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This paper offers a case study of the dynamic of securitisation of asylum seekers and migrants in Poland since 2015. It uses a unique case of the external actor – the Belarussian government – not merely threatening to escalate the pre-existing situation but actively constructing it by creating new migration flows and forcibly pushing asylum-seekers and migrants into the EU. By reconstructing the discourse and practice of the securitising actor and the intervention of the external actor, the paper shows that the pre-existing securitisation of asylum seekers and migrants in Poland was instrumentalised by the external actor, which led to the further development and intensification of the securitising policies and practices and their justifications. The analysis contributes to our understanding of the securitisation process in the moment of the context change as triggered by an exogenous factor – an intervention by the external actor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper attempts to assess events related to the huge scale of the influx of migrants in the summer of 2021 at the Belarusian borders with Lithuania, Poland and Latvia. The involvement of the Belarusian government had a key impact on the nature of the events and led to Belarus' violation of its international obligations. In particular, Belarus has violated the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951), the 1967 additional Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1966 UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime of 2000 and the Protocols Thereto (Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children and Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air). The illegal actions taken by Belarus were described as a hybrid attack aimed at destabilizing Europe. Minsk's creation of an engineered migration pressure on the border with the EU can be considered part of a hybrid strategy – one of the dominant methods in geopolitical confrontation and the struggle for influence in international relations. The present paper verifies the research hypothesis that Belarus has deliberately violated international law by inducing engineered migration at the border with the EU in order to paralyse the migration situation in the neighbouring EU Member States. The violation of international law has not resulted in any major international consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an investigation of authoritarian encounters in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, this paper takes seriously the challenges of making geopolitical sense of contextualised micro moments. Working in a minor key, the paper offers three contributions. First, it advances a minor theory, micropolitical sensibility that interrogates the co-constitution of intimate and geopolitical scales. Second, it proposes a loose ethnographic framework to guide the analysis of ordinary moments, link them outside of the immediate, and make fuller sense of the geopolitical: rupture, digestion, connection, and representation. Third, it aspires to destabilise regional container thinking and Orientalising tendencies through a focus on authoritarian practices rather than authoritarian states. Overall, the paper foregrounds a minoritarian reading of the micro-dynamics of authoritarian encounter in order to enrich the conversation on the constitution of the geopolitical, while also offering an intimate and interconnected methodology that encourages critical, safe, and ethical research under authoritarian conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper attempts to describe, discuss and analyse the situation of rapid and spontaneous transfer to practical usage of a language which speakers know only passively in the situation of stable closely related bilingualism. Such a transfer – from native Russian to Belarusian – has been taking place in the Republic of Belarus due to various reasons. Partly, this process was connected to the political situation in the country and around it; at the same time, a part of Russian-speaking intelligentsia (mostly residing in the country capital, Minsk) was in the process of reshaping of their national identity. The paper discusses in details both those reasons, as well as the peculiarities of the language situation promoting this process, its linguistic features and their difference from those of an interlanguage which arises in the situation of a foreign language acquisition and from those of trasyanka, the code in-between Russian and Belarusian. The phenomenon in the focus is also compared with the newest tendency of Russian-speaking Ukrainians to transit to using Ukrainian instead of Russian in their everyday communication and in social media. The paper is based on the data obtained in the course of longitude field study conducted in Minsk in 1999–2022 and the data derived from media and internet sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking into consideration the current developments as regards the intensification of the irregular movement of third country nationals at the EU's border with Belarus, this paper sets as its main objective to assess the resilience building measures that were taken at the level of the affected Member States and that of the EU in order to manage the newly emerged border crisis. It is being argued that we are not dealing with an ordinary migration crisis, but a deliberate act of the Belarusian regime to instrumentalise migrants from the Middle East for political purposes. The research presents the facilitation of irregular immigration in a dual nexus, firstly as a hybrid warfare tool, and secondly, as a shock/stress factor disturbing the system or the prevalent status quo. After presenting the statistics on the modification of the illegal border-crossings between Belarus and the EU in the 2021-2022 period, we shall attempt to briefly analyse the resilience building measures to the hybrid threat of weaponizing migrants that were taken at both Community and Member State level, by grouping them in five resilience building categories: political/legal, institutional, inter-institutional, regulatory and societal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Polish Journal of Economics / Gospodarka Narodowa is the property of SGH Warsaw School of Economics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Looking at the recent cases of security force defection in Belarus and Venezuela, this paper develops a theory of security force "confidence" to supplement the existing literature on security force defection. Security forces' confidence (or lack thereof) in the regime, other security forces, the opposition, and their future prospects in a transition help to explain why security forces in both countries have stayed cohesive and loyal to the regime during crisis. Our research found little data to support some of the other arguments that are popularly used to explain these cases, namely external support, differences in protester tactics, and counterbalancing by the regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the interdependencies between democracy, privatization, and the rule of law in transitioning countries by comparing the cases of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Based on the findings, the study recommends policies to follow to improve the progression of economic and political transition. By focusing on two key hypotheses--whether democracy positively drives privatization, and whether privatization positively drives the rule of law--the study combines political and economic transitions of countries as one subject. It is found that democracy negatively interferes with privatization in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus due to corruption, insider control, hollow reforms, and institutional weakness. Consequently, the rule of law is also hindered by the same factors. Hence, the root causes of these transitional blockers must be resolved. Finally, the study explores political and economic interdependencies and suggests policies for political, economic, and institutional reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the growing trends and conditions for the effective introduction of feminitives into some European languages in several countries, including Belarus, Poland, and France among others. Linguists, who are against the use of feminitives often claim that they are redundant and violate the grammatical rules of the language. They argue that the use of gender-neutral nouns and adjectives is sufficient, and that feminitives unnecessarily complicate the language. The paper highlights the efforts of the modern feminist movement and the gender approach in linguistics to promote linguistic equality by overcoming gender asymmetry in language use. It is argues that while the issue of language feminization is crucial for many languages, the peculiarities and uniqueness of noun gender distribution in different languages demonstrate that the category of gender is a specified generalized cultural experience of previous generations. Nevertheless, many occupational nouns lack female counterparts, which leads to the use of male nouns to refer to women. Thus, there is a conclusion that the category of masculine gender in some languages primarily reflects the idea of a person, rather than the idea of gender. As a result, language use can perpetuate gender stereotypes, bias, and inequality. Feminist linguists and language activists argue that language must be feminized to promote gender equality and eliminate gender asymmetry in language use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysing the contemporary housing development Minsk World as a paradigmatic case of the authoritarian neoliberal shift in housing delivery in Belarus, this paper focuses on the intersections of law, finance and architecture. This paper makes three contributions to the debate on the neoliberal shift in housing delivery and the role architecture plays within it. First, it challenges the widely held opinion that the neoliberal shift in housing delivery never happened in Belarus. Second, it explores how building codes and regulations governing certain aspects of housing delivery can be overcome through political intervention by an autocratic head of state. In so doing, the paper introduces the concept of "legitimized architecture" as a way of describing the spatial dimensions of laws, codes and regulations. Third, it highlights the role of architecture, as professional practice, in normalizing the legal reforms that have facilitated the commodification of urban housing in Belarus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the findings of a study on the attitudes of Belarusian parents with school-aged children towards school-based sexuality education programs. The study aimed to measure parental support for comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) and its individual components, identify the topics and age ranges approved by parents, and determine which course characteristics are important to them. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression were used to evaluate the factors that influence parental support for introducing sexuality education in schools. The study found that a fairly high share of 60.6% of parents were supportive of the introduction of CSE, despite low satisfaction and awareness of the current information presented in schools. Parents approved a median age of 13.3 years as the minimum age for CSE curriculum. However, topics such as safe use of cell phones, computers, the Internet, and social media; psychological pressure and violence; peer bullying; confronting peers; sources of help; relationships, love, friendship, parenting, and family were considered permissible for earlier age ranges. The study found that parental support to school-based sexuality education is influenced by several factors. These include parents' normative ideas about the balance of responsibility between family and school in educating children and adolescents about sexuality, the level of awareness of and satisfaction with available information on sexual development and health in the school curriculum, whether parents have a college degree, parents' personal experiences in having intimate conversations with their children, and any difficulties they may encounter in such communication. The paper offers recommendations for a CSE course architecture that is relevant to the context of Belarus and meets parental expectations, as well as on perspectives for advancing sexuality education in Belarus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the political and cultural processes of nation-building over thirty years of independence in Belarus. It argues that in becoming a nation-state Belarus has faced challenges similar to the other post-Soviet nations but has proved an exception in the choice of strategies it used to address them. The paper examines how, on the eve of independence, the nationalist elites devised policies aimed at consolidating statehood around the national revival in opposition to the Soviet past. It explores the role played by linguistic policy and historical memory as the two main arenas for implementing their visions of Belarusian identity. The paper then maps a shift in this trajectory from Lukashenka's rise to power to a national project based on reappropriation of Soviet legacy. Up until 2020, the state effectively navigated a geopolitical environment and adjusted its sociocultural parameters to preempt the society's shifting expectations. Finally, the paper reflects on how protests in 2020 demonstrated both the lack of support for Lukashenka and his reliance on the violent repression and external support for remaining in power. The war in Ukraine revealed limits of Belarus's sovereignty, while the society's ability to consolidate for its defense has been seriously undermined by the repression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuadernos Europeos de Deusto is the property of Universidad de Deusto and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: This paper analyses