Ants Piipa
What happened in Moscow?
On 27-28 September 1939, the delegation from the Republic of Estonia – K. Selter, A. Rei, J. Uluots and A. Piip – held difficult negotiations in the Kremlin with J. Stalin, V. Molotov and A. Mikoyan. Previously, on 24 September, the USSR had presented an ultimatum according to which a pact of mutual assistance had to be concluded between the USSR and Estonia, and Soviet military bases established in Estonia. In case of refusal, the USSR threatened to use force, which in all likelihood would have meant a war.

Ants Piip describes the course of the negotiations, which on 28 September resulted in Estonian Foreign Minister Karl Selter and USSR People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov signing the pact of mutual assistance between the Republic of Estonia and the USSR and its secret additional protocol. The pact was unequal, as the USSR ultimately demanded deployment of Soviet military bases and a 25,000-strong garrison on the territory of Estonia. The pact of mutual assistance severely limited the sovereignty of the Republic of Estonia, abolished its neutrality and made Estonia a protectorate of the USSR. Less than a year later, on 17 June 1940, Red Army troops, supported by troops stationed in Soviet bases in Estonia, occupied the whole of Estonia.

Piip writes about 28 September, "when looking back we found that there was no other way out. Although we entered the Russian orbit, the war was avoided, the nation saved, and the future will show what will become of it all. The sad truth is that everything depends on mutual goodwill."


Anneli Kaasa, Karin Koppel
Changes in joining academic student organizations in Tartu – a manifestation of declining social capital?
Academic student organizations (student fraternities, sororities and societies) have been active in Tartu for two centuries, and they are still essential in the life of many students. But compared to the period between the two World Wars, members of academic organizations form a considerably smaller part of the total student body. Kaasa and Koppel attempt to find the reasons for this change using the concept of social capital since academic organizations can be viewed as one of the forms of social capital – formal networks – and additionally, as a source of other aspects of social capital (informal networks, trust and trustworthiness as well as civic participation).

For the individual as well as society, academic organizations have both positive and negative effects. At that, what is negative for one individual may be positive for someone else. Likewise, a circumstance that is positive for an individual may be negative for the society. Still, when balancing the positive and negative influences, one might say that the positive influences outweigh the negative ones.

There are several reasons why fewer students join academic organizations today. First, compared to the period between the two World Wars, the gender composition of the student body has changed – the earlier predominance of males has been replaced by that of females. Women, however, are less likely to join organizations; they are more matter-of-fact and more devoted to their speciality and work than men. In addition, women have a relatively smaller number of organizations to choose from, which may be caused by the fact that women are less interested in academic organizations as well as by their historical background – after the restoration of independence only old organizations were restored while no new ones were founded. The historical background is also essential in another way. Differently to the period between the two World Wars in which most Estonian student societies were established, the present time was preceded by the Soviet period which interrupted the tradition of organization and caused a distrust of organizations in general.

One of the greatest hurdles against organization may be a lack of information. Students do not know what the organizations do and what they can offer (fulfilment, entertainment, internationality, sports facilities). Lack of information may also cause misunderstandings and accusations against academic organizations. It can result in another problem of the present-day student – lack of time. It may even be that being short of time, students do not attempt to find information. Clearly one of the reasons for a lack of time is that a greater percentage of students work than they did during the interwar period. Along with economic necessity, it has become a general norm that one should start working already during one's studies at the university – then it is easier to find employment later. Finally, we cannot exclude the influence of declining social capital and spread of individualist views in society – some students do not even value cooperation and togetherness, and therefore they do not actually feel the need to organize.


Tiit Kärner
Humans, society and the new paradigm of social sciences
Simultaneously with the spread of higher education, it has been increasingly noted that learners acquire material superficially without understanding its content. This particularly concerns real sciences – though having been taught, school-leavers lack the ability to think systematically. Kärner argues that this result, although unexpected from the viewpoint of earlier concepts, is expected and understandable in the light of evolutionary psychology – the human brain has not evolutionally adapted to this kind of activity.

Last decade's research in evolutionary psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science suggests that, since the Enlightenment, human rationality has been overrated. The impulses directing human behaviour are based on emotions rather than rationality, and the evolutionarily evolved peculiarities of human nature have been misunderstood or entirely ignored. In their turn, the viewpoints on the above-mentioned issues have served as a basis for theories describing people's social behaviour and respective policies; therefore, in the light of new research results the whole paradigm of social sciences has to be revised. This concerns the hitherto valid standard model of social sciences in particular, which essentially denies the hereditary component in human nature and considers it determined by social conditions only.

