Hasil untuk "History of Eastern Europe"

Dunja Radojević

Ima­ju­ći u vi­du sa­zna­nje da u isto­rij­skim izvo­ri­ma ra­zli­či­te provenijenci­je po­sto­je sve­do­čan­stva, ma­da po­ma­lo spo­ra­dič­na, o ve­za­ma istak­nu­tog srp­skog na­uč­ni­ka Jo­va­na Cvi­ji­ća s ru­skim na­uč­ni­ci­ma, umet­ni­ci­ma i slo­ve­no­fi­li­ma, ovim smo ra­dom na­sto­ja­li da uka­že­mo na po­tre­bu nji­ho­vog ce­lo­vi­ti­jeg pro­u­ča­va­nja. Isto­vre­me­no, po­u­zda­nost po­je­di­nih izvo­ra omo­gu­ći­la je da sa­gle­da­mo te­me ko­je se pri­tom otva­ra­ju, kao i da do­ne­se­mo pr­ve za­ključ­ke. U is­tra­ži­vač­kom smi­slu, kao jed­no od po­seb­no in­tri­gant­nih pi­ta­nja na­met­nu­lo se krat­ko­traj­no, ali ne i ne­va­žno, po­znan­stvo Jo­va­na Cvi­ji­ća i Mak­si­ma Gor­kog, po­go­to­vo s ob­zi­rom na sa­dr­ži­nu raz­go­vo­ra ko­ji su vo­di­li, a ko­ji se, iz­me­đu osta­log, ti­cao su­štin­skih nacional­nih ka­rak­te­ri­sti­ka Sr­ba i Ru­sa.

Dragoljub Mandić

Cilj ra­da je da pri­ka­že ulo­gu Bo­ri­sla­va Pe­ki­ća to­kom pr­vih go­di­na više­stra­nač­kog si­ste­ma ko­ji je u Sr­bi­ji ob­no­vljen 1990. go­di­ne. Kao ugled­ni knji­žev­nik i kritički in­te­lek­tu­a­lac, Pe­kić se pred kraj ži­vo­ta ak­tiv­no ba­vio po­li­ti­kom, po­stav­ši je­dan od osniva­ča i pot­pred­sed­nik De­mo­krat­ske stran­ke, a po­tom i je­dan od glav­nih ini­ci­ja­to­ra osni­va­nja De­mo­krat­ske stran­ke Sr­bi­je i De­mo­krat­skog po­kre­ta Sr­bi­je, pr­ve ve­li­ke ko­a­li­ci­je pro­tiv re­ži­ma Slo­bo­da­na Mi­lo­še­vi­ća. Na osno­vu re­le­vant­ne na­uč­ne li­te­ra­tu­re i izvo­ra, pre sve­ga pi­šče­ve zaostav­šti­ne, sve­do­čan­sta­va sa­vre­me­ni­ka, dnev­ne i stra­nač­ke štam­pe, u ra­du će­mo po­ku­ša­ti da pri­ka­že­mo po­li­tič­ke ak­tiv­no­sti i sta­vo­ve Bo­ri­sla­va Pe­ki­ća u na­ve­de­nom pe­ri­o­du.

Catherine Mary MacRobert

This paper argues that the classical reconstructive critical edition is not methodologically well suited to the textual tradition of the Church Slavonic Psalter, which has been subject to repeated linguistic revision and correction against its Greek original.  It reviews alternative possibilities, such as critical reconstruction of specific redactions or variorum editions which locate a particular copy or redaction within the wider context of related versions, and suggests instances in which these approaches have been or could be usefully be deployed.

Бейсенов, А.З., Паничкин, А.В., Мусырманкул, П.Б.

В статье впервые публикуются результаты металлографического исследования железного кинжала иссыкского типа, происходящего из Жетысу. Кинжал датируется периодом второй половины VI — первой половины V в. до н.э. Общая длина изделия, поверхность которого подвергнута сильной коррозии, 309 мм. По сечению рукояти изменение твёрдости по шкале Виккерса находится в пределах от 88 до 178 HV10. Проведённые анализы показали, что кинжализготовлен кричным методом. Использованный при его изготовлении режим термической обработки позволил получить низкоуглеродистую сталь.

Xiyue Zhu, Peng Tang, Haofu Liao et al.

