Journal articles on the topic 'Army squadrons'

In the study, the Author presented the plans and the process of developing the cavalry of Polish military units- the Polish Army- in the period from November 1918 to the beginning of April 1919. In this context, he described the emergence and formation, and next the participation of the voluntary Radom Squadron, which was one of the voivodeship squadrons formed at that time in the former Kingdom of Poland, in the Polish Ukrainian war. Its history has been described until the moment of incorporation into the ranks of 11th Legions Uhlan Regiment.

Obok budowy zrębów administracji państwowej jednym z najważniejszych zadań stojących w końcu 1918 r. przed polskimi elitami było formowanie narodowych sił zbrojnych – Wojska Polskiego. Podobnie jak odrodzona Rzeczpospolita Polska powstawało ono niemal z niczego i początkowo wyłącznie w oparciu o ochotników, a także o majątek wojskowy pozostawiony przez zaborców oraz o zdobycze przejmowane na polu walki i ofiarność polskiego społeczeństwa, głównie ziemiaństwa. W tekście tym autor postanowił przedstawić więc dzieje formowanych wówczas w byłym Królestwie Polskim szwadronów wojewódzkich, głównie zaś jednego z nich, mianowicie Szwadronu Jazdy Ziemi Kaliskiej. Pokazał on proces jego tworzenia oraz proces przekształcania w szwadron regularnego 2 Pułku Ułanów. Calisian Cavalry Squadron. Contribution to the history of voivodeship squadrons formed in Poland between the end of 1918 and March 1919 Apart from building the foundations for state administration, one of the most important tasks of the Polish elite in late 1918 was the formation of national armed forces – the Polish Army. Just like the reborn Polish Commonwealth, it was created virtually from scratch and was at first based solely on volunteers, as well as the military resources left by the partitioners and the spoils of war captured on the battlefield, together with generosity of the Polish society, mostly landowners. In this paper, the author decided to present the history of voivodeship squadrons formed at that time in the former Kingdom of Poland, with special focus on one of them – the Calisian Cavalry Squadron. It shows the process of forming the unit, as well as the process of transforming it into the regular 2nd Ulan Regiment.

The revival of the Polish Army 1918–1921The Polish Army began to form before the resurrection of the Polish state. After Józef Piłsudski took over the highest positions in the state and army, the pace of organization in the Polish Army quickened. The Chief of State treated this issue as a priority. He believed the strength of the army to be a decisive factor in the real possibilities of the state, and in Polish conditions necessary to win the righteous and safe borders and defend the independent existence of the Republic of Poland. The inflow of new volunteers meant that at the end of 1918 the number was already around 100,000 soldiers. Until then, 39 infantry regiments, 17 regiments and 3 artillery regiments were successfully formed. In 1919, the intensive development of the Polish Army continued. It was a time of dynamic development of its strength, creation of great units — brigades and divisions, unification of organizational structures of sub-units, units and tactical units. There was also a consolidation of all Polish military formations within the armed forces, and the Polish Army was transformed into a regular army. The highest strength of the Polish Army was reached just after the end of the battle in the outskirts of Warsaw, on 1 September 1920, as it numbered 943,976 soldiers. At that time, its composition included, among others: 22 infantry divisions, 3 independent infantry brigades, 9 motorized brigades, 20 field artillery brigades, a mountain artillery brigade, 20 air squadrons.

Introduction. The article considers the development of military educational structures of the Russian military settlement organization at various stages of their activity. In the 1810s and 1850s, training battalions, squadrons, batteries, and combat reserve units trained children of Cantonese military settlers to serve in the army as Junior and non-commissioned officers. Specialized educational institutions taught topographers, builders, doctors, veterinarians, agronomists and other training specialists to serve in the settlement districts. Methods and materials. The author explores models of developing military educational institutions on the basis of materials of complexes of legislative, statistical and reporting documents applying methods of quantitative analysis (trend models, grouping method), comparative analysis using source-oriented, problem-oriented, and system-structural approaches. Analysis. All this made it possible to trace the evolution of government policy aimed at training army personnel and noncommissioned officers based on changing historical realities (the army’s needs for trained personnel, the reform of the military settlement organization), and the results of its implementation, as well as to show the numerical corps of graduates of training units of military settlements and its growth in time and space. Results. The main stages of the development of military educational structures of settlements and periods of their quantitative growth are also defined, which resulted in the multiplication of the number of graduates for the army service. The formation and expansion of the entire educational system of settlements was carried out as the need for special-profile personnel arose in the settled regiments. In the 1820s – 1850s, new special educational institutions were integrated into it, and primary education developed along a transformed vector.

The article deals with the issues of mobilization of human and material resources of Kazakhstan in wartime conditions. According to the revealed data, during the war years of 1941-1945, 24% of the population of the republic was mobilized for the defense of the USSR and the Labor Army. As the analysis of documents shows, the restructuring of the national economy for war conditions was carried out from July 1941 to July 1942. During this time, more than 1600 evacuated enterprises were located in the republic, 142 of them began to produce military products. The work of all people's commissariats, as well as the transport system, was rebuilt. Light industry provided the army with uniforms and warm clothing. 12 new mines were built and the subsoil of the Zhezkazgan region was developed. Kazakhstan during the war years gave the country more than 70% of polymetallic ores, 90% of lead and other strategic products. The article also discusses the mobilization of agricultural resources. In 1941-1942 the area under crops in the republic was expanded. In addition, the article shows the activities of public bodies to provide voluntary assistance to the front, to raise funds for the construction of tank columns, air squadrons and other equipment. In the course of the study, the authors came to the conclusion that during the war years all the resources of Kazakhstan were mobilized for the defense of the USSR. Out of 1 million 367 thousand, every second Kazakhstani who fought on the fronts of the war remained on the battlefields. 700 thousand Kazakhstanis worked in the labor army (200 thousand of them were Kazakhs). Most of them worked outside the republic.

The article deals with the issues of mobilization of human and material resources of Kazakhstan in wartime conditions. According to the revealed data, during the war years of 1941-1945, 24% of the population of the republic was mobilized for the defense of the USSR and the Labor Army. As the analysis of documents shows, the restructuring of the national economy forwar conditionswas carried out from July 1941 to July 1942. During this time, more than 1600 evacuated enterprises were located in the republic, 142 of them began to produce military products. The work of all people's commissariats, as well as the transport system, was rebuilt. Light industry provided the army with uniforms and warm clothing. 12 new mines were built and the subsoil of the Zhezkazgan region was developed. Kazakhstan during the war years gave the country more than 70% of polymetallic ores, 90% of lead and other strategic products.The article also discusses the mobilization of agricultural resources. In 1941-1942 the area under crops in the republic was expanded. In addition, the article shows the activities of public bodies to provide voluntary assistance to the front, to raise funds for the construction of tank columns, air squadrons and other equipment. In the course of the study, the authors came to the conclusion that during the war years all the resources of Kazakhstan were mobilized for the defense of the USSR. Out of 1 million 367 thousand, every second Kazakhstani who fought on the fronts of the war remained on the battlefields. 700 thousand Kazakhstanis worked in the labor army (200 thousand of them were Kazakhs). Most of them worked outside the republic.

In August 1920 the turning-point operations of the Polish-Soviet war took place. A battle was fought at the Wkra, Vistula and Wieprz rivers, which led to pushing back the Western Front troops of komandarm Mikhail Tukhachevsky from Warsaw and breaking up of part of his forces. The same month, in the southern section of the front, the Polish Army defended Lviv against the attempts of komandarms Alexander Yegorov and Semyon Budyonny. In the fights for Lviv, the Polish troops confronted the forces of the South-Western Front, including the legendary 1st Cavalry Army, which was the main force of the Bolsheviks intending to conquer the capital of Galicia. The Polish command, having no reserves at its disposal, directed the 3rd Air Squadron of Major Pilot Cedric Faunt le Roy to fight against the „Horsearmy”. Despite the strength of even four escadrilles at its peak (5th and 6th Reconnaissance Escadrilles, 7th Fighter Escadrille and, with time, 15th Fighter Escadrille), between 9–19 August it had in fact only a few operational planes. In spite of this, the Polish crews were tirelessly performing their tasks: reconnoitering enemy forces – their intentions and composition – and, most importantly, delaying their march. In this article the author describes the composition and tasks of the 3rd Air Squadron, and the course of its fights against the 1st Cavalry Army in August 9–19, 1920. He also drew attention to the combat tactics of Polish aviators, which he analyzed accordingly

On 6 July 1874, the government of Alexander II published an edict announcing the formation of a mounted Bashkir squadron in the Orenburgguberniia.The modest scale of the endeavor—a squadron-sized element added little to Russian military strength—belied its historic importance. The Bashkirs, in 1874, stood at a watershed in their long history of military service to Russia marking the divide between decades of irregular frontier duty and inclusion in the ranks of the regular army. The evolution of Bashkir military formations, paralleling the course of social change, offers a most instructive case in little-studied aspects of imperial policy towards subject national minorities and their employment in the armed forces in particular. A virtually forgotten component in Russia's rich military tradition, the contribution of “native” units organized among theinorodtsyof the Caucasus, the Crimea, and Asia was indeed significant.

