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The turn of the 1980s and 1990s brought a number of changes for the whole Soviet world, including the Hungarian community in Transcarpathia, which obviously had an impact on the language of the press, as elements of political or economic jargon appear in the daily press just as much as the language of sport or the argot. The majority of linguists agree that press language is a mirror of language use in which linguistic changes are detectable and traceable almost immediately. In this paper, we have attempted to present an overview of the 1989-1990 issues of the Berehovo District Council newspaper, the Vörös Zászló [Red Flag]--i.e. more than 300 issues and more than 1,200 pages of text for the two years--presenting the major events and problems of the period, and the linguistic information related to them, especially the state language loanwords that appeared in the paper as a result of bilingualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Th e purpose of the presented investigation is to actualize the problem of the archive of printed publications of Ukraine and the main task in the study of the hitherto unexplored departmental institution of the Book Chamber of Ukraine named after I. Fedorov. The investigation is written under the requirements of modern methodology, based on the principles of historicism, comprehensiveness, and objectivity; it uses general scientific (description, analysis, synthesis, generalization, classification) and special (periodization, historical-comparative, content analysis) research methods. The scientific novelty of the presented work is proved by the facts of the significant amount of unprocessed materials of the internal departmental archive concerning the funds of printed publications of the Book Chamber of Ukraine named after I. Fedorov and the lack of comprehensive investigations into the history of the State Archive of the Book Chamber of Ukraine. The result of the study was to establish the stages of development of the archive of printed publications of Ukraine, the peculiarities of its structural compilation, the formation of principles of activity (receipt, systematization, perpetual storage, withdrawal for research) and fundraising, and the personification of these processes. Unused or fragmentarily cited documents and materials were introduced into scientific circulation, in particular, materials of inspections of the Book Chamber of Ukraine by republican authorities (People’s Commissariat of Education of the USSR 1934-1935), All-Union Book Chamber (Report on business trip to the Ukrainian Book Chamber signed by All-Union Book Chamber of Ye. Shamurin in 1935), constituent documents that contributed to the institutional formation of the State Archives of the Press (Statute of the State Bibliographic Institute of the USSR “Ukrainian Book Chamber” (1934), Regulations on the State Archives of the Book Chamber of the Ukrainian SSR of October 30, 1950, Regulations on the Press Archive of the Book Chamber of Ukraine of January 4, 1968, etc.). Th e authors consider the writing of a large monographic work, which would reflect the entire historical path of the State Archives of the Press as part of the Book Chamber of Ukraine, to be a prospect for further studies. Th e practical significance of the results already obtained is the possibility of their application in future exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russian journalism has always existed in the tension between political power and a more or less independent intelligentia. This was the case during the old czar regime as well as during different periods of the Soviet Union era. At the end of the Cold War liberalization followed, which offered Russian journalism a kind of freedom it had never known. However, despite an increased independence, journalism continued to be used as a political tool and what autonomy that had been achieved by journalists as a professional group remained limited. At the same time and despite exposing themselves to great risks there were Russian journalists who maintained their autonomy and continued to challenge the regime. Since Putin came to power, the room of maneuver for independent journalism has gradually diminished. As a result, Russian journalism and independent media institutions develop and carry out their work in exile mimicking a pattern of a 19th century tradition. The regime tries to control various information flows but finds it increasingly difficult to do so with global digital networks and VPN-services that circumvent any blocking [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the special focuses of law and literature is law on literature. This examines how various issues connected with literature are regulated by law. This article addresses the issue of the intervention of the state in artistic freedom of expression, drawing on the situation of the artist in the totalitarian state that was the Soviet Union. In Stalinist Russia, artists were not only imprisoned or condemned to death, but they were also subjected to various forms of pressure. Ultimately, the greatest problem for many of them was the imprisonment of human thought (what Czesław Miłosz called "the captive mind"). Mikhail Bulgakov was a writer who did not give in. He spent twelve years, up to his death, working on The Master and Margarita, in which he tried to settle accounts with the Soviet system and its ideology, while simultaneously coming to terms with Stalin personally. Bulgakov's history and that of his most important work open up a rich field for analysis of how in a totalitarian state various procedures were employed to legitimize the interference of the state in literature. Such steps included: decrees suspending freedom of the press and introducing censorship; creating institutions that aimed to monitor the ideological correctness of literature; and producing an index of forbidden books and lists of enemies of the state. The article presents an artist who, against this background, did not allow literature to be defeated by ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the 1930s, active industrialization of the economy in the USSR was impossible without using modern management techniques and accounting methods. To increase the manageability of industrial enterprises, attempts to introduce standard costing, imported from the United States, were undertaken. Previously called progressive and useful, after the policy of the Communist Party changed, standard costing was identified as a calculative technique that did not correspond to the goals of the socialist state. Soviet researchers formulated the principles of normative cost accounting, based on standard costing. This new version was greatly simplified and lost its analytical focus. The paper investigates the influence of state policy on the transformation of standard costing methodology during the construction of the Socialist economy. The authors contribute to previous literature by focusing on the periodic press, professional societies, and educational institutions being used as tools of political power to put pressure on accounting theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the increase of investigative journalism in the Soviet Union. The Soviet press has discovered the delights of the expose. It was also uncertain who had arranged for the tanks to be exported, and why, although the prime minister himself seemed to be involved in the deal, as was a joint state-private cooperative known as Automation-Science-Technology (with the Russian acronym ANT). Novoe Vremya correspondent Boris Balkarei tried to sort out the roles of Soviet government and party officials, ANT cooperative leaders, and a mysterious Sudanese businessman, who later sued the magazine for libel in a Russian court. Although Soviet TV and radio generally have continued to shy away from aggressive questioning of the government and party on national security and foreign policy stories, numerous newspapers and magazines took their lead from Ogonyok.

