This article contains an analysis of the issues of cultural transfer during the First World War in the areas occupied by the Central Powers and the territories affected by the war. The German propaganda institutions that emerged after August 1914 functioned, somewhat contrary to initial intentions, as a network for transnational exchanges and were used by publishers, translators, writers, and other actors in the cultural sphere of the time. On the basis of archival research, the author advances several ideas on, respectively, culturalmobility in the years 1914–1918, cultural propaganda in the period of the First World War as the prehistory (and not the antithesis) of later cultural policy, and the role of cultural propaganda/cultural policy in research into literary transfers.
The author refers to Roland Barthes’s early concept of mythology in analyzing the films of Jerzy Kawalerowicz, one of the most outstanding Polish directors of the twentieth century. He interprets three of Kawalerowicz’s films, Pociąg [Night Train], Matka Joanna od Aniołów [Mother Joan of the Angels] and Faraon [Pharoah], which are read in the mythological register and in the political context. First the statements of the director in regard to each film are presented, then the judgments of film critics are provided, and finally the author gives his own interpretation. Night Train is shown as a film addressing the wrongs of the Stalinist era, and the problem of a totalitarian state. Mother Joanne of the Angels questions the sense of ideology in a totalitarian world, and is partially the director’s search for political identity, while Pharoah is a look at the post-October reformers and the reasons for their failure. Pharoah also provides a new vision of the state.
Asst. Prof. Piotr Osęka from the PAS Institute of Political Studies explains what groups are being depicted as enemies in the eyes of the Poles and what purposes such propaganda serves.
Words and images of the Republic: Italian political propaganda (1946–1948) – The article intends to highlight how the transition from monarchy to republic represents a significant boundary in Italian history not only from the institutional point of view but also from that of national political propaganda, in which words and images – the expression of a harsh ideological confrontation – contributed to the building of a national collective memory of which there are still evident and rooted traces in current political confrontation.
The book outlines the artistic events accompanying the large sports events in 1928: the 9th Olympic Games in Amsterdam and the 1st Summer Spartakiad in Moskow and 2nd Summer Spartakiad planned in Prague, which, however, was cancelled. The organization, character, and cultural influence of these events are outlined, while selected works of art connected to these events are analysed in meticulous detail. The author points out the general differences between the Olympic Games and the Spartakiads both in the approach to sports events, and the accompanying artistic events. The Olympic Games stressed the individualistic approach to art and creative work, and encouraged international competition. The Spartakiads were aiming at collective approach to both art and sports, which were seen not as competition between nations, but a collective effort of the Proletariat.
This paper discusses the linguistic features of political propaganda in the Polish newspaper “Trybuna Radziecka”, which was published in Moscow in 1927–1938 and edited by Polish left-intelligentsia, living in USRR as political émigrés in the interwar period. “Trybuna Radziecka” as the other Polish newspapers published in Soviet Russia was a part of the Soviet press. It entirely depended on Soviet authorities. Its language reflected the Soviet Russian language and was an example of political jargon typical for all communist newspapers of the interwar period.