teachers' perceptions of how teaching-learning approaches affect the development of higher education (HE) graduates' learning outcomes based on competencies development. The authors focus the analysis on Belarus, a post-Soviet country which transitioned from a centrally planned to a market economy and needs reforms to the HE sector there. In particular, Belarus requires HE graduates equipped with competencies that match the needs of a market economy. Design/methodology/approach: The authors use Fostering Competencies Development in Belarusian Higher Education (FOSTERC) data to study how teachers contribute to the development of HE graduates' competencies, employing factor analysis to categorize 24 competencies and group the graduates into two groups: entrepreneurial or transversal. The authors also consider variables such as teachers' educational background and experience, predominant teaching field of study and university location – using regional dummies. Findings: The results point to a lack of attention to entrepreneurial and transversal competencies and suggest a disconnect between HE and society needs in Belarus. Originality/value: Although Belarus has introduced some changes to the HE system following the adoption of the Bologna process, Belarus, especially Belarus' national HE system are still influenced by the country's Soviet past, where universities prepare the students for participation on one job and one career, instead of offering more attractive and constructive curricula that would allow future graduates to operate in a changing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores grassroots community activist art archives and their ability to disseminate and preserve digital protest art in the period surrounding the Belarusian 2020 presidential election. This paper focuses on the cultural aspects of these digital archives and argues that they have become a recent source for describing, defining and communicating Belarusian culture in ways that have challenged the norms of political power and the centrality of the archives of state institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper's focus is on the innovations in the urban public political agenda that are due to the interplay between participatory digital platforms, the socio-economic paths of specific urban environments, and long-term policy orientations on the national and urban levels. The context of the 2020 presidential elections in Belarus and the resulting boom of participation in the local and national political agendas is taken here as a particular configuration of the mentioned interplay and its outcomes. The first part of the paper focuses on the role of digital platforms in the studied boom of participation in 2020, the second documents the urban policy developments in Belarus during the period of 2015--2020, and the third reflects on the compatibility of the Belarusian case with wider discussions on the political impact that the spread of digital platforms has on urbanism. It is argued that the repressive state, the gradual marketization of urban development and the accompanying strengthening of urban dwellers' economic autonomy, and the proliferation of commercial digital platforms and civic tech are the factors that have defined the studied politicization and the boom of participation in Belarus. The examined case shows the contours of emerging politics in non-democracies under conditions of ubiquitous digitalization and the pressure on the state's redistributive capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological change has brought a new dimension to the interaction between civic protest and policing in post-Soviet societies. Social media has had a revolutionary impact on protests during the last decade, mobilising citizens to resist state corruption and despotism, notably in states like Armenia, the Republic of Moldova and Belarus. Enhanced surveillance techniques and new communication channels have, at the same time, changed policing techniques and the modes of interaction between citizens and the police. This article examines the dynamics of transformed protest and policing practices, particularly of public order police, in the context of digitisation and social/political protest and change. It sheds light on the transformation of citizen-police relations and, ultimately, on the repercussions this has on the respective polities. The principal findings of the paper reveal that digital technology has been an important element in the evolution of practices of policing and police reform across the region. Yet, it is only one aspect of many in the somewhat divergent development of citizen-police relations. So far, it has produced rather negative effects instead of having been conducive to the mentality and ethos of the police. The disconnect between people and the police remains large in societies across the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sedimentary column at the Rechitsa oilfield in the Pripyat rift basin, Belarus, is dominated by an Upper Devonian synrift succession. The succession includes uppermost Frasnian and mid‐Famennian salt units which are about 1000 m and 2000 m thick respectively. Reservoir rocks consist of sandstones and carbonates in the intra‐, inter‐ and sub‐salt successions. In this paper, the geochemical analysis of 15 oil samples from different stratigraphic intervals at the Rechitsa field is used as a basis for reservoir characterisation. Geochemical studies included biomarker and stable C, N and S isotope analyses. Four genetic oil groups were identified and are referred to as Groups A to D. Oils in Group A came from upper intra‐ and inter‐salt reservoir rocks; the oils are early mature, enriched in heavy (C36+) hydrocarbons, heteroatoms, aryl‐isoprenoids and gammacerane, with low Pr/Ph = 0.6 and a sulphur isotope composition averaging 22.7‰ CDT. Oils in Group B were from sub‐salt reservoirs and are at peak maturity with Pr/Ph = 1, an increased proportion of C27 regular steranes, and a sulphur isotope composition of 8.1‰ CDT. The single oil sample in Group C was from a Proterozoic reservoir. The oil was overmature with a low content of heavy fractions, heteroatoms and steranes; its hopanes composition indicated that it was generated by the same source rock as the oils in Group B. Oils in Group D came from inter‐salt reservoir rocks and were composed of a mixture of Groups A and B oils in roughly equal proportions, as indicated by their average isotope, molecular and biomarker compositions. Observed differences in oil composition were explained in terms of contributions from at least two different source rocks together with variations in source rock maturity. Group A oils were interpreted to have been generated by Famennian carbonate‐rich source rocks containing dominantly marine and bacterial organic matter deposited in an anoxic evaporitic setting. Source rocks for Groups B and C oils were suggested to be composed of OM‐rich marine shales of Frasnian age or older. The geochemical characteristics of the Devonian oils from Rechitsa field, and the oil‐oil and