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EESTI ELU reedel, 11. juunil 2021 — Friday, June 11, 2021
It is tempting to compare
It is hard not to be reminded of this optimistic count Rostop chin, when considering Adam Johann von Krusenstern’s three year long voyage around the world, 1803-06, Russia’s first circumnavigation. 33 years old Krusenstern was commis sioned to support the Petro pavlovsk city and garrison far away on the Kamchatka penin sula with supplies, to establish diplomatic relations with Japan and cities on China’s coast, and
to pursue scientific research all along the trip: mapping, mapping and mapping. But of course, one can assume that he off the record, like Mannerheim on his 1906-08 Asian expedition, also carried on qualified reconnais sance for military purposes. Last but not least, he was to en hance the glory of his imperial patria, shortly, to establish Russia among the world’s elite in navigation. During his long voyage, Krusenstern’s ship’s doctor was his old friend Karl Espenberg from Tallinn. Another young Landsmann, Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, born on Hoheneichen/Pilguse manor on the west coast of Estonian island Oesel/Saaremaa, served as his chief cartographer. Krusenstern himself was born on the Haggud/Hagudi manor between Tallinn and Rapla. He spent his later years in his manor Aß/Kiltsi in Wierland, where he wrote, cor responded and also died. He is buried together with his wife in the Tallinn cathedral. His youngest cadets on board were the brothers Mauritz and Otto von Kotzebue from Tallinn, 13 resp. 15 years old at the start, sons of the famous playwright August von K, whose wife was a Krusenstern relative. During the Napoleonic wars, Russia seized Finland from Sweden (1809). Then the Vienna Peace Congress of 1815 turned out extremely favorably for Russia. And as one of the sharpest tools of proactive czar ist foreign policy, the Russian Admiralty then renewed its interest in exploring, mapping and claiming faraway seas and coasts. Already in the same year, 1815, now 28-year old Otto Kotzebue on a private initiative set out from Kron stadt. In two expeditions, 181518, and 1823-26, he discovered and mapped more than 400 islands in the faraway Pacific. Unfortunately, his attempt at the North West Passage, from the West (!), failed. On his both world tours he enjoyed the company of the zoologist Johann Friedrich Eschscholtz,
is wrong. Especially, as the issue was resolved on the same day, near Ottawa. Why wake up so Most people are generally many? tolerant, living in a developed Would that this have been country, of most of the the first such stupid darkness heavy-handed decisions made alarm. Trust me, the noise is by bureaucracy and poli incredible. Not like a gentle ticians. But the Amber Alert alarm clock. If it were a nuclear system certainly needs re attack, OK. Could accept it. thinking. What advantage is Last year there were so many there to wake up the entire midnight Amber Alerts that province at 3:54 A.M early many complained. To no avail. last Friday with a shrill alert, No one is cold to these issues. that in Ottawa a child has But the bleeding hearts that been abducted? From Thun supported the continuing alerts der Bay, are they going to at ridiculous hours, suggested come down and help the qua that those who wanted changes lified, alert, and very present to the system were, in fact, police? uncaring about kidnapped Common sense should be in children. Far from it. But why play. We all care about abducted wake up Windsor, when such an children. But waking up a huge event happened 700 kilometers province, with a population away? And between Thunder around 13 million? Something Bay and Ottawa it is almost
1,100 such. Would it not make more sense to have, as an arbitrary suggestion, a circle of, say 100 km from where the Amber Alert is raised? And who decides on the 4 A.M. infernal raising of the citizenry? As it turns out, the infant was found in the morning, during daylight. As privacy issues usually reign, we have no idea, as to who the abductor was. The only infor mation online was that the mother was in Nunavut. Some mother! 11-month-old babe with special needs was left with a caregiver. Perhaps the father, we just do not know. It is perfectly reasonable to interrupt radio and television programming, if there is a dire urgency. At one time those large signs above the 401 also carried the alerts. But who, other than a
trucker is on the highway at that god-awful hour? And these alerts raise issues. Most who were woken had the alert come in on their cell phone. One assumes that the telephone connection providers supplied these to law enforce ment. For there is no directory, any way to find out someone’s cell phone number. Is it man dated by law for cell phone ser vice providers to do so? Or is this law enforcement putting its heavy boots down on the issue? No blocking app works. You cannot opt out. The only surefire solution to get a good night’s sleep – for many of us, interrupted sleep usually does not restore – is to turn off the phone. Who does that? Do people with landlines discon nect at night? What is the point of having a communication
Hybrid seminar – Embassy of Estonia, Stockholm, May 5
Challenges in exploring the Arctic; historical maritime exploration and current realities Hain Rebas On the Russian early 19th cen tury exploratory background 1. Introduction In the year 1800, Europe had been drawn into the Napoleonic wars, and Russia’s Czar Paul I still had some months to live before his assassination. The Czar’s influential Grand Marshal of the Court was count Fyodor Rostopchin, an Army general, later distinguished as Moscow’s unhappy defender against Napoleon. At a meeting of the Russian Foreign Policy Committee in 1800, count Rostopchin stood up and proclaimed prophetically that Imperial Russia will become the Hercules of international politics. – Hercules! – There fore, Russian sea power should be established in new oceans far beyond the neighboring Baltic Sea. 2. Factual background Like everything else in early modern Russian history, the building of a merchant fleet and a navy started with Czar Peter I, who reigned a century before Paul I. The following Russian 18th century expansion on the European continent and the sys tematic development of Peter’s Baltic Sea Navy are well docu mented. Then already, Russian Cossack agents, like famous Jermak and others, had pene trated the Eurasian continent with its great rivers through to the Pacific Ocean and claimed the territories for the crown. Also, in the far north, Rus sians partly explored the Barents Sea, the Kara Sea, the Laptev Sea and even the East Siberian Sea – including the islands. Then, in the mid-18th
What gives?
