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Introduction
No full textAt the end of May 2019, the Estonian War Museum – General Laidoner Museum and Estonian Military Adademy organised the conference Independence Wars in North-Eastern Europe and Beyond in Tartu. The conference commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Estonian War of Independence. In addition to Estonia, several other nations were fighting their wars of independence at the same time, but the majority of them were unable to break away from the crumbling empires and establish national statehood. First and foremost, Soviet Russia, the successor of tsarist Russia, was able to consolidate itself after a bloody civil war, but in doing so releasing its grip on the Baltic countries, Finland and Poland.
Pavel Bermondt-Avalov and the Formation of the West Russian Volunteer Army – Warlordism in the Baltic?
No full textWarlordism is a phenomenon that emerges in a power vacuum during wars, civil wars and revolutions. There are many examples from the Russian Civil War where military commanders amassed absolute power in certain areas, without being subordinate to any state authority, or perhaps being subordinate in name only. Pavel Bermondt-Avalov, who formed the West Russian Volunteer Army, is discussed as an example of a warlord from the era of the Baltic wars of independence. A large portion of his army was made up of the German soldiers and officers who, as members of Freikorps, had fought in the Iron Division under the command of General Rüdiger von der Goltz, or in other units in the first half of 1919. In the autumn of 1919, instead of fighting the Bolsheviks and the Red Army, he turned his weapons against the Republic of Latvia and marched on Riga
The Paradox of Institutional Trust and Entrepreneurship in Transitional Countries
No full textThe relationship between institutional trust and entrepreneurship is not straightforward but is intertwined with social context. This study explores this relationship by estimating the relationship between entrepreneurship and institutional trust together with a set of individual social demographics and the country of residence in 27 transitional countries in Eastern Europe and countries of the former Soviet Union using the data of the 2016 Life in Transition Survey (LiTS). The analytical framework in this study is that individuals make their decisions in choosing the type of employment by weighing the level of institutional trust in their communities, a set of democratic factors and social indicators.
The results of our 2SLS estimations indicate a consistent negative association between institutional trust and entrepreneurship for all the sub-datasets. However, this cannot be interpreted as evidence for the negative effect of institutional trust on entrepreneurship. Given our analytical framework, this counter common-sense phenomenon would be interpreted as when the institutional trust was high, individuals would rather choose to have a paid job instead of running their own business in these transitional countries. This study provides evidence of how far these countries have gone on the path of transition three decades after the transition
Ideological and Cultural Practices in The Soviet Housing Space: The Case of Allocation and Obtaining of Apartments in Yerevan
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to reveal the ideological and cultural practices underpinning the formation of the housing space in Soviet Yerevan. While exploring the case of Yerevan, this paper provides insight on the processes of allocating and obtaining an apartment in the Soviet period and reveals contradictions of ideological and cultural practices in this context. Qualitative research has been conducted analysing the narratives of personal and group experiences. Through a narrative approach, this paper studies the relationship between the physical and social spaces. In particular, the method of narrative semiotics was implemented. This approach served the purpose of building a narrative model of the processes of allocating and obtaining in the Soviet housing space. In sum, 20 narrative interviews were conducted with Yerevan dwellers. This paper shows that in the context of the Soviet city of Yerevan, there was a distortion of macro-interventions and informal mechanisms for the formation of the Soviet space were institutionalised in the continuum of communism and capitalism. This led to the evolvement of inclusive ideologies on a cognitive level and to the circulation of positioning ideologies on a pragmatic level
Idealists or Adventurers? The Swedish volunteers in Estonia in 1919
No full textSwedish volunteers fought alongside the Finns and the Danes in the Estonian War of Independence. Sweden had been neutral in World War I, but some 1,000 Swedish volunteers had fought in the Finnish War of Independence in the first half of 1918. Many of those Swedish fighters were among the volunteers who came from Finland to Estonia in 1919. ‘The Swedish corps’ – in fact a company – spent nearly half a year in Estonia and was disbanded in the beginning of June 1919. The unit did not play a significant military role; for the most part, it attracted the attention of the Swedish public with several scandals. There were quite a few volunteers who did not return home. Some men joined the Estonian Army, but some also ended up in Russian White Guard units, as well as in Latvia or Lithuania. Major Carl Mothander, the commander of the Swedish volunteers, is known in Sweden, Estonia and Finland thanks to his memoirs. Captain Einar Lundborg became a pilot after returning to Sweden. He is renowned for rescuing the Italian Arctic explorer, Umberto Nobile, from an ice field in 1928
