Journals
2026 EN
Dukeyev Berikbol
This article examines the commemoration of Kazakhstani participation in World War II between 1992 and 2025 by studying official speeches, newspaper coverage, and history textbooks and conducting interviews with memory agents. It argues that the evolution of public memory surrounding the war reflects a broader shift away from Soviet and Russian narratives. Competing engagements by mnemonic agents, alongside their co-optation by the Toqaev government, have made narratives of mourning and grievance more apparent, signaling the emergence of a distinct Kazakh perspective on World War II memory. Publications from leading history institutions and school textbooks have further amplified these memory contestations.
Journals
2026 EN
Kislenko Ivan
This paper critically examines the notion of the Global East in the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine. First, it deals with existing critiques, providing an overview of the main critical points raised by other scholars. It also points out new problems with Müller’s critique of post-socialism that emerged after February 24, 2022. Second, the article underlines the failed prospects of any strategic essentialism of the Global East as a consequence of Russia’s military expansionism. Third, it criticizes the false analogy with the Global North–South and the lack of proper reference to the existing discussion on global epistemologies.
Journals
2026 EN
Iliyasov Marat · Ratelle Jean-François
This article analyzes 2,098 posts from Ramzan Kadyrov’s Telegram channel “Kadyrov_95” between February 24, 2022, and October 16, 2023, to examine how he uses the Russo-Ukrainian war to consolidate power. Using Natural Language Processing, it reveals how Kadyrov’s messaging centers on glorifying his father, Akhmat Kadyrov, to legitimize his rule. The study explores how social media reinforces Kadyrov’s loyalty to Vladimir Putin, amplifies his federal political influence, and secures regime durability. The war serves as a strategic platform for promoting Kadyrov’s family members, reinforcing his cult of personality, and strengthening control over Chechnya.
Journals
2026 EN
Liczbińska Grażyna · Marco-Gracia Francisco J.
This study analyses the evolution of sex ratios at birth in the Polish city of Poznań during World War II. The analysis is based on a sample of over 13,500 unique observations from 1935 to 1944, sourced from the Gynaecology and Obstetrics Clinic of the Medical University of Poznań. Logit regressions were applied to explore the relationship between the probability of a baby being male and various explanatory variables: years before and during WWII, maternal marital status, place of residence, occupation (either the mother’s or her husband’s), maternal age at delivery, and the number of previous deliveries. The findings indicate that during WWII, more boys were born alive than girls, compared to the years preceding the conflict. Among the variables examined, only birth order had a significant impact on sex ratios at birth. Additionally, the study suggests that gestational age may have played a crucial role during WWII, contributing to the higher number of live-born boys compared to girls, as pregnancies tended to end pre-term during the war. This research contributes to the ongoing exploration of sex ratios at birth under acute environmental conditions and highlights those severe conditions experienced by pregnant mothers during WWII adversely affected pregnancy outcomes.
Journals
2026 EN
Saaritsa Sakari
This article analyses the impact of the political, economic, social and epidemiological crises experienced by Finland in 1917–1919 on the population with high-frequency time series data on births. Previous research has identified environmental factors associated with significant deviations of sex ratios at birth (SRB) from the established reference value of c. 105–106 boys per 100 girls. These include material and psychological stressors as well as factors affecting the primary sex ratio via increased coital frequency. The SRB therefore has the potential to capture both positive and negative responses of a population to historical events. During the years under study, Finland experienced two revolutions and considerable social upheaval, a food crisis, a civil war followed by violent repression and a bourgeoisie restitution, and a pandemic. Using monthly birth data from 1878 to 1938, this study shows significant traces of responses to the events in 1917–1919 in reproductive statistics. In addition to the predictable fall in SRB during the worst months of the civil war, there are indications of popular jubilation via an elevated SRB particularly following the March 1917 revolution in the Russian Empire, rather than, for example, national independence later in the year. The bulk release of large numbers of prisoners following the conflict also resulted in an elevated SRB with a nine-month lag. The article demonstrates how reproductive statistics can be used to study the embodied experiences and public sentiment surrounding major events.
Journals
2026 EN
Cornwall Mark
Lesbian voices and experiences have received little attention in Czech historiography: recent research has concentrated on the modern era from the 1950s. This article deepens our understanding of lesbian lives in interwar Prague. It focuses on two forgotten lesbian novels, Exiles of Love and The Third Sex , which were deliberately suppressed after 1948 by the Communist regime as examples of inferior bourgeois literature. The two authors, Lída Merlínová and Gill Sedláčková, both hailed from Prague’s cultural world (theatre and film) and were active too in the 1930s Czech movement for homosexual reform. Spanning the late twenties to the late thirties, the novels reveal tantalising glimpses of the evolving sub-culture of interwar Prague. Merlínová’s naïve novel of 1929, Exiles of Love , was the first Czech lesbian novel, and it betrayed the 1920s optimism of the ‘Czech New Woman’ who was prepared to challenge gender stereotypes. Sedláčková’s novel, The Third Sex , is a more explicit study from 1937, reflecting the more mature sub-culture but also a cynicism about the chances of homosexual reform. Yet it manages, even more than Exiles , to convey an uplifting and moral message. Indeed, both novels are about lesbian self-knowledge, exploring the scope for same-sex survival in a world where the best solution may be abroad, not in ‘provincial Prague’. In restoring these texts to lesbian literature we recover a range of voices, expressing the hopes and frustrations of some queer Czech women in an unusually liberal era.