Language models have led to a leap forward in web automation. The current web automation approaches take the current web state, history actions, and language instruction as inputs to predict the next action, overlooking the importance of history states. However, the highly verbose nature of web page states can result in long input sequences and sparse information, hampering the effective utilization of history states. In this paper, we propose a novel web history compressor approach to turbocharge web automation using history states. Our approach employs a history compressor module that distills the most task-relevant information from each history state into a fixed-length short representation, mitigating the challenges posed by the highly verbose history states. Experiments are conducted on the Mind2Web and WebLINX datasets to evaluate the effectiveness of our approach. Results show that our approach obtains 1.2-5.4% absolute accuracy improvements compared to the baseline approach without history inputs.

Wendong Yao, Saeed Azadnejad, Binhua Huang et al.

Monitoring ground displacement is crucial for urban infrastructure stability and mitigating geological hazards. However, forecasting future deformation from sparse Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) time-series data remains a significant challenge. This paper introduces a novel deep learning framework that transforms these sparse point measurements into a dense spatio-temporal tensor. This methodological shift allows, for the first time, the direct application of advanced computer vision architectures to this forecasting problem. We design and implement a hybrid Convolutional Neural Network and Long-Short Term Memory (CNN-LSTM) model, specifically engineered to simultaneously learn spatial patterns and temporal dependencies from the generated data tensor. The model's performance is benchmarked against powerful machine learning baselines, Light Gradient Boosting Machine and LASSO regression, using Sentinel-1 data from eastern Ireland. Results demonstrate that the proposed architecture provides significantly more accurate and spatially coherent forecasts, establishing a new performance benchmark for this task. Furthermore, an interpretability analysis reveals that baseline models often default to simplistic persistence patterns, highlighting the necessity of our integrated spatio-temporal approach to capture the complex dynamics of ground deformation. Our findings confirm the efficacy and potential of spatio-temporal deep learning for high-resolution deformation forecasting.

Arvydas Gelžinis

The topic of the article is the release and return of deportees and political prisoners to Lithuania. As the Soviet regime was modifying itself, it abandoned mass repressions as of 1953 and authorised a large part of the deportees to return home. According to the available information, in 1953–1958 over 40,000 people returned to Lithuania from exile and imprisonment. The release of political prisoners within the context of USSR’s repression is clearer. The release of a political prisoner could happen in three scenarios: (i) after serving the full sentence, (ii) prematurely, i.e. after serving 2/3 of the sentence, or (iii) after serving a fixed period in exile following the sentence at the labour camp, which was usually 5 years. The specific period of deportation was not fixed, the Soviet perpetrators used the term ‘na viečno’ (for eternity, forever). As a result, the communist authorities and repressive structures had to take various decisions to release the deportees: they had to adopt many orders and resolutions, and the fate of each family had to be decided by the commissions for the review of deportees’ cases. Therefore, in light of these complex procedures, the article focuses more on the release of the deportees. This paper examines the cooperation between the Lithuanian Communist Party and the repressive structures in their attempts to ensure a gradual return of deportees and political prisoners, as the return of the repressed was raising great concern for the Soviet authorities. Such concerns mainly resulted from the fact that some of the repressed were entitled to restitution of confiscated property (often no longer available), while there was a potential threat that a sudden or massive return of these people would incite the anti–Soviet sentiment in Lithuania. Research into the activities of the commissions for the review of deportees’ cases was based on archival documents. Both statistical data and deliberations of the fate of individual families by the commissions are presented in this paper. The analysis of the sources demonstrates a significant change as of 1956 triggered by several driving factors: the growing number of repressed returnees, the news of the 1956 Hungarian anti-Soviet uprising reaching Lithuania, and anti-Soviet demonstrations in Kaunas and Vilnius during the 1956 All Souls’ Day. Sensing danger the Lithuanian communist authorities took some precautionary measures. In January 1957, a decree banned the return to Lithuania of prominent Lithuanian statesmen, leaders of the armed resistance and anti–Soviet underground. At the same time, the returned deportees and political prisoners were ‘under supervision’ by strengthening the repressive apparatus of the LSSR’s KGB, by preventing the returnees from registering, from getting a job, and by prohibiting them from returning to their hometowns. In this way, the communist authorities achieved their goal: some of the returnees, unable to settle, went to Latvia, the Kaliningrad region, or even back to Siberia, where they had a guaranteed employment. In this way, the Lithuanian communist government tried to create a ‘critical mass’ of the Lithuanian population which it could lead towards a ‘bright communist future’.

