article also shows the usefulness of qualitative study of social media interaction in order to reveal the dynamics of digital authority construed in social media.
The ritualized memory of genocide has been a cornerstone of Roma political mobilization during at least the last three decades. A uniqueness paradigm has been developing for some time, applying a memorial discourse inspired by the Jewish Holocaust model. While paralleling each other in time, the mass murders of Jews and Roma during the Second World War differed on several points. In the General Government of the Occupied Polish Territories and the territories occupied by Nazi Germany after Operation Barbarossa, the persecution of Roma took place largely in local initiatives. Consequently, the Nazi policies varied considerably, leading to territories in which Roma were annihilated and those in which about half of the Roma population survived. Considerable differences could also appear within the same administrative unit. In Distrikt Galizien, the southeastern-most district of the General Government, Roma were persecuted violently in the countryside, while the district capital of Lemberg (Lwów, Lviv) saw a different course of events. The picture that appears from the available documents also diverges from survivor testimonies and general accounts of the persecution of Roma as being similar and parallel to that of Jews. Roma were present in Lemberg throughout the Nazi occupation and the authorities were aware of their whereabouts. Roma were not confined to the ghetto, but many, along with Poles and Ukrainians, remained within the territory of the ghetto, parts of which had constituted areas of Roma settlement in Lemberg since the mid nineteenth century. Several Roma also lived in wagons in various locations in 1942–43, as well as in quarters close to the town’s centre. Altogether, several hundred Roma lived in Lemberg, and their treatment by the local courts was different from that of Jews, bearing more similarity to the way in which Polish and Ukrainian cases were handled.
In the spring of 1782 a group of peasants of Swedish origin reached their destination on the right bank of Dnipro River in Ukraine. The village they founded became known as “Gammalsvenskby” (Russian “Staroshvedskoe,” English “Old Swedish Village”). In the 1880s links were established with Sweden and Swedophone Finland where the villagers were seen through a nationalistic-romantic prism and in broad circles became known as a brave group of people who had preserved their Swedish culture in hostile surroundings; in the terminology of this volume, a “lost Swedish tribe”. The village remained largely intact until 1929, when in the aftermath of the Russian revolution a majority of the villagers decided to leave for Sweden. When they arrived, there was disappointment. Neither Sweden nor the lost tribe lived up to expectations. Some of the villagers returned to Ukraine and the USSR.
This book offers an alternative perspective on Gammalsvenskby. The changing fortunes of the villagers are largely seen in the light of two grand top-down modernization projects – Russia’s imperial, originating in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and the Soviet, carried out in the early 1920s – but also of the modernization projects in Sweden and Finland. The story the book has to tell of Gammalsvenskby is a new one, and moreover, it is a story of relevance also for the history of Russia, Ukraine, Sweden and Finland.
This article analyses knowledge production about itinerant groups such as Nightmen, Roma and Travellers in Denmark between 1800 and 1950. It puts forward the thesis of a Danish Sonderweg in this regard, not only compared with Germany, but also the Scandinavian neighbours. This Sonderweg was characterized by an underdeveloped interest of science and state authorities for respective groups and culminated into a rejection of forced eugenic measures. The analysis is based on key texts from three periods: a national romantic one from approximately 1800 onwards, one shaped by the Danish Gypsy Lorist Johan Miskow at the beginning of the 20th century, and one eugenic from 1938. Special interest is given to continuities and fractions in narratives of purity vs. mixture.
The hypothesis of psychological egoism is a commonplace in disciplines like economics, psychology and biology. As an explanatory model it includes prosocial behaviour such as providing aid for distant strangers. However, philanthropic research has found mixed results regarding the effectiveness of appeals to the self-interest of donors. This article analyses the use of self-interest in appeals for humanitarian aid during the Russian famine of 1921-1923 and points out the need for the systematic inclusion of historical experience in philanthropic research. It concludes that the specific conditions surrounding the international campaign favoured the widespread use of appeals to donors' self-interest. A categorization of such appeals into four groups - national, economic, group-specific, and psychological - is proposed as an analytical tool for similar studies.
Book abstract: This is the first systematic pan-European study of the hundreds of thousands of non-Germans who fought ― either voluntarily or under different kinds of pressures ― for the Waffen-SS (or auxiliary police formations operating in the occupied East). Building on the findings of regional studies by other scholars ― many of them included in this volume ― The Waffen-SS aims to arrive at a fuller picture of those non-German citizens (from Eastern as well as Western Europe) who served under the SS flag. Where did the non-Germans in the SS come from (socially, geographically, and culturally)? What motivated them? What do we know about the practicalities of international collaboration in war and genocide, in terms of everyday life, language, and ideological training? Did a common transnational identity emerge as a result of shared ideological convictions or experiences of extreme violence? In order to address these questions (and others), The Waffen-SS adopts an approach that does justice to the complexity of the subject, adding a more nuanced, empirically sound understanding of collaboration in Europe during World War II, while also seeking to push the methodological boundaries of the historiographical genre of perpetrator studies by adopting a transnational approach.
