Trends in Migrations of Refugees in Serbia

This project aimed to establish a comprehensive long-term projection of refugee migration trends in Serbia which would allow the different organisations engaged in caring for refugees to plan their work more effectively. Mr. Cvetkovic studied first the official records of numbers and origins of refugees and the various definitions used to describe refugees, exiled persons, etc., considering also the indication of nationality, i.e. Serb or Yugoslav, and the future intentions expressed by refugees. He concluded that more than three quarters of the total number of refugees in Serbia wish to remain in Serbia/Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and only 20% wish to repatriate. He concludes that the situation in relation to the ethnic-national structure of Serbia is extremely complicated, even to the point of chaos. One certainty is that sooner or later a huge majority of the refugees in Serbia today will be granted full citizenship and will then participate in the choice of the political system and the dominant national values and institutions of the country. The experiences of the refugees, as well as of their fellow nationals in Serbia, make it relatively unlikely that they will make rational choices that could produce a balance between civil democracy and national totalitarianism. Insofar as overall political relations within Serbia and its Federation with Montenegro develop along democratic lines, the civic identity of Serbs (as opposed to their national/ethnic status) can be expected to become stronger, and the civil and national to become an integral part of thinking which does not represent a challenge to the democratic state. This would help ensure that the migratory movements of the Serbs and of other national and ethnic groups in the region are motivated by economic rather than political or ethnic reasons.

Private Publishing in Moscow and St. Petersburg: Historical Background, Present Situation and Trends"

This research was a complex study of the economic and socio-cultural aspects of the development of Russian private publishing in the second half of the19th and early 20th centuries, during the periods of 'war communism' and the New Economic Policy of 1917 to 1930, and during the reform of book publishing in 1986-1999. Conclusions about private book publishing in Moscow and St. Petersburg were extrapolated to Russia-wide problems of the development of this field. Svichenskaya sees her main achievement as having identified the economic and legal concepts behind the development of private book publishing over the period in question in the context of state and corporate regulation of publishing. Here the state was the main influence on its development and there was a paradox in the relations between the state authorities and private publishers, in that the latter constantly suffered from repression by the former but at the same time were dependent on state support. The research identified the administrative process of the liquidation of private publishing at the end of the 1920s and showed that its present flourishing is closely linked with the establishment of a preferential mode for the development of this sector. Private publishing now represents around 80% of domestic publishing, in terms both of the number of publishing houses and of the number of volumes published, and so plays the major role in satisfying the demand for books in Russia. Svichenskaya predicts that in the coming years private publishing will see a further concentration of growth and a tendency to monopolies and also the increasing specialisation of the publishing repertoire. She outlines a suggested concept of state management in publishing and ways to optimise this. In the transitional period of adaptation to the market regulation of publishing, these include a continuing degree of state protectionism, the creation of a favourable investment climate, privatisation of the printing companies with the aim of modernising these, and the development of coordinated corporate policies.