We examined the effect of leader narcissism on the change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior of subordinates and the mediating role of leader–member exchange (LMX) in this relationship. We further proposed that perceived overall justice would moderate the relationship between leader narcissism and LMX. We used data from 158 pairs of squadron leaders and subordinates in 4 battalions of the Korean Army. Hierarchical regression analysis results confirmed the proposed effects and further revealed a stronger positive relationship between leader narcissism and LMX when perceived overall justice was high versus low. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

AbstractIn August 1815, Sir Philip Durham and Sir James Leith, with the help of the French Royalist Comte de Vaugiraud from Martinique, landed a body of troops on the island of Guadeloupe. After a skirmish, in which the British army lost 16 killed and about 50 wounded, the Comte Linois struck his flag and surrendered the island. Afterwards he was, along with his adjutant-general, conveyed to France under the terms of the articles of the capitulation treaty. The Commander in Chief of the Leeward Islands Squadron at that time, Admiral Sir Philip Durham KCB, and his Secretary, Surgeon John Forbes, played important roles in the recapture of the island.

Unpublished sources and archival material can still shed fresh light upon the history of the evacuation of the Serbian Army and civilian refugees from the Albanian coast in 1915-1916. Among them are reports to the British Admiralty written in 1915 and 1916 by the commander of the British Adriatic Squadron, Rear Admiral Cecil Fiennes Thursby. These documents deposited in the National Archives in Kew Gardens have never been used in reconstructing the evacuation operation. Written on an almost daily basis, Thursby?s reports of 1915 and 1916 constitute a unique source not only for the history of the evacuation of Serbs but also for the history of the South-East Europe in the Great War.

Forces responsible for internal security in Poland include the Police. However, shortly after regaining independence in 1918, the officers of the newly created State Police (Act of 24 July 1919) played an important role not only in ensuring internal security, but also in critical moments in defending the independence of their homeland. A mounted police squadron taking part in the defence of Warsaw in August 1920 provided the “Zegrze” group command with precise, reliable, and thus extremely valuable information about the enemy army movements. Thanks to the knowledge of the planned directions of attack, the military commanders were able to make appropriate decisions that would make it impossible for the Bolsheviks to achieve the assumed military goals.

The article is devoted to the participation of French pilots of the Normandy squadron in battles on the Soviet-German front as part of the Red Army in 1943-1945. After the defeat of France at the first stage of World War II (1940), the occupation of its territory by Germany and the organization of the Resistance movement “Fighting France” in London by General Charles de Gaulle, the pilots joined him expressed a burning desire to fight the enemy in the skies over Soviet soil. Their participation in the ranks of the Soviet Air Force was a unique event in the history of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union (1945-1945). The article analyzes the information of the Soviet press during the war years about the French squadron “Normandie-Niemen”, which fought in the Soviet Air Force on the Soviet-German front. It is shown that Soviet readers during the Great Patriotic War could get a very complete and reliable idea of the military exploits of French pilots, find out the names of heroes, get acquainted with the military everyday life of officers, appreciate their patriotism and sincere friendly feelings for the Soviet Union and its people. Along with stories about the air battles of the Normandy, the articles of Soviet correspondents contained information about the history of France, how the pilots reacted to the defeat of their country, how and where they fought in the first stage of the Second World War. The press of the war years gave brief sketches of the everyday life of French fighters on Soviet soil, about the curious events that happened to the pilots of the squadron. On the example of newspaper publications 1943-1945. about the military alliance of our and French pilots, you can get an idea of how the cooperation of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition developed and strengthened.

People’s Liberation Army Air Force Squadron Commander Fan Yuanyan flew his MiG-19 from Fujian Province, People’s Republic of China (prc) to the Republic of China (roc) on Taiwan on 7 July 1977. The timing of this defection, which came as u.s. President Jimmy Carter was moving decisively towards normalisation of relations with the prc, made Fan an anticommunist star. Fan spoke for years afterwards on behalf of the ‘800 million mainland compatriots’ who he felt wanted the roc to retake the mainland, even as he also became more critical of the excesses of capitalism and liberalism in Taiwan. Much of the Kuomintang’s propaganda use of Fan was related to ways in which Nationalist and Communist ideologies about authoritarian and antibourgeois values overlapped. Fan thus represents the ways in which Nationalist and Communist ideologies and societies were mutually constitutive and constructed with the other clearly in mind during the Cold War.

In the Ulster Museum’s new gallery The Troubles and Beyond, the central display showcases a Wheelbarrow bomb disposal robot. This machine was invented by the British Army in Northern Ireland in 1972 and used by officers of the 321 Explosive Ordinance Disposal Squadron (321EOD) to defuse car bombs planted by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). This article offers an alternative history of that machine – a dirtier history – that critically assesses its role during the Troubles. Centrally, the article contests the British Army’s preferred account of this machine as a ‘game-changing’ technological innovation in counterinsurgency, and their understanding of themselves as benign peacekeepers. Rather than figure the Wheelbarrow robot as an unreadable ‘black box’ used instrumentally by the superior human operators of 321EOD, this article seeks to foreground the unruly transfers of agency between the machine and its operators as they tested and experimented in the exceptional colonial laboratory of Northern Ireland. The article further explores the machine’s failures during bomb disposal episodes, the collateral damage that resulted, and the multiple and often unruly reactions of local populations who watched the Wheelbarrow robot at work. Providing a ‘dirty history’ of the Wheelbarrow robot is an effort to demonstrate that war can never be fully cleaned up, either through militarized mythologies of technological innovation or hopeful museum displays.

IntroductionMusculoskeletal injuries (MSKI) represent a significant burden within the British Army, this has been extensively studied amongst recruits. It was decided to study the injury rates of a Light Cavalry Squadron who have adopted an empowered physical training program involving personal responsibility for physical training with periodic benchmark exercises.MethodsAnonymised data were collected between April and August 2020 during an operational tour. The number of presentations to the medical centre for MSKI as well as the number of days of restricted duties were collected. The data relating to the same operational tour, exactly one year previously, for another Light Cavalry squadron were collected as a control. Both units were deployed in the same location, in the same role, and with the same population, fluctuating around 138 personnel.ResultsBetween April and August 2020 there were 124 consultations for MSKI amongst the study population, this resulted in 241 days of restricted duties. In comparison for the control population (April to August 2019), there were 225 consultations for MSKI, and this resulted in 777 days of restricted duties.ConclusionsIt was found that the current unit has experienced a lower incidence of MSKI and fewer restricted duties days when compared to the control group. It is proposed that the greater emphasis on personal responsibility for physical fitness has allowed personnel to develop their fitness with a broader range of physical activity. This has resulted in a lesser burden of overuse injuries. It is also thought that the focus on personal responsibility has led to a greater desire to engage in physical training. Further work is needed to ensure that this trend continues throughout the operational tour and that the empowered training programme has a comparable benefit in physical fitness to the standard training program.

Adam Gruca was born on 3 December 1893 in MajdanSieniawski. In 1902 he began his education in a 4-year primary school. Thanks to the support of his teacher, Helena Ostrowska, in 1906 he became a student in a Gym­nasium in Jarosław. On 16 June 1913 Adam Gruca passed his secondary school leaving exam and in autumn he started his studies at the Faculty of Medicine at John Casimir University in Lviv. His studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. On 1 July 1914, he was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army. After sixweeks’ training he was assigned to a hospital at the Merciful Brothers Monastery in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska. Subsequently, he worked for two years at the Field Hospital No. 2 in Andrychów, where he first started learning surgery. On 1 May 1916,Gruca was promoted to second lieutenant and was granted a three-month leave, during which he completed the 2nd year of his studies. In July 1917, he was transferred to the Italian front. Adam Gruca served in the Austrian army until 31 October 1918. On 6 November 1918 he volunteered to join the new Polish Armed Forces and was incorporated into the 2nd Squadron, 6th Cavalry Regiment. After one year of service in the Polish Armed Forces, he was transferred to Lviv, where he completed his 3rd year of studies. On 30 August 1920, he was assigned to the 34th Infantry Regiment. In 1921 he was promoted to captain and moved to the reserve. During the 5-year army service,the young student was able to gain practical knowledge and medical experience. On 24 June 1922, after nine years, he obtained a diploma in Medicine.