oil‐ source rock correlations reported, will contribute to a better understanding of the petroleum system in the Pripyat Basin although direct oil‐ source rock correlations are not yet available. The presence of at least two source rocks for the Rechitsa oils has been suggested, respectively comprising carbonates in the inter‐salt succession and marine shales and/or carbonates in the sub‐salt succession. The main controls on oil composition in the Devonian reservoir units were the varying contributions from the different source rocks and differences in source rock thermal maturity associated with variations in burial depth and tectonics, together with the stratigraphic distribution of reservoir units which was in turn controlled by the presence of the thick Frasnian and Famennian salt units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how Belarusians discursively construct a local identity of a creative people in Minsk. Drawing upon Cultural Discourse Analysis, we examine speakers' talk at monthly meetings of CreativeMornings Minsk. Participants give voice to oppositional, cultural terms and notions about identity, acting, and relating; they build an alternative sociocultural space of togetherness that is opposed to the Belarusian state of devastation and war. Russian terms are identified that express this discourse include obschenie, tvorchestvo, and kreativ. Finally, this study discusses the discursive dimensions of time and their role in Cultural Discourse Theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to specify the definitions of two terms, bigraphia and digraphia, and examine how these phenomena appear in post-socialist countries. It is currently a global phenomenon to use two or more writing systems in one country, due to the spread of English and the Internet. Bigraphia means when the function and prestige of two writing systems (or two varieties of one system) are equal. On the other hand, when there is a difference in the function and/or prestige between two writing systems, it is defined as digraphia. The paper examines the combination of writing systems in post-socialist countries such as Russia, Belarus, Serbia, and Uzbekistan. In-digraphia refers to a situation in which variations of one writing system coexist, and out-digraphia refers to a situation in which two different writing systems coexist. A narrower sense of digraphia is observed in Belarus today: Belarusian Cyrillic-Т(BC-T) is used to write Tarashkievitsa and Belarusian Cyrillic-N (BC-N) is used to write Narkamaŭka. Out-digraphia is observed in Serbia and Uzbekistan. In these countries, Cyrillic and Latin scripts are used to write Serbian and Uzbek. Out-digraphia is also confirmed in Russian texts: It is commonly thought that only Cyrillic letters are used to write Russian, but recently the use of the so-called "macaronic alphabet," which is a mix of Cyrillic and Latin letters, has become common. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this article is to analyse women’s writing as immaterial labour, focusing on the case of contemporary Belarusian literature as the contribution to the de-Westernizing of creative labour studies. First, the paper focuses on language choice specific for contemporary Belarusian literature and educational opportunities as the prerequisites to begin a writing career set in the 1990–2000s. Second, the paper outlines the environment providing publishing and showcase opportunities, emphasising the mid-2010s as the period of increased diversity. And third, the paper assesses the conditions that influence creative expression sustaining the labour of creating writing in 2020–2023. Within this argumentation, the paper investigates the state of specifically women’s writing in Belarus, considering the problematics of equal opportunities. Thus, in the 1990– 2000s women’s writing wasn’t on the agenda aimed at the preservation of the field and relating it to the Belarusian language. In the 2010s educative and showcase opportunities supporting the efforts of young writers provided an equally beneficial environment for men and women writing in Belarusian or Russian. The representation of women writers increased, including more women writers awarded with book prizes by both state and independent organizations although still not equal with men writers. During 2020–2023 it is mostly recognized women writers over 40 years old, especially currently in emigration, who produce literary works that are successfully published in Belarusian or Russian. Younger women writers have less opportunities for publication and showcase, switching to autofiction of shorter formats barely sustaining their efforts as labour. Interestingly, in both cases the most common themes are ancestry and corporality, making women representation in contemporary Belarusian literature less diverse. This affects the demand in literary works by women writers among diverse groups of women as the reading audience, making the labour of women writers in Belarus more precarious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines some ‘stories’ of female artists who were connected (in different ways) to Belarusian cultural space, mainly in the first half of the twentieth century. Despite women’s prominent and incontestable contribution to art, firstly, as producers, their role and place are still mainly invisible in ‘global’ and ‘local’ art history, whose ‘canon’ is oriented on the male experience. Exploring history and the strategies of displacement, erasing, forgetting, and non-recognition of female producers in art, the paper asks about socalled universal common patterns of how this marginalisation (and, as a result, absent) still happens, no matter what field — art, science, technology — in any area which is considered as a male realm. Discussing several obstacles scholars might face in the process of reconstructing women’s biographies, the author argues that the feminist approach of storytelling aims not merely to extend ‘history’. It is a strategy to trouble the existing male-oriented ‘canon’ that contributes to creating multidiverse and plural ‘epistemic spaces’ as the fundamental matter of transnational feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the notions of interruption and exhaustion in relation to the 2020-21 anti-governmental uprising in Belarus. It examines various forms of protesting, such as marches, neighbourhood gatherings and strikes from a feminist perspective. It focuses on the dynamics of visibility and opacity, social reproduction and politicization of mundane gestures, and on questioning the notion of revolutionary event and its temporalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia i Polityka is the property of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper examines prerequisites and assumptions of the classical Bass innovation diffusion model with the aim of applying it in modeling of relevant stochastic processes related to the pandemic. The Bass model has proven its versatility and applicability to various environments. A thorough mathematical substantiation of the model