State And Non-State Cross-Border Cooperation Between North Karelia And Its (Un) Familiar Russian Neighbors

Russia has often been seen in a negative light and as a difficult place for foreigners to operate, both currently and in the past. To a large extent, this is also true for Finland, which has fought several wars against its eastern neighbor and whose border with Russia has been closed for years. However, Finland, and in particular North Karelia, also has a long history of cross-border cooperation with Russian partners.This paper seeks to analyze why North Karelian governmental and NGO actors choose to engage in cross-border cooperation with Russian counterparts and explain why they have been so successful.The answers are sought via a historical review of the relationship between Finland and Russia, in particular the role and importance of Karelia as a source of both conflict and consolidation. Furthermore, semi-structured interviews with Finnish cross-border cooperation actors are utilized in the analysis. The theoretical approach is grounded in (un)familiarity, which is used to explain the pull-push effects of the border.In conclusion, it was found that the Finnish actors harbor a historical feeling of connectedness and nostalgia towards the Karelian area which pulls them across the border. Because of the proximity they see cross-border cooperation as a natural extension of their work. Finally, the success is connected to the increased familiarity and close personal relations that have been build up over the years.

Letters to the Power in the Epistolary Heritage of F.M. Dostoevsky

One of the urgent issues of modern Russian studies is the study of letters to the power of Russian writers. It is legitimate to single out these addresses in a special genre, which, in contrast to the genre of friendly writing, has practically not been studied. Fedor Dostoevsky wrote letters to Alexander I, V. A. Dolgorukov, A. E. Timashev, A. A. Suvorov, heir to the throne A. A. Romanov, and Grand Duke K. K. Romanov. Of particular note is the voluminous correspondence between Dostoevsky and K.P. Pobedonostsev – correspondence between a writer and an official of such a high rank is very rare (it should be noted that the addresser and the addressee were connected not only by business, but also by personal relations). The subjects of Dostoevsky’s letters to the authorities are very diverse – requests to move to the capital, creativity, literary and social life in Russia and Europe, the publication of “Citizen” and others. On the basis of F.M. Dostoevsky’s letters to the Emperor, the Tsareviches and their confidants of various ranks, one can trace the relationship with the authorities and clarify a number of already obtained facts and assessments. The messages of Russian writers to power are a special kind of epistolary genre that has both aesthetic value and is a historical document – evidence of the relationship between power and literature in our country. Obviously, the authorities were interested in cooperation with writers, and specific rulers showed interest in the work and in the personality of Dostoevsky.

Political structures and trust in markets: A comparative examination of consumer trust in 28 EU member states and the effects of consumer policy on trust

A central tenet of the New Economic Sociology is that trust is a central factor in the sound functioning of markets. Previous research has mainly used a national-scale network approach to argue that personal relations generate trust in market relations. In contrast, this article shows, from a comparative perspective, how political structures influence consumer trust. First, using aggregate data, it shows how consumer trust in markets varies across the 28 European Union (EU) member states. Second, it uses regression models to examine the effects of varying levels of political embeddedness on consumer trust, taking consumer policy as a proxy. The results support the view that it is not only personal relations that generate trust in market relations but also political structures. This argument echoes institutional economic sociological approaches, and it adds to them a trust dimension. It furthermore encourages a more finely grained comparative analysis to better account for the effects of social macrostructures on trust.

Inverse Intimacy: Reconfiguring ‘Personal Relations’ in Elizabeth Bowen's The Hotel

