Authoritarian Laughter
explores the political history of the satire and humor
magazine Broom published in Soviet Lithuania. Artists,
writers, and journalists were required to create state-sponsored
...Soviet humor and serve the Communist Party after Lithuania was
incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940. Neringa Klumbytė
investigates official attempts to shape citizens into Soviet
subjects and engage them through a culture of popular humor.
Broom was multidirectional-it both facilitated
Communist Party agendas and expressed opposition toward the Soviet
regime. Official satire and humor in Soviet Lithuania increasingly
created dystopian visions of Soviet modernity and were a forum for
critical ideas and nationalist sentiments that were mobilized in
anti-Soviet revolutionary laughter in the late 1980s and early
1990s.
Authoritarian Laughter illustrates that Soviet Western
peripheries were unstable and their governance was limited. While
authoritarian states engage in a statecraft of the everyday and
seek to engineer intimate lives, authoritarianism is defied not
only in revolutions, but in the many stories people tell each other
about themselves in jokes, cartoons, and satires.
The Golden Age of the Lithuanian Yeshivas tells the
story of the last chapter of Jewish rabbinical schools in Eastern
Europe, from the eve of World War I to the outbreak of World War
II.
The ...Lithuanian yeshiva established a rigorous standard for
religious education in the early 1800s that persisted for over a
century and continues to this day. Although dramatically reduced
and forced into exile in Russia and Ukraine during World War I, the
yeshivas survived the war, with yeshiva heads and older students
forming the nucleus of the institutions. These scholars
rehabilitated the yeshivas in their original locations and quickly
returned to their regular activities. Moreover, they soon began to
expand into areas now empty of yeshivas in lands occupied by
Hasidic populations in Poland and even into the lands that would
soon become Israel.
During the economic depression of the 1930s, students struggled
for food and their leaders journeyed abroad in search for funding,
but their determination and commitment to the yeshiva system
continued. Despite the material difficulties that prevailed in the
yeshivas, there was consistently a full occupancy of students, most
of them in their twenties. Young men from all over the free world
joined these yeshivas, which were considered the best training
programs for the religious professions and rabbinical ordination.
The outbreak of World War II and the Soviet occupation of first
eastern Poland and then Lithuania marked the beginning of the end
of the Yeshivas, however, and the Holocaust ensured the final
destruction of the venerable institution.
The Golden Age of the Lithuanian Yeshivas is the first
book-length work on the modern history of the Lithuanian yeshivas
published in English. Through exhaustive historical research of
every yeshiva, Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky brings to light for the first
time the stories, lives, and inner workings of this long-lost
world.
The book presents an analysis of the history of the Lithuanian Metrica--the chancellery books of the Lithuanian grand duke--from its formation in the mid-fifteenth century until today. A great deal ...of new factographic material is revealed, offering new answers to traditional questions on the history of the Lithuanian Metrica and formulating new objectives for future researchers.
Electronic survey mode has become a more common tool of research than it used to be previously. This is strongly associated with the overall digitization of modern society. However, the evidence on ...the possible mode effect on study results has been scarce. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the comparability of findings on health and behaviours using a paper-versus-electronic mode of survey with randomization design among schoolchildren.
A randomized study was conducted using a mandatory questionnaire on international Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study in Lithuania, enrolling 531 schoolchildren aged 11-15 years. The questionnaire included health and social topics about physical activity, risk behaviours, self-reported health and symptoms, life satisfaction, bullying, fighting, family and school environment, peer relationships, electronic media communication, sociodemographic indicators, etc. The schoolchildren within classes were randomly selected for electronic or paper mode.
It was found that by study mode differences are inconsistent and in the majority of cases do not exceed 5%-point difference between the modes. The only significant difference was that in the paper survey the participants reported more exercise than in the electronic survey (OR=8.08, P<.001). Other trends were nonsignificant and did not show a consistent pattern - in certain behaviours the paper mode was related to healthier choices, while in others - the electronic.
The use of electronic questionnaires in surveys of schoolchildren may provide findings that are comparable with concurrent or previously conducted paper surveys.
The focus of this book is the unique socio-politicaland socio-cultural community of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the late fifteenthto the early seventeenth century. This ethnically diverse, ...multilingual,multi-faith, multicultural national space has had a great impact on thesocio-political development of Central Europe.