properties is presented based on theories of evolutionary equations and stochastic processes for its further development, as well as search for uncertainty parameters and observable variables. The paper provides realistic estimation results of the Bass model parameters for vaccination in Ukraine and Belarus on weekly data of the first half of 2021. Similar studies are suggested for other countries, as well as regions and districts of Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will look at the rich narratives of a young Belarusian professional, Aleksandra, collected in audio and video narratives and interviews since the autumn and winter 2020-2021. By looking in detail at Aleksandra's experiences of the 2020 movement for democracy in Belarus, the paper will try to illuminate the work done by Aleksandra to give sense to her self-narrative, and to locate the voice she has been looking for and may have found. Connecting the usual micro interactions of conversation-like talk to the complex spaces of political and social relations, biographical narratives constructed in this kind of interview talk become an important lens through which the ongoing construction of individual/social identities and the realignment of individual meaning-making in times of harsh biographical transition can be heard. Learning biographies, as narrative constructions, in which the layers of experience of a (being) lived life are drawn upon as resources, are situated in, and create, personalised storied spaces. Learning biographies draw upon biographical knowledge, which is the prerequisite for biographical reflexion, i.e. being able to think your own biography through anew and form it anew. In times when demands on people come as sudden and difficult, this type of knowledge serves as crucial biographical competence. The paper will show that such times of conflict entail redefinition of self, the re-drafting of biographies, the urgent need to reinvent the self in relation to others. Discursive processes hearable in such biographic narratives involve the changes imposed by civil conflict on narrators' own and on others' words, on their very narrative resources, altering radically the very language hitherto used to describe themselves and the world. They involve, too, the confrontation of past layers of experience with a difficult, yet sometimes exhilarating present. The construction of narratives of hope and solidarity can be observed. Finally, the paper explores the possibility of identifying in the interviews heard here the crucial relationships between everyday lives, the experience found in a widening of everyday sites of biographical experience, learning, and narration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Traditional dyeing methods are practically forgotten in Poland. Józef Rostafiński included questions on the use of dyes in his ethnobotanical survey from 1883. Methods: 126 questionnaires contained information on dye plants. They were identified by the respondents using folk names or sometimes even Latin names. Folk names were analyzed by comparison with other literature. Several voucher specimens were also present. Results: 74 plant taxa were identified to genus or species level. The most commonly used were: onion (Allium cepa), brazilwood (Caesalpinia brasiliensis or Paubrasilia echinata), winter corn (mainly rye Secale cereale), black alder (Alnus glutinosa), safflower (Carthamus tinctorius), apple (Malus domestica), birch (Betula pendula), oak (Quercus robur), and violet flowering spring flowers (mainly Hepatica nobilis and Pulsatilla spp.). Conclusions: Most species are well known in the literature about plant dyeing, but the paper provides extra details on the picture of dyeing traditions in Eastern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the important current problem of illegal crossing of a national border, which since autumn 2021 has been particularly intense on the Belarusian-Polish section of the border. It has been serious enough to pose a security threat not only to Poland, but also to the rest of Europe. This article contains a discussion of the solutions provided for in the 1999 Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus that concern illegal border crossing and associated crimes, i.e. organization of illegal migration and violation of the period of prohibition of entry into the territory of the country. For the purposes of the article, it was assumed that the scope of the regulations in question is casuistic and restrictive, and provides little guarantee of protection of the national border of Belarus. The legal analyses that were conducted generally confirmed the assumed evaluation of these solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the degree of digitalization of Academic Writing and Information Literacy (hereafter AW & IL) course in the countries of the post-Soviet era. Numerous research demonstrated that digital transformation has taken place toward the teaching of AW & IL in most of the developed countries and beyond, yet little is studied about the digitalization in countries of the former Soviet Union that have passed a long way to align their education with the globe. Keeping up with the four main categories of digitalization, the paper will look at its application as a part of curriculum development, assessment, students' competency, and university maintenance. The paper employs a phenomenological approach confirmed through the qualitative analysis of 18 in-depth interviews conducted with AW & IL instructors from nine countries. The study revealed that recently AW & IL course has moved through partial digitalization, providing that the university stakeholders do not exert any necessary support.

This paper explores and analises aspects of Antisimetism and the Jewish theme in the Russian, Belarusian and Ukraninan propaganda during the first seven months of the Russian-Ukrainian war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we determine the parameters of the equation for predicting the yield of agricultural crops (wheat, barley, rapeseed of both winter and spring forms) according to Earth remote-sensing data for the territory of the Republic of Belarus. As an equation for predicting yield, a power function that uses the vegetation index as one of the input values is considered. The parameters of the equation are determined (using a statistical approach) with no allowance for the variety of agricultural crops for fixed values of the plant development code and are oriented to the spectral channels of the Sentinel-2 satellites. Among those considered, the normalized vegetation index using spectral channels in the red edge and red regions of the spectrum are determined to be the best. When using this index, a stable relationship between its values and the yield of all studied types of agricultural crops for all values of the plant development code is observed. The accuracy of the forecast crop yields is estimated both from ground-based measurements and from atmospherically corrected data of the Sentinel-2 satellites both for individual