The official art of the Khrushchev Thaw: The Severe Style as an ambassador of the Estonian national school at Baltic art exhibitions in Moscow

In Estonian post-Socialist art history writing, the term ‘national’ has mostly been introduced as a defense mechanism against the Soviet regime. The aim of this article is to indicate that concept ‘national’ also played quite an important role in ‘official’ Soviet cultural politics, especially after Stalin’s death. The processes of cultivating ‘national particularities’ in the arts will be exemplified by the Baltic exhibitions in Moscow in the end of 1950s and 1960s.     

Unfolding the coverage of illicit drugs in Estonian print press

The aim of this article is to analyze the changes in the coverage of illicit drugs by the Estonian press in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the restitution of Estonia’s independence. The article adapts Anthony Downs’ ‘issue-attention cycle,’ in which he proposes that public concern about certain issues follows a particular five-phase model. The author of this paper conducted a content analysis of 1523 press articles from 1993 to 2009. The analysis indicates that coverage of drug issues follows four of the five phases of Downs’ model, the exception being the fifth ‘post-problem’ phase.     

Mediated and unmediated access to the past: Assessing the memoir as literary genre

A survey was conducted of a number of younger generation members of Estonian and Latvian émigré communities (11 and 16 subjects, respectively) who had ‘returned’ to the ancestral homeland, to determine the reasons for their decision. A detailed questionnaire was provided for the respondents. Attempts were made to ascertain the subjects’ level of ‘Latvianness’ or ‘Estonianness’ and their emotional commitment to their new-found homeland. While the small sample may not provide definitive answers, the study gives richly suggestive insights into the thought processes and motivations of these young Baltic people.     

Report on the conference on the Baltic area in World War II

Time and space serve as key identity markers of a nation. This article focuses on the construction of historical space in Estonian history textbooks. The aim of this analysis is to follow the trajectory of post-Soviet understanding of Estonia’s location on the European map. Rejecting the Soviet idea that Estonia belongs to the Russian Civilization, the post-Soviet Estonian national elite has offered the Baltic Sea region as a plausible alternative regional identity. The present analysis suggests that the last two decades are marked by an increasing tendency in Estonian history textbooks to present the Baltic Sea region as the nation’s historical space.     

Estonian nationalism through the postcolonial lens

ABSTRACT

The article approaches the controversial topics of (post-)Soviet Estonian nationalism from the perspective of Postcolonial Studies, drawing upon nationalism theory, as well as comparative literary and cultural analysis. It is argued that the global context of postcoloniality allows reflective intellectual space that enables analysis of Estonian nationalism’s problems and potential in their cultural and political embeddedness, without idealizing or demonizing it.     

The 1972 Memorandum to the United Nations and its repercussions: Émigré politics and Soviet Estonian dissent during the ‘era of stagnation’

The Estonian dissidents’ Memorandum to the United Nations, drafted as a call for national self-determination in 1972, set new standards for the émigré community’s campaigns. Although its political message was initially dismissed as utopian, the subsequently emerging cooperation between émigré and homeland activists via intricate courier networks significantly strengthened the authority of Estonian voices in the West. By the early 1980s, the political alliances across the Iron Curtain eventually bore fruit. The Memorandum’s core demands reappeared in political debates on Baltic issues on both sides of the Atlantic, foreshadowing the massive Western support for the Baltic cause during the Singing Revolutions.     

A Glimpse of Medieval Curonian Vernacular Architecture in Egils Saga SkallagrÍMssonar

Interviews were conducted with native Russian and Finnish speakers living in Estonia to examine their perspectives on language policy and usage. The aim was to paint a picture of how they perceived Estonian language policy, providing an insight into the cognitive frameworks within which they work, and into the social and historical factors shaping their discursive environments. For Finnish informants, official monolingualism was not normal, while de facto monolingualism seemed to be. For Russian speakers, the opposite seemed true: those interviewed accepted Estonian's official status but wanted to see more use of Russian ‘on the ground’. Their perspectives reflect their worldviews, which have been shaped by their personal, family, and community realities and experiences.     

A.H. Tammsaare’s Truth and Justice as a Postcolonial Bildungsroman

A.H. Tammsaare’s pentalogy Truth and Justice is considered a central text in Estonian culture, perceived virtually as a second national epic. The article analyzes it from the perspective of comparative genre studies. It is discussed as an idiosyncratic example of Bildungsroman, a genre narrativizing modernizing change focusing on the lives of everyday individuals, thus symbolically domesticating and humanizing the global developments of modernization. The emplotment of Tammsaare’s novel is comparatively discussed against the background of the Western European Bildungsroman on the one hand and of non-European postcolonial Bildungsroman on the other. The analysis enables to gain new insight into the reception and cultural working-through of the belated rapid modernization in Estonia. It also helps to explain the canonical position of Tammsaare’s novel in Estonian literature: The novel is a poetic tour de force that forges a both intra- and internationally acceptable model of modern Estonia.     