This article offers an account of being a Soviet journalist before and during glasnost. Soviet reporters' weapons are still the pen and the notebook--the cost of a personal computer is about the same as a reporter's lifetime salary. It was not a big deal to me when Mikhail Gorbachev, the godfather of glasnost, recently asked the Congress of People's Deputies for a moratorium on the new press law which the same Congress had accepted only half a year ago. If you read ten different newspapers of the Brezhnev era, you would have found no difference: they all had the same mother. Pravda sometimes publishes articles that absolutely contradict Gorbachev's speeches, although Gorbachev is still the general secretary of the party that he has almost dismantled. Three years ago the same Ogonyok, with Vitali Korotich as the editor, published the truth about Adilov--that he took bribes and shared money with the first party secretary of Uzbekistan, that he had personally killed more than ten people (it is not possible to know the exact number--too much time has passed).

The Russian media system was during most of the 20th century part of the state institutions. During glasnost and perestroika, the media became gradually more independent of the state. However, the subsequent apex of journalistic freedom in the late 1980s and the early 1990s was followed by stagnation and a pronounced democratic setback following Putin’s accession to power. Despite this, the findings based on qualitative text analysis of articles in the daily press strongly indicate that after 1991 readers of the press are being increasingly addressed as active and knowledgeable citizens, a tendency which is strengthened during the entire period of study. Methods for text examination are speech act and modality analysis, exploring how readers are discursively positioned in the sample text material, which covers the democratically critical time span 1978–2003. The findings imply that although post-Soviet journalism itself faces considerable difficulties, a firm cultural ground for citizen participation in society has been laid through changes in press language. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Acta Historica Tallinnensia is the property of Teaduste Akadeemia Kirjastus 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.)

Discusses the existence of tensions between the theory and practice of human rights in both U.S. and the Soviet Union. Contradiction between the commitment to free press and arguments for suppression of pornography; Details of the fundamental human right of free expression; Interest of the Soviet Union in restoring free expression.

The article reviews the revolt of the minds as it has evolved in the Soviet Union and its satellites. It attempts to examine its basic causes by highlighting the writings of several writers which reflected on the freedom of creative works, and evaluate its consequences. It concludes that the present revolt of the minds has shown that such a communistic man has failed to be produced in the 40 years of as exclusive a monopoly of power, propaganda, and thought control as could be achieved.

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