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Eurysomus soloduchi Minich, 1992 is a deep-bodied actinopterygian from the Middle Permian (Roadian) of European Russia, described by D. N. Esin. Unfortunately, the type specimen is lost. We nominate a second known skeleton of E. soloduchi from the type locality as a neotype of this species. Some features not previously identified in the species are described, and the dentition is described in detail for the first time. The morphology of E. soloduchi indicates a intermediate phylogenetic placement among species of paraphyletic genus Platysomus Agassiz, 1833 because it has features of both 'Platysomidae' Young, 1866 (P. superbus Traquair, 1881, P. parvulus Williamson, 1849, P. striatus Agassiz, 1833) and 'Bobasatraniidae' Stensiö, 1932 (P. gibbosus (Blainville, 1818), P. biarmicus Eichwald, 1857, P. swaffordae Mickle & Bader, 2009, P. schultzei Zidek, 1992). The lower jaw is deep and bears molariform teeth with apical cusps. All teeth have traces of in-vivo wear. The jaw anatomy and dentition indicates that E. soloduchi was adapted to a durophagous feeding habit, but we assume that it was a generalist feeder that could consume hard prey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Ukraine is usually portrayed as a cleft country with a determining internal East–West divide. However, critical researchers in Ukrainian scholarship emphasize that the East–West paradigm fails to adequately reflect the complex reality of the Ukrainian society and its historical, linguistic, economic, and political mixture. This article deconstructs the origins and evolution of the eastern and western Ukrainian identities and argues that the current clash between the two regions should not be explained by linguistic and ethnic differences, geopolitical strategies, economic interests, or political gains but rather by symbolic geographies, historical myths, and political imaginations. As a consequence, Ukraine is unable to make clear choices about its geopolitical future and remains a liminal space of east and west, where the broader EU-centered and Russia-centered regions overlap. Resumen: Ucrania suele ser retratada como un país caracterizado por una división interna determinante entre el este y el oeste. Sin embargo, algunos investigadores critican este paradigma Este-Oeste, que no refleja la compleja realidad de la sociedad ucraniana y su mezcla histórica, lingüística, económica y política. En este artículo se deconstruyen los orígenes y la evolución de las identidades ucranianas orientales y occidentales y se argumenta que el actual choque entre las dos regiones debería explicarse por el nuevo enfoque de geografías simbólicas, mitos históricos e imaginaciones políticas. En caso contrario, Ucrania no puede tomar decisiones claras sobre su futuro geopolítico y sigue siendo un espacio liminal de este y oeste, donde se superponen las regiones más amplias centradas en la UE y en Rusia, respectivamente. Résumé: L'Ukraine est généralement présentée comme un pays avec une division interne Est-Ouest déterminante. Cependant, des chercheurs ukrainiens critiquent ce paradigme Est-Ouest, qui ne reflèterait pas la réalité complexe de la société ukrainienne ni son mélange historique, linguistique, économique et politique. Cet article déconstruit les origines et l'évolution des identités ukrainiennes orientales et occidentales et soutient que le conflit qui les oppose actuellement devrait être expliqué par la nouvelle approche des géographies symboliques, des mythes historiques et des imaginations politiques. A défaut, l'Ukraine est incapable de faire des choix clairs quant à son avenir géopolitique et reste un espace liminaire entre l'Est et l'Ouest, où les régions plus larges centrées sur l'UE et la Russie se chevauchent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Late Glacial, that is the period from the first pronounced warming after the Last Glacial Maximum to the beginning of the Holocene (c. 16,000–11,700 cal bp), is traditionally viewed as a time when northern Europe was being recolonized and Late Palaeolithic cultures diversified. These cultures are characterized by particular artefact types, or the co-occurrence or specific relative frequencies of these. In north-eastern Europe, numerous cultures have been proposed on the basis of supposedly different tanged points. This practice of naming new cultural units based on these perceived differences has been repeatedly critiqued, but robust alternatives have rarely been offered. Here, we review the taxonomic landscape of Late Palaeolithic large tanged point cultures in eastern Europe as currently envisaged, which leads us to be cautious about the epistemological validity of many of the constituent groups. This, in turn, motivates us to investigate the key artefact class, the large tanged point, using geometric morphometric methods. Using these methods, we show that distinct groups are difficult to recognize, with major implications for our understanding of patterns and processes of culture