plots and for a set of plots. In this case, the accuracy of the yield forecast increases significantly when analyzing multiple plots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze the background activity of anthropogenic radionuclides (14C, 3H, 137Cs, and 239,240Pu), emphasizing 14C content, in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in the Lithuanian border region before the commissioning of a new nuclear power plant in Belarus (BelNPP). In terrestrial samples, the 14C concentration varied insignificantly—from 98.6 ± 0.7 to 102.2 ± 0.8 pMC, which is close to the 14C level in atmospheric CO2. In aquatic samples, the 14C concentration varied within wide limits from 76.9 ± 0.7 to 99.6 ± 0.6 pMC, depending on the ecological group of macrophytes. Various ecological groups of macrophytes have experienced the influence of a freshwater reservoir effect. This lowest 14C content in submerged macrophyte species, within the limits of uncertainty, was very close to the specific activity of 14C in DIC (78.6 ± 0.6 pMC) in the water of the Neris River. The background 14C values, together with the data on 3H, 137Cs and 239,240Pu obtained in this study, can be used in the future to assess the contribution of the BelNPP conventional radioactive effluents to the levels of 14C and other radionuclides in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems of the transboundary region of Belarus and Lithuania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is dedicated to the issue of collective guilt and the interconnection between theoretical political thinking and ethically grounded political action, collective guilt, and personal responsibility. It assumes that facing political events in a form of media representation (such as with the war conflict in Ukraine), we mostly deal with simulacra, which affects and creates passive shock content consumption instead of active participation. The interconnection between irrational and rational ways of interpretation of political conflict is shown together with the attempt to rethink the social responsibility of nowadays, switching the prospective from synchronic to diachronic dimensions. Instead of producing descriptions that multiply monstrous zombie/victims-blaming apocalyptic discourse or subconsciously continuing to symbolically support "fratricide", it is proposed to think about the legacy for future generations and see the moral dimension of politics in terms of "adults' responsibility for children" as each one's personal responsibility issue. Acting "as if you would wish all children on Earth to grow in safety and deserve a happy life no matter where (s)he would be born, as if it were a universal law" – this is proposed as an ethical-political common-sense formula, based on potential equality and global interconnection, maturity, and care – which could lead to a common goal of overcoming starvation, wars, sufferings, and catastrophes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors of this research paper analyse the impact of declared state of emergency measures on social relations in the Republic of Lithuania within the entire area at the state border of the Republic of Lithuania with the Republic of Belarus and 5 kilometres inland from the border area from 10 November 2021, 24.00 (midnight). Influx of migration as part of the hybrid attack against the Lithuania, Poland, Latvia supported by the Belorussian authorities in 2021 requires Lithuanian institutions to take immediate coordinated contra measures to stop the hybrid attack on the European Union (hereinafter - the EU). The Republic of Lithuania has 679 kilometres eastern external border of the European Union with the Republic of Belarus. Accordingly, Lithuania is in charge for ensuring protection of the border and as sovereign state has the exclusive and discretionary right to make final decisions in a given situation and employ the best suitable and effective measures to handle threats to the national security. Lithuania declared the state emergency at the border with the Republic of Belarus. The territory which falls under the state of emergency obtained a new legal status and concurrently became the object of the specific legal regulation. Also, this gives rise to several questions. How the new legal status of the given territory impacts the four freedoms of the EU, i.e., the free movement of goods, the free movement of capital, the freedom to establish and provide services, the free movement of persons. It affects many parts of the economic activity, the human behaviour, the status of psychological health, the international cooperation between neighbouring countries and between different players in both countries. This research mainly focuses on the economic part of social relations. The object of the research might seem simple at first sight. However, suppression in economic relations affects both legal and shadow economy, and border crossing procedures and finally it interferes with the communication sphere at trans-border and within the affected territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article aims to analyze the "Robim Good" project -- a digital platform for sharing urban knowledge and info about upcoming local campaigns. A vacuum among urban initiatives was established in Belarus because of the repressive policy of the authoritarian regime. As a result, around 965 non-profit organizations have been shut down. Nonetheless, there was a demand from activists to create a safe managerial organization that focused on urbanism. The "Robim Good" project became a solution. The research question is as follows: what is the value orientation of the analyzed digital platform that attracts new participants? The paper applies the value-based approach in NGO engagement. The analysis shows that one of the main promoted values and key characteristics of the digital ecosystem is security, which is directed at overcoming the dangers of the unpredictable regime. Subsequently, "Robim Good" has been able to engage volunteers and survive after a year of activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the cases of denuclearized countries, namely Belarus, Kazakhstan, South Africa, and Ukraine and primarily intends to answer the questions of how (process), why (reasons for denuclearization), and for what (benefits and gains) did these four countries abandon their strategically advantageous nuclear arsenals. For conceptual analysis, 'a trading state' is employed, for they commonly faced the imminent need of guaranteeing state sovereignty and the influence of changing security dynamics. The four cases exhibit both generalizable commonality and distinctive experience in the process of denuclearization. They demonstrate that two mutually-reinforcing forces, 'global-scale structural change in world politics' and 'pressure for regime creation or change', interactively led to the final decision to enact complete denuclearization, albeit not effortlessly. Furthermore, unveiling the differences in the process of denuclearization – in terms of resistance, negotiation tools and