Olev Liivik, Hiljar Tammela
The President leaves the arena
Konstantin Päts' last public appearance on 21 June 1940
The article deals with the last public appearance of Konstantin Päts (1874-1956), the last head of state of the Republic of Estonia before the Soviet occupation, 70 years ago, on 21 June 1940. This was the President's public address from the balcony of his residence in Tallinn to participants in the communist coup. He was, however, was shouted down by the demonstrators. The event was an episode in the simultaneous communist coups in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which took place under military pressure of the Soviet Union and were directed by its representatives. The "working people's demonstrations" organized by the Soviets and openly supported by the Red Army troops present were a show of force meant to compel the Baltic states' leaders to submit to the demands of the Soviet Union to install pro-Soviet governments.

In detail, the article discusses different reflections of President Päts' last speech published during the last 70 years. Different assessments have been given of the style and content of the President's speech and of the number of communist protesters, their aggressiveness and their reactions to what the President said. Different treatments had their beginning as early as on the following day, 22 June, in descriptions of the event in Estonian daily newspapers. The gap broadened particularly when Estonian-language literature and memoirs were published on the other side of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. In Soviet-occupied Estonia, "socialist realism" and memoirs of participants in the coup prevailed. In the West, books by émigré Estonian writers and memoirs of President Päts' close associates were published. The President's last speech has also found different interpretations in the 1990s, after the restoration of Estonia's independence. The article compares all these writings with the transcription of the audio recording of 21 June events, analysing the manner of treatment and motives of different authors.

Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein
FRIEDRICH von KRESS
My mission in the Caucasus. Part I
The beginning of the mission of Friedrich von Kress (1870-1948) in 1918 falls into the revolutionary period when, in addition to other problems, Germany had to tame its ally Turkey so that its unchecked pan-Turkist activity would not jeopardize the Brest Peace. As early as in 1916, Turkey had decided to annex at least the Russian territories in the Caucasus, for which it tried to find justification from its unusual interpretations of the Brest Peace Treaty. Germany, however, needed the Brest Peace and a non-warring Russia in order to concentrate its forces for a decisive breakthrough on the Western Front. Germany had a strategic interest in the rich mineral resources of the Caucasian region, as in the fourth year of World War I there was an acute shortage of them. The wish of the Oberste Heeresleitung (Supreme Army Command) to establish a place d'armes on the Black Sea Coast for potential assault against the British Army in India was wishful thinking rather. In addition to Georgia, von Kress' mission established relations with the governments of the neighbouring countries – Armenia and Azerbaijan. While Georgians relied on Germany, Muslim Azerbaijanis supported Turkey full-heartedly, and Armenians still placed hopes on the Entente.

The author's mission reached Tbilisi on 24 June 1918. On 26 May the Transcaucasian Republic disintegrated as Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan proclaimed independent republics. The German government rejected Georgians' request for German protectorate but promised them Germany's assistance and support.

As the author states, all the ministers of the Georgian government lacked experience and had no support of trained officials. Neither had Georgia a constitution. The country was facing a famine. The agrarian question was one of those that the Georgian government had to tackle immediately to find a solution to it. Prices had risen dramatically. Shortage of goods was similar to that in Germany in 1943. Armenian refugees posed a threat to the country as they were infected by all kinds of diseases. Georgia's financial situation was miserable. There were no customs duties and the government had not dared to impose taxes yet. The country lived on Russia's legacy and hoped to get a large loan from Germany.

A few days before Kress' arrival, Tartar bandits led by Turkish officers had crossed Georgia's southern border, destroyed the weak Georgian border guard units and reached within only a few days journey from Tbilisi. The German troops managed to drive the Tartar bandits back across the border without engaging in direct combat with their own ally.

(To be continued)

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Some remarks on logical form
Wittgenstein finds that the analysis of propositions must finally come to the point where it reaches propositional forms which are not themselves composed of simpler propositional forms. We must eventually reach the ultimate connection of the terms, the immediate connection which cannot be broken without destroying the propositional form as such. After B. Russell, he calls the propositions which represent this ultimate connection of terms atomic propositions. These are the kernels of every proposition, they contain the material, and all the rest is only a development of this material.

A correct analysis, however, can only be arrived at by what might be called the logical investigation of the phenomena themselves, i.e., in a certain sense a posteriori and not by conjecturing about a priori possibilities. The atomic form cannot be foreseen.