change in this period in north-eastern Europe and perhaps elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cet article remet en question trois hypothèses courantes sur la culture de la danse de l'ère socialiste chinoise : premièrement, la danse de l'ère maoïste aurait rarement circulé à l'international et aurait été déconnectée des tendances internationales de la danse ; deuxièmement, le mouvement du yangge se serait essoufflé dans les premières années de la république populaire de Chine (RPC) ; et troisièmement, la signification politique de la danse socialiste résiderait dans le fond plutôt que dans la forme. Cet article examine la transformation du yangge des temps de guerre en une danse folklorique de la RPC pendant les années 1950 et 1960, et retrace la circulation internationale de ces nouveaux styles de danse dans deux contextes : les Festivals mondiaux de la jeunesse et des étudiants en Europe de l'Est, et les écoles, syndicats ouvriers et associations claniques des communautés chinoises d'outre-mer à Hong Kong, à Singapour, en Malaisie britannique et à San Francisco. En retraçant l'émergence et la diffusion du yangge et de la danse folklorique de la RPC, je démontre l'existence d'un «yangge de la guerre froide» : un phénomène transnational par lequel la danse folklorique chinoise est devenue un lieu d'activisme politique de gauche. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces what recent research and primary sources tell us about psychotherapy in Communist Europe, and how it survived both underground and above the surface. In particular, I will elaborate on the psychotherapeutic techniques that were popular across the different countries and language cultures of the Soviet sphere, with a particular focus upon the Cold War period. This article examines the literature on the mixed fortunes of psychoanalysis and group therapies in the region. More specifically, it focuses upon the therapeutic modalities such as work therapy, suggestion and rational therapy, which gained particular popularity in the Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The latter two approaches had striking similarities with parallel developments in behavioural and cognitive therapies in the West. In part, this was because clinicians on both sides of the ‘iron curtain’ drew upon shared European traditions from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nevertheless, this article argues that in the Soviet sphere, those promoting these approaches appropriated socialist thought as a source of inspiration and justification, or at the very least, as a convenient political shield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the literature on the mediation of transnational memory is concerned with historically recent phenomena and with the most obviously cross-border forms of communication, such as diasporic media, transnational coproductions, or digital forms of mass communication. This article adopts a different approach, seeking to show that the shaping of transnational remembering in and through the media has a long history. To demonstrate this, the article examines selected aspects of cross-border television and representations of the past in the era of terrestrial television, focusing on experiences in state socialist Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article dwells on the connection between the annihilation of the Jews in Poland during the Holocaust (Shoah), the destruction of the hegemonic class of landed gentry during the Stalinist period, and the origins of some characteristics of contemporary Polish society. These characteristics determine major aspects of the current political situation, in particular the symbolic prevalence of rightwing parties and movements. The two major historical events (the Holocaust and the destruction of the nobility) are described as sleepwalking through the revolution. The dark genealogy of the middle class, the modern Polish bourgeoisie, is described; and the consequences of denying it are analyzed. The denial of responsibility but, at the same time, feelings of guilt and shame account for some of the political choices currently made in Polish politics. The case of Poland seems, to a certain extent, typical of the “bloodlands” of Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his work «On Female Sex as a Battlefield in the War of Bosnia» Matei Vilniec, a writer of Europian notoriety converts the immediate reality into an excellent dramatic discourse making use of a genuine artistic requisite. The story of the female personnage Dorra, inspired by the events in Bosnia, projects in a generalizing formula the condition of the East-European world traumatised by horrors. By allusively announcing his sentiment of solidarity with the victim-personnage the author condains the abuse, the brutality, resuming himselt to the evocation of the events in the East-European area that has always been under the mark of great historical crises, as mentioned in the debute of this work by the second feminine personnage