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Abstract
This article investigates how the Bulgarian community of southern Moldova experienced the collapse of the Soviet Union. It questions why Moldova’s Bulgarian population refused offers from the Gagauz and Ukraine’s Bulgarian minority to join them in their quest for autonomy. The fact they chose not to is somewhat puzzling, as Moldova’s Bulgarian minority shared many of the same grievances as the Gagauz and Ukrainian Bulgarians, and they were offered considerable concessions to join each movement. I argue that there were several reasons for this. Firstly, Bulgarians in Taraclia distrusted the Gagauz and Ukrainian Bulgarians. Secondly, local political elites quickly realised they could extract greater concessions from Chișinău by aligning with the central government during such a tumultuous period. Finally, relations between Taraclia and Chișinău were characterized by a high degree of pragmatism.
Abstract
The article discusses the organization and process of repatriation of American prisoners of war and interned civilians liberated from German captivity by the Red Army. It presents legal grounds of repatriation, the adopted principles of arranging the repatriation process, the territorial network of komendanturas and camps where the liberated citizens were kept, the living, medical and sanitary conditions in the mentioned units, the evacuation routes, the means of transport, the number of the repatriated, the rules of the work of teams of contact officers. A detailed analysis of the above-mentioned issues reveals the complicated and tense relations between the United States and the Soviet Union in the final years of World War II. It also perfectly illustrates the attitude of the USSR towards the American ally, which was characterized by failure to follow agreements, disregarding the requests and petitions from US representatives, and delaying a lot of shared actions.
Abstract
This article offers an overview of the most important developments in the Bulgarian media sphere after the changes of 1989. It fills a conceptual gap by analyzing the place of Bulgarian media in the context of the relationship between democracy and capitalism. The transition from socialist to private and market-oriented media, Bulgaria’s opening up to foreign media companies, the expansion of media into the internet environment, and the role of media regulation are identified as the key – and ambivalent – factors of change in the media sphere. The article argues that the tension between media democracy and media capitalism unfolded in the form of a permanent crisis in the media field. The analysis leads to the conclusion that indeterminacy and hybridity are key characteristics of the Bulgarian media system.
Abstract
The first years of democracy after the fall of national-communism in Romania have seen media enjoy some forms of freedom. But old vices made their way into the new political landscape, together with the less familiar ills of capitalism. In what follows, the author proposes a critical overview of the historical developments of Romanian media market before and after 1989 and of the mechanisms brought on by the new system that transferred state control over media to market control. To this end, the article makes a brief account of the pre-1989 media system, going through the media capture by the monarchical and the following communist state. It then looks at the liberalization period after the fall of communism, the privatization of the media and its capture by private interests, especially in the form of “media moguls”. The study also looks at the state of public television after ’89 and how state control was reshaped to be compatible with capitalist democracy. Getting closer to present day, the article analyses how the financial crisis and the covid-19 crisis made journalists more vulnerable, but also examines some promising alternative journalistic models, brought by digital media.
Abstract
At the very end of the 1980s, Croatia had a good starting position to develop accountable media because Yugoslavian media markets developed within a decentralised paradigm controlled by republics, not by the Federal Government. In this article, the authors focus on changes in the Croatian media development between 1990 and 2020. Framed by McChesney’s theory on critical junctures (2007) they focus on three: privatisation, liberalisation, and commercialisation. Research questions consider five dimensions of each of the junctures: (1) the legal framework, (2) media ownership, (3) technological developments, (4) the journalistic profession, and (5) media audiences. The authors elaborate and conclude that in the Croatian media environment these brief periods of dramatic changes, followed by long periods in which structural or institutional change was slow and difficult, were heavily shaped by all three junctures, and each of them was shaped by multiple background processes evident in major legal changes, ownership changes, technological developments, reshaping of journalism, and shifting audience dynamics.