Siirdeajastu kultuurimuutused [Cultural Changes of the Transition Period]
No full textEessõna / Introductio
Suudlusest süütuse kaotuseni: Eesti performance’i-kunstnike esimesed esinemised Soomes ja nende kajastused sealses trükimeedias [From the Kiss to the Loss of Innocence: the first appearances of Estonian performance artists in the west and their reviews in the Finnish print media]
No full textArtikkel käsitleb eesti performance’i-kunsti retseptsiooni Soome trükimeedias peamiselt 1980. aastate lõpus, kui toimusid kunstnike esimesed külaskäigud üle lahe. Uuritavat perioodi raamivad metafoorid „suudlus“ ning „süütuse kaotus“. Esimene neist tähistab Eesti tegevuskunstnike esmakohtumisi läänega, mida markeerib konkreetne aktsioon, mille käigus kunstnik Siim-Tanel Annus suudles Soome maapinda. „Süütuse kaotus“ tähistab perestroika-aegse performance’i-kunsti siirdumist siirusest künismi, mida on esile tõstnud kunstnik Raoul Kurvitz. See üleminek peegeldab laiemalt lääne idealiseerimise lõppu, kaine- nemist ning kapitalistlike oludega kohanemist. Artikkel analüüsib toonast kunstikriitikat, mille kaudu avaldub metafooridest laetud performance’i-kunsti ja turbulentse päevapoliitika vaheline pingeväli, ning uurib, kuidas suhestusid publiku ootused ning kunstnike kavatsused.-----------------------The article concentrates on Estonian performance art and its reception in the Finnish print media during Perestroika, mainly the years 1988–1990, when the first trips of the artists across the Iron Curtain took place. The period of study is framed by the metaphors of “kiss” and “loss of innocence”. The former designates the first encounters of the Estonian performance artists with the west, marked by a specific event in 1988 when the artist Siim-Tanel Annus (b. 1960), having for the first time sailed on a ferry from Tallinn to Helsinki, kissed the Finnish cost on arrival – an event which was widely covered in the Finnish media at the time. “Loss of innocence” stands for the transition from earnestness to cynicism in performance art at the end of the 1980s as described by the artist Raoul Kurvitz (b. 1961). The transition corresponds with the shift from idealisation of the west to the sobering to the reality of capitalism. Contemporary art reviews offer ample study material of the tension between metaphorically loaded performance art of the era and the turbulent politics of the day. Having been situated simultaneously in the mythical as well as contemporary reality, performance art acted as a living metaphor for the political events
Из Именного указателя к «Записным книжкам» Ахматовой: Итальянцы [From an Index to Anna Akhmatova’s _Notebooks_: Italians]
No full textThis article is yet another installment in the series of Roman Timenchik’s annotations to Anna Akhmatova’s Notebooks (see also three previous volumes of Slavica Revalensia). This particular installment concerns two Italians mentioned in Akhmatova’s notes: Bruno Carnevali (1924—1990) and Carlo Riccio (1932—2011)
«На земле еще много хороших вещей»: Рец. на кн.: «Человек эпохи: Ирина Белобровцева» [“Na zemle eshcho mnogo khoroshikh veshchei”: Review of _Chelovek epokhi: Irina Belobrovtseva_ by Aurika Meimre (ed.)]
No full textThis is a review of a recently published book Chelovek epokhi: Irina Belobrovtseva (2021). The book consists of three parts: the first and longest is Irina Belobrovtseva’s autobiography followed by a publication of the correspondence between the Belobrovtsev family, Yuri Lotman and Zara Mints (from 1967 to 1986), and finally by Prof. Belobrovtseva’s list of publications
Legitimate Corruption: Ethics of Bureaucracy and Kinship in Central Asia
No full textThe World Bank and Transparency International rank the Central Asian republics as highly corrupt. This is an opinion that is also shared by international media and by NGO personnel and academics working on the ground in these countries. Yet, the kind of practices that are labelled as “corrupt” by these observers seem much too diverse to meaningfully be covered by the same term, such as illicit selling and buying of government contracts at the highest level; tax evasion in the millions; the faster processing of a passport for a relative; and a taxi driver bribing the traffic police. This presents both an analytical and an ethical problem. This article argues that condemning discourses on corruption are often used by the powerful both nationally and internationally to dominate colonised and marginalised groups. Such groups, excluded from or exploited within formal structures, rely on networks and communities for their livelihoods. The upkeep of these social relations comes into conflict with the imperatives of state law and bureaucracy. Anti-corruption thus becomes a weapon of the strong against the weak and aligns with a long history of colonial tradition of domination and vilification of those “yet-to-be-civilised.” Its focus on regions of the Global South such as Central Asia marks a continuation of colonial legacy but also the region\u27s continued marginality in the capitalist world system. This article posits that in order solve these analytical and ethical problems, we must be careful not to conflate a legal state-notion of corruption with a moral one thus accepting as default the perspective of the dominant groups running states and organisations