Journals
2026 EN
Pilyarchuk Kateryna
Animal metaphors are pervasive in languages as many aspects of people’s conduct are understood via animal behavior. Such conceptualizations may be negative or even highly offensive, reinforcing hostility and exclusion. This research draws on Conceptual Metaphor Theory and approaches to multimodal metaphors to examine animal metaphors in Internet memes created and circulated by Ukrainian Internet users during the first year after the Russian full-scale invasion (March 2022–March 2023). Previous scholarship suggests that this digital participatory practice serves not only as a coping mechanism but also as a form of sociopolitical critique. Following this idea, the present study analyzes a corpus of 151 Internet memes to investigate how the image of the aggressor is conceptualized through dehumanization and what purposes it has. The findings reveal that animal metaphors are strategically used to construct the image of the aggressor as ignorant, incompetent, despicable, and monstrous, and that the resultant memetic discourse creates a counter-narrative to Russian media propaganda while serving as a form of resistance.
Journals
2026 EN
Yanuar Yanuar · Arifin Agus Zainul · MN Nuryasman
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This study examines how the U.S.–China trade war reshaped investment dynamics in ASEAN through trade and FDI diversion channels. Using a two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimation for eight ASEAN economies from 2012 to 2023, the analysis identified the causal impact of USA tariffs on Chinese goods on both USA imports from ASEAN and Chinese FDI inflows. The first-stage results confirm significant trade diversion effects, as higher US tariff on Chinese products diverted USA imports toward Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand. The second-stage findings reveal that these redirected trade flows stimulated Chinese FDI inflows to Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, supporting the tariff-jumping FDI hypothesis. The results highlight ASEAN’s strategic position as a beneficiary of global supply chain resolutions. The study contributes to the literature by integrating trade diversion and tariff jumping FDI theories in a unified empirical framework, offering insights for regional policymakers to sustain redirected investment inflows.
Journals
2026 EN
Yu Inhee · Kim Hyon-Sob
This study examines the evolution of four post-war refugee settlements constructed by the South Korean government: Jeongneung-dong in Seoul, Pyeonghwa-dong in Gimcheon, Yukdan-ri in Cheorwon, and Changyong-ri in Asan. Approximately 165,000 permanent houses were built through the “National Housing” and “Resettlement Housing” projects to stabilise refugees and support their integration as productive citizens. This study highlights the differences between these projects, examining how distinct policy objectives, geographical settings, and socioeconomic conditions shaped unique characteristics in individual settlements. Furthermore, it traces how government-led plans gradually intersected with residents’ spontaneous adaptations. Through methods including a literature review, geographical analysis, fieldwork, and in-depth interviews, this study explores the spatial, architectural, and social changes that these settlements have undergone over the past 70 years. The findings show that urban areas have increasingly integrated into metropolises, gaining more infrastructures, while rural areas have experienced slower development and stronger spontaneous modifications. The intersection of government planning intervention and user-led adaptation has resulted in hybrid landscapes where formal planning and informal adaptation coexist. It reveals both resident resilience through improved living conditions and economic benefits, as well as challenges, including disorderly growth and a weakened community identity.
Journals
2026 EN
Müller Patrick · Slominski Peter
This article advances the concept of ‘soft’ hostage-taking and examines its effectiveness in EU policymaking. Hostage-taking relates to situations where an individual member state (the hostage-taker) combines its veto-power in intergovernmental domains with a strategy of tactical issue-linkage to extract concessions in a not functionally related negotiating context. Soft hostage-taking does so whilst simultaneously denying issue-linkage in public communications. We argue that the effectiveness of (soft) hostage-taking depends on the credibility of a hostage-taker’s veto-threat, the cost of complying with hostage-taking demands by the other side, as well as the latter’s mitigating capacity. Empirically, we explore the relevance of our theoretical claims for the role of Hungary’s Populist Radical Right government in EU policymaking, which has increasingly relied on veto-threats on key EU foreign policy decisions to gain concessions in its rule of law conflict with EU institutions. We show that whilst Hungary’s soft hostage-taking strategy initially benefited from favourable conditions, its effectiveness has become more circumscribed in line with an altered context.