Sportska natjecanja kao odraz političkih promjena u kontekstu sukoba Tito-Staljin (1948. – 1953.)

The Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, headed by Josip Broz Tito, was the most radical of all the post-World War II communist countries in following the example of the Soviet Union. After gaining control over the country, Yugoslavian communists ushered in a single-party system, brutally dealing with any political opposition and members of the regimes defeated in the war. In addition, they nationalized the means of production, reformed the country’s agriculture, and implemented an economic programme based on heavy industry. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) also controlled the country’s cultural and scientific output, and in addition clashed with the most prominent religious leaders of the time. The importance of Yugoslavian communism within the European communist bloc was highlighted during the formation of the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties (Cominform) in September of 1947, when Belgrade was selected as the seat of this forum. However, with the beginning of the Cold War, Tito’s aggressive foreign policy undermined Stalin’s efforts to avoid open conflict with the western powers. After the leadership of the KPJ ignored Stalin’s severe criticism of their policies, and refused to explain their positions on the matter before the Cominform, the forum passed a resolution in June of 1948 entitled “Concerning the Situation in the Communist Party of Yugoslavia”. This marked the beginning of military and economic pressure on Yugoslavia, which continued until Stalin’s death in March of 1953, and resulted in Yugoslavia turning to the West as well as the emergence of the so-called Third Way. The goal of this thesis is to determine whether, and in what way, the ideological and political conflict between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, along with the other members of the Cominform, influenced the interactions of Yugoslavian athletes and sports officials with their counterparts from those countries. Special attention was given to the available sources pertaining to the football match between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union during the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games. In addition to the changes in relations with the sports organizations of the Eastern bloc, the thesis gives a brief overview of the dynamics of the interactions of Yugoslavian athletes and sports teams with athletes and sports teams from the West, before and after the “Cominform Resolution”

Football and shaping national identity: the case of the Croatian national team and world cup in France

U sklopu ovog diplomskog rada teorijski se obrađuju fenomeni nacije, nacionalnog identiteta i nacionalnih simbola te se na primjeru Hrvatske nogometne reprezentacije i Svjetskog prvenstva u Francuskoj 1998. godine, kroz analizu diskursa, nastoji pokazati kako političke elite, posredstvom medija, koriste uspjeh na velikom sportskom natjecanju kako bi oblikovali i učvrstili osjećaj nacionalnog identiteta među pripadnicima pojedine nacije. Budući da je sport vrlo raširena i popularna društvena pojava koja je sastavni dio mnogih kultura, on je veoma pogodna arena za konstrukciju i rekonstrukciju identiteta, tj. mjesto gdje se na međunarodnoj razini proizvode nacionalne kulturne razlike, a što omogućava fokus sporta na simbole, natjecanje, pobjeđivanje i kolektivnu borbu.This thesis discusses the theory behind the phenomena of nation, national identity, and national symbols through the example of the Croatian national football team at the World Cup in France in 1998 by using discourse analysis and attempts to show how political elites, through the media, use success at large sporting events in order to shape and strengthen the sense of national identity among the people of a certain nation. Because sport is a widely spread and popular social phenomenon that is an integral part of many cultures, it is a very convenient arena for the construction and reconstruction of identity, i.e. a pace where national cultural differences are fashioned on an international level, which enables sports to focus on symbols, competition, winning, and collective struggle

Block of death-receptor apoptosis protects mouse cytomegalovirus from macrophages and is a determinant of virulence in immunodeficient hosts.

The inhibition of death-receptor apoptosis is a conserved viral function. The murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV) gene M36 is a sequence and functional homologue of the human cytomegalovirus gene UL36, and it encodes an inhibitor of apoptosis that binds to caspase-8, blocks downstream signaling and thus contributes to viral fitness in macrophages and in vivo. Here we show a direct link between the inability of mutants lacking the M36 gene (ΔM36) to inhibit apoptosis, poor viral growth in macrophage cell cultures and viral in vivo fitness and virulence. ΔM36 grew poorly in RAG1 knockout mice and in RAG/IL-2-receptor common gamma chain double knockout mice (RAGγC(-/-)), but the depletion of macrophages in either mouse strain rescued the growth of ΔM36 to almost wild-type levels. This was consistent with the observation that activated macrophages were sufficient to impair ΔM36 growth in vitro. Namely, spiking fibroblast cell cultures with activated macrophages had a suppressive effect on ΔM36 growth, which could be reverted by z-VAD-fmk, a chemical apoptosis inhibitor. TNFα from activated macrophages synergized with IFNγ in target cells to inhibit ΔM36 growth. Hence, our data show that poor ΔM36 growth in macrophages does not reflect a defect in tropism, but rather a defect in the suppression of antiviral mediators secreted by macrophages. To the best of our knowledge, this shows for the first time an immune evasion mechanism that protects MCMV selectively from the antiviral activity of macrophages, and thus critically contributes to viral pathogenicity in the immunocompromised host devoid of the adaptive immune system