The article attempts to explain the role that Mexico played during World War II (1939-1945). The Mexican armed forces, in particular the 201st air squadron, were directly involved in the hostilities at the end of the armed conflict, which had more of a symbolic significance. Nevertheless, it is necessary to emphasize the contribution of the army of Mexican workers – the Braceros, as well as of the thousands of Mexicans who sacrificed their lives in the uniform of the United States armed forces. In the present review of literature and key historical sources relevant to the topic, the author talks about Mexican heroes, World War II soldiers and considers the armed participation of Mexico in the war in the general context of the national development of this country, which borders with the United States. For Mexico, participation in World War II was an important event in the framework of the Mexican “economic miracle”, the modernization of the national armed complex, and the construction of the new world order (Mexico was one of the founders of the United Nations, taking an active part in the conference of San Francisco).

In this paper, we present our approach to achieve autonomous walking over complex terrain on the quadrupedal robot, LLAMA. LLAMA is a prototype robot designed by NASA Jet Propulsion Lab as part of the Army Research Laboratory’s Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance. One of the major objectives of this robot is to be capable of traversing complex terrain autonomously to enable operating alongside a human squadron. This goal requires the robot to be capable of identifying practical footholds according to the environment, which may be sparse, and using these for walking. To accomplish this end, we first introduce two new contact planners. One is based on either desired body path plans; the other an A* graph-search based planner that find contacts over rough terrain given the environmental constraints. We then plan a dynamic trajectory using a custom Divergent Component of Motion planner, which is tracked using a whole-body inverse-dynamics control framework. We also introduce new methods for maintaining balance by adjusting step position and timing. We additionally discuss our approach for contact detection without the use of force sensors. We highlight the results in several experiments, both in our laboratory and at the RCTA Capstone Event at the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base. We conclude with a discussion of these results, specific implementation problems, and lessons learned when developing such a control architecture on a quadruped.

This article addresses the destiny of an ordinary man, Karel Bergman – a civilian who fought for the freedom of his nation. It seeks to describe the life of a man for whom entry into the Czechoslovak foreign armed forces was not easy, but who did his very best for his country. The article also commemorates the sad destiny of his family – as Karel Bergman was a Czechoslovak Jew. Karel Bergman was one of the 2 500 Czechoslovak airmen in the RAF. He was not a pilot or an air crew member; his duties were different; but men in his line of duty ought also to be remembered. Karel Bergman was born into a Jewish family in the small town of Trhová Kamenice in East Bohemia. After his studies he entered the family business and supported his local community, as did other Jewish families there. When the situation in Czechoslovakia became harder for Jewish people, he left his country for the United Kingdom. There he started his own business and employed refugee women. He was called up to the Czechoslovak army in exile, but his recruitment was postponed several times due to his work for refugees. When he entered the Czechoslovak army in exile, he took up his duties as interpreter and translator. He served as translator in the 312th Czechoslovak Fighter Squadron, for Fighter Command and other units. When World War II ended, he was demobilised and tried to engage in a normal life as the sole survivor from his family, his mother and sister and other members of his family having been murdered in Nazi concentration camps. Upon returning to his homeland, he met a friend of his cousin’s and married her. Later, because of the communist party takeover in Czechoslovakia, he left his homeland with his wife and stepdaughter for Canada. A job was offered to him in the United Kingdom, enabling him and his family to stay there. He later bought the company in which he worked. Karel Bergman died on 14 September 1983 at a UK airport, and his ashes were scattered at the Dřevíkov Jewish cemetery in Czechoslovakia.

В рамках статьи исследован вопрос развития военно-полицейских органов в России до 1917 г. Отмечено, что до формирования кадровых военно-полицейских частей уже с XVII в. законом предусматривались специальные воинские чины, на которых были возложены задачи по поддержанию правопорядка в армии на ранних этапах ее становления. Приведен пример полицейской службы Ингерманландского драгунского полка в годы Отечественной войны 1812 г., который стал прообразом кадровой военно-полицейской части. Рассмотрены организация службы, функции, полномочия, этапы формирования и законодательные акты, регламентирующие деятельность военно-полицейских частей. Раскрыта краткая история гвардейского жандармского полуэскадрона, приведены примеры выполнения военной полицией возложенных задач. Произведены обобщение, структурирование задач и функций, возложенных на военную полицию в годы Первой мировой войны. Сделан вывод, что создание в составе армии кадровых военно-полицейских частей стало одним из этапов и логическим продолжением генезиса военно-полицейских органов в России. Проведен сравнительный анализ деятельности военно-полицейских органов в различное время, при этом отмечено, что задачи и функции военной полиции с течением времени оставались в основном неизменными. Within the framework of the article, the issue of the military-police bodies development in Russia from 1815 to 1917 is investigated. It is noted that before the formation of cadre military-police units, already from the 17th century, the law provided for special military ranks, who were entrusted with the tasks of maintaining law and order in the army at the early stages of its formation. An example is given of the police service of the Ingermanland Dragoon Regiment during the Patriotic War of 1812, which became the prototype of the regular military-police unit. The organization of the service, functions, powers, stages of formation and legislative acts regulating the activities of military-police units are considered. A brief history of the Guards gendarme half-squadron is revealed, examples of the military police performing the assigned tasks are given. The generalization, structuring of the tasks and functions assigned to the military police during the First World War are made. It is concluded that the creation of personnel military-police units within the army was one of the stages and a logical continuation of the genesis of military-police bodies in Russia. A comparative analysis of the activities of military-police bodies at different times is carried out, while it is noted that the tasks and functions of the military police have remained largely unchanged over time.

Of all types of military and naval activity, combined operations have had a particular fascination for public and politicians in the English-speaking world. In England, from Drake's raid on Cadiz in 1587 through to actions initiated by Sir Roger Keyes' Combined Operations Head Quarters in 1940, this mode of warfare has offered the romantic and morale-boosting spectacle of a beleaguered nation striking back at a powerful and threatening adversary. To politicians and administrators such operations seemed to present tantalizingly rich results at little cost. From the early part of the sixteenth century, France and Spain were largely immune from decisiveEnglish military action on the continent, but seemed extremely vulnerable on their seaboards and, as their overseas empires grew, in their colonies. A naval squadron with a small seaborne army could inflict damage upon the economy and prestige of these powers out of all proportion to the forces employed. Even when France was able to continue the fight after major colonial defeats, as she did between 1761 and 1763 and after 1809, England was at least enriched by the profits from her seizures. The belief that the navy could be relied upon to defend Britainand carry the war to the enemy received significant support from the great school of naval historians that developed between 1870 and 1914.1 Their works, supplemented by popular histories, and enlisted unsuccessfully by the royal navy in its attempt to resist a reorientation of British strategy between 1905 and 1911, added great weight to the conviction that British strategy traditionally lay in the application of sea power, of which combinedoperations was a major element. Assisted by newsreel and film, the spectacular developments in the power and technology of combined operations since 1941 have ensured continued public interest in this mode of warfare.

The article describes the part of the Russian State Military History Archive (RGVIA) fonds, which contains documents related to the maintenance of aircrafts, engines, aircraft weapons, apparatus, radio stations, and photographic equipment of the Russian Air Force Fleet (VVF) in 1910-17; they testify of the emergence of the maintenance department. As the forming department had no management bodies, its documents deposited in the RGVIA do not form a compact fond, they are found in a large array of fonds, some of which have no relation to aviation. In the modern scholarship on the history of Russian military aviation, there is a lack of the RGVIA reference materials on location of documents on the history of maintenance of the Russian Air Force Fleet. The article is to provide researchers with a detailed tool for searching documents on the history of maintenance in the archival fonds. The author relies on his knowledge of historical development of the Russian Air Force Fleet, his long-term research experience in the RGVIA, and on reference publications on the archive fonds. Having analyzed the RGVIA fonds, he shows what kind of documents on the history of the VVF maintenance can be found there. Features of various fonds and volume of documents on the history of maintenance in them are being described. It has been identified in which fonds the guidelines and instructions for the aircrafts maintenance are stored, as well as reports on technical condition of aircrafts, armament, and equipment in the squadrons, materials on aircraft radio equipment usage, reports on inspection of technical condition of aircrafts in the units, documents on accidents and disasters. The article reviews fonds of various organizations engaged in operation and repair of the aviation equipment, of management bodies of the armed forces, of integrated combined arms force, and of military aviation. The analysis will help the historians of the Russian Air Force to navigate numerous RGVIA fonds and to speed up their search of documents.

