Annales Scientia Politica

10

Authors: Gita Geremešová

Fiction, oral history, and memoirs of the then participants, besides history and its ambitions to approach the historical truth, enable one to return to a relatively distant or near past. Three such publications – by the authors V. Kuštek (2018), M. Greenfield (2019), and E. Adam – I. Jirků (2018) fulfill this role in regards to the past political, cultural, and economic developments of the Eastern Slovakian and Transcarpathian regions, including in the context of their present day cooperation. Each of these works portrays life in Transcarpathia as well as life in the area of the entire Czechoslovakia, a state which had been formed by the Allied Powers as a result of the Treaty of Versailles after the conclusion of World War I in 1918. The currently developing cross-border cooperation among the regions of Eastern Slovakia and Transcarpathia – part of the European Union’s strategy („Europe 2020“) – can benefit from their common historic and cultural heritage; they struggled with the religious and ethnic plurality, their dramatic destinies were characterized by an uncertain statehood (unstable statehood coordinates), by their distrust against the political and religious elites.

11

Authors: Juraj Tej - Roman Vavrek - Viera Papcunová

Any government intervention in the economy disrupts the natural market mechanism. One such intervention is the political cycle, which is based on maximizing the benefits of government politicians. Such interventions can be perceived not only at the national level but also in relation to local self - government. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the impact of the political cycle on the financial management of local self - governments in a set of 69 district towns. The results of the analysis showed that it is not possible to clearly determine the political cycle in self-government, nor to demonstrate the impact of the political cycle on the financial management of district towns in the Slovak Republic.

11

Authors: Alexander Mušinka

The contribution describes the relevant methodological differences among three most extensive surveys of Roma communities in Slovakia, called Atlas of Roma communities from the years 2004, 2013 and 2019. Subsequently according to data of these surveys it presents political participation of Roma in local municipalities of Prešov Self-governing Region.

22

Authors: Ondrej Marchevský

The Enlightenment represents a frequently reflected and, at the same time, also updated tradition. The Enlightenment ideas have become a theoretical-methodological base for thinking as such by its connection to a social or social-political praxis, what can be seen even in the contemporary confrontation with the Enlightenment legacy. The paper analyses the Enlightenment as a unique historical phenomenon – it deals with its explicit as well as its practical-political features – within the Russian milieu. In the basic outline, the paper presents a critical survey of the selected bibliographical sources. It primarily focuses on a historical-philosophical problematics and identification of three phases which can be found within a genesis of the Enlightenment thinking in Russia. The second part of the paper offers the characteristics of distinctive intellectual environments participating in a forming of the Enlightenment tradition in Russian thinking, and overlapping into actual political and social happenings. To these environments belong aristocratic associations, the Masonic lodges, and also educational institutions established and controlled by the state – spiritual academies and universities.

2

Authors: Róbert Király

Book review of the alamanach: Irina Dudinská – Michal Cirner – Gabriel Székely (eds.): Politologická analýza regionálnych volieb 2017 na Slovensku. Prešov: Vydavateľstvo Prešovskej univerzity, 2018. 106 s. ISBN 978-80-555-2128-2

9

Authors: Krzysztof Żarna

The main purpose of the article is to present a relations of the newly created entity on the international arena of the Slovak Republic and the Republic of Poland. Time caesuras include the period from 1993 to 2002. In 1993, the establishment of the Slovak Republic was proclaimed and in 2002, both Slovakia and Poland completed the accession negotiations in Copenhagen related with joining the European Union. The article is based on the assumption that in the analysed period the relations of both countries were determined by striving for be a part of Euro-Atlantic structures.

20

Authors: Gita Geremešová

The study compares identities of the Ukrainian and Slovak ethnicities; they both contribute with their respective uniqueness to Europe – in a certain sense – as a supranational community as well as to Europe consisting of differences and regional connotations. The existence of both ethnicities in a historical sense is primarily related to the European macro-regions of East and West. In this context, Christianity fulfilled important cultural and civilizational functions; it determined people’s educational levels, morals, customs, etc. In this sense, the Ukrainian ethnicity archetypically identified with the Orthodox Christianity. The principle of caesaropapism, the superiority of the political power compared to the ecclesiastical power, as well as the principle of Catholicity brought into the nation’s “mentality” the elements of collectivism, communalism, obedience, respect toward authority, and heteronomous religious morals, which were later transformed to secular morals, i.e. party and state orders / bans. The Slovakians living in the Roman-Catholic / Evangelical Christianity partially acquired the cultural and civilizational heritage of the West. By separating the secular and ecclesiastical powers, the West enabled the rise of individualism, liberty, nation states, and human and civil rights; however, one cannot overlook Slovakia’s geographic position within Middle Europe, and therefore the backwardness of its society. Both Slovakian and Ukrainian ethnicities, and more precisely, their elites led the national emancipatory processes in multi-ethnic empires (Russia and the Habsburg Monarchy) with a single state nation; they had been confronted with the issue of the linguistic nationalism.