scholarly journals Tartu ülikool kui eestlaste mälupaik [The University of Tartu as a memory site for Estonians]

Author(s):  
Lea Leppik

The City of Tartu is proud of its university and its status as a university town. The university is an even stronger memory site than the city and has special meaning for Baltic Germans in addition to Estonians, but also for Ukrainians, Armenians, Poles, Latvians, Jews and other minorities of the former Russian Empire. The commemoration of the anniversaries of the University of Tartu is a very graphic example of the use of memory and the susceptibility of remembering to the aims of the current political system and of various interest groups. Here history has become an “active shaper of the present” according to Juri Lotman’s definition. This article examines the commemoration of jubilees of the University of Tartu through two hundred years. Nowadays Estonians consider the entire history of the University of Tartu to be their own starting from its founding by King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden in 1632. The Estonian language was not unknown in the university in the Swedish era – knowledge of Estonian was necessary for pastors and some examples of occasional poetry written in Estonian have survived from that time. The university was reopened in 1802 when it was already part of the Russian Empire and became a primarily Baltic German university. It shaped the identity of the Baltic provinces in Russia and contributed to their growing together culturally in the eyes of both the German-speaking upper class and the Estonian- and Latvian-speaking lower class. The Estonian and Latvian languages were both represented at the university by one lecturer. There were also Estonians at the university in the first decades already but at that time, education generally meant assimilation into German culture. The 50th jubilee of the Imperial University of Tartu was commemorated in 1852 as a celebration of a Baltic German university. The 100th anniversary of the imperial university in 1902 was commemorated at a university where the language of instruction had been switched to Russian. The guests of honour were well-known Russian scientists, church representatives and state officials. For the first time, a lengthy overview of the history of the University of Tartu was published in Estonian in the album of the Society of Estonian Students under the meaningful title (University of the Estonian Homeland). Unlike the official concept of the 100 year old university, this overview stressed the university’s connection to the university of the era of Swedish rule. When the Russian Empire collapsed and the Estonian nation became independent, the University of Tartu was opened on 1 December 1919 as an institution where the language of instruction was Estonian. The wish of the new nation to distance itself from both the Russian and German cultural areas and to be connected to something respectably old was expressed in the spectacular festivities held in 1932 commemorating the 300th anniversary of the University of Tartu. After the Second World War, Estonians who ended up abroad held the anniversaries of the Estonian era University of Tartu in esteem and maintained the traditions of the university student organisations that were banned in the Soviet state. The 150th anniversary of the founding of the university was commemorated in the Estonian SSR in 1952 – at the height of Stalinism. The Swedish era university was cast aside and the monuments to the king and to nationalist figures were removed, replaced by the favourites of the Soviet regime. Connections to Russia were emphasised in every possible way. Lithuanians celebrated the 400th anniversary of their University of Vilnius in 1979, going back to the educational institution established in the 16th century by the Jesuits. This encouraged Estonians but the interwar tradition of playing up the Swedish era was so strong that the educational pursuits of the Jesuits in Tartu (1585–1625, with intervals) were nevertheless not tied into the institute of higher education. So it was that the 350th anniversary of the University of Tartu was celebrated on a grand scale in 1982. The protest movement among university students played an important role in the restoration of Estonia’s independence. Immediately thereafter, the commemoration of the anniversaries of the Estonian era university that had in the meantime been banned began once again. The 200th anniversary of the opening of the Imperial University of Tartu (2002) passed with mixed feelings. The imperial university as a university of the Russian state no longer fit in well and it was feared that the connection to the Swedish era would suffer. Yet since this period had nevertheless brought Tartu the greatest portion of its scientific fame, a series of jubilee collected works were published by various faculties. On the other hand, nobody had any qualms about commemorating the 375th anniversary of the Swedish era university five years later (2007) on a grand scale with new monuments, memorial plaques, exhibitions, a public celebration and a visit from the King of Sweden.

The paper is a review on the textbook by A. V. Yeremin, «The History of the National Prosecutor’s office» and the anthology «The Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Empire in the Documents of 1722–1917» (authors: V. V. Lavrov, A. V. Eremin, edited by N. M. Ivanov) published at the St. Petersburg Law Institute (branch) of the University of the Prosecutor’s office of the Russian Federation in 2018. The reviewers emphasize the high relevance and high level of research, their theoretical and practical significance. The textbook and the anthology will help the students increase their legal awareness, expand their horizons.