Iryna GRABOVSKA, Serhiy HRABOVSKY

Анотація. Проблематика, пов’язана з геополітичною суб’єктністю, була і залишається однією з основних для філософії історії. При цьому вона не може бути зведена до суто теоретичних міркувань, відірваних від реальних подій. Автори статті на знакових прикладах останніх десятиліть показують, якою непростою стає така проблематика, коли виникають ситуації «втрати суб’єктності» формуваннями збройних сил певних традиційних геополітичних суб’єктів. А разом із тим –  як таку суб’єктність виявляють українці, на яких ніхто не зважав. Але несподівані для зовнішніх спостерігачів дії українців – не випадковість, вони зумовлені попередньою історією, тож не «взялися нізвідки». Таким чином, щоб краще розуміти сьогодення, слід звернутися до історії. Історична частина цієї статті присвячена перетворенню латентної геополітичної суб’єктності України на суб’єктність актуальну, що яскраво було засвідчено активною та самостійною участю складених з українців військових формувань у скиненні царського режиму в Росії (березень 1917 року), що мало колосальний вплив на ситуацію у світі. Автори відстежують ключові сюжети та моменти змін на українських теренах наприкінці ХІХ – у перших декадах ХХ століття, передусім змін в інтелектуальному середовищі та політично активних колах. Але водночас, як і в переважній більшості колоній, далеко не все населення України становило українську націю, навіть більша частина етнічних українців перебувала у невизначеному стані. Перша світова війна та революція в Російській імперії істотно пришвидшили консолідацію національної суб’єктності, але не зробили її достатньо міцною та внутрішньо структурованою. Висновок, зроблений авторами статті, полягає, по-перше, в необхідності враховувати факт наявності тривалого процесу перетворення латентної геополітичної суб’єктності України на актуальну суб’єктність, по-друге, у тому, що суб’єктність України навряд чи вписується у рамки стандартної дихотомії «латентна-актуальна» і потребує розробки складнішого понятійно-категоріального апарату для своєї характеристики.

Tim Buchen

When the Habsburg monarchy lost its grip over the former Crownland of Galicia, sponta-neously organised committees moderated the shift of power from Austria-Hungary to the future Polish state. In four districts incentral Galicia however, Polish peasants sought to establish a new order that would primarily serve their economic and political interests. For a couple of months, the idea of a peasant republic challenged the central state. This republic was named afterthe town Tarnobrzeg, where every Wednesday thousands of peasants as-sembled to articulate their vision of a post-war order. This article explains the context of violence and social unrest in which the Republika Tarnobrzeska emerged, analysises how a priest and a former Habsburg officer became leaders of this peasant vision of democracy and self-determination. It also sheds light on the economic conflicts, societal ruptures and cultural clashes that the revolution of 1918 brought to the fore.

Arno Simons

This paper explores the potential of contextualized word embeddings (CWEs) as a new tool in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science (HPSS) for studying contextual and evolving meanings of scientific concepts. Using the term "Planck" as a test case, I evaluate five BERT-based models with varying degrees of domain-specific pretraining, including my custom model Astro-HEP-BERT, trained on the Astro-HEP Corpus, a dataset containing 21.84 million paragraphs from 600,000 articles in astrophysics and high-energy physics. For this analysis, I compiled two labeled datasets: (1) the Astro-HEP-Planck Corpus, consisting of 2,900 labeled occurrences of "Planck" sampled from 1,500 paragraphs in the Astro-HEP Corpus, and (2) a physics-related Wikipedia dataset comprising 1,186 labeled occurrences of "Planck" across 885 paragraphs. Results demonstrate that the domain-adapted models outperform the general-purpose ones in disambiguating the target term, predicting its known meanings, and generating high-quality sense clusters, as measured by a novel purity indicator I developed. Additionally, this approach reveals semantic shifts in the target term over three decades in the unlabeled Astro-HEP Corpus, highlighting the emergence of the Planck space mission as a dominant sense. The study underscores the importance of domain-specific pretraining for analyzing scientific language and demonstrates the cost-effectiveness of adapting pretrained models for HPSS research. By offering a scalable and transferable method for modeling the meanings of scientific concepts, CWEs open up new avenues for investigating the socio-historical dynamics of scientific discourses.

Khadija Khatun, Chen Shen, Jun Tanimoto et al.