This article analyses the participation of individuals, networks and international organizations in transnational fundraising aimed at providing humanitarian relief aid. Focusing on fundraising campaigns organized in the Italian states in favour of Ireland in 1847, when the Great Famine scourged its population the most, the article highlights the agency of the fundraisers in setting in motion an economy of altruism that transcended groups’ boundaries and state borders. The activism and networking of a few well-established individuals in Rome were pivotal in mobilizing the lay and religious elites at a local level. In January and February 1847, the elites of the Italian capitals collected copious sums within private events and initiatives directed at their peers, while the Christian faiths present in Rome organized the first alms collections. This wave of altruism succeeded in setting humanitarian relief for Ireland as one of the goals of the global Catholic Church. In March, Pope Pius IX issued the Encyclical Praedecessores Nostros, appealing for Catholics to donate in favour of Ireland, and thereby generating much local fundraising, mainly in the Italian states and Southern Europe, until the early months of 1848. The Catholic clergy served the cause, raising money locally and taking charge of its delivery to Ireland, with partial coordination from Rome. Although implementing a transnational fundraising campaign involved obstacles of a political, logistical and financial nature, the alms collection raised in the Catholic churches aggregated many small donations over a considerable time span, providing more than double the amount raised in the lay initiatives organized by the elites of the Italian states. The article, based on unedited archival sources from the Italian, Vatican and Irish archives, shows how the charitable fundraisers overcame the obstacles imposed by state politics, international conflicts and transaction costs over the transnational circulation of ideas, initiatives and capitals.
This article aims to analyse the relationship between history and political power in communist Romania during the rule of Nicolae Ceauşescu. The article’s opening section explains how Romanian historiography was substituted by a pro-Soviet and pro-Stalinist version which proclaimed the superiority of the Soviet Union and of communism; secondly, the section illustrates the delicate passage between Stalinism and national communism. As the section shows, Party Secretary Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej understood that autonomy from Moscow was essential in order to guarantee the internal stability of the Romanian communist élite. For this reason, genuine legitimacy had to be created by reissuing the national ideology dismissed since 1948. National history was given back its primary importance within Romanian culture, this time in service of the Stalinist élite, sided with more traditional Marxist-Leninist tenets, symbols and narratives. The second section illustrates the development of the new national-communist canon after 1965, once Nicolae Ceauşescu took power. The section presents the main trends developed by Romanian historiography in order to inspire loyalty to the Romanian Communist Party. As the article shows, by the early eighties, nationalism and the cult of the leader had become the main trends of this metanarrative. The epilogue briefly points out the continuities and changes produced by the regime change in 1989 for Romanian historiography.Keywords: Historiography; Stalinism; Romania; national communism; politics and history.
Among the strategies followed by far right groups for normalising their messages of intolerance in contemporary Europe, sites of memory play a pivotal role. Adopting an actor-centred and instrumentalist perspective of memory work and memory politics, the article considers sites of memory as products of the framing and staging of the past by the memory entrepreneurs, leading figures within the community of remembrance who, mastering the art of memorialisation, strive to establish their revisionist history within the state-endorsed memory politics. The far right memory entrepreneurs spatialise their memory work in sites of memory that downplay the history of violence of their group and present its heroic and patriotic side. The degree of success in contesting such sites shows whether the memory entrepreneurs have succeeded in normalising their messages. The article analyses the making and the contestation of a site of memory established by the far right in post-communist in Romania.
The present article analyses the relation between politics and historiography in communist Romania (1948-1989). Since the beginning of the four-decades-long communist dictatorship, history has been turned into an ancillary discipline of the political discourse. The analysis of this peculiar kind of historiography starts from the processes that have determined its political nature and brought to its development over time. In this article, the history of historiography is presented in the light of the two main political strategies that have been at the core of Romanian communism, namely the attempt to implement a Stalinist civilization (1948-1956) and a slow but steadily-implemented road to national-communism (1956-1989). Both projects operated for conferring legitimacy to the Romanian communist leadership. The first one did so by legitimating the rule of communism and the Soviet Union; it was implemented by marginalizing and destroying the interwar élite and by banning the traditional national discourse in favour of a novel glorification of the Soviet Union and of Marxism-Leninism. The second strategy, instead, aimed at establishing the rule of a domestic, Romanian form of Stalinism. Party Secretary Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej ideated this second strategy as a reaction to the de-Stalinization began with the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1956). For implementing the second strategy, the Romanian leadership re-established gradually the national discourse and its symbols. The role of history became fundamental for showing the domestic audience that the Romanian leadership and the Party were truly national and were serving the interests of the homeland against foreign exploiters. Nicolae Ceauşescu, who succeeded to Gheorghiu-Dej in 1965, potentiated this strategy along the years. However, he was unable to adapt it to the new international circumstances. He favoured instead a sterile nationalism which included also the cult of his own personality. The article presents the fallout of the two strategies on Romanian historiography.
The aim of this paper is to shed light on the continuities and changes that far-right movements undergothroughout historical changes. It does so by focusing on the transnational and transgenerational dynamicsthrough which the Legionary Movement fostered its existence from the settings of the Cold War exile topost-communist Romania. In order to illustrate these transnational and transgenerational dynamics, thepaper compares the activities of the legionaries in their late Cold War exile with their activities in earlypost-communist Romania.
This article analyses the memorialization of Ion Moţa and Vasile Marin, two Romanian Legionary movement volunteers who died while fighting for Franco in the Spanish Civil War, as an entangled history of Romanian and Spanish fascisms. The commemoration practices and narratives recounted in the Spanish and Romanian newspapers and archival sources from the period 1937–41 show that commemorating foreign ideological peers and appropriating symbolic elements of foreign fascisms in order to memorialize fallen comrades served as resources for legitimizing the struggle against domestic competitors. Although the totalitarian ambitions of Spanish and Romanian fascists remained unfulfilled, the Spanish-Romanian entanglement contributed to consolidating Moţa and Marin as martyrs of transnational fascism.