The article is devoted to the well-known serial edition “Soldatskaya Biblioteka” [Soldiers’ Library] of V.A. Berezovsky, the commission agent of the Ministry of Defence, private publisher and bookseller of military literature. Since 1888, most of the works were published and republished under the title “Reading for Soldiers and People” and from 1894 to 1915 — “Soldiers’ Library”. The purpose of this large publishing project of V.A. Berezovsky was to promote intellectual and spiritual moral development and self-education of the lower military ranks. By 1915, twenty-five serial sets of “Soldiers’ library” — twenty stories in each — were published. Separate sets and works were repeatedly republished. The aim of the study is to show the noticeable role of cheap illustrated “military and moral” books in the acquisition of libraries for the lower ranks and company book collections of military educational institutions. The author collected the data about all serial sets and runs of “Soldiers’ Library” by 1915, its acquisition and distribution. The article presents the analysis of the authors and the content of the library, its presence in military and civil book collections.Commercial entrepreneurial spirit, common sense and taste of V. Berezovsky himself, the appropriate choice of authors and their works, low prices, design, accessibility and accuracy of the publications were of great importance in gaining the great popularity of the “Soldiers’ Library”. Its active advertising campaign, conducted through the official structures of the military and other Departments, as well as through the printed publications owned by V. Berezovsky, contributed to its promotion to soldiers-readers. Therefore, some of the works from the “Soldiers’ Library” were purposfully admitted for acquisition of book collections of lower schools, free folk libraries and reading rooms and were recommended for home reading for cadets of primary schools.The results of study demonstrate that the “Soldiers’ Library” was available in the catalogues of book collections for lower ranks, in company schools, in battalion, squadron, crew, battery and regimental educational teams of military units and military schools. The experience of edition of “Soldiers’ Library” was popular in the years of Soviet power: it was used in the series “Library of Red Army Soldier”, “Popular Scientific Library of Soldier” and “Bibliotechka of the ‘Sovetsky Voin’ magazine” [Library of the “Soviet Soldier” Magazine].

Many historians believe that Russia became a great power either as a result of the Poltava victory in 1709, or after the Nystadt Peace of 1721. It is difficult to agree with this. Peter the Great’s rule indeed produced a combat-ready regular army, a guard, an officer corps, a navy with shipyards, military bases, and coastal artillery. There was an upsurge in the metallurgical industry and mining. Schools with high-quality military and secular education, the Academy of Sciences, the Senate, and the Synod were established. St. Petersburg was founded. Talented and enterprising individuals were promoted to military, diplomatic and administrative posts. The main factor in the rise of the state was military modernization. The main geopolitical achievement of Peter I was the conquest of full access to the Baltic Sea. However, a limited resource base, military and diplomatic defeats and setbacks did not allow Russia to rise to the rank of a great power. The disasters of Narva in 1700 and on the Prut River in 1711 were painful. Russia lost access to the Sea of Azov, the city of Azov, city of Taganrog, the Azov squadron, shipyards and shipbuilding in the Voronezh Territory were lost. The damage from three treatises with the Ottomans in 1711-1713 was great. Russia has lost all of Zaporozhye. The demarcation of the borders of 1714 threw Russia back several hundred kilometers from the Black Sea region. In 1719, the Russian military force was squeezed out of Central Europe – from Mecklenburg. The sphere of influence of Russia after the victorious Peace of Nystad in 1721 was established only in Northern and Eastern Europe – in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Swedish and Danish-Norwegian kingdom, partly in Prussia. The tsar had no claims to hegemony in Europe and no claims to join the circle of the then great powers. Russia was not a great power like the Habsburg monarchy, France, Great Britain, and the Eurasian-African Ottoman Empire. Russia could not compare with the great powers of that time neither in terms of economic (industrial, financial) power, nor in terms of the intensity of expansionism. The entry of the Russian Empire into the system of international relations as one of the five great powers – France, Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia – occurred during the Seven Years War of 1756-1763. Another rise to great power took place during the reign of Catherine II. The apogee of greatness and the culmination of Russia's influence on European affairs was the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815.

Robert Hanbury Brown was born on 31 August 1916 in Aruvankadu, Nilgiri Hills, South India; he was the son of an Officer in the Indian Army, Col. Basil Hanbury Brown, and of Joyce Blaker. From the age of 3 years Hanbury was educated in England, initially at a School in Bexhill and then from the ages of 8 to 14 years at the Cottesmore Preparatory School in Hove, Sussex. In 1930 he entered Tonbridge School as a Judde scholar in classics. Hanbury's interests turned to science and technology, particularly electrical engineering, and after two years he decided that he would seek more appropriate education in a technical college. His decision was accelerated by the fact that after the divorce of his parents his mother had married Jack Lloyd, a wealthy stockbroker, who in 1932 vanished with all his money and thus Hanbury felt he should seek a career that would lead to his financial independence. For these reasons Hanbury decided to take an engineering course at Brighton Technical College studying for an external degree in the University of London. At the age of 19 he graduated with a first-class honours BSc, taking advanced electrical engineering and telegraphy and telephony. He then obtained a grant from East Sussex and in 1935 joined the postgraduate department at the City & Guilds, Imperial College. In 1936 he obtained the Diploma of Imperial College (DIC) for a thesis on oscillators He intended to continue his course for a PhD but a major turning point in his career occurred when he was interviewed during his first postgraduate year by Sir Henry Tizard FRS, Rector of Imperial College. Hanbury explained to Tizard that he was following up some original work by Van der Pol on oscillator circuits without inductance and hoped, ultimately, to combine an interest in radio with flying. In fact, Tizard had already challenged him about the amount of time he spent flying with the University of London Air Squadron. Tizard told Hanbury to see him again in a year's time and that he might then have a job for him. In fact, within three months Tizard accosted Hanbury and said he had an interesting research project in the Air Ministry for him. After an interview by R.A. (later Sir Robert) Watson-Watt (FRS 1941), Hanbury was offered a post at the Radio Research Board in Slough. His visit to Slough was brief; he was soon told to report to Bawdsey Manor in Suffolk, which he did on 15 August 1936. Thereby, unaware of what Tizard had in mind for him, Hanbury's career as one of the pioneers of radar began.

The author of the article investigates the merits and remuneration of employees of the regional and city depatments of the NKGB-MSS in the Ternopil region in the 1945-1948 on the basis of a considerable circle of historical sources and monographs. The author identifies the main type of remuneration for NKGB-MSS employees - gratitude announcement. The author of the article indicates the main type of remuneration for NKGB-MSS employees - the announcement of gratitude, and the main merit was the successful participation in the chekist-military operation. It was considered successful if it resulted in the killing or detention of a person or a group of people involved in a particular case. Often during such operations, various trophies were taken, such as assault rifles, guns, pistols, machine guns, grenades and ammunition. However, internal documentation of the OUN or UPA was of the greatest operational value, since the documents served as the basis for the development of new operational cases. The author notes that NKGB-MSS security officers, their families, and agents received compensation. To substantiate this thesis, the author provides two examples. After the death of a security official, the family of the deceased received a lump sum compensation of 3,000 rubles. A security agent received 2,000 rubles for the reconstruction of the house and manor buildings because during the chekist-military operation, the rebels hid in her house and set it on fire, and not only the house but also the manor buildings. The author allocates arms and money as a reward to separate unit. The author emphasizes the receipt of the prize weapon for two reasons: firstly, as a rare event, and secondly, as irresponsible act of the state security officers, since the TT combat weapon was presented to a minor schoolboy who had joined the military unit. The author of the article emphasizes that most of the cash prize was received only by fighters of fighter battalions, recruited agents and cadets of militant squadron. They earned cash prizes for successfully conducted chekist-military operations.The author of the article also notes the amount of cash prizes was from 250 to 500 rubles. The amount of remuneration often varied depending on the rank and significance of each individual operation.

This paper takes a comprehensive look at the current state of army aviation attack helicopter squadrons of the Polish Armed Forces. The aim of the article is to present a concept for the functioning of the attack reconnaissance squadrons of the Polish Armed Forces, which takes into account the identified requirements of the Land Forces of the Polish Armed Forces in relation to army aviation on the battlefield and the current limitations in the functioning of the attack helicopter squadrons of the Polish Armed Forces. To meet this aim, qualitative research included interviewing, observation and the collection and qualitative analysis of texts and documents. The study revealed that it is necessary to organise attack-reconnaissance squadrons with a modular organisational structure including: a headquarters, a command company, three attack-reconnaissance companies, an aviation maintenance company and a supply company, capable of conducting autonomous operations in independent directions (areas). The squadrons should be equipped with new attack-reconnaissance helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles as well as equipment for their technical and logistical support that will be part of their individual subunits. The results of the research are the basis for further, in-depth research on the issue of improving the functioning of attack helicopter squadrons, so that they are fully capable of supporting the land forces of the Polish Armed Forces in large scale combat operations.

