Interwar Romania was infamous for its many violent political and
social scenes. Some of these scenes represented exclusionary violence in its basic form, such as riots against Jews (and sometimes against other minorities) in 1922 and most prominently in 1927. But many other forms of violence were customary in Greater Romania. Clashes between villagers, destruction of memorials and statues, armed violence against the opposition electorate,beating up of politicians and occasional revolts against the authorities concerned an ever-growing state security apparatus that was rarely able to control these eruptions. Their persistence makes them suspicious of being a systemic phenomenon. In this article I argue that violence in this widespread form was a structural characteristic of Greater Romania, the result of systemic factors in
the new state. A loosening of moral constraint due to the preceding first world war, subsequent revolutions (and paramilitary endeavours) and the deficiencies of the state together had a decisive impact on the formation of a political culture that fostered violence from time to time. These factors on the one hand legitimized violence as a form of political action and, on the other hand, they resulted from and impeded successful nation building, and the realizationof the state’s promises for the nation. Thus, interwar Romania became a failing nation state and as such it facilitated popular forms of violence that was widely felt being justified by the legitimacy enjoyed by the ideology of the
nation-state. and Obsahuje poznámkový aparát pod čarou
The goal of this article is to approach the Armenian epic poetry and above all the phenomenon of local troubadour lyrics as such, in the light of traditions of neighbouring nations and also in a European context. I have tried to show that Armenia (and the Caucasus region as whole) is far from being a region deserving only the marginal interest of researchers. To the contrary, its relative isolation on the one hand and the constant blending of cultures and the emergence of syncretic traditions on the other hand make the Caucasus a fountainhead of topics not only for ethnologists and folklorists. Armenian lyric poetry can be shown to have developed under the strong influence of Persian as well as Arabic poetry, but Armenian folk art tended to také its inspiration also from local traditions, and through the quasi authorship of hayrens it then became the inspiration for the higher art form of poetry. Through popular music, Armenian troubadour lyric poetry has remained alive and is still popular with the public.