Understanding how cooperation emerges in public goods games is crucial for addressing societal challenges. While optional participation can establish cooperation without identifying cooperators, it relies on specific assumptions -- that individuals abstain and receive a non-negative payoff, or that non-participants cause damage to public goods -- which limits our understanding of its broader role. We generalize this mechanism by considering non-participants' payoffs and their potential direct influence on public goods, allowing us to examine how various strategic motives for non-participation affect cooperation. Using replicator dynamics, we find that cooperation thrives only when non-participants are motivated by individualistic or prosocial values, with individualistic motivations yielding optimal cooperation. These findings are robust to mutation, which slightly enlarges the region where cooperation can be maintained through cyclic dominance among strategies. Our results suggest that while optional participation can benefit cooperation, its effectiveness is limited and highlights the limitations of bottom-up schemes in supporting public goods.

Alexander Mozdzen, Felicity Addo, Tamas Krisztin et al.

The global climate has underscored the need for effective policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from all sources, including those resulting from agricultural expansion, which is regulated by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) across the European Union (EU). To assess the effectiveness of these mitigation policies, statistical methods must account for the heterogeneous impact of policies across different countries. We propose a Bayesian approach that combines the multinomial logit model, which is suitable for compositional land-use data, with a Bayesian nonparametric (BNP) prior to cluster regions with similar policy impacts. To simultaneously control for other relevant factors, we distinguish between cluster-specific and global covariates, coining this approach the Bayesian nonparametric partial clustering model. We develop a novel and efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm, leveraging recent advances in the Bayesian literature. Using economic, geographic, and subsidy-related data from 22 EU member states, we examine the effectiveness of policies influencing land-use decisions across Europe and highlight the diversity of the problem. Our results indicate that the impact of CAP varies widely across the EU, emphasizing the need for subsidies to be tailored to optimize their effectiveness.

Ulyana Piterbarg, Lerrel Pinto, Rob Fergus

Neural Language Models (LMs) offer an exciting solution for general-purpose embodied control. However, a key technical issue arises when using an LM-based controller: environment observations must be converted to text, which coupled with history, results in long and verbose textual prompts. As a result, prior work in LM agents is limited to restricted domains with small observation size as well as minimal needs for interaction history or instruction tuning. In this paper, we introduce diff history, a simple and highly effective solution to these issues. By applying the Unix diff command on consecutive text observations in the interaction histories used to prompt LM policies, we can both abstract away redundant information and focus the content of textual inputs on the salient changes in the environment. On NetHack, an unsolved video game that requires long-horizon reasoning for decision-making, LMs tuned with diff history match state-of-the-art performance for neural agents while needing 1800x fewer training examples compared to prior work. Even on the simpler BabyAI-Text environment with concise text observations, we find that although diff history increases the length of prompts, the representation it provides offers a 25% improvement in the efficiency of low-sample instruction tuning. Further, we show that diff history scales favorably across different tuning dataset sizes. We open-source our code and data to https://diffhistory.github.io.

Alexis Boulin, Elena Di Bernardino, Thomas Laloë et al.

The task of simplifying the complex spatio-temporal variables associated with climate modeling is of utmost importance and comes with significant challenges. In this research, our primary objective is to tailor clustering techniques to handle compound extreme events within gridded climate data across Europe. Specifically, we intend to identify subregions that display asymptotic independence concerning compound precipitation and wind speed extremes. To achieve this, we utilise daily precipitation sums and daily maximum wind speed data derived from the ERA5 reanalysis dataset spanning from 1979 to 2022. Our approach hinges on a tuning parameter and the application of a divergence measure to spotlight disparities in extremal dependence structures without relying on specific parametric assumptions. We propose a data-driven approach to determine the tuning parameter. This enables us to generate clusters that are spatially concentrated, which can provide more insightful information about the regional distribution of compound precipitation and wind speed extremes. In the process, we aim to elucidate the respective roles of extreme precipitation and wind speed in the resulting clusters. The proposed method is able to extract valuable information about extreme compound events while also significantly reducing the size of the dataset within reasonable computational timeframes.

Martin Lopez-Corredoira

Since the beginning of the 20th century, a continuous evolution and perfection of what we today call the standard cosmological model has been produced, although some authors like to distinguish separate periods within this evolution. A possible historical division of the development of cosmology into six periods is: (1) the initial period (1917-1927); (2) the period of development (1927-1945); (3) the period of consolidation (1945-1965); (4) the period of acceptance (1965-1980); (5) the period of enlargement (1980-1998); and (6) the period of high-precision experimental cosmology (1998-now). The last period started with a epistemological optimism that has declined with time, and the expression "crisis in cosmology" is now stubbornly reverberating in the media. The initial expectation of removing the pending minor problems arising from the increased accuracy of measurements has backfired: the higher the precision with which the standard model tries to fit the data, the greater the number of tensions that arise, the problems proliferating rather than diminishing.

