Rossijskaja Karelija i karely v imperskoi politike Rossii, 1905-1917

Russian Karelians were one of the small peasant nations of the Russian Empire that began to identify themselves as nations during the late imperial period. At that historical moment Russian Karelia fell between an economically undeveloped empire and the rapidly modernizing borderland of Finland. The economic and cultural lure of Finland drew Karelians into the Finnish camp. This attraction was seen as a challenge to Russia and influenced the straggle between Russia and Finland for the Karelians. This struggle was waged from 1905 to 1917. This work is focused on the beginning stage of the struggle, its various phases, and their results. The confrontation extended into different dimensions (economic, political, ideological, church and cultural politics) and occurred on two levels: central and regional. Countermeasures against local nationalisms developed much earlier both in Russia and in other empires for use were also used in the Russian Karelian case. Economic policies were deployed to try to make relations with Russia more alluring for Karelians and to improve their economic condition. However, these efforts produced only minimal results due to the economic weakness of the empire and a lack of finances. Fear of the economic integration of the Karelians and Finns, which would have stimulated the economy of the Karelia, also hindered these attempts. The further development of the Orthodox Church, the schools and the zemstvos in Karelia yielded fewer results than expected due to the economic underdevelopment of the region and the avoidance of the Finnish language. Policizing measures were the most successfull, as all activities in Russian Karelia by the Finns were entirely halted in practice. However, the aspiration of Russian Karelians to integrate their home districts with Finland remained a latent force that just waited for an opportunity to push to the surface again. Such a chance materialized with the Russian revolution. The Karelian question was also a part of Russian domestic political confrontation. At the and of the 1800s, the Russian nationalist right had grown strong and increasingly gained the favor of the autocracy. The right political forces exploited the Karelian question in its anti-Finnish ideology and in its general resistance to the national emancipation of the minority peoples of Russia. A separate ideology was developed, focusing on the closeness of Karelians to the "great Russian people." Simultaneously, this concept found a place in the ultramonarchist myth of the particularly close connection between the people and tsar that was prominent in the era of Nicholas II. This myth assigned the Karelians a place amongst the "simple people" faithful to the tsar.

Pitch discrimination in optimal and suboptimal acoustic environments: electroencephalographic, magnetoencephalographic, and behavioral evidence

Pitch discrimination is a fundamental property of the human auditory system. Our understanding of pitch-discrimination mechanisms is important from both theoretical and clinical perspectives. The discrimination of spectrally complex sounds is crucial in the processing of music and speech. Current methods of cognitive neuroscience can track the brain processes underlying sound processing either with precise temporal (EEG and MEG) or spatial resolution (PET and fMRI). A combination of different techniques is therefore required in contemporary auditory research. One of the problems in comparing the EEG/MEG and fMRI methods, however, is the fMRI acoustic noise. In the present thesis, EEG and MEG in combination with behavioral techniques were used, first, to define the ERP correlates of automatic pitch discrimination across a wide frequency range in adults and neonates and, second, they were used to determine the effect of recorded acoustic fMRI noise on those adult ERP and ERF correlates during passive and active pitch discrimination. Pure tones and complex 3-harmonic sounds served as stimuli in the oddball and matching-to-sample paradigms. The results suggest that pitch discrimination in adults, as reflected by MMN latency, is most accurate in the 1000-2000 Hz frequency range, and that pitch discrimination is facilitated further by adding harmonics to the fundamental frequency. Newborn infants are able to discriminate a 20% frequency change in the 250-4000 Hz frequency range, whereas the discrimination of a 5% frequency change was unconfirmed. Furthermore, the effect of the fMRI gradient noise on the automatic processing of pitch change was more prominent for tones with frequencies exceeding 500 Hz, overlapping with the spectral maximum of the noise. When the fundamental frequency of the tones was lower than the spectral maximum of the noise, fMRI noise had no effect on MMN and P3a, whereas the noise delayed and suppressed N1 and exogenous N2. Noise also suppressed the N1 amplitude in a matching-to-sample working memory task. However, the task-related difference observed in the N1 component, suggesting a functional dissociation between the processing of spatial and non-spatial auditory information, was partially preserved in the noise condition. Noise hampered feature coding mechanisms more than it hampered the mechanisms of change detection, involuntary attention, and the segregation of the spatial and non-spatial domains of working-memory. The data presented in the thesis can be used to develop clinical ERP-based frequency-discrimination protocols and combined EEG and fMRI experimental paradigms.