century, great leaders and scholars, like the Dane Vitus Bering, and Mikhail Lomo nosov, supported by the new Russian Academy of Sciences, spent decades gathering, sorting out and presenting facts about faraway waters, coasts, passages, skerries, islands and their inhabitants, flora, fauna and minerals. Around 1790, the Russian Baltic Navy prevailed in some decisive battles with the re vengeful Swedes. In 1788 the attacking Swedish Navy failed to break the Russian de fense-line at the island of Hogland in the middle of the Gulf of Finland. Another Swedish attempt 1790 outside Kronstadt, actually the last great sailing-ships line-to-linebattle in the Baltic Sea, ended in a draw. The war ended in status quo – the point of which is, that from the end of the 18th century, the Russian Baltic Fleet indisputably was biggest and strongest in the Baltic Sea. Furthermore, after having finally devoured continental Poland and Lithuania in the 1790s, and after having estab lished herself in the Black Sea and in the Mediterranean, Imperial Russia had become an important player around 1800, not only at sea, but also in European top-politics. One can easily assume that the drive to find new continents and mar kets, like the British had done for centuries, by sailing even further north, and pushing through an imagined North-East Passage to reach the riches of China and India directly, was by then entrenched in the Petersburg Court and Admiralty. 3. Theoretical deliberations
Rostopchin’s proclamation and implicit urging of the forces in 1800 with the American naval historian A.Th.Mahan’s thesis almost one hundred years later, in 1890. Mahan strongly high lighted the decisive role of the Royal Navy in creating, form ing and maintaining the British empire. Spoiler alert: Without sea power, no world hegemony. In fact, Mahan’s work be came a naval strategy bible for imperialistic professionals all over the world. It strongly in fluenced politicians and naval theoreticians in England, USA, Germany (Tirpitz, Kiel) and Japan (Tsushima 1905). I wouldn’t doubt that even Soviet Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, who from the end of the 1950s developed the enormous nuclear Soviet Northern Fleet in Severomorsk, was a later scholar of Mahan. Rostopchin of course knew nothing about Mahan. But he seems to have been capable of independent observation and reflection. Just like Mahan, he had the record of the British Royal Navy and its symbiosis with the expanding British Empire more or less before his eyes. And if he really needed a prototype, a role model for his naval thinking, he could always have resorted to Peter I, the “founder of everything Rus sian”. Peter is quoted to have said: “A ruler that has but an army has one arm, but he who has a navy, has both”. Count Rostopchin did not need a Mahan to understand macropolitics and where to proceed with his muscular Russia. 4. Early 19th century
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another Landsmann, from Tartu university. Kotzebue’s later years were spent on his Kau/ Kõue manor south of Tallinn. He died in Tallinn. Both Krusenstern and Kotzebue also published their reports in German, their atlases even in French. In 1819, the Russian Admiralty was able to launch two new well-equipped ex plorative expeditions to the far side of the globe, one to the north, the other to the southern hemisphere. The southern one was led by Fabian von Belling shausen, already well-known to us, who, as we know, also dis covered Antarktis. We will hear more about him as follows. The northern expedition, 1819-23, moved around in the Bering Straits, the East Siberian and the Chukchi Sea, and along the American North-West coast as well as in Alaska, then still under Russian rule. Managed by tough leaders like Ferdi nand von Wrangel, another Baltic German, the expedition pushed further north than man had ever previously sailed (Bear island). Wrangel spent his last years on his manor Rojel/Roela in Wierland and passed away in Tartu. 5. Summing up: Around 1800, accumulated intellectual, financial, physical and mental resources, and a lot of military power were at hand in self-confident St.Petersburg – for exploration and expansion also at sea, now also worldwide. In one way or other, we hear count Rostopchin’s bold procla mation about Russia as a future Hercules of the seas resound also in the contributions on the other side of the globe by a most remarkable quartet ex plorers, adventurers at sea. As it happens, all four of them, Adam