Tamara Kutsaieva

У статті визначено актуальність продовження дослідження колекції «Книжкові пам’ятки з екслібрисами, маргіналіями та інскриптами з ім’ям Ф. К. Вовка» з бібліотечного фонду Національного музею історії України як джерелознавчої бази з етнології, етнографії, краєзнавства, народознавства та українознавства. Охарактеризовано об’єкт дослідження – висліди Федора Вовка 1880-х років, які він провадив під час вимушеної політичної еміграції в Румунії щодо українства Добруджі – історико-географічного краю між нижньою течією Дунаю і центральною частиною Балканських гір, що знаходиться на території Болгарії та Румунії. Дослідження проведено за методом de visu на основі двох основних джерел – книжкових пам’яток, якими є монографія «Задунайская Сечь (по местным воспоминаниям и расcказам)» (1883) та стаття «Українське рибальство в Добруджі» (1899). На основі актуальності дискусії визначено її міждисциплінарний характер та завдання для вивчення, які поєднали як українознавчі, так і книгознавчі студії. Узагальнено, що можливо змістовно, хоча і на основі дуже вузького переліку досліджень інших, окрім Ф. Вовка, вчених, ілюструвати минувшину українства Добруджі в певній багатоманітності його історії та традицій. Зроблено спостереження, що Ф. Вовк не тільки присвятив майже 10 років наукової творчості пошуку, збиранню та збереженню фрагментів історичної пам’яті своїх співвітчизників за кордоном України, а й спочатку поставив за мету віднайти сліди військових (адміністративних) центрів запорізького козацтва, а надалі вивчити його пам’ять про батьківщину, спосіб життя та традиції в новому складному локальному географічному, суспільному та політичному контексті. Окреслено перспективи теми стосовно того, що книгознавці, історики та українознавці продовжують місію створення «Пам’яткового відділу проф. Хв. Вовка», започатковану в 1920-х роках його сподвижниками та брутально перервану репресіями.

Michele Vespe, Stefano Maria Iacus, Carlos Santamaria et al.

The rapid spread of COVID-19 infections on a global level has highlighted the need for accurate, transparent and timely information regarding collective mobility patterns to inform de-escalation strategies as well as to provide forecasting capacity for re-escalation policies aiming at addressing further waves of the virus. Such information can be extracted using aggregate anonymised data from innovative sources such as mobile positioning data. This paper presents lessons learnt and results of a unique Business-to-Government (B2G) initiative between several Mobile Network Operators in Europe and the European Commission. Mobile positioning data have supported policy makers and practitioners with evidence and data-driven knowledge to understand and predict the spread of the disease, the effectiveness of the containment measures, their socio-economic impacts while feeding scenarios at EU scale and in a comparable way across countries. The challenges of this data sharing initiative are not limited to data quality, harmonisation, and comparability across countries, however important they are. Equally essential aspects that need to be addressed from the onset are related to data privacy, security, fundamental rights and commercial sensitivity.

