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donate Abstracts for Arche 11/2008
The issue opens with the round table discussion "The Authoritarian Ersatz of the electoral campaign", dedicated to the recent purges at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, KGB, Ministry of Defence and National Office of the public prosecutor, initiated by the Belarusian president on November 13. Lukashenko blamed high ranking officers for illegal appropriation of plots of land and construction of luxurious villas near Zaslauskaje water storage.
The political analysts have agreed that this spectacular show has been the mamin talking point for official political discourse this year. The functional role of the Lukashenka-style authoritarianism can be compared to election procedures in free societies. Having eliminated free elections, Lukashenko is forced to rotate the state officials through scandal purges and arrests, which are broadcast live. Without these purges, corruption would expand to an unacceptable level.
Linguist Zmicier Sauka deconstructs, in his "Mosaic orthography", the new orthography regulations of the Belarusian language, which are due to be implemented on 1 September 2010.
Essayist Volha Parfiencyk writes about Barack Hussein Obama in her article "The black hope of America".
The Pontis Foundation Belarus Brief "The END of the ENP" suggests that the main challenge the EU faces now is to speak with one voice, in line with the newly-adopted Realpolitik towards Belarus.
Piotra Rudkouski, a philosopher, logician, and methodology professor at the Vilnius-based European Humanities University (EHU), Lithuania, contests the suggestions that the Belarusian language and Belarusian nationalism have no prospects under the populist regime and the commercialized culture oppression.
Alaksiej Lastouski, a sociologist at the Minsk based Institute of Sociology, criticizes two recently published books on the Belarusian nationalism in the twenty first century. Their authors, the above mentioned Piotra Rudkouski and Taciana Vadalazskaja, sociologist at the Minsk based Institute of Sociology, oppose him in their "Label argumentation" and "How to answer the question: What is the Belarusian nation?" respectively.
The Kyiv based philosopher Vitaliy Ponomariov reviews in his "The phenomenology of the nation" the Belarusian translation of the Miroslav Hroch piece "In the national interests".
Polish translator and essayist Maigorzata Buchalik discusses two novels by the Mahilou born Russian novelist Uiadzimier Kazioch The School and Warsaw in his article "The Belarusian vegetation in Mahilou and Minsk".
Uiadzimier Furs, a philosophy professor at the Vilnius-based European Humanities University (EHU), Lithuania, presents his ideas on the ongoing Belarusian Nation-Building.
David R. Marples, professor of History at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, and his Belarusian co-author Uiadzimier Padhoi wonder how the official remembrance policy, falsifying the WWII developments in Belarus, consolidates the acceptance of the regime by the Belarusian population.
EHU professor Taciana Culickaja in "The discourses of Belarusian students" analyzes the identity formations and divisions in the university youth environment.
The economists Alaksandar Cubryk, Dzmitry Kruk and Kiryia Hajduk assess how Belarus could soften the implications of the global financial crisis and effectively reform its economy.
The American expert Jonathan Row and his British counterpart William Tompson explain why the crisis hurt the American and the Russian economies more than others.
Aris Trantidis from the London School of Economics reveals the economic preconditions of the Belarusian regime stability in "The economic underpinnings of semi-authoritarianism: Explaining preferences and power relations in the case of Belarus".
Web-site editor and editor-in-chief Andrej Dycko writes about his cultural, political and social experiences in the late 1990-ies in "How I became a journalist".
The political commentator from the service Radio Liberty Belarusian Jury Drakachrust states that the new generation of the Belarusian nomenklatura is more consumption oriented and hostile toward Russia than their communist predecessors.
Historian Vital Makarevic traces how the Belarusian gentry responded to the official St Petersburg demand to confirm their noble origin.
Published 2009-01-22
Original in Belarusian
Contributed by Arche
© Arche
© Eurozine
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