The port city Liepaja had gained recognition in Europe and the world by World War I. On the coast of the Baltic Sea a resort developed, to which around 1880 a wide promenade – Kurhaus Avenue provided a functional link between the finance and trade centre in Old Liepaja. On November 8, 1890 the building conditions for Liepaja, developed according to the sample of Riga building regulations, were partly confirmed: the construction territory was divided into districts of wooden and stone buildings. In 1888 after the reconstruction of the trade canal Liepaja became the third most significant port in the Russian Empire. The railway (engineer Gavriil Semikolenov; 1879) and metal bridges (engineers Huten and Ruktesel; 1881) across the trade canal provided the link between Old Liepaja and the industrial territory in New Liepaja, where industrial companies and building of houses developed in the neighbourhood of the railway hub, but in spring 1899 the construction of a ten-kilometre long street electric railway line and power station was commenced. Since September 25 the tram movement provided a regular traffic between Naval Port (Latvian: Karosta), the residential and industrial districts in New Liepaja and the city centre in Old Liepaja. In 1907 the construction of the ambitious “Emperor Alexander’s III Military Port” and maritime fortress was completed, but already in the following year the fortress was closed. In the new military port there were based not only the navy squadrons of the Baltic Sea, but also the Pacific Ocean before sending them off in the war against Japan. The development of Liepaja continued: promenades, surrounded by Dutch linden trees, joined squares and parks in one united plantation system. On September 20, 1910 Liepaja City Council made a decision to close the New Market and start modernization of the city centre. In 1911 Liepaja obtained its symbol – the Rose Square. In the independent Republic of Latvia the implementation of the agrarian reform was started and the task to provide inhabitants with flats was set. Around 1927 in the Technical Department of Liepaja City the development of the master-plan was started: the territory of the city was divided into the industrial, commercial, residential and resort zone, which was greened. It was planned to lengthen Lord’s (Latvian: Kungu) Street with a dam, partly filling up Lake Liepaja in order to build the water-main and provide traffic with the eastern bank. The passed “Law of City Lands” and “Regulations for City Construction and Development of Construction Plans and Development Procedure” in Latvia Republic in 1928 promoted a gradual development of cities. In 1932 Liepaja received the radio transmitter. On the northern outskirts a sugar factory was built (architect Kārlis Bikše; 1933). The construction of the city centre was supplemented with the Latvian Society House (architect Kārlis Blauss and Valdis Zebauers; 1934-1935) and Army Economical Shop (architect Aleksandrs Racenis), as well as the building of a pawnshop and saving bank (architect Valdis Zebauers; 1936-1937). The hotel “Pēterpils”, which became the property of the municipality in 1936, was renamed as the “City Hotel” and it was rebuilt in 1938. In New Liepaja the Friendly Appeal Elementary school was built (architect Karlis Bikše), but in the Naval Officers Meeting House was restored and it was adapted for the needs of the Red Cross Bone Tuberculosis Sanatorium (architect Aleksandrs Klinklāvs; 1930-1939). The Soviet military power was restored in Latvia and it was included in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. During the World War II buildings in the city centre around the Rose Square and Great (Latvian: Lielā) Street were razed. When the war finished, the “Building Complex Scheme for 1946-1950” was developed for Liepaja. In August 1950 the city was announced as closed: the trade port was adapted to military needs. Neglecting the historical planning of the city, in 1952 the restoration of the city centre building was started, applying standard projects. The restoration of Liepaja City centre building carried out during the post-war period has not been studied. Research goal: analyse restoration proposals for Liepaja City centre building, destroyed during World War II, and the conception appropriate to the socialism ideology and further development of construction.

At the beginning of the 19th century, caught within the ring of the massive walls of the fortress, Timişoara town had been hardly defining its new profile. From 21 military buildings, 20 were situated in the inner side of the fortress. In 1807 this town and its church represented the target of the orations of one young bricklayer who had arrived from Arad: he was also asking for a house in this settlement. e story turned real: for four decades the builder had built princely houses, administrative palaces, barracks, hospitals, churches and record houses throughout the historical Banat. His name had become well-known in the villages and towns of this region. Anton Schmidt – a former pupil of Franz Pumberger, a builder of fortifications in Aradul Nou – had more unacknowledged projects before becoming a significant member of the guild in Timişoara. At the time of his first marriage, with Anna Frantz in 1809, the documents mention him as a simply “Murar”. He participated, for the first time in 1818, in a contest promoted for the construction of an inn named “At the Queen of England,” in the suburb of the Fabric district. Scheduled with halls for dancing and playing billiards, the building had to offer several rooms for travelers too. e edifice, designed from a symmetrical viewpoint, with a central risalit on its façade, and its fronton sustained by four columns with Ionic capitals, which tower a terrace at the first floor level, the exterior of the ground floor decorated “in rustica,” had not been approved by the management board of the town. In 1834 Anton Schmidt signed onto the project of a Communal eatre, a building which was supposed to be raised within the inner side of the walls. Its façade re-engaged the clearer and more balanced elements of the unachieved inn. He proposed a new edifice, with some modern stage equipment, an easy access (separate entrance for the artists and public), a comfortable ground floor and dress circles on the floor for the onlookers, and ball rooms for the high life public too. Yet, because of low financial resourses, this project had not been finalized either. In the meantime, the tireless architect also designed other important and utilitarian buildings: a factory and a wine storehouse (Pesac village), a treatment resort (Băile Buziaş), and manor houses (in Herneacova, Sângeorgiu, Beodra/Serbia). He constructed an impressive number of barracks for the army in the fortress of Timişoara or in the region, he designed and built the Town-Hall (currently the Town Museum) and the Hospital in Pančevo (Serbia), a new one storried barracks in Timişoara (1836), he added some more floors at the Catholic Seminar and executed some repairs at the St. George Church. He traveled to Austria and Hungary and returned with the cathedral project from Eger (Hungary, made by József Hild). In 1841 he proposed the construction of a church for the believers from Călacea, several plans for Catholic (with 300 or 500 people) and Orthodox churches, in 1835 he signed a plan for the Evangelic Lutheran Church in Timişoara. e documents in 1836 mention him as an outstanding member of the society in Timişoara: “Muratorium Magister et Selecta Civica.~ Com~unitatis Membrum”. Getting married, for the second time in 1823, to Anna, the sister of senator Franciscus Mayer, he succeeded in founding a happy family. He was the first builder who had influenced the architecture in Timişoara through his activity. His buildings, most of them scheduled on three levels (wine cellars, ground floors and one upper floor), were characterized by balance, reason and few classical ornaments (columns with Ionic or composite capitals, pilasters, gates marking the axle of the building developed symmetrically on the horizontal level). e more important edifices benefited by one more floor and an attic mounted on classically symbolic sculptures. Only a few of creations have been preserved. e greatest part of the buildings meant to the army (e Genista Barrack, e New Engineers’ Barrack etc.) was demolished when the town was brought up to date. e one-storried castle from Elemir was sold as construction material. We have no information related to the manor house in Banatsko Aranđelovo (Serbia) nor to the Barracks of the Cavalry Squadron in Sânnicolaul Mic (today part of Arad). In Timişoara, in the old historical centre, there is only the imposing building of a business man, Franciscus Xaverius Strohmayer, watching the town out of its numerous windows. He retired in 1851 with a considerable fortune visiting Italy twice. He remained a consultant regarding the important buildings of the town: he elaborated the development plans of the Old Prefecture Palace, he modified his own house in the Iozefin Suburb, sold to the Gendarme Station (1857), he designed for his relatives, he drew and dreamt of ideal familial residencies. Some of these, incomplete drawings and projects, were deposited to the museum in 1908, certifying the fact that... the beseech of the young builder had been finally accomplished.