Audronė Veilentienė

After occupying Lithuania, the Soviet Union first arrested and imprisoned members of the Lithuanian government and later other government operatives. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Juozas Urbsys spent 13 years in prisons in Tambov, Saratov, Moscow, Kirov, Gorky, Ivanov, Vladimir, and spent 11 of those years in solitary confinement. After Stalin’s death, the cases of political prisoners were reviewed. In 1954, J. Urbsys and Mrs. M. Urbsys were released from prison, and returned to their homeland in 1956. Urbsys had to live on a pension of 50 rubles and translations from the French language, which were commissioned by the Fiction Publishing House. After returning from prisons and The Gulag, former Lithuanian state figures, including J. Urbsys, were monitored by KGB agents, and they were subjected to various sanctions to compel the service of Soviet propaganda and to denigrate the achievements of an independent Lithuania. The historically in this issue is extremely limited – the testimony of J. Urbsys, about the confiscation of Klaipeda from Lithuania in the trial organized by the Berlin High ranking Hitlerite Officer Hans Globke, was the main focus. The main source of the investigation is the first time in Lithuanian history of the use of J. Urbsys’ records of visits by KGB employees and journalists carrying out their tasks, and publishing staff. The former minister wrote in calendars and notebooks information on the visits and suggestions of such visitors. Chronology of inscriptions were from 1960 to 1978. The chronological gaps in events were filled in with the memories of the people who knew Mr Urbsys. • Urbsys was in the KGB spotlight throughout the soviet occupation. After returning from prison, living in very poor conditions, J. Urbsys under the pressure of the KGB, was forced to write articles slandering independent Lithuania and exalting the life of Soviet Lithuania. Initially, KGB staff applied direct pressure, visiting Mr Urbsys’ house or inviting him to come to the KGB palace. KGB staff suggested that J. Urbsys, using the help of Solomon Atamuk and Boleslov Baranrak, wrote an article in the press “About the achievements of Soviet Lithuania with comparisons to the period of independent Lithuania”. Boleslovas Baranauskas, a former NKVD/KGB investigator, at the time presided over the special version of the publication of archival documents, which was established in early 1959 by the LKP CK, the purpose of which was to compromise former state figures and participants of the anti-Soviet resistance movement in the press. • Urbsys refused to write the articles, but agreed to testify live in an international court in Germany and to give an interview about the confiscation of Klaipeda from Lithuania, because he understood that these testimonies were useful and would not be distorted by the Soviet authorities. The former minister was also followed up by KGB agents, who were deployed to take an interest in the publishing of Mr Urbsys’ articles, to ask questions about writing memoirs. Former state figures sought to write memoirs in which they wanted to treat historical events from the positions of Lithuanian statehood, and the KGB sought to stop this process by strengthening the agency’s work. In order to force Mr Urbsys to write an article useful to Soviet propaganda, the KGB also used the services of journalists, the heads of the Kaunas Executive Committee or Soviet intelligence agents under the guise of Soviet “diplomats”. As an experienced diplomat, Mr Urbsys sought to treat them diplomatically, but at the same time adhere to his principles. This helped him avoid compromising other former national figures (e.g. Z. Toliusis) with the KGB in the press. The purpose of this article is to show for what purpose and methods the KGB attempted to use the last Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Juozas Urbsys, to reveal what tactics the former foreign minister followed in order not to become a tool of the KGB.

Simon Saunders

The concept of indistinguishable particles in quantum theory is fundamental to questions of ontology. All ordinary matter is made of electrons, protons, neutrons, and photons and they are all indistinguishable particles. Yet the concept itself has proved elusive, in part because of the interpretational difficulties that afflict quantum theory quite generally, and in part because the concept was so central to the discovery of the quantum itself, by Planck in 1900; it came encumbered with revolution. I offer a deflationary reading of the concept "indistinguishable" that is identical to the Gibbs concept of "generic phase", save that it is defined for state spaces with only finitely-many states of bounded volume and energy (finitely-many orthogonal states, in quantum mechanics). That, and that alone, makes for the difference between the quantum and Gibbs concepts of indistinguishability. This claim is heretical on several counts, but here we consider only the content of the claim itself, and its bearing on the early history of quantum theory rather than in relation to contemporary debates about particle indistinguishability and permutation symmetry. It powerfully illuminates that history.

Taima N. Furuyama, Fernando Antoneli, Isabel M. V. G. Carvalho et al.

The COVID-19 pandemic started in Wuhan, China, and caused the worldwide spread of the RNA virus SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19. Because of its mutational rate, wide geographical distribution, and host response variance this coronavirus is currently evolving into an array of strains with increasing genetic diversity. Most variants apparently have neutral effects for disease spread and symptoms severity. However, in the viral Spike protein, which is responsible for host cell attachment and invasion, an emergent variant, containing the amino acid substitution D to G in position 614 (D614G), was suggested to increase viral infection capability. To test whether this variant has epidemiological impact, the temporal distributions of the SARS-CoV-2 samples bearing D or G at position 614 were compared in the USA, Asia and Europe. The epidemiological curves were compared at early and late epidemic stages. At early stages, where containment measures were still not fully implemented, the viral variants are supposed to be unconstrained and its growth curves might approximate the free viral dynamics. Our analysis shows that the D614G prevalence and the growth rates of COVID-19 epidemic curves are correlated in the USA, Asia and Europe. Our results suggest a selective sweep that can be explained, at least in part, by a propagation advantage of this variant, in other words, that the molecular level effects of D614G have sufficient impact on population transmission dynamics as to be detected by differences in rate coefficients of epidemic growth curves.