In all critical moments of man’s social life, the rational forces that resist the rise of old mythical ideas are no longer sure of themselves. In these moments all mythical conceptions reappear and become a prominent feature in the sphere of political action. Political myth, a fantasy of a better world, cannot be simply discarded as infantile daydreaming. Although some myths are vindictive, and potentially disastrous, others are favorable to dialogue and a commitment to a free community of equal individuals. It is always a matter of interpretation and the same myth can be used for expansion or limitation of one’s freedoms and responsibilities. The present thesis has been prepared to present national mythologies – conceptions that had dominated collective imagination of the Eastern European societies. The first part is devoted to present several selected theoretical concepts which characterize the essence of modern myth and describe direct relation between myth and policy. They are: G. Sorel’s concept of political myth, E. Cassirer’s philosophical concept of political myth, and the concept of political myth put forward by V. Tismaneanu. In the second part of my study I have focused on a few different definitions and typologies of nationalism, which I consider the most interesting and most significant of all. In these part I have also attempted to present and analyze phenomena which I have deemed the most essential for the arisen of mythologization of the political life. The final part of the work is devoted to present and explain the phenomenon of the mythologization of the political life in Eastern European countries. A very important component of this analysis is presentation how extreme nationalistic and authoritarian thought has been influential in Eastern Europe for much of this century, while liberalism has only shallow historical roots. Despite democratic successes in Czech Republic and Poland it would be a mistake for the West to assume that liberalism will always triumph. Nationalist intellectuals have encouraged ethnic hatred in such countries as Russia, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia by reviving patriotic myths of heroes, scapegoats, and historical injustices. Often focused on the past, the new mythologies are actually discourses about the present and especially the future of post-Communist societies. The main aim of these thesis was to introduce how the mythology of the nation explaining brutal reality had created particular intellectual rigours, moral standards and archetypal personalities which had efficiently steered collective imagination in the last decades and shows how enthusiastically these myths have been welcomed by people desperate for some form of salvation from political and economic uncertainty.
Once we used to say that the world is divided between rich and poor, then between north and south, after that people often used a slogan: the west and the rest. Today this west is America. There has been a huge turn in the way of thinking about our world. Many political scientists and sociologists say nowadays, that there is no west anymore, it has lost its significance. Ways of the Europe and USA had split. It is time to cease pretending that, Europeans and Americans still think about world in the same way, because now they live in two entirely different worlds. Of course, they both have same ideas and aspirations, but they perceive the world, define notions and means of international policy otherwise. That is why they often disagree and cannot really understand each other. The abyss between them is getting tremendously large. The question, which appears is: How is it possible, that Europe and America changed their attitude to international policy so radically? Yet it was Europe, where all the religious, ethnical and national wars took place, where Napoleon, Bismarck or Hitler ruled, and it was America where all the citizens denounced the XIX century imperial European policy. It appears that the strategic cultures have changed all the way around. That situation was possible, because in the 20th century it was the USA, that became a world-power even stronger than Europe. Before, America was too weak and had not enough military power to conduct forceful policy of power. Nowadays Americans reigns in world’s most important domains: technology, economy, military and culture and that makes it the only world-power. Europe unfortunately had to say goodbye to its hegemony and now it has to rely on international law because its military power is embarrassingly tiny in comparison with American.
The paper is devoted to diagnosing the availability and use of the internet in Croatia. The author analyses the legal situation, availability of the internet as a communication channel as well as anthropological contexts of network communication, referring to the practice of the media system in Croatia. She discusses changes in the availability of the internet in Croatia, analyses the Croatians’ web activities, examines the social media, their popularity and specificity of functioning in Croatia. The paper also includes remarks concerning legal issues as well as the economic functioning of the web.
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