Culture is a mercurial concept -- volatile, contested, and somehow, less than the sum of its parts. Its anthropology, it can be argued, was rooted in an exoticising scholarship typical of the late 19th-century colonialist ruminations on all things "other"; in contemporary terms of course, this exoticising tendency would be termed, as it should, "Orientalist". Still, there is something more than merely residual in the persistence of a notion of culture as a summary, as a package of knowledge and practice, as a name for identity, or even politics, all of which draw clearly from the well of Edward B. Tylor's bold attempt to terminologically and conceptually capture "the most complex whole", a people's entire way of life (albeit non-white, non-literate, non-western people) from what we can trust were the considerable comforts of his armchair. This Tylorean notion of culture, as Clifford Geertz once suggested, leads to a "conceptual morass" that "obscures a great deal more than it reveals" (4). Another definitional foundation of culture for consideration is the philosophical tradition of German Idealism. Culture as a process of aesthetic education was for Friedrich Schiller a means of progressing from a state of nature to a state of reason without the destruction of nature. Schiller offered a critique of Kant's account of the development of reason (the achievement of the state of rationality as key to the education and progress of humanity) as necessarily predicated on the containment and ultimately, the destruction of nature (against the chaos and moral abyss that is nature). Schiller argued for the capacity of art to infuse nature with morality, to serve as an intermediary of sorts, between chaotic nature and the structures of pure reason. It is the cultivation of moral character -- Bildung -- that is the foundation of this capacity, and that defines the nature and purpose of "culture" as a process of aesthetic education. There were two influential trajectories that seem inspired by this philosophical source. First, there was an important sense from the German Idealists that culture was a determining principle of nation (the nation-state is achieved through Bildung, through cultivation), and accordingly, culture was understood as the source of nationhood. Second, culture took on the sense of moral authority, an Arnoldian equation of culture with high culture and a concomitant mistrust of all things democratic and popular, which debase and ultimately threaten the authority of high culture. Raymond Williams's reinterpretation of culture merits attention because of its departure from previous traditions of defining culture, and because it is a useful foundation for the view of culture proposed later in this discussion. Williams offered a detailed historical analysis of the reasons for the under-theorisation of the British labour movement, and the glaring dislocation of the English proletariat from the ideas, the concepts, the political theory of capitalism. Actual working classes in Britain, the "lived culture" of workers, fit neither into broad political theoretical currents, nor into an examination of workers as elements in a historical process -- this lived culture defied the embrace of political analysis. Williams argued for a more anthropological view of culture, and decisively shifted the concept away from the British literary-cultural tradition, away from Arnold's "high culture", to a view of culture as a whole way of life, and open to the vision and the possibilities of social integration, popular classes, and popular struggles in ordinary, everyday life. Williams argued compellingly for the "ordinariness" of culture. As Bill Readings notes, "Williams's insistence that culture is ordinary was a refusal to ignore the actual working classes in favor of the liberated proletarians who were to be their successors after the revolution" (92). In this sense, culture confounds political theory -- or to stretch the point, culture confounds systematic theorising. In a similar vein, and in a classic of anthropological inquiry, Clifford Geertz argued that the analysis of culture was "not an experimental science in search of law, but an interpretive one in search of meaning" (4). Such an "interpretive" project demands above all, that that the analyst is also a participant in a dimension of the culture she/he is describing. I want to consider two of Geertz's assertions in his interpretive theory of culture to frame my proposal for a concept of culture-as-action. Geertz maintained that cultural analysis is guesswork rather than systematic theorising, which he regarded as a manipulation or reconstruction of reality through analytical practices in search of elegant schemata. Cultural analysis is "guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better guesses, not discovering the Continent of Meaning and mapping out its bodiless landscape" (20). Clearly, Geertz trained his critical sights on anthropological trends to extrapolate from material data singularly coherent, even symmetrical systems, orders, properties, and universals in a method that wants to imitate, but is not science. Interpretation resists scientism. In a second assertion, Geertz argued that any sustained symbolic action -- the stuff of culture -- is "saying something of something" (448-53). While this assertion appears disarmingly simple, it is profound in its implications. It points to the possibility that cultural analysis, if it is to grasp and interpret layered, textured, and often thoroughly complex significations, must attend to "semantics" rather than "mechanics"; the representation of the substance of culture, its symbolic expressive forms and its unfolding action, rather than the insinuation, or even the bold declaration of systems and formulas, however elegant, of cultural patterns and process. The concern in interpretation -- a form of representation -- is that "a good interpretation of anything -- a poem, a person, a history, a ritual, an institution, a society -- takes us into the heart of that of which it is the interpretation" (18). To describe culture is to attend to action -- actual and resonant -- and such descriptions representations have responsibility; specifically, they must seek to grasp and portray social discourse and its possible meanings in ways that allow symbolic action -- the vocabulary of culture -- to speak on its own behalf. We arrived back in Lahore after a day's journey by jeep over the bone-dry and dusty roads of rural Punjab. The air was a toxic soup, and the heat was crushing, as it always is in Pakistan in monsoon season. The interior of the vehicle was an oven, and I was feeling sealed and cooked, even with all the windows open. My friend and driver, Ashicksahib and I were soaked with sweat from the journey, and we were eager to finally get out of the jeep as we pulled into the city in the late afternoon. I had been through a half dozen bottles of water, but I still felt dizzy with dehydration. I knew that this day was the celebration of Mohammed's birthday, and while I expected many people on the streets, I was unprepared for the magnitude of the event that was taking place. The crowds consumed us. We crawled along until we couldn't continue. The jeep had to stop as the sea of celebrants became denser and denser inside the city, and Ashicksahib shrugged his massive shoulders, smiled at me from under his thick white moustache, wiped his neck with a sodden cloth, and said in Urdu, "That's it, we cannot move, there's nowhere for us to go. We must be patient." I had never seen this much humanity gathered in a single place before. There were only boys and men of course, thousands and thousands of them moving along in joyous procession -- on foot, piled on platforms of flatbed trucks, stuffed into rickshaws, two or three sharing scooters and bicycles. The usual animal multitudes -- herds of water buffalo, goats, some camels, the ubiquitous miserable and thread- bare donkeys with their carts -- all stood passively in the midst of the chaos, too exhausted or too confused to register any instinctive response. Blasting loudspeakers competed from a hundred different directions, chants and patriotic music, prayers and devotional declarations, the staccato delivery of fundamentalist pedagogy and the improvised reveries of individuals with small bullhorns. The soft drink vendors shouted to the crowds to make way as they spun their carts around over and over again, and darted off into fray. I brought out my camera, and because the noise was deafening, I mimed to Ashicksahib my intention to take some photos from the roof of the jeep. He motioned with an affirmative sweep of his hand and the typical and essential south Asian head roll, and I pried open the door and squeezed out against the celebrants pressed up to the side of the jeep. I hoisted myself onto the roof and sat cross-legged to steady myself for some wide- angle shots of the celebrations. I had some concern over my obviousness -- white and western -- but everyone who saw me shouted greetings in Urdu or Punjabi, waved and smiled, and young boys ran up very close to the jeep to see what I was up to. I heard Ashicksahib laughing, and all seemed safe -- until the squadrons of Sunni fundamentalists caught sight of me as their trucks crawled by in a formation that seemed remarkably disciplined and militaristic in the direct contrast to the emotionalism and formlessness of the event. Like the wave in a sports stadium, the young men stood up one by one on the back of the trucks, their green turbans cut into the indefinite wash of a grey, polluted sky, their eyes searching until they fixed on me, now exposed and vulnerable on the roof of the jeep. And quickly they leapt from their trucks like a SWAT team responding crisply to a crisis, precise and efficient, jaws clenched, cocked for action. I saw them first through the lens of my camera, and uttered an expletive or two appropriate to the situation. I knew I was in trouble, and clearly, I had nowhere to go. The turbans formed a green ribbon winding through the mass. As they approached, the eyes of the militants were trained on me with the focus of a predator about to take down its prey. I slipped back into the jeep through the window, and motioned for Ashicksahib to look over the crowd and see the slow and steady movement of the green turbans toward us. His smile vanished instantly, and he readied himself for confrontation. When the first militant reached the jeep's window, Ashicksahib's entire body was taut and urgent, like a finger twitching on the trigger of a pistol. "American! American! No photo! No photo!" The leader of the group shouted at me in English and began to bang the side of the jeep. Ten or twelve young men, eyes flaring under their turbans, screamed at me and joined in the assault on the jeep. Ashicksahib had waited for a particular moment, it occurred to me later, a certain point in the rising arc of tension and emotion. He opened his door, but did not leave the jeep. Instead he stood on the step on the driver's side, half in and half out, slowly unfurled his considerable frame to its full height, and began his verbal assault. He stood on his perch above the action and in a play of passions, he shouted his opponents into submission. There were a few physical sorties by the militants, attempts to kick the door of the jeep into Ashicksahib, but these were displays, and Ashicksahib kicked back only once. And suddenly they wavered, an erosion of spirit evidenced in their eyes, a bending to the force roaring above them. They gave up their attempts to grab my camera, to gain entry to the jeep, and with a swift gesture of his hand, the leader called his small army into retreat. This same festival that mobilised great masses of people in celebration, that enacted the inextricableness of nationalist and Pakistani Muslim commitment and identity, that on the surface appeared to articulate and demonstrate a collective belief and purpose, also dramatised conflictive divisions and the diverse interpretations of what it means to be a Pakistani, a Muslim, a Punjabi, an Indus person, a Lahori, a poor person, a person of means, and numerous other identities at stake. As an obvious westerner in the midst of the event, I was variously ignored, warmly greeted as a friendly foreigner, or accosted as an unwelcome interloper, each interaction unfolding within a broader and deeper passionate ritual which for some meant play and celebration, and for others meant a serious and forceful demonstration of affiliation, faith, and nationalism. I had been working in both village and urban contexts on issues and strategies around communication/education and advocacy with South Asia Partnership-Pakistan, a non-government organisation based in Lahore that was engaged in front-line work for social change. The organisation was driven by the pursuit of the principles of civil society, and on a daily basis, it contended with the brutal contradictions to those principles. Its work was carried out against a bulwark of poverty and fundamentalism that seemed impenetrable, and this moment of imminent confrontation resonated with the complex historical, cultural, and political dynamics of identity, religion, nationalism, colonialism, and a seething cauldron of south Asian geopolitics. As Paulo Freire argued that world views are manifested in actions that offer insight into broader and prevailing social and political conditions, so Geertz maintained that societies "contain their own interpretations". This was not essentialism -- there were none of the conceits or romanticism of essentialist readings of the commonplace as encapsulated social and political axioms. Rather, these views were a call for analytical honesty, a participatory and political dimension to cultural analysis that works to gain some access to these "interpretations" by encountering and apprehending culture in forms of action. Cultural analysis becomes a kind of trial-by-fire, a description from a viewpoint of participatory engagement. By "participatory", I mean everything that the bloodlessness and obfuscation of so much of Cultural Studies is not -- an actual stake in action and consequence in a real world of politics. The interpretation of culture is valuable when it attends to action rather than theoretical insinuation; to cultural volatility and contingency, and the broad determinants of social discourse rather than schemata and structure as critical ends. Interpretation has a participatory dimension -- an involvement, an engagement with culture described and interpreted -- which eschews the privilege of theory unimpeded by empirical evidence. References Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Harmondsworth. Penguin, 1972. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Readings, Bill. The University in Ruins. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996. Schiller, Friedrich. Notes on the Aesthetic Education of Man. Trans. E.M. Wilkinson and L.A. Willoughby. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. Tylor, Edward B. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Customes. 2 vol. New York: Henry Holt, 1877. Williams, Raymond. "Culture is Ordinary". Resources of Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism. Ed. Robin Gable. London: Verso, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Martin Laba. "Culture as Action." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.2 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api- network.com/mc/0005/action.php>. Chicago style: Martin Laba, "Culture as Action," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 2 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/action.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Martin Laba. (2000) Culture as action. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(2). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/action.php> ([your date of access]).