leverage, stage of nuclear development, domestic-grown technology, internal justification for legitimacy – helps to clarify the gains and benefits received in return for denuclearization. Shedding light on these four countries, under pressure from nuclear weapons states, complements conventional realism-leaning interpretations of nuclear politics and offers policy insights to understand countries with nuclear ambition in contemporary world politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research shows that even though the time women and men spend on housework has slowly converged in recent decades, the time mothers and fathers invest in childcare has not changed as much. This paper aims to contribute to the literature on childcare by focusing on the two Eastern European countries of Lithuania and Belarus, which took very different development paths after seceding from the Soviet Union in 1990. For our analysis, we use two recent datasets: the Families and Inequalities Survey from 2019 for Lithuania, and the Generations and Gender Survey 2020 Belarus Wave 1 from 2017. The analytic sample consists of 2114 mothers and fathers born between 1970 and 1984 with children under age 14. Our results reveal that in both Lithuania and Belarus, mothers perform more childcare tasks than fathers, and that, however, gendered parenting is more prominent in Lithuania than in Belarus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional skills, as opposed to interpersonal skills, are types of skills that students learn in university. These skills are easy to quantify. The proficiency in these skills is easy to verify. Soft skills cannot be measured and tested as simply as professional skills. The authors highlight the most indemand soft skills among employers. The article presents the results of several surveys of employers about the important requirements for jobseekers required for employment. Similar surveys were conducted among employers and employees of IT companies in the Republic of Belarus. It is concluded that soft skills are very important both for getting a first job and building a successful career. However, in the universities of the Republic of Belarus, teaching soft skills is poorly represented. The article shows how the process of teaching students of the second stage of higher education was modernized. Only the IT specialties of five Belarusian universities have undergone modernization. This work was carried out with the support of the international project MaCICT. At the same time, the experience of teaching similar disciplines in the universities of the European Union was used. To assess the effectiveness of students' acquisition of soft skills at the university, a system for assessing the results of the modernization of the learning process was developed. Questionnaires for teachers, students and employees of IT companies have been developed. A survey of all stakeholders in the results of the international project MaCICT was carried out. The paper provides information on the dissemination of the main approaches for organizing the teaching of IT specialties for teachers of another specialties of the Sukhoi State Technical University of Gomel, as well as for teaching IT disciplines of another universities in the Gomel region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the politicization of the environment in the late Soviet Union based on a new perception of the interconnection between the human being and the 'rest' of nature. On the basis of previously ignored sources, it shows the emerging rise and ultimate decline of human subjectivity as a political force in the Soviet Union, and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR) in particular. Experts, politicians, and the secret service had long understood the need to conserve natural resources and the ecological consequences of relentless industrialization or nature transformation projects, and they had at least partially attempted to counter them. However, the disclosure, in the late 1980s, of the extent and consequences of the Soviet Union's ecological legacies, particularly the Chernobyl disaster, triggered an unprecedented awareness of the vulnerability of the human body and the Soviet state's disregard of the dangers to human health. This new awareness mobilized Soviet citizens, including state functionaries who had previously seemed untouched by ecological issues, to call for a right to life in an unprecedented way. Despite some achievements, such as new protection laws and investments in health care, this 'ecological revolution' was short lived. The social and economic difficulties linked to the collapse of the Soviet Union allowed the concern for a healthy, livable environment to fade into the background again in the early 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Belarusian Potash salt deposits are bedded under aquifers and unstable soil layers. Therefore, to develop the deposits a vertical mine shaft sinking is performed using the artificial ground freezing technology. Nowadays, real-time observations of ground temperature and groundwater level is applied to control the ground freezing process. Numerical simulation can be used for a comprehensive analysis of measurements results. In this paper, a thermo-hydro-mechanical model of freezing for water-saturated soil is proposed. The governing equations of the model are based on balance laws for mass, energy and momentum for a fully saturated porous media. Clausius-Clayperon equation and poroelastic constitutive relations are adopted to describe coupled processes in water and ice pore pressure, porosity and a stress-strain state of freezing soil. The proposed model was used to predict equivalent water content measured in Mizoguchi's test and frost heave in a one-sided freezing test. Numerical simulation of ground freezing in the Petrikov mining complex located in Belarus has shown that the model is able to describe field measurements of pore pressure inside a forming frozen wall. Furthermore, the mismatch between hydro- and thermo-monitoring data obtained during the artificial freezing is analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent protests against the dictatorship in Belarus and the subsequent political conflict simultaneously polarised the Belarusian nation and unified various groups of protesters with the help of new national imagery. These opposing but connected processes instrumentalise the Belarusian Soviet past. Heritage as a way of past-in-present existence becomes a tool in this struggle. In this paper, I focus on the music band 'Pesniary' that represents the Soviet music heritage in Belarus. The manifoldness of Pesniary creativity and the peculiarities of the band's cultural origins allows different agents to articulate its meaning as Soviet and national heritage at the same time. Using the critical heritage studies approach to heritage as a constantly antagonistic process of meaning-making of the past, I explain how popular music heritage functions in the field of political dissent as a means of assimilation of contested