Venäjän politiikka ja perustuslaki : Tutkimus Venäjän perustuslakikäsitteistön kehityksestä 1900-luvulla

Constitutional politics in Russia, a conceptual history study of the constitutional rhetoric in the 20th century In April 2006 the Russian Constitution had its 100th anniversary. Following its late start, five constitutions have been adopted. The great number of constitutions is partly explained in my work by the fact that Russia s political system has changed many times, from one state system to another. From a monarchical state power, it changed first, with the October revolution, into the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, and after that, in 1924, into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In 1991, the Russian Federation was established. The great number of constitutions can also be explained by the fact that in a one-party system, constitutional concepts became one of the most important instruments for introducing political programmes. When the political unity of the state was not only restricted by the Constitution, but also by the party ideology, the political debates concerning constitutional concepts were the key discussions for all the reformative pursuits of Soviet politics. It can be said that, in the Soviet Union, almost all political discourses dealt with constitutional concepts. In the context of restricted unity, the constitutional concepts were the most important tools to argue and create a basis for a new presentation and new political programmes. Thus, the basic feature of the Soviet political discourses has been a continuous competition regarding the constitutional concepts. By defining the constitutional concepts, a new, the political elites wanted especially to redefine, their own way, the traditional meanings of the October 1917 Revolution, and to differentiate them from those of the preceding period of power. From a methodological point of view, I argue that the Russian constitutional concepts make a conceptual historical approach very suitable, and change the focus on history. This approach studies history in contemporary contexts which follow after each other, and whose texts are the main research target. The picture of history is created through the interpretation of the original sources of contemporary contexts. Focusing on the dynamic and traditional characteristic of Russian constitutional concepts, I refer to a certain kind of value and the task of these concepts to justify and define the political and societal unity in every situation. This is done by combining the pursued future orientation of constitutional unity with the new acts of preservation of the traditional principles of the revolution. The different time layers of the constitutional concepts, the past, the present and the future, are the key aspects of storytelling in justifying the continuity and redefining the constitutional unity for the sake of reform. These aspects of constitutional concepts, in addition to all the other functions, have been the main elements of the argumentative structure of acting against opponents.

Itsenäisen Suomen puolesta : Sotilaskomitea 1915-1918

For Independent Finland. The Military Committee 1915–1918 In the course of the First World War, several organizations were founded with the purpose of making Finland independent or, at least, restoring her autonomous status. The Military Committee was the most significant active independence organization in Finland in the First World War, in addition to the activist student movement, i.e., the Jaeger Movement. The Military Committee was an organization founded in 1915 by officers who had attended the Hamina Cadet School, with the goal of creating a national army for a liberation war against the Russian troops. It was believed that the liberation war should succeed only with the help of the German Army. With the situation in society continually tensing up in the autumn 1917, the Military Committee also had to figure on the possibility of a Civil War. The activities of the Military Committee started in the early part of 1915 when they were still small-scale, but they gained significant momentum after the Russian Revolution in March 1917. In January 1918, the Military Committee formed the general staff for the White Army, the Senate’s troops. The independence-related activities of the Hamina cadets in the years of the First World War were more extensive and multifaceted than has been believed heretofore. The work of the Military Committee was divided into preparations for a liberation war in Finland, on one hand, and in Stockholm and Berlin, on the other hand. In Finland, the Military Committee took part in intelligence gathering for Germany and in supporting the recruiting Jaegers, and later in founding the civil guard organization, in solving the law and order authorities issue, and finally in selecting the Commander-in-Chief for the Senate’s troops. The member of the Military Committee, especially Captain Hannes Ignatius of the Cavalry contributed greatly to the drafting of the independence activists’ national action plan in Stockholm in May 1917. This plan preceded the formation of the civil guard organization. The Military Committee’s role in founding the civil guards was initially minor, but in the fall of 1917, the Military Committee started to finance the activities of the civil guards, named several former officers as commanders of the civil guards and finally overtook the entire civil guard movement. In Stockholm and Berlin, the representatives of the Military Committee were in active contact with both the high command of the German Army and with the representatives of the Swedish Army. Colonel Nikolai Mexmontan, who was a representative of the Military Committee, collaborated with Swedish officers and Jaeger officers in Stockholm in coming up with comprehensive and detailed plans for starting the Liberation War. Under Mexmontan’s leadership, there were serious negotiations to enter into a confederation with Germany. Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Thesleff, on the other hand, became the commander of the Jaeger Battalion 27. The influence and importance of the Military Committee came to the forefront in independent and conflict-torn Finland. The Military Committee became a Senate committee on the 7th of January 1918, with its chairman, for all practical purposes, as the Commander-in-Chief in an eventual war. Lieutenant General Claes Charpentier was the chairman of the Military Committee from mid-December 1917 onwards, but on the 15th of January 1918 he had to resign in favour of Lieutenant General Gustaf Mannerheim. Soon after that, Mannerheim got an order from the chairman of the Senate P. E. Svinhufvud to organize and assume the leadership of the law and order authorities. The chairman of the Military Committee became the Commander-in-Chief of the Senate troops in January 1918, and the Military Committee became the Commander-in-Chief’s general staff. The Military Committee had turned from a clandestine organization into the first general staff of the independent Finnish Army.