In The Odyssey of an Apple Thief, Moishe Rozenbaumas
(1922-2016) recounts his fascinating life, from his Lithuanian
boyhood, to the fraught experiences that take him across Europe and
Central Asia ...and back again, to his daring escape from Soviet
Russia to build a new life in Paris. Along the way, we get a rarely
seen portrait of the lives of working-class Jewish youth in
Telz/Telsiai, a religious town renowned for its yeshiva. We hear of
the games children played, the theft of apples from a Catholic
orchard, and Rozenbaumas's early apprenticeship as a tailor once
his father leaves the country. The war breaks out and the teenaged
Rozenbaumas flees Lithuania alone, unable to convince his mother
and sibling to go with him. We learn of his life as a starved
refugee in an Uzbek kolkhoz, his escape into the Red Army, and his
unlikely work in the reconnaissance unit of the Soviet Army. After
the war, Rozenbaumas is drafted into the Marxist-Leninist
university and as a cadre of the Communist Party, ultimately
escaping in 1956 with his family to Paris, where he and his wife
give an openly Jewish education to their children. In the vast
literature of memory written by Jewish witnesses before, during,
and after WWII, Rozenbaumas's account stands out for the
singularity of his experience and for his deft narration of events
of mythological dimension from a personal perspective. The
Odyssey of an Apple Thief offers not only invaluable testimony
of this historical moment but also an illuminating and original
portrait of Lithuanian Jews in the twentieth century.
As a universal European Christain phenomenon, pilgrimages focused particularly on three main destinations: Jerusalem, Rome, and Compostela. In the period from the late 14th until the early 17th ...century, several dozens of identified pilgrims from Poland and Lithuania travelled on ships along the Croatian Adriatic Coast, heading for Jerusalem. However, within this overall picture there are several common traits and differences. As for their motives, they were similar in all countries and consisted of elements related to their religious or estate identity. Owing to its early Christianization and an elaborate network of Franciscan monasteries, Poland was more advanced in terms of pilgrimage than Lithuania. On the other hand, among the Lithuanian pilgrims one fi nds many Orthodox Christians, which reflects the country’s ethnical structure. As for the estates, it can be observed that there were not many commoners among the Polish pilgrims, while the nobility and clergy are present in almost equal numbers. It is especially among the nobility of both countries that gaining the title of miles Sepulchri Domini played an important role in terms of motivation. Pilgrims from Poland and Lithuania used exclusively the route through Austria and Hungary, their destination being Venice as the place of embarkment on ships.
Redko posejani intelektualci, ki so ostali v Litvi po priključitvi Sovjetski zvezi, so si za oživitev klasične filologije prizadevali v surovih okoliščinah povojnega terorja, ko je bilo treba povsod ...dokazovati prednosti sovjetskega sistema. Zapisniki Oddelka za klasično filologijo, shranjeni v arhivu vilenske univerze, pričajo o univerzitetnem življenju v tem obdobju ter razkrivajo svojsko zvrst sovjetske druge sofistike, ko ni povedanemu verjel nihče, še najmanj tisti, ki je stvar povedal. Oddelek je kljub temu ostal pomembno kulturno žarišče prizadevanj za evropsko razsežnost litovske kulture.
It has often been claimed that Jews have a penchant for capitalism and capitalist economic activity. With this book, Adam Teller challenges that assumption. Examining how Jews achieved their ...extraordinary success within the late feudal economy of the eighteenth-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, he shows that economic success did not necessarily come through any innate entrepreneurial skills, but through identifying and exploiting economic niches in the pre-modern economy-in particular, the monopoly on the sale of grain alcohol.
Jewish economic activity was a key factor in the development of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and it greatly enhanced the incomes, and thereby the social and political status, of the noble magnates, including the powerful Radziwiłł family. In turn, with the magnate's backing, Jews were able to leverage their own economic success into high status in estate society. Over time, relations within Jewish society began to change, putting less value on learning and pedigree and more on wealth and connections with the estate owners.
This groundbreaking book exemplifies how the study of Jewish economic history can shed light on a crucial mechanism of Jewish social integration. In the Polish-Lithuanian setting, Jews were simultaneously a despised religious minority and key economic players, with a consequent standing that few could afford to ignore.
Raspad SSSR-a i Jugoslavije proizveo je 22 nove nacionalne države. Nove države državljanstvom uređuju odnose između individue i zajednice; pritom vlade mnogih država ostavljaju stotine tisuća ljudi ...bez državljanstva, bez osnovne legalne zaštite. Tko pripada, a tko je isključen, kako i zašto iz političke zajednice novih država, temeljno je pitanje rada. Na ta pitanja pokušava se odgovoriti teorijski i analizom slučajeva Estonije, Latvije, Litve, Slovenije i Hrvatske. Rad prati nastanak i promjenu državljanskih zakona i politika te njihovu prilagodbu Europskoj uniji. Inicijalna dodjela državljanstva u svim je promatranim državama prioritet dala etničkom identitetu i time oblikovala kategoriju »isključenih«. Promjene »iznuđuje« Europska unija, a države reagiraju sličnim politikama uključivanja – manjina i imigranata – s varijantama koje ne ugrožavaju temeljne standarde EU-a. Međutim, usprkos očekivanju, samo članstvo u EU nije značajno utjecalo na politiku prema »drugima«, zaključuje autorica te navodi primjere »otvorenih pitanja« za svaku promatranu državu.
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