If we try to get at an actual analysis, we find logical forms that have very little similarity with the norms of ordinary language. We meet with the forms of space and time with the whole manifold of spatial and temporal objects, as colours, sounds, etc., with their gradations, continuous transitions and combinations in various proportions, all of which we cannot seize by our ordinary means of expression. Here Wittgenstein makes his first definite remark on the logical analysis of actual phenomena, namely that, for their representation, the structure of the atomic propositions themselves must include numbers (both rational and irrational).

It is a characteristic of gradual properties that one degree of them excludes any other. The important point here is that these remarks do not express an experience but are in some sense tautologies. Wittgenstein considers the statement of a degree (of temperature, for instance) to be a complete description which needs no supplementation. Similarly, when asked, we say what the time is, without adding what it is not.

Peter Michael Stephan Hacker
Wittgenstein on Human Nature
Hacker offers an illuminating introduction to Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy of mind and to his conception of philosophy. Combining passages from Wittgenstein's writings with detailed interpretation and commentary, Hacker leads us into a world of philosophical investigation in which 'to smell a rat is ever so much easier than to trap it'.

Wittgenstein's philosophical psychology undermined the Cartesian, empiricist and behaviourist traditions. In place of the Cartesian res cogitans – a spiritual substance which is the bearer of psychological properties, Wittgenstein put the human being – a psychophysical unity, not an embodied anima – a living creature in the stream of life. For it is human beings, not minds, who perceive and think, have desires and act, feel joy and sorrow. By contrast with the Cartesian and empiricist conception of the mental as an inner realm of subjective experience contingently connected with bodily behaviour, Wittgenstein conceived of the mental as essentially manifest in the forms of human behaviour which give expression to 'the inner'. While the Cartesians and empiricists alike thought of the inner as 'private' and truly known only to its introspecting subject, Wittgenstein denied that introspection is a faculty of 'inner sense' or a source of knowledge of private experience at all. On the other hand, he insisted that others could often know perfectly well about what is thus 'private' to oneself. While Cartesians and behaviourists represented behaviour as bare bodily movement, Wittgenstein emphasized that human behaviour is, and is experienced as being, suffused with meaning, thought, passion and will.

Ott Kurs
From the Old World to the New
Human migrations at the dawn of humanity and later
The distance of the Earth from the Sun has been appropriate for the emergence and maintenance of life on our planet. The Earth's crust is divided into rigid parts or plates on which continents and oceans are situated. On the borderlines between plates, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes are frequent, and ocean abysses are located there. The border areas of the plates forming the bottom of the Pacific Ocean are known as the great Ring of Fire. The development of archaeology, anthropology and genetics has helped to explain the origins and spread of human settlement.

The modern human or Homo sapiens evolved in East Africa; from there humans outmigrated less than 100,000 years ago and inhabited the rest of the world, except Antarctica. During the outmigration, the modern human replaced all the earlier human species. For a long time, researchers have been interested in how and when the continents of North and South America in the western hemisphere were settled. The most widely spread version says that people migrated out of Eurasia at the location of the present Bering Strait where during glacial periods (40,000-20,000 and 13,000-12,000 years ago) the continents were connected by a land bridge. As sea coasts are best suited for human life and activities, America could have been settled along several routes in the area of the great Ring of Fire, either from north (the Bering area) to south or from south to north (first from Oceania to Tierra del Fugo and from there along the western coast of South America). It is also possible that North America was settled from Europe, across the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean and Greenland – along the route that Vikings used thousands of years later. The opinion that the indigenous people of America have immigrated from several directions has also been confirmed by DNA analysis. The indigenous people of America, the so-called Indians have virtually disappeared from the flatland areas (the territories of Canada, the USA, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay). They have better preserved in mountainous Central and South America (in the Andes and the Guyana Highlands). Sparse indigenous population (Inuits) can also be found in the Arctic areas of North America where Inuit autonomous territories have been founded in recent times.

Werner Heisenberg
Physics and philosophy. Part V
The book published in New York in 1958 contains the author's lectures held at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in the winter of 1955-1956. At the beginning of the book, Heisenberg provides an overview of the birth of the quantum theory and the role of many early 20th century scientists in it. Then he discusses the formation of the notion of atom in Ancient Greece and compares it with our present understanding of elementary particles. Leaving out the interim centuries, the author continues with the ideas of philosophers of the modern times, particularly Descartes and Kant, and analyses them from the viewpoints of the quantum theory. In the second half of the book, he describes the relations of the quantum theory with other natural sciences, discusses the theory of relativity, studies the connection of the quantum theory with the structure of matter and examines the meaning of language and reality in modern physics. At the end of the book, Heisenberg analyses the role of modern physics in the present stage of development of human thought.

Published 2010-06-02