I remember the first time I saw a dead body. I spawned just before dawn; around me engines were clattering into life, the dim silhouettes of tanks beginning to move out in a steady grinding rumble. I could dimly make out a few other people, the anonymity of their shadowy outlines belied by the names hanging over their heads in a comforting blue. Suddenly, a stream of tracers arced across the sky; explosions sounded nearby, then closer still; a tank ahead of me stopped, turned sluggishly, and fired off a couple of rounds, rocking slightly against the recoil. The radio was filled with talk of Germans in the town, but I couldn’t even see the town. I ran toward what looked like the shattered hulk of a building and dived into what I hoped was a doorway. It was already occupied by another Tommy and together we waited for it to get lighter, listening to the rattle of machine guns, the sharp ping as shells ricocheted off steel, the sickening, indescribable, but immediately recognisable sound when they didn’t. Eventually, the other soldier moved out, but I waited for the sun to peek over the nearby hills. Once I was able to see where I was going, I made straight for the command post on the edge of town, and came across a group of allied soldiers standing in a circle. In the centre of the circle lay a dead German soldier, face up. “Well I’ll be damned,” I said aloud; no one else said anything, and the body abruptly faded. I remember the first time I killed someone. I had barely got the Spit V up to 4000 feet when out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of something below me. I dropped the left wing and saw a Stuka making a bee-line for the base. I made a hash of the turn, almost stalling, but he obviously had no idea I was there. I saddled-up on his six, dropping down low to avoid fire from his gunner, and opened up on him. I must have hit him at perfect convergence because he disintegrated, pieces of dismembered airframe raining down on the field below. I circled the field, putting all my concentration into making the landing that would make the kill count, then switched off the engine and sat in the cockpit for a moment, heart pounding. As you can tell, I’ve been in the wars lately. The first example is drawn from the launch of Cornered Rat Software’s WWII Online: Blitzkrieg (2001) while the second is based on a short stint playing Warbirds 3 (2002). Both games are examples of one of the most interesting recent developments in computer and video gaming: the increasing popularity and range of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs); other notable examples of historical combat simulation MMOGs include HiTech Creations Aces High (2002) and Jaleco Entertainment’s Fighter Ace 3.5 (2002). For a variety of technical reasons, most popular multiplayer games—particularly first-person shooter (FPS) games such as Doom, Quake, and more recently Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (2002) and Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001)—are played on player-organised servers that are usually limited to 32 or fewer players; terrain maps are small and rotated every couple of hours on average. MMOGs, by contrast, feature anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of players hosted on a handful of company-run servers. The shared virtual geography of these worlds is huge, extending across tens of thousands of square miles; these worlds are also persistent in that they respond dynamically to the actions of players and continue to do so while individual players are offline. As my opening anecdotes demonstrate, the experience of dealing and receiving virtual death is central to massively multiplayer simulations as it is to so many forms of computer games. Yet for an experience is that is so ubiquitous in computer games (and, some would say, even constitutes their experiential core) death is under-theorised. Mainstream culture tends to see computer and console game mayhem according to a rigid desensitisation argument: the experience of repeatedly killing other players online leads to a gradual erosion of the individual moral sense which makes players more likely to countenance killing people in the real world. Nowhere was this argument more in evidence that in the wake of the murder of fifteen students by Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 1999. The discovery that the two boys were enthusiastic players of Id Software’s Doom and Quake resulted in an avalanche of hysterical news stories that charged computer games with a number of evils: eroding kids’ ability to distinguish fantasy from reality, encouraging them to imitate the actions represented in the games, and immuring them to the real-world consequences of violence. These claims were hardly new, and had in fact been directed at any number of violent popular entertainment genres over the years. What was new was the claim that the interactive nature of FPS games rendered them a form of simulated weapons training. What was also striking about the discourse surrounding the Littleton shooting was just how little the journalists covering the story knew about computer, console and arcade games. Nevertheless, their approach to the issue encouraged readers to see games as having real life analogs. Media discussion of the event also reinforced the notion of a connection with military training techniques, making extensive use of Lt. Col. (ret) David Grossman, a former Army ranger and psychologist who led the charge in claiming that games were “mass-murder simulators” (Gittrich, AA06). This controversy over the role of violent computer games in the Columbine murders is part of a larger cultural discourse that adopts the logical fallacy characteristic of moral panics: coincidence equals causation. Yet the impoverished discussion of online death and destruction is also due in no small measure to an entrenched hostility toward popular entertainment as a whole, a hostility that is evident even in the work of some academic critics who study popular culture. Andrew Darley, for example, argues that, never has the flattening of meaning or depth in the traditional aesthetic sense of these words been so pronounced as in the action-simulation genres of the computer game: here, aesthetic experience is tied directly to the purely sensational and allied to tests of physical dexterity (143). In this view, the repeated experience of death is merely a part of the overall texture of a form characterised not so much by narrative as by compulsive repetition. More generally, computer games are seen by many critics as the pernicious, paradigmatic instance of the colonisation of individual consciousness by cultural spectacle. According to this Frankfurt school-influenced critique (most frequently associated with the work of Guy Debord), spectacle serves both to mystify and pacify its audience: The more the technology opens up narrative possibilities, the less there is for the audience to do. [. . .]. When the spectacle conceals the practice of the artists who create it, it [announces]…itself as an expression of a universe beyond human volition and effort (Filewood 24). In supposedly sapping its audience’s critical faculties by bombarding them with a technological assault whose only purpose is to instantiate a deterministic worldview, spectacle is seen by its critics as exemplifying the work of capitalist ideology which teaches people not to question the world around them by establishing, in Althusser’s famous phrase, an “imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of their existence” (162). The desensitisation thesis is thus part of a larger discourse that considers computer games paradoxically to be both escapist and as having real-world effects. With regard to online death, neo-Marxism meets neo-Freudianism: players are seen as hooked on the thrill not only of destroying others but also of self-destruction. Death is thus considered the terminus of all narrative possibility, and the participation of individuals in fantasy-death and mayhem is seen to lead inevitably to several kinds of cultural death: the death of “family values,” the death of community, the death of individual responsibility, and—given the characterisation of FPS games in particular as lacking in plot and characterisation—the death of storytelling. However, it is less productive to approach computer, arcade and console games as vehicles for force-feeding content with pre-determined cultural effects than it is to understand them as venues within and around which players stage a variety of theatrical performances. Thus even the bêtes noire of the mainstream media, first-person shooters, serve as vehicles for a variety of interactions ranging from the design of new sounds, graphics and levels, new “skins” for player characters, the formation of “tribes” or “clans” that fight and socialise together, and the creation of elaborate fan fictions. This idea that narrative does not simply “happen” within the immediate experience of playing the game, but is in fact produced by a dynamic interplay of interactions for which the game serves as a focus, also suggests a very different way of looking at the role of death online. Far from being the logical endpoint, the inevitable terminus of all narrative possibility, death becomes the indispensable starting point for narrative. In single-player games, for example, the existence of the simple “save game” function—differing from simply putting the game board to one side in that the save function allows the preservation of the game world in multiple temporal states—generates much of the narrative and dramatic range of computer games. Generally a player saves the game because