The aim of this study is to outline the process of the extinction of Ukrainian culture in south-eastern Poland as a result of Polish resettlement actions and the activities of the Ukrainian underground movement (i.e., the Ukrainian Insurgent Army) in the post-war period (1944–1947). Concurrently, the study offers an analysis of the image of the “Ukrainian Banderite”, created by propaganda in Polish and Czechoslovak literature, journalism, and cinematography in the period from the mid-1940s to the end of the 1980s. The authors state that both in Poland and in Czechoslovakia the analysed topic has been subject to certain cyclical waves of interest, or current political demand or usefulness, but always according to an established and politically accepted template. The black-and-white reception of the issue, propaganda fictions, the concealment of facts, and the disproportionate highlighting of others, which were applied in the literary and film production of the real-socialist period, only distorted the historical objectivity of the issue and created a complicated stereotype in the collective memory.
As a result of combat operations by the Czechoslovak army and security forces aimed at eliminating units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA), which had been crossing Czechoslovak territory into the American zone in Germany since June 1947, and in view of the increasing number of Ukrainian insurgents captured and surrendering to the Czechoslovak authorities, there was a need for their lawful investigation and possible prosecution for crimes committed on the territory of the country. As part of this, the Czechoslovak Ministries of Defense and the Interior proceeded to establish a special investigative body called the "Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Committed by Bandera's Bands on the Territory of the Czechoslovak Republic." Its task was to investigate the activities of the UIA units in Czechoslovakia from a criminal law perspective and to prepare the groundwork for the prosecution of captured and surrendered Ukrainian partisans. During the Commission's activities, a total of 132 captured Ukrainian insurgents were interrogated between October 1947 and February 1948, and criminal charges were brought against them. From the perspective of today's research into the activities of the UIA in Czechoslovakia, the Commission's general findings regarding the organization and activities of UPA units in 1945–1946 and especially in 1947 summarized in the final documents, are par-ticularly interesting. Although these summaries of the Commission do not always correspond to the current state of research on the activities of Ukrainian insurgents in Czechoslovakia and are largely biased by the political assessment of the UIA at the time, they nevertheless provide a wealth of valuable original information and are a valuable research source.
The aim of this study is to clarify evolution of life and traditions of Circassian society in a historically comparative perspective. It is based on published travelogues and diaries of European travellers who visited various parts of Caucasian Circassia from the 16th century to the half of the 19th century. Although they had described various aspects of life of this varied mountain ethnic group, the study focuses on just a few of them: anthropological appearance, language, religion, clothing, traditions, social activities and social structure of the Circassians. This data shows that Circassia embodied tribal formation that was split, speaking different languages without existence of any mutual language of interethnic communication. Despite this fact, different tribes had been somehow connected. This variedness was based on the Circassians mentality and religious issues as well. Isolation of the Circassia area, underdevelopment of external relations, absence of migration processes and peculiarities of the population mentality conditioned weak development of craft, industry, trade and character of social activities at all.
Christianity in the Caucasus – from its expansion in the 3rd – 4th centuries to the integration of the region to the Russian Empire in the 19th century went through peculiar metamorphic changes. It had its own history for each nation of the region. On the one hand, old Transcaucasian cultures (Armenian and Georgian) entirely adopted Christianity and maintained it throughout the centuries. On the other hand, the mountain dweller nations of the Caucasus, lacking their own statehood, have only partially adopted Christianity with the long-term presence of religious syncretism (mix of paganism, Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism) and after all, they were mostly Islamized. Beside a number of internal and external influences and factors, the mental conservatism of Caucasian ethnic groups also appears important in these processes.
This paper examines recordings of Russian WWI POWs of Finno-Ugric ethnicities (primarily Udmurts) captured by Austria-Hungary and Germany between 1915 and 1918. These recordings were made by Austrian, Hungarian and German Academies of Sciences in the POW camps using the technical know-how and state-of-the-art technical capabilities of the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv and the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and were stored as phonographs and gramophone records. Top experts in the fields of anthropology, ethnography, musicology and linguistics participated in the project, the outcome of which is preserved to this day and allows us to study the Great War not only through written materials, but by hearing the voices of those who fought in it.
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