2021 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-38
Author(s):  
Anna B. Agafonova ◽  

The article describes the history of creation and activities of sanitary guardians in the cities of the Russian Empire. The study aims to identify organizational and social contradictions in guardianships’ activities, which hindered citizens from involvement in solving local sanitary problems. Boards of sanitary guardians were established by order of local authorities to involve the population in the fight against epidemics and conducting sanitary measures. The sanitary guardians’ activities consisted of timely notification of local authorities about the emergence of epidemics, participation in sanitary inspections of households, and conducting preventive conversations with homeowners about their compliance with public health and urban improvement regulations. The practice of citizens social participation in monitoring the urban area’s cleanliness was intended to level out the contradictions between homeowners and temporary doctors and sanitary executive commissions “alien” to the city community. Still, it often provoked conflicts between sanitary guardians and homeowners who defended the rights to inviolability of their property. In general, public oversight conducted by sanitary guardians has proven ineffective in the long term.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 29-38
Author(s):  
Drobotushenko Evgeny V. ◽  

The history of the creation of the agent network of the Russian Empire has not found comprehensive coverage in scientific publications so far. The existing research referred to specific names or mention private facts. This predetermined the relevance of the work. The object of the study is the Russian agents in China in general and in Chinese Shanghai, in particular. The subject is the study of peculiarities of the first attempts in creating Russian agent network in the city. The aim of the work is to analyze the attempt to create a network of Russian illegal agents in Shanghai in 1906–1908. The lack of materials on the problem in scientific and popular scientific publications predetermined the use of previously unknown or little-known archival sources. This is the correspondence of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Russian Imperial envoy in Beijing and the Russian Consul in Shanghai stored in the funds of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (SARF). The main conclusion of the study was the remark about the lack of scientific elaboration, at the moment, the history of official, legal and illegal agents of the Russian Empire in Shanghai, China. Private findings suggest that, judging by the available data, creation of a serious network of agents in the city during the Russian Empire failed. The reasons for this, presumably, were several: the lack of qualified agents with knowledge of Chinese or, at least, English, who could work effectively; the lack of funds for the maintenance of agents, a small number of Russian citizens, the remoteness of Shanghai from the Russian-Chinese border, etc. A network of agents will be created in the city by the Soviet authorities by the middle of the third decade of the 20th century, and Soviet illegal agents began to work in the early 1920s. The History of Soviet agents in China and Shanghai, in particular, is studied quite well which cannot be said about the previous period. It is obvious that further serious work with archival sources is required to recreate as complete as possible the history of Russian legal and illegal agents in Shanghai in pre-Soviet times


Author(s):  
Sergei Sergeevich Tiurin

Faithful military fortification, founded in the middle of the XIX century in the south-eastern outskirts of the Russian Empire, was located far from the center of the state with a turbulent political and social life. At the same time in the middle of the XIX century, there is interest in the history of Russia, memoirs, internal politics and social sciences in general, that leading to the emergence of an unprecedented hitherto the number of periodicals historical themes. This article explores references to the city / Verny Fortification in the "Historical Gazette", "Notes of the Fatherland", "Russian Archive", "Niva", "Russian Gazette", "Russian Antiquity", "Russian Thought" and a number of other publications. Identified during the study, articles and notes on the city of Verny allow us to get an idea of what exactly the city remembers to travelers, what specific information about it was reflected in historical journals published between 1854 and 1917 in Moscow and St. Petersburg.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-280
Author(s):  
Ihor Dvorkin ◽  
Artem Kharchenko ◽  
Svitlana Telukha