Key Factors Influencing Economic Relationships and Communication in Finnish Food Chains

The aim of this report is to discuss the role of the relationship type and communication in two Finnish food chains, namely the pig meat-to-sausage (pig meat chain) and the cereal-to-rye bread (rye chain) chains. Furthermore, the objective is to examine those factors influencing the choice of a relationship type and the sustainability of a business relationship. Altogether 1808 questionnaires were sent to producers, processors and retailers operating in these two chains of which 224 usable questionnaires were returned (the response rate being 12.4%). The great majority of the respondents (98.7%) were small businesses employing less than 50 people. Almost 70 per cent of the respondents were farmers. In both chains, formal contracts were stated to be the most important relationship type used with business partners. Although for many businesses written contracts are a common business practice, the essential role of the contracts was the security they provide regarding the demand/supply and quality issues. Relative to the choice of the relationship types, the main difference between the two chains emerged especially with the prevalence of spot markets and financial participation arrangements. The usage of spot markets was significantly more common in the rye chain when compared to the pig meat chain, while, on the other hand, financial participation arrangements were much more common among the businesses in the pig meat chain than in the rye chain. Furthermore, the analysis showed that most of the businesses in the pig meat chain claimed not to be free to choose the relationship type they use. Especially membership in a co-operative and practices of a business partner were mentioned as the reasons limiting this freedom of choice. The main business relations in both chains were described as having a long-term orientation and being based on formal written contracts. Typical for the main business relationships was also that they are not based on the existence of the key persons only; the relationship would remain even if the key people left the business. The quality of these relationships was satisfactory in both chains and across all the stakeholder groups, though the downstream processors and the retailers had a slightly more positive view on their main business partners than the farmers and the upstream processors. The businesses operating in the pig meat chain seemed also to be more dependent on their main business relations when compared to the businesses in the rye chain. Although the communication means were rather similar in both chains (the phone being the most important), there was some variation between the chains concerning the communication frequency necessary to maintain the relationship with the main business partner. In short, the businesses in the pig meat chain seemed to appreciate more frequent communication with their main business partners when compared to the businesses in the rye chain. Personal meetings with the main business partners were quite rare in both chains. All the respondent groups were, however, fairly satisfied with the communication frequency and information quality between them and the main business partner. The business cultures could be argued to be rather hegemonic among the businesses both in the pig meat and rye chains. Avoidance of uncertainty, appreciation of long-term orientation and independence were considered important factors in the business cultures. Furthermore, trust, commitment and satisfaction in business partners were thought to be essential elements of business operations in all the respondent groups. In order to investigate which factors have an effect on the choice of a relationship type, several hypotheses were tested by using binary and multinomial logit analyses. According to these analyses it could be argued that avoidance of uncertainty and risk has a certain effect on the relationship type chosen, i.e. the willingness to avoid uncertainty increases the probability to choose stable relationships, like repeated market transactions and formal written contracts, but not necessary those, which require high financial commitment (like financial participation arrangements). The probability of engaging in financial participation arrangements seemed to increase with long-term orientation. The hypotheses concerning the sustainability of the economic relations were tested by using structural equation model (SEM). In the model, five variables were found to have a positive and statistically significant impact on the sustainable economic relationship construct. Ordered relative to their importance, those factors are: (i) communication quality, (ii) personal bonds, (iii) equal power distribution, (iv) local embeddedness and (v) competition.

Arvoja näkyvissä : Kaunokirjallisuuden etiikka Ludwig Wittgensteinin filosofian valossa

The goal of this dissertation was to study whether it is possible and meaningful to apply Ludwig Wittgenstein s distinction between saying (Sagen) and showing (Zeigen) to ethically oriented literary criticism. The following questions were used as the primary guidelines: 1. Is it possible, in the context of literary criticism, to put in practice Wittgenstein s ethical conceptions, which are quite theoretical and metaphysical by nature? 2. If so, what practical literary devices do authors use if they want to demonstrate their ethical values within the frame of a fictional work? 3. Does philosophy offer useful ethical consepts that open us new and interesting readings in fiction? The philosophical background of Wittgenstein s distinction is clarified in chapter I. This clarification is based on his main works, Tractatus logico-philosophicus and Philosophishe Untersuchungen, the published correspondence between Wittgenstein and Paul Engelmann, and selected Wittgenstein research and papers. Analyzing ethics and it s expression in Georg Trakl s poetry further elucidates Wittgenstein s concept of showing. The concept that a literary work is an act of an author was used as a starting point. The presumption was that analyzing this act of an author will reveal how ethical values can be demonstrated in literature. Categorizing an author s act at different levels of literary expression provides the structure of this study. In chapters IV - XIII literary devices useful for demonstrating ethics are examined and explained using examples from the works of Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, Nikolay Leskov, Ludwig Uhland, Eino Leino, Pentti Haanpää and Maria Jotuni. The concepts and views of researchers and writers such as Mihail Bahtin, Peter Juhl, E. D. Hirsch, Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen are used. The concepts outlined in previous chapters are then applied in three case studies: Aeschylus s Oresteia trilogy, J-L. Runeberg s poem Sven Dufva and Sofi Oksanen s novel Puhdistus (Purge). On the whole, Wittgenstein s idea that ethical values can be demonstrated (shown) by means of literature is revealed as a fruitful point of departure for a more exact ethical reading, offering a new perspective on literary works.