Kate, a psychologist from America: «In the inter-ethnical wars the female sex becomes a battlefield. It is a phenomenon observed in Europe at the end of the xx th century. The penis of the new warrior is bathed in the screams of the raped women just like the knight's spade was bathed in the blood of his adversary». The investigation made by the writer into the interiority of the personnage is equal in its essence to the revealing of the landscapes of the external universe which he intends to define in all their complexity evoking surprising significances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Polish-Czechoslovak confederation project of 1939-1943, which was seen by its proponents in wartime London as the core of a potential Central European Federation. The author devotes special attention to British policy, as it helps not only to understand how the project fitted into British and Allied post-war planning, but also to reveal the various alternatives that were being considered for postwar settlement in East Central Europe. The main reason for the confederation project's failure was the well-known Soviet veto. However, there were other factors that made the USSR's policy so decisive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of modernization and industrialization on gender arrangements has been different depending on the gender culture that predominated when the modernization process started. Romania was among the most rural societies in Europe after the Second World War. Women’s involvement in agricultural activity was very high, but the gender division of work was a very traditional one. The communist regimes promoted a full employment policy for the entire population but did nothing to encourage gender equality in the private space. This article focuses on the Romanian case, aiming to identify the dynamics of gender beliefs during the post-communist period. Using data from two waves of the European Values Survey (1990, 1999), as well as data provided by the Public Opinion Barometer 2007 and by Family Life – 2008, the authors carried out standard cohort decomposition methods in order to detect the mechanism that produced the most variation in gender beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Currently, only Tréhougol’naya Cave has reliably dated evidence for human settlement in Eastern Europe and Caucasus, from the beginning through the middle of the Middle Pleistocene. In Eastern Europe, assemblages from Khriatchi and Mikhailovskoé, and possibly Darvagchai I, appear to be the only stratified locations that tentatively can be compared (despite problems with these materials) with Tréhougol’naya. In the eastern limits of Central Europe, layer VI in Korolevo I is the only stratified assemblage that may be compared with Tréhougol’naya. All these Lower Paleolithic occupations yielded the Pre-Mousterian small tool industries with some pebble tools, but without Acheulean bifaces and Levallois technique. These data suggest that Eastern Europe lies outside the distribution range of the Acheulean techno-complex demarcated with the “Movius Line”. In the Southern Caucasus, the Dmanissi hominine and lithic records document the fact that the earliest small-brained humans – probably later H. habilis-rudolfensis or earlier H. ergaster-erectus hominids bearing Pre-Oldowan technology – initially left Africa and appeared in Western Asia as early as 1.8 Ma ago. However, in the Southern Caucasus, the available chronological data indicate that the Acheulean complex has a later temporal appearance here compared to the Upper Acheulean or Acheulo-Yabrudian in Western Asia. Two main Upper Acheulean industrial variants currently can be recognized in the Southern Caucasus. The first, called the Kudarian by the author (from the caves of Kudaro I, Kudaro III, and Azyk), is characterized by lithics made from mostly siliceous rocks, rare Acheulean bifaces, and non-Levallois flaking technique. The second variant is characterized by lithics made from volcanic rocks, numerous Acheulean bifaces, and often more laminar or Levallois debitage. It can be suggested that there are independent origins for these Southern Caucasus Upper Acheulean industrial variants. Possible roots of the Acheulean assemblages of Kudarian variant might be in the local earlier Lower Paleolithic small tool assemblages with some pebble tools but without Acheulean bifaces. The other Caucasus variant of the Upper Acheulean appears to be related to the Levantine Upper Acheulean. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The post-socialist transformation has changed forms of poverty in eastern Europe. After defining poverty and examining the instruments used to measure it, a statistical description is proposed of its forms. Although monetary poverty (in absolute and relative terms) has decreased in most countries in this zone since 1998-1999, non-monetary forms of poverty persist. The major causes of these trends are presented and discussed for four groups of countries: the eight CEECs that joined the EU in 2004, the Balkans (including Bulgaria and Romania), and the countries belonging to the CIS (on the one hand, those with middle-level incomes, including Russia, and, on the other hand, those with low incomes). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current state of research on Lower Palaeolithic sites in Ukraine within its 1991 borders is the focus of this paper. Over the last 10–15 years, many new sites have been discovered in different parts of the eastern European area of the country, reassessed some old materials. In the central European region of the country, in the Ukrainian Transcarpathia, important new stratified Lower Palaeolithic sites have also been found. The current Ukrainian Lower Palaeolithic records demonstrate hominin presence in mountainous areas (Carpathians, Crimea) and the valleys of all major rivers, namely the Dniester, Southern Buh, Dnieper and Severskiy Donets. The article presents a brief review of the main currently known Lower Palaeolithic assemblages. Available geological, geomorphological, biostratigraphical data and ESR dates allow defining their age between 1.2 and 0.4 Myг; sites correlate with few warm phases between MIS 35 and MIS 11. Earlier sites, very tentatively dated at around 2 Myг, gravitate towards the seashore and mountainous areas. Later sites witness steady, though not continuous, colonisation of East European plain fringe areas. The main regularities of geographical setting, chronology, morphological and technological characteristics of assemblages of the Lower Palaeolithic sites of the Western segment of the East European plain are characterised. Typologically, industries are mainly characterised as belonging to Mode I. Core-and-flake industries survives to the Holsteinian. Essential difficulties in lithic raw materials supply could probably be a reason for the rise of a peculiar pattern of technological behaviour that involved mainly bipolar knapping and widely applied trimming technique of shaping the working edges of tools. Some signals of probable population movements penetrated the territory of Ukraine by the Asia Minor "western" trajectory and by Caucasian "eastern" way are revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the history of British geographical studies of the USSR and Eastern Europe 1945-1991, presenting material from a research project which has included thirty-two oral history interviews. Oral history is an especially fruitful research methodology in this context due to the distinct issues of formality and informality involved in researching the Soviet bloc. After discussing the nature of the subdiscipline and the Cold War context, including the role of the British state in shaping the field, the paper considers the role of formal academic meetings and exchanges, and the place of unofficial spaces of encounter in the formation of an intellectual culture. The paper concludes by reflecting on the merits of oral history in studies of the production of geographical knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The communist systems in Central and Eastern European countries had some common features, with atheism as the cornerstone of the political order, but they varied in many different aspects. Both political pressure and social change brought about not only the rise of secularism but also the rise of religiosity, particularly in the 1980s. However, the course of change and the impact of atheism on generations were quite different in each country. This is shown in the empirical analysis, which is presented in two parts. First, four countries are examined (Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia) showing three distinctive responses to communist rule. Second, on the basis of the EVS 1999 data for 14 post-communist countries, three groups of countries are differentiated according to religious and non-religious legacies and the different generational impacts of the communist system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring the relationship between global forces and local practices, this article examines the reception of global investment flows in an East European transition country, Slovenia. Using content analysis of legal regulations and policies, the article investigates how global pressures impact the official foreign investment policy regime in Slovenia. Examples of foreign investment transactions illustrate economic practice. The analysis shows that yielding to the universalizing pressures of neoliberalism creates convergence in official foreign investment policies. In practice, however, economic actors involved in foreign investment transactions resist and particularize global processes on the basis of their network ties, political alliances and cultural affinities. Overall, the study emphasizes the social and political embeddedness of economic processes and substantiates how the decoupling of formal policies and local practices sustains the coexistence of uniformity and diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]