he or she is facing an obstacle that may result in death; saving the game at that point allows the player to investigate alternatives. Thus, the ever-present possibility of death in the game world becomes the origin of all narratives based on forward investigation. In multiplayer and MMOG environments, where the players have no control over the save game state, it is nevertheless the possibility of a mode of forward projection that gives the experience its dramatic intensity. Flight simulation games in particular are notoriously difficult to master; the experience of serial death, therefore, becomes the necessary condition for honing your flying skills, trying out different tactics in a variety of combat situations, trying similar tactics in different aircraft, and so on. The experience of online death creates a powerful narrative impulse, and not only in those situations where death is serialised and guaranteed. A sizable proportion of the flight sim communities of both Warbirds and Aces High participate in specially designed scenario events that replicate a specific historical air combat event (the Battle of Britain, the Coral Sea, USAAF bomber operations in Europe, etc.) as closely as possible. What makes these scenarios so compelling for many players is that they are generally “one life” events: once the player is dead, they are out for the rest of the event and this creates an intense experience that is completely unlike flying in the everyday free-for-all arenas. The desensitisation thesis notwithstanding, there is little evidence that this narrative investment in death produces a more casual attitude toward real-life death amongst MMOG players. For example, when real-world death intrudes, simulation players often reach for the same rituals of comfort and acknowledgement that are employed offline. Recently, when an Aces High player died unexpectedly of heart failure at the age of 35, his squadron held an elaborate memorial event in his honor. Over a hundred players bailed out over an aerodrome—bailing out is the only way that a player in Aces High can acquire a virtual human body—and lined the edges of the runway as members of the dead player’s squad flew the missing man formation overhead (GrimmCAF). The insistence upon bodily presence in the context of a classic military ceremony marking irrecoverable absence suggests the way in which the connections between real and virtual worlds are experienced by players: as tensions, but also as points where identities are negotiated. This example does not seem to indicate that everyday familiarity with virtual death has dulled the players’ sensibilities to the sorrow and loss accompanying death in the real world. I began this article talking about death in simulation MMOGs for a number of reasons. In the first place, MMOGs are more commonly identified with their role-playing examples (MMORPGs) such as Ultima Online and Everquest, games that focus on virtual community-building and exploration in addition to violence and conquest. By contrast, simulation games tend to be seen as having more in common with first-person shooters like Quake, in the way in which they foreground the experience of serial death. Secondly, it is precisely the connection between simulation and death that makes games in general (as I demonstrated in relation to the media coverage of the Columbine murders) so problematic. In response, I would argue that one of the most interesting aspects of computer games recently has been the degree to which generic distinctions have been breaking down. MMORPGs, which had their roots in the Dungeons and Dragons gaming world, and the text-based world of MUDs and MOOs have since developed sophisticated third-person and even first-person representational styles to facilitate both peaceful character interactions and combat. Likewise, first-person shooters have begun to add role-playing elements (see, for example, Looking Glass Studios’ superb System Shock 2 (1999) or Lucasarts' Jedi Knight series). This trend has also been incorporated into simulation MMOGs: World War II Online includes a rudimentary set of character-tracking features, and Aces High has just announced a more ambitious expansion whose major focus will be the incorporation of role-playing elements. I feel that MMOGs in particular are all evolving towards a state that I would describe as “simulance:” simulations that, while they may be associated with a nominal representational reality, are increasingly about exploring the narrative possibilities, the mechanisms of theatrical engagement for self and community of simulation itself. Increasingly, none of the terms "simulation,” "role-playing" or indeed “game” quite captures the texture of these evolving experiences. In their complex engagement with both scripted and extemporaneous narrative, the players have more in common with period re-enactors; the immersive power of a well-designed flight simulator scenario produces a feeling in players akin to the “period rush” experienced by battlefield re-enactors, the frisson between awareness of playing a role and surrendering completely to the momentary power of its illusory reality. What troubles critics about simulations (and what also blinds them to the narrative complexity in other forms of computer games) is that they are indeed not simply examples of re-enactment —a re-staging of supposedly real events—but a generative form of narrative enactment. Computer games, particularly large-scale online games, provide a powerful set of theatrical tools with which players and player communities can help shape narratives and deepen their own narrative investment. Obviously, they are not isolated from real-world cultural factors that shape and constrain narrative possibility. However, we are starting to see the way in which the games use the idea of virtual death as the generative force for new storytelling frameworks based, in Filewood’s terms, on forward investigation. As games begin to move out of their incunabular state, they may contribute to the re-shaping of culture and consciousness, as other narrative platforms have done. Far from causing the downfall of civilisation, game-based narratives may bring with them a greater cultural awareness of simultaneous narrative possibility, of the past as sets of contingent phenomena, and a greater attention to practical, hands-on experimental problem-solving. It would be ironic, but no great surprise, if a form built around the creative possibilities inherent in serial death in fact made us more attentive to the rich alternative possibilities of living. Works Cited Aces High. HiTech Creations, 2002. http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Toward an Investigation).” Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. By Louis Althusser, trans. Ben Brewster. New York, 1971. 127-86. Barry, Ellen. “Games Feared as Youths’ Basic Training; Industry, Valued as Aid to Soldiers, on Defensive.” The Boston Globe 29 Apr 1999: A1. LexisNexis. Feb. 7, 2003. Cornered Rat Software. World War II Online: Blitzkrieg. Strategy First, 2001. http://www.wwiionline.com/ Darley, Andrew. Visual Digital Culture: Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres. London: Routledge, 2000. Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone Books, 1994. 1967. Der Derian, James. “The Simulation Syndrome: From War Games to Game Wars.” Social Text 8.2 (1990): 187-92. Filewood, Alan. “C:\Games\Dramaturgy: The Cybertheatre of Computer Games.” Canadian Theatre Review 81 (Winter 1994): 24-28. Gittrich, Greg. “Expert Differs with Kids over Video Game Effects.” The Denver Post 27 Apr 1999: AA-06. LexisNexis. Feb. 7 2003. GrimmCAF. “MojoCAF’s Memorial Flight.” Aces High BB, 13 Dec. 2002. http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/sh... IEntertainment Network. Warbirds III. Simon and Schuster Interactive, 2002.http://www.totalsims.com/index.php?url=w... Jenkins, Henry, comp. “Voices from the Combat Zone: Game Grrlz Talk Back.” From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Ed. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT P, 1998. 328-41. Lieberman, Joseph I. “The Social Impact of Music Violence.” Statement Before the Governmental Affairs Committee Subcommittee on Oversight, 1997. http://www.senate.gov/member/ct/lieberma... Feb. 7 2003. Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. New York: Free, 1997. Poole, Steven. Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2000. Pyro. “AH2 FAQ.” Aces High BB, 29 Jan. 2003. Internet. http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/sh... Feb. 8 2003. Links http://www.wwiionline.com/ http://www.idsoftware.com/games/doom/ http://www.hitechcreations.com/ http://www.totalsims.com/index.php?url=wbiii/content_home.php http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;threadid=77265 http://www.senate.gov/member/ct/lieberman/releases/r110697c.html http://www.idsoftware.com/games/wolfenstein http://www.idsoftware.com/games/quake/ http://www.ea.com/eagames/official/moh_alliedassault/home.jsp http://www.jaleco.com/fighterace/index.html http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;threadid=72560 Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Mullen, Mark. "It Was Not Death for I Stood Up…and Fragged the Dumb-Ass MoFo Who'd Wasted Me" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 6.1 (2003). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/03-itwasnotdeath.php>. APA Style Mullen, M., (2003, Feb 26). It Was Not Death for I Stood Up…and Fragged the Dumb-Ass MoFo Who'd Wasted Me. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,(1). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/03-itwasnotdeath.html