This explains the wide spread of different social constructivist political theories, which are based on the belief that humans can be limitlessly transformed in the desired direction. During the past few centuries, these theories, in combination with modern political technology and skills acquired by mass communication to use the evolutionarily developed behaviour mechanisms of humans, have repeatedly led humankind to conflicts and social disasters.

In order to prevent the recurrence of such events, new social science that would be strictly based on natural science, and would be able to make a difference between the desirable and the possible, is needed. Secondly, efforts should be directed at developing people's ability of thinking by respective education and changing of social attitudes. This is a precondition for rationally functioning democratic society and progress of humankind.


S. Fred Singer, Dennis T. Avery
Species extinction
The authors look at the theory and for real life-evidence of massive extinction of species due to global warming. They find no persuasive rationale that large numbers of species would die from global warming, nor that any real-world species will be lost due to increased temperatures around the earth. Instead, they find a great deal of evidence that species move effectively to keep or expand their ranges in response to climate change. Through their movements, they are testifying against the alarmism of global warming activists.

They also come up with both a theory and evidence that higher concentrations of CO2 help plants – and ultimately animals – adapt to higher temperatures. That extinction theorists continue to ignore this peer-reviewed literature is inexcusable. Wildlife biologists probably hate to take advice from colleges of agriculture, where most of the CO2 research has been carried out. Nevertheless, the CO2 research is a vital element of global warming threat analysis.

The authors found a claim of a species loss to global warming (the Golden Toad) that should not have been offered without a caveat, either by the authors of by Nature's editors; both should have known about the deforestation study that seems to refute the claim that sea surface warming caused the disappearance of the Golden Toad.

The authors found that a reputable biologist, Chris Thomas, was making exaggerated claims about massive extinctions that are refuted by his own published research. They found a well-known biologist, Camille Parmesan, authoring a poorly supported and overstated claim, in a prestigious scientific journal, and repeatedly misusing the term "locally extinct" to over-dramatize climate warming risks. Finally, they found eco-activists and biologists who claim global warming is killing corals, in direct contradiction to scientific research showing the adaptability of coral reefs.


Henri Bergson
Consciousness and life
In the Huxley Lecture delivered at the University of Birmingham on 29 May 1911, Bergson differentiates between matter, which is subject to inevitability, and consciousness, i.e. memory along with liberty, the characteristic feature of which is continuity of creation. Thereafter, he argues that these two lines of existence – matter and consciousness – stem from the same source.

The whole evolution on our planet is, in his opinion, like creative consciousness, which permeates matter and makes clever and inventive efforts to liberate something that still remains imprisoned in the animal but becomes finally liberated in humans. All of this happens as if an immense stream of consciousness where all kind of virtualities (virtualités) permeated matter to lead it to organization and, although matter in itself is inevitability, make it an instrument of liberty.

Juxtaposing matter and consciousness, Bergson can see that matter is, first, what differentiates, separates, divides into individuals and finally into personalities the tendencies that had once merged in the primeval momentum of life. On the other hand, matter evokes and facilitates effort. Its resistance and obedience make it simultaneously an obstacle, a means and a stimulant; it tests our strength, preserves its imprint and calls for its intensification.

Finally, Berson argues that humans' mental activity surpasses their brain activity; that the brain preserves motor habits but not memories; that other functions of thinking are even more independent of the brain than memory; that preservation and even amplification of a personality is thus possible even after disintegration of the body. He asks whether in that case doubt does not arise that in this world consciousness hardens like steel and prepares itself for an even more efficient activity, for more intense life?


Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Six letters from the prison of Tegel
The letters sent in 1944 attempt to answer the questions – what do the church, the congregation, the sermon, the liturgy and Christian life mean in a religionless world? How can we speak about God without religion, i.e. without metaphysics conditioned by time, earlier piety and other preconditions?

Bonhoeffer's critique of religion is based on the statement that the movement towards the autonomy of the human, which began approximately in the thirteenth century, has reached a certain perfection. Through the laws discovered in science, social life, art, ethics and religion, the world has reached adulthood. Therefore, the attacks of Christian apologetics where Christ is confused with one stage in human religiosity, i.e. human laws, are inappropriate for it.

