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(published in: Apr, 2012)
The Balkans’ economic relations with European Union countries have been particularly intense during the last decades. Geographical reasons together with political and economical links can explain why the process of development and integration of Balkan’s countries is of paramount interest for the European Union: this area represents the South - Eastern gateway to a new and more integrated Europe...
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(published in: Mar, 2012)
Pre-crisis high growth rates of the Western Balkans were fuelled by domestic demand financed through capital inflows from abroad. This, coupled with low domestic savings, increased vulnerability to the external shocks that followed. Four main external transmission mechanisms…
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(published in: Feb, 2012)
This paper analyzes social and political movements that emerged in Slovenia in the last years of socialist Yugoslavia. Explicitly or impliedly, any of them was contesting the inability of the Federation to find a solution to the problems Yugoslav peoples were experiencing: lack of...
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(published in: Jan, 2012)
This research is based on the fundaments of somewhat nonsystematic historical and culturological investigation of censorship as an important factor in the shaping of cultural identity of people of former Yugoslavia. It starts from the past studies conducted in the fields of book history, archivistics and journalism. It takes Croatia and Serbia for referent countries as base fields for explaining censorship methodologies in the period of Yugoslav WWII aftermath, through the year of IB resolution in 1948 until 1952 and slowly coming out from so called Agitprop cultural period of Yugoslavia.
The gap which is to be filled is...
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(published in: Dec, 2011)
The evolution of genetically related languages may sometimes result in a radical modification and differentiation of their structures. The author of this article uses the term shift to designate this kind of structural changes. The relevance of the shift may be increased by geographical and temporal distance. There is a chronological asymmetry in the establishment and development of Italian and Russian. The forefathers of the two modern languages...
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(published in: Nov, 2011)
Nowadays, a strategic highly-skilled migration policyis crucial for every country. A knowledge based economy represents a realbusiness and a long term investment for the future; a highly skilled labourforce is the true added value to each market, Italy is still working onimplementing a new strategy for a more flexible and more internationalisedsociety to adapt its labour force to the real global competitiveness. Althoughin the last decades the number of migrants in Italy has widely grown - thereare around...
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(published in: Oct, 2011)
The present paper will focus on the analysis of changes in Russian foreign policy discourse and the conception of Russian world as an instrument of new Russian soft power strategy. According to a wide topic of this paper we will have to deal with two main concepts here. One is the concept of discourse or even discursive practice which is theoretical and methodological background for this study, whilst the other...
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(published in: Sep, 2011)
The aim of this research project ("Bilingualism and migration in different Russian speaking settings") is analyzing contemporary Russian speaking communities in different social and linguistic settings in order to identify divergent or common features, concerning language maintenance vs. decay, group integration (or assimilation) vs. insertion without integration. The method of Linguistic Landscape, which is here applied to these two settings, gave interesting results. The same survey...
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(published in: Aug, 2011)
With the disintegration of former Yugoslavia, Macedonia became an independent state. Similar to other Republics of the former Yugoslavia, Macedonia had to carry out double transitions, i.e. transition to a market economy and transition from a regional economy to a national economy. For a newly independent small country to survive the environment of market economy, it is required to settle domestic conflicts, establish good relationship with neighboring countries and secure economic independence. Western Balkan countries, which have experienced ethnic conflicts and still have domestic ethnic problems, would not be assured of their survival as long as they remain outside the European Union. This paper examines how Macedonia has been tackling the above mentioned problems, proceeding toward EU accession in the context of EU’s Stabilization and Association Process. In the discussion a successful small country Slovenia, which consisted of the former Yugoslavia, is utilized as a benchmark.
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(published in: Jul, 2011)
There are worse things than defeat. If a community has the opportunity to inspect its setbacks its conqueror has stopped short of wiping out the vanquished group's memory and collective existence. If the defeated are a mobile community they might literally look for greener pastures. Sedentary winners and losers, on the other hand, remain in contact, and their paired experiences of victory and defeat affect future actions on both sides.
The Serbs are among those who have developed their identity by moving from defeat to defeat. Enemies have failed to (or refrained from) destroying them, inundating them with non-Serbian settlers, or banishing them to a destructive exile. The iconic battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389 remains an appropriate starting point for a discussion of Serbia's relationship to defeat, but the evolution of songs and memories adapted to the task of honing a Herderian nation, not the battle itself, informs the construction of collective defeat. The peripatetic remains of "Tsar" Lazar, continuing references to his heavenly kingdom, and mass commemorative rallies at the battlefield in 1889 and 1989 remain central, contemporary, touchstones. Serb poets and politicians folded defeats of the 18th and 19th centuries into the Kosovo memory.
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(published in: Jun, 2011)
Russian foreign policy thinking has evolved significantly in recent years. Defined throughout the 1990s by a notable lack of any clearly defined strategic course, there is now a clear vision of the type of global order that Russia wants. Russian foreign policy thinking is reaching far beyond traditional realism to embrace global risk sharing, although the extent to which the country ought to embrace a truly global security agenda is still hotly debated. Too little attention has been paid in the West to this intellectual evolution, and to what it says about Russia's long term foreign policy goals.
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(published in: May, 2011)
The paper deals with Slavonic folklore and its influence upon literature. Here the term “folklore" covers oral epics, fairy stories, popular traditions and superstitions; the meaning of "literature" is restricted to XII century chronicles and written epics and also to XV century pseudo-hagiographic compositions. The essay – addressed to non-initiated educated readers – is the result of an original contribution to the meeting "La terra dell'Uccello di fuoco" (Fire-bird Land) held in Bolzano (Italy) in May 2004.
The author shows that...