past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic affected not only global economy and society, but also particular institutions, including those of higher education. The aim of the paper is to determine changes in students' life at selected universities in Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus. An online survey was applied, addressed to students of four universities in Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus (n=380). As a result of the pandemic, more than 46% of students declared worsening of their material situation. In comparison to the period before the pandemic, the respondents observed appearance or intensification of various psychosomatic symptoms, and a 12 percent point decrease in the assessment of their own health. The comparative analysis showed similarities between students' life preferences, plans on university education, and differences in their material situation, health, and employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, the sustainable development of rural areas is relevant for various countries, both developed and developing. The improvement of existing approaches for the assessment and management of rural settlement systems is particularly relevant for Belarus, as a country with agricultural resources. Currently, there is no eligible information model for a rural settlement system in Belarus. The main research aim of this study was to develop the information model for formulation and assessment of the settlement scenarios for solving the issue of sustainable rural development in Belarus. The research methods were based on the complex and interdisciplinary approaches, including the systems approach, factor analysis, comparative analysis, spatial and mathematical modelling, SWOT analysis, and the hierarchy method. The paper proposes the development of the informational model of a rural settlement system at a local planning level, including five main determinants of sustainability, namely social, technological, economic, environmental, and political. The model was approved by the assessment of development scenarios for the Zavalocycy local council as the first-level unit of a planning system. We obtained the development indexes for 14 rural settlements within the obtained assessment criteria. The research results showed the relevance of the informational model for the monitoring of sustainable development at a local planning level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presented the results of surface water temperature measurements from 17 lakes located in northern Poland and Belarus over the period of 50 years (1971–2020). Using the Excel computer program, Corel Quattro Pro 8, and graphic Draw 9, annual and monthly averages, extreme values, and annual and monthly trends were calculated and presented. These were supplemented by the monthly average air temperatures for 13 weather stations. The research showed that the temperature in all lakes was characterized by a positive trend at the level of 0.044 °C year−1. The largest lake was characteristic for the Chervonoe Lake—0.066 °C year−1—and the smallest 0.029 °C year−1 for the deep Lake Hańcza. In the course of the average monthly surface water temperatures, a positive trend was also observed, ranging from 0.015 °C year−1 in January to 0.069 °C year−1 in May. These values correlated with the average air temperatures in the winter months (December–March) and with the winter NAO index (DJFM). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of research in this paper refers to the analysis of the impact of free zones on the economic growth of developing countries. The objective of the research is to explain to the scientific and professional public the way of functioning and the transmission mechanism of free zones in generating economic growth ceteris paribus. The analysis covers free zones in three countries in the development of compatible characteristics: Serbia, Croatia and Belarus. The research problem is sublimated in the question of whether and in what way free zones have an impact on the economic growth of developing countries? The research was conducted by analyzing the relevant literature and by using the panel analysis. The results of the research showed the existence of statistically significant determination of GDP per capita, as an indicator of economic growth, by variations of macroeconomic parameters of the functioning of free zones. That is, the operation of free zones has a statistically significant impact on the economic growth of targeted developing countries ceteris paribus. Whether growth will be inclusive and sustainable in the long run depends on political and economic decision makers and defined economic policy. In this way, the hypothesis was confirmed that the establishment of free zones in developing countries, with the condition of integration of the national economy into the work of zones, creates preconditions for sustainable and inclusive economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the paper, the frequency and spatial distribution of atmospheric and hydrological droughts over the territory of Belarus in 1945–2020 is assessed. Aridity is evaluated using the standardized precipitation and streamflow indices (SPI and SSFI). Trends in monthly total precipitation are determined, the features of the streamflow formation during the open-channel period are revealed. The frequency of anticyclones that determines hydrometeorological conditions on the territory of Belarus is calculated. The statistically significant increase in the number of the days with anticyclonic weather over the country during the warm season is found. The increasing frequency of dry conditions in summer months against the background of a rise in the precipitation intensity is highlighted. A simultaneous increase in the frequency of very-low-flow periods on rivers and an increase in the height of warm rainfall floods in some river basins are revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kopan microregion is a group of the Stone and Bronze Ages archaeological sites, located in the section of the Dnieper River valley (about 30 sq. km) between Rechytsa town and Kopan village (eastern Belarus). The aim of the study is to reconstruct the history of this section of the Dnieper River valley. The paper presents the results of field studies of the relief and sediments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores aspects of resilience developed in Belarusian society and dwells on those elements of resilience as viewed by the general public in 2019. Based on the results of focus groups conducted in Belarus, the paper uncovers perceptions of identity and community of relations, explores the Belarusian vision of a good life, and substantiates the importance of value orientations as an element of social integration. The article expands the understanding of resilience, introducing the notion of inclusive resilience, thus highlighting the importance of local coping strategies while addressing global challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]