The Freedom to Manifest Religious Belief: An Analysis of the Necessity Clauses of the ICCPR and the ECHR

This paper examines Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Both documents affirm freedom of religion as a fundamental human right, yet both recognize the need for restrictions on freedom of religion when “necessary.” The paper discusses the text of Articles 18 and 9, as well as European Court of Human Rights and Human Rights Committee cases interpreting and applying the Articles. The paper then analyzes several current laws restricting religious freedom on necessity grounds as to whether the restrictions are legitimate or illegitimate under the instruments. I conclude that the laws from several States likely do not pass muster, and pose a great risk to religious freedom. My second primary contention is that the “principle of secularism” (as defined primarily in European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence), without more, is an illegitimate justification for restrictions on religious freedom under the ICCPR and the ECHR. More specifically, the principle of secularism functioning as a principle by which religious expression may be excluded from full participation in democratic government is inimical to the ICCPR’s and ECHR’s vision of religious pluralism as “indissociable” from a democratic society. Further, the European Court’s application of the principle improperly equates a “secular” government with a democratic government, and as such is in tension with prior cases in which the Court has affirmed religious pluralism as axiomatic for a democratic society. The paper concludes with a discussion of the case of a pastor in Sweden who was convicted for preaching a sermon condemning homosexuality, as a test case for the application of the principles discussed throughout

Modern Jewelry Art of Moldova

In this article the author examines some problems concerning formation of the jewelry industry in the territory of Bessarabia, Moldavian RSS and the Republic of Moldova, for the considerations that contemporary art jewelry is presented as a subject very poorly investigated, despite having an interest for historical researchers, the study art, ethnography and culturology. Are determinate some aspects of the evolution of different types of jewelry manufacturing workshops and articles Jewelry Plant Giuvaier from Chisinau, founded in 1972.jewelry art, museum collections, manufacturing, modern masters, jewelry decorations

Citizenship and identity: being Hungarian in Slovakia and Romanian in Serbia and Ukraine

No abstract available

Captive Body, Free Mind: Euphrosinia Kersnovskaia, the Gulag, and Art Under Oppression

This paper examines the art of Euphrosinia Kersnovskaia (1907-1994) as it relates to both the larger experience and narrative of the Soviet Gulag and to the survival of the artist. Larger trends of art made under oppression are used to find reason for such seemingly insignificant acts, and art therapy frameworks provide analytical bases for approach. By looking at such deeply subjective forms of memory and its transcription, individuality and humanity is returned to an inhuman penal system

The Ukrainian Stundists and Russian Jews: a collaboration of evangelical peasants with Jewish intellectuals in late imperial Russia

Book description: The relationship between states, societies, and individuals in Central and Eastern Europe has been characterised by periods of change and redefinition. The current political, economic, social and cultural climate necessitates a discussion of these issues, both past and present. It is this theme which the proposed publication intends to discuss using a selection of papers given at the 5 th Annual Postgraduate Conference on Central and Eastern Europe held at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) in 2003. The papers represent work from young international scholars from Europe and North America writing on Central and Eastern Europe. The book consists of seven papers and develops an interdisciplinary framework reflecting the range of topics discussed during the conference. It embraces the regional breadth of Central and Eastern Europe containing analyses of Russia, the former Soviet Republics, Central Europe and South Eastern Europe. The papers chosen cover a variety of fields and adopt a corresponding range of approaches with a view to assessing from a multidisciplinary perspective the relationship between state, society and individuals. The papers in the book have been ordered chronologically. The volume starts with an analysis by Julia Mannherz of social conflict in late imperial Russia and moves on to Sergei Zhuk’s discussion of the Stundist movement in Ukraine. The third paper from Stefan Detchev is a discussion of the late-nineteenth-century politics of commemoration surrounding the Bulgarian war of independence. The theme of the politics of commemoration is also present in Andrzej Michalczyk’s analysis of the commemoration of the plebiscite in Silesia by Germans and Poles during the interwar period. Michalczyk examines how a shared event is commemorated and interpreted differently by the two national groups. The idea of common and shared histories is further developed by Rüdiger Ritter in his study of the history and the historiography of post-Communist Poland, Belarus and Lithuania. The move into the contemporary period is completed in the final two papers. The use of historical imagery for political purposes is explored in Markus Wien’s study of the King Simeon II Party in Bulgaria as well as the way in which the historical image of the monarchy has been changed for political purposes during the transition from communism to democracy. The final paper by Maria Aluchna continues the discussion of the process of transition by examining the economic transformation from a communist command economic system to a modern capitalist economy

For King, not Tsar: Identifying Ukrainians in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1918

Canadian-born men, followed by those born in the British Isles, made up the bulk of the 620,000 men who enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) during the First World War. Many Americans, perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 or more, enlisted in Canada or were recruited in the USA. Men holding Russian passports became the next most numerous group in the CEF, as recent immigrants from the vast Russian Empire joined up. How many of these were ethnic Ukrainians, born in Ukrainian regions of the Tsarist Empire? And how many ethnic Ukrainians born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, even though it was one of the enemy Central Powers, were allowed into the Canadian army?

Work Camps, Commerce, and the Education of the 'New Man' in the Romanian Legionary Movement

This article explores two aspects of the Romanian legionary movement's organization in the 1930s, namely work camps and commerce. These are placed in the context of the Legion's attempts to construct a ‘parallel society’ that challenged the hegemony of the state and the dominant class of Romanian politicians and Jewish capitalists. The Legion's work camps and commercial ventures played a crucial educational role within the movement. The work camps were regarded as ‘schools’ in which the legionary ‘New Man’ was to be created and nurtured. Through its commercial ventures, the Legion aimed to educate a new generation of ‘Christian’ entrepreneurs to win back the economic position which the Romanians had allegedly lost to Jewish traders. This new elite would thus replace the decadent Romanian political and commercial classes which the Legion regarded as devoid of national awareness. The success of the Legion's ‘parallel society’ provoked government counter-measures which culminated in the murder of the movement's leader, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, in 1938, and the fragmentation of the Legion. The article draws upon hitherto unused Romanian archival sources, as well as legionary memoirs and articles