Ernst Troeltsch, Karl Heim, Paul Althaus and Paul Tillich, who have also searched for a way out in the wake of liberal theology, have not reached a solution either. Karl Barth recognized the errors in these experiments as all of them strove to leave room for religions in the world or against the world. He has however not provided concrete tips for non-religious interpretation of theological concepts in either dogmatics or ethics, but contrasts them with the positivist teaching of revelation. Although Bonhoeffer acknowledges Rudolph Bultmann, he considers Bultmann's option to discard the mythological elements of Christianity and to reduce Christianity to its "essence" a typical liberal method of reduction. He is of the opinion that the full content of concepts, including mythological concepts, should be preserved – the New Testament is not mythological clothing for one general truth, but the mythology (the Resurrection, etc.) is the thing itself. These concepts, however, should now be interpreted in a way that does not consider religion a condition for faith.

God as a moral, political and scientific working hypothesis as well as a philosophical and religious working hypothesis has been exhausted. Bonhoeffer emphasizes that one cannot be honest without recognizing that we have to live in the world etsi dues non daretur. God tells us that we have to make do without God. The Bible directs the human towards the powerlessness and suffering of God – only a suffering God can help. Therefore, one might say that the above-mentioned development towards the adulthood of the world, which puts an end to the wrong image of God, directs the attention to the Biblical God who acquires power through powerlessness. Here the "lay interpretation" can be applied indeed, as Bonhoeffer writes.


Jüri Talvet
A journey to Turkey – via Latvia
The essay does not tell the reader much about Turkey. Instead, Talvet, the chair of comparative literature at the University of Tartu and a poet, provides a detailed and often humorous description of his journey, first by an Estonian rural bus and then on a Latvian train, from Tartu via the Estonian border town Valga to the capital of Latvia, Riga, from where he proceeds by airplane to Istanbul, to give lectures at the Turkish Eskisehir University.

Although the framework of the essay is humorous, Talvet addresses a number of serious social, historical and cultural issues of newly independent Estonia. He attacks such national features as greed, vulgarity, racial prejudices and unequal distribution of social welfare, which have become manifest in less than twenty years of Estonia's existence as a newly sovereign state. He questions the physical ability of Estonia to implement broader strategic projects (like the national railways, now in full decay) and finally suggests the unification of Estonia and the neighbouring Latvia into a federal Baltic state, strong enough morally and physically to face the economic, social and moral challenges of the twentyfirst century. Rejecting historical fatalism, he reveals his trust in future generations of Estonians, capable of overcoming negative national features and building up a healthier identity than the one reflected by the Estonian media and the state's socio-political behaviour at present.


Mihhail Lotman
Semiotics of fear and typology of Russian culture. II. The space of fear: On semiotics of fear in Russian culture
The study consists of five parts: 1. Semiotics of culture and phenomenology of fear. 2. Space of fear in Russian culture. 3. Glossophobia in Russian culture. 4. Fear and its cognitive models (fear and threat in Estonian and Russian). 5. Borders of fear. Some fragments of the study, mostly concerning the first three parts, have been published earlier in Russian as well as in English; the whole of it is published in Akadeemia for the first time.

The first part defines the specific semiotic features of fear, relying on the traditions of both Charles Sanders Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure. In the framework of Peirce's tradition it turns out to be simpler to speak about concrete manifestations of fear, but the Saussurean angle makes it possible to speak about fear as a specific language that does not only apply the existing signs but also creates them.

Analyzing the models of fear in Russian culture, the author applies a systemic approach. He does not refer to individual texts or viewpoints that characterize their authors, but uses only those views that occur in the texts of different authors in different periods and different genres. Thus, they can be believed to represent culture-specific stereotypes.

One of the significant specific features of Russian culture is its emphatic cognition of space, which is closely related to threat and fear. Such a threat has a dual nature – large, limitless space is dangerous and frightening, but decrease in space is also dangerous. Agoraphobia transforms into claustrophobia.

Another specific feature of Russian culture is glossophobia. At the level of the individual, glossophobia manifests itself in fear of speaking; at the cultural level, it can acquire a specific form, which is expressed as fear of (foreign) languages. Namely this kind of glossophobia has been characteristic of Russian culture throughout the times, where language has always been a dangerous and alien element.

The understanding of threat in one or another culture is at least partly determined by the cognitive structure of the respective language. Therefore, it is illuminating to compare the Russian models of fear with those that have been expressed in Estonian, where fear is much more isolated from threat (sayings like "better be afraid than regret", in any wording, remain incomprehensible when translated into Russian).

Published 2009-02-19