The article examines the history of establishment of the Kharkiv Practical Technological Institute in the broad context of modernization processes. The history of the Practical Technological Institute in Kharkiv is considered in the context of socio-economic changes in the South of the Russian Empire, primarily in the "Ukrainian provinces", in the last third of XIX – early XX centuries. The methodological basis of the article is the modernization approach. Changes that took place in the Russian Empire in the last third of the XIX – early XX century are considered as a modernization movement. Modernization is understood as a complex number of transformations that society is undergoing on the path of development from traditional agricultural to urban and industrial. We proceed from the fact that modern society of that time was aware of the speed of industrial production, the need for qualified engineering personnel. The training of such personnel required the opening of local higher education institutions. The processes of industrialization, migration and urbanization, due to the modernization theory, were the main components of social development in the XIX century. The approach chosen by the authors allowed to analyze the formation of higher technical institutions in the Russian Empire, on the example of the Kharkiv Practical Institute of Technology, within these changes. The approach within the new imperial history enabled us to take into account the socio-political subtext of the situation and the decisions that contributed to the establishment of technical universities in the south of the empire. An important aspect of our article is the European context. We investigated the general tendencies of opening similar to Kharkiv educational institutions. We can see certain commonalities, which allows us to explore the problem more deeply. We came to the conclusion that, the emergence of a higher technical educational institution ‒ Kharkiv Practical Technological Institute, in Kharkiv was due to the demand of local elites, which was met by the highest bureaucracy of St. Petersburg, as well as the situation in the city itself. This compromise did not cancel the rivalry, both at the highest bureaucratic level – the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of National Education, and at the regional level, in particular Kharkiv university elite and the inspirers of the idea of a separate technical institution.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 154
Author(s):  
Olha Posunko

Novomoskovsk is the city in the Dnipro Ukraine, for which the period of the late 18th and the first half of the 19th century became very significant. This is the beginning of the city in its modern sense, the beginning of many institutions functioning, the time of inclusion in the new administrative-territorial system within the Russian Empire. The specified period due to many objective circumstances is not sufficiently provided with scientific sources, and therefore requires the use of all possible archival materials. This article describes the information capabilities of the forensic documentation of the above-mentioned chronological boundaries for the study of the history of Novomoskovsk and Novomoskovsk district. Attention should be paid to the descriptions of the lost funds of the Novomoskovsk Lower Zemsky court, the Novomoskovsk and Pavlograd Lower Reprisal, Novomoskovsk District Court, and the Novomoskovsk City Hall, which were stored in the State Archives of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. These materials often mention the names of famous landowners in the county: Rodzianko, Alekseev, Gersevanova, Kochubey, Faleeva, Miloradovich, Losev, Mizko, Magdenka. Brief information about them in the names of the cases makes it possible to follow (at least partially) the history of ownership, sales, inheritance of the place; conflict situations they were involved in or their peasants. As a separate example, the case of the Yekaterinoslav Chamber of Civil Cases of 1810–1811 is presented by the inhabitant of Novomoskovsk Anna Skalon. The noble family of French descent, Skalon, is associated with the region, some of the new evidence presents this trial of the dispute over the legacy of her husband, Fyodor Scalon. Particular attention should be paid to the report on the inspection of the cities of Yekaterinoslav province in 1833 by the order of the governor N. Longinov. This document captures the following facts: in 1833, 7 096 peoples lived in Novomoskovsk (slightly less than in the province of Yekaterinoslav); there were 1 429 wooden houses in the city; 65 merchants. The report also contains information about the hospital, the prison of the city; characterizes the work of various institutions; gives an idea of the level of crime in the county. It was concluded that the documents of the judicial institutions of Yekaterinoslav region should be involved in the study of various problems of regional history.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-42

Between 1914 and 1921, the population inhabiting the region of Bessarabia witnessed, although from behind the frontline, the world conflagration, which was followed by major political changes that detached the region from the Russian Empire, then created the conditions for a short independence period, to finally attach the province to “Greater Romania” in 1918. The history of the city of Chișinău during this tumultuous time period is discussed – for the first time – with a specific focus on its dynamics as a place in which two political systems, defined by the imperial and the national model, confronted each other while also coexisting in different settings. The authors are especially interested in the trajectories of individuals, communities, and institutions linked to the city. They reconstruct the way local actors acknowledged political changes, but also how they exercised agency and imposed their own agendas, frequently based on local, group, or personal needs. The case of Chișinău is relevant for the understanding of the major impact of political transition(s) on the local level. It shows that there were various local actors, all of them being part and parcel of this transition, within which they had their own story to tell. Whereas for some political or social groups 1918 meant a new beginning, for others it was the time of political vacuum, from which certain dividends could be extracted.


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