Ever since its publication in 1927, Elizabeth Bowen's first novel, The Hotel, has prompted critical responses that have tried to gauge the ways in which the narrative represents intimacy between women. Although one of its earliest reviewers sensed that the ‘dark, forlorn spirit of inversion is all through it’, modern critics have acknowledged that The Hotel is not engaged with the sexological models of inversion that inform Radclyffe Hall's contemporaneous novel, The Well of Loneliness (1928). At the same time, commentators have recognized that The Hotel forms part of a group of 1920s fictions that address female homosexuality with increasing openness. For the most part, readers have focused close attention on the intimate friendship that develops between the young Sydney Warren and the middle-aged widow Mrs. Kerr. This bond, even if it is fraught with tension, remains a source of prurient fascination among the other English residents enjoying a wintertime dolce far niente on the Italian Riviera. Still, the sustained critical focus on the attachment that develops between these two characters has tended to ignore the significance of the partnership between the two single women, Miss Pym and Miss Fitzgerald, that places the whole span of the novel in parentheses. Although recent studies by Elizabeth Cullingford and Maud Ellmann have drawn attention to Bowen's interest in what it means to be a ‘singleton’ or part of stadial series of personal relationships (single, couple, and triad), little has been said about the two spinsters, each of whom is ‘half of a duality’. The present essay concentrates attention on the ways in which the enumerative turn in Bowen studies broadens in scope when we look at how Miss Pym and Miss Fitzgerald appear as both two in one and one in two: a narrative formula that reminds us not of sexual inversion but the inverse number in mathematics. It is this type of inverse intimacy between woman and woman that triumphs at the end of The Hotel.

Utverdzhennya prosvitnytsʹkoyi estetyky u shchodennyku Petra Apostola

The diary of Petro Apostol belongs to great samples of documentary prose of the beginning of the 18th century. The document indicates an expressive influence of the European ideological and cultural trend of the Enlightenment, which found its reflection in the language, figurative system and problems. The author wrote his diary for more than two years - from May 1725 to August 1727. There are several motifs in the diary, against the background and in the interweaving of which the historical era of Ukraine of that time is visible. First of all, it is told about the family of the Apostols and their life in the Myrgorod regiment. The system of images created by the author is interesting - here his parents, peasants, Cossacks, serfs, Cossacks foremen, Russian nobles, merchants, princes, tsars, foreigners, friends of the author. The author’s attitude to his heroes is characteristic of enlighteners. It is rationalistic, that is, each mentioned person in society performs his function regardless of which class he belongs to. Particular interest in a wide range of problems that the author writes about in his notes - he is interested in family, agriculture, relations between people, legal issues, the problem of serfdom, poverty, personal relations, he talks about books and newspapers, about friends, about his father, about Prince Menshikov and his service, talks about entertainment and leisure, about dances and receptions, talks about clothes and everyday life, about gift s for the family, about his wife, about baptism and the birth of a child. The author does these problems esthetic in his notes, puts them into literary practice.

Quest for Identity in the novels of Beloved and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Identity is often described as finite and consists of separate and distinct parts such as; family, culture, personal relations and profession, to name a few. The formation of identity is an ever – evolving one wherein our genealogy, culture, loved ones, those we cared for, people who have harmed us and people we have harmed, our memories of the various phases of life, or the deeds done to oneself and to others, experiences lived and choices made, all come together to form who one is, at a given moment. The black Americans in the select novels are neglected even not to be considered as human beings, deprived of their rights. This article deals with the search for self as to who they truly are in the novel of Toni Morrison’s Beloved and The Bluest Eye. Identity is the uniqueness of a person and when it is lost, the person loses everything in his life.

TRUST, FRIENDS, AND INVESTMENT IN LATE VICTORIAN ENGLAND

Why people trust is a question that has preoccupied scholars across many disciplines. Historical explorations of trust abound, but we know relatively little about the workings of trust in the history of investment. Despite becoming increasingly mediated and institutionalized in the nineteenth century, the market for stocks and shares remained local and embedded in personal relations to a significant extent. This created a complex trust environment in which old and new forms of trust co-existed. Investors sought information from the press, but they also relied upon friends to help them navigate the market. Rather than studying trust in the aggregate, this article argues that focusing on the particular allows us to appreciate trust as an emotional and ultimately imaginative process depending as much on affective stories as rational calculation. To this end, it takes the case of a Bath clergyman and workhouse schools inspector, James Clutterbuck, who solicited investments from a wide network of friends and colleagues in the 1880s and 1890s. By capturing the complex interplay of friendship, emotions, and narrative in the formation of trust, the article offers a window onto everyday financial life in late Victorian provincial England.