Framing,valuing, and assessing the environment: August Wilhelm Hupel’s perceptions of Baltic nature and settings for human activities

This article addresses early modern Baltic environmental history and historical geography by interpreting the public writings of August Wilhelm Hupel within the theoretical framework of framing, valuing, and assessing nature and the environment. Hupel’s broad series of publications, issued during the heyday of Baltic Enlightenment, not only contributed to the emergence of Baltic geographical studies but also played a pioneering role in placing the knowledge on Estonian and Livonian topography and nature to order. Although Hupel concerned physical geographical aspects in his writings to some extent, his primary interest definitely focused on human relations with and across space and place. The cameralist thoroughness and calculativeness within that geographical field of enquiry brought about an endeavor to catalogue the parts of nature by using their utility or harmfulness as the measure. However, in Hupel’s opinion the then-prevailing civilisation also contained certain responsibilities for and to nature, particularly regarding forests and their sustainable use (‘nachhaltende Nutzung’), which Hupel wished to promote in the Baltic provinces of Russia.     

Description of the peasants’ sexual behavior in August Wilhelm Hupel’s Topographical Messages in the context of the history of the Estonian family

The aim of this article is to introduce the work of August Wilhem Hupel, a Baltic German author of the 18th century. The article focuses on the sections in his most voluminous work Topographische Nachrichten von Lief- und Ehstland (1774–1782) that describe Estonian peasants’ sexuality. Hupel’s writings belong to the sources of the history of the Estonian family, a field that has been rediscovered at the beginning of the 21st century. Thanks to the work of Marika Mägi and Nils Blomkvist, a new paradigm for research in this field has been opened up. This article adheres to that paradigm.     

Public Discourse of (De)legitimation: The Case of South Estonian Language

This paper focuses on two different argumentative strategies for dealing with a regional variety of Estonian, one of which may discourage the use of South Estonian in favor of Estonian, while another legitimates the lesser-used regional variety. These argumentative strategies are studied by critical discourse analysis (CDA) of six articles in Estonian language newspapers and magazines published in 2004–2005. The use of South Estonian is discouraged by presenting real or imagined threats that it will undermine Estonian. This discourse also parallels the Estonian-Russian majority-minority discourse of recent years by employing zero-sum arguments of the Estonian language losing to Russian as a consequence of the recognition of South Estonian. Language ideologies, which also construct some varieties worthier than others, re-enforce an essentialist representation of separate languages. This representation will work toward suppressing linguistic variation.     

Estonian Folklore as A Source of Baltic-German Poetry

Estonian folk tales form a common element in Estonian and Baltic-German (lyro)epic poetry. Baltic-German interest in Estonian folkloric heritage originated in the eighteenth century, when J. G. Herder first encouraged the collection of Estonian and Latvian folk songs. Systematic collection began in the 1830s, and peaked in the Estonian language area with the Estonian epic Kalevipoeg (1857–1861). Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald implemented this epic, but it was also influenced by many collectors and adaptors and was published in both German and Estonian. The myths of Friedrich Robert Faehlmann, presented in the Learned Estonian Society between 1840 and 1852, have had the biggest influence on the German-speaking audience. Literary adaptations of folk tales quickly found their way into journals, newspapers, poetry collections, and anthologies, often in the popular form of a ballad. This paper seeks to explore the role of Estonian folklore in Baltic-German lyroepic poetry.     

Limits of diaspority in Central Asia: contextualizing Dungan's multiple belongings

This article shows different ways of defining, understanding and performing ‘diaspority’ in the border region of Kordai (Kazakhstan) and Tokmok (Kyrgyzstan). Taking the example of Dungan people, as the Sinophone Muslims are known in Central Asia, both academic and political definitions of the concept of ‘diaspora’ are compared. This ethnographic account problematizes Kazakhstani Shaanxi Dungan ‘diaspority’. Together with this, the political definitions of ‘diaspora’ are also analysed. I show that while in China and Kazakhstan the definitions of the Dungans as a ‘diaspora’ of ‘China’ are somewhat complementary, once the Shaanxi Dungan emic perspective is taken into account, this concept becomes rather problematic. The kinds of diaspority defined by the states involved are ways of implementing particular cultural hegemonies that legitimate the two political regimes analysed in this article. Concurrently, this dual diaspority is used by the Dungan people in distinct ways in defining their own identities. Nevertheless, I show in this article that the ‘Chinese card’ is not necessarily played by all Dungans. Moreover, there are some Dungans for whom ‘Chinese-ness’ is not even relevant.     

A Question of Priorities: Candidate Selection in Estonian Political Parties

This article addresses political-party organization in Estonia, especially candidate selection. Its first objective is to describe the ways in which the main parties chose their candidates before the 2011 parliamentary election. A second objective is to evaluate those procedures in light of expectations generated by established theory. The focus is on two conditions: the institutional framework, particularly the electoral system, and the relative youth of Estonian democracy. The evidence confirms these expectations only partially, which suggests that an individual party’s ideological, organizational and strategic circumstances, in addition to structural and institutional conditions, are critical to understanding why it performs this basic function as it does.     

Living in the Marikana world: The state,capital and society

Abstract

The ‘Marikana massacre’ that happened on 16 August 2012 at Lonmin mine near Rustenburg in the North-West province of South Africa, in which the South African police shot dead 34 mineworkers for protesting against low wages and other unbearable employment and/or living conditions, cannot be understood as merely an accidental event. It may therefore be useful to view the massacre as one of those tragedies that dramatises, in visible ways, the generally hellish conditions which the peoples of the non-Western world have come to endure ever since the advent of Western modernity. The ‘voyages of discovery’ undertaken by figures such as Christopher Columbus after 1492 marked the commencement of a world system characterised by a Western-centred modernity whose ‘darker side’ inflicted hellish conditions on the non-Western subject, while its ‘brighter side’ in the West saw positive developments – from the 16^th-century ‘rights of people’ to the 18^th-century ‘rights of man’, up to the late-20^th-century ‘human rights’. This article is a decolonial critique on the Marikana massacre and seeks to explain how the modern world system has, since its advent in 1492 as global power structure, been producing a series of ‘Marikana-like’ conditions and events on the part of the non-Western subject that underlies its hierarchical arrangement. The article's point of departure is that rather than understand the Marikana massacre as a unique event or accident, it can better be characterised as a sign of the non-Western subject's subjection to Western-centred modernity. The article explicates how the modern South African state and capital are part of the same ‘colonial power matrix’ (Quijano 2000a), hence the two were bound to be on the same side against labour during the Marikana massacre.     

Baltic Theater 1995–2005: Processes and Trends

During the decade from 1995 to 2005 theater in the Baltic region widened its repertory borders, created a new system of management and renewed its artistic language. It lost its ideological significance and intellectual leadership. The new system of contracts gave more freedom to theater managers in changing the inner structure of theaters, and in forming smaller and more dynamic theater companies. The self-identifying process appeared in all three Baltic theaters, as seen in such productions as Alvis Hermanis's Latvian Stories (2004), Priit Pedajas’ performance of Andres Kivirahk's Estonian Funeral (2002) and Rimas Tuminas’ production of Marius Iva?kevi?ius’ Madagaskaras (2004).     

How should the Past be Treated in Estonian Schools? Constructions of History Teaching in an Estonian Teachers’ Newspaper

In the context of pluralization, globalization, and developments in pedagogy and academic history, ideas about the functions and objectives of history teaching (HT) have significantly diversified. Though traditional conceptions still prevail among the broader public, in professional circles traditional ideas about HT are accompanied by deconstructionist and multi-perspective approaches, deriving from the notion that history should not be regarded as true and unambiguous. The objective of this study is to discern the variety of representations of HT in Estonia, as reflected in an Estonian teachers’ weekly newspaper, an “interface” between the broader public and narrower professional spheres and discussions.     

Religion,ethnicity and citizenship: demands for territorial self-determination in southern Kaduna,Nigeria

This article analyses the ‘politics of scale’ of how identity is linked to territory in the quest for self-determination by actors on the Christian side of the ethno-religious conflict in Kaduna State, Nigeria. Ethnic and political relations are framed with reference to scale, such as ‘the local’ and ‘the regional’, in ways that support claims for territorial control on an ethnic and religious basis. The experience of lack of access to the state is seen to be grounded in community identities. Furthermore, the state relates to citizens through religious and neo-customary authorities as a way to localise authority. This is connected to an idea that neo-customary institutions represent ‘the local’. It is argued in this article that these institutions are just as entangled in various constructions of scale as the state.     

Power Politics Behind the Transforming Geopolitics in East Asia

Current geopolitical dynamics in East Asia is generated by the US rebalancing and China’s counterbalancing. The US rebalancing has so far ended in an encircling of China, whereas China counteracts to extend into the seas and the lands as typified by the Belt and Road Initiative and assertive activities in the South China Sea. China under Xi Jinping’s leadership has set up a new guideline of ‘great power foreign policy’ (大国外交) to realize Xi Jinping’s ambitious vision of ‘China dream’. As delivered in the ‘New Model of Great Power Relations’, China under Xi Jinping’s leadership seeks clearly for ‘regional dominance’, while for ‘global balance’ with the USA. With rebalancing, however, the USA seeks to restore power balance in East Asia by adding up to military and economic resources already deployed there. By doing so, the USA aims to achieve its strategic goal of ‘regional balance’, while maintaining ‘global dominance’. These two distinct strategic goals, regional dominance and global balance for China and regional balance and global dominance for the USA, interact to result in currently transforming geopolitics in East Asia.     

Three models of integration and the Estonian/Russian reality

Abstract

This paper provides a framework for evaluation of Estonia's integration program that the government approved in 2000. It differentiates three “integration” processes that the literature has identified: (1) integration in which Russians and Estonians meld into a common new culture, though predominantly Estonian; (2) assimilation of Russians into Estonian culture; and (3) integration into a common external framework as part of an expanded EU. Relying upon a review of the Estonian and Russian-language press since 2000 and a new survey of 9th year students and their parents conducted in 2002, the paper offers a fourth model of integration in which two integration processes — Russians integrating into Estonian society and both Russians and Estonians integrating into an English-speaking Europe — are taking place simultaneously. Furthermore, the data show that the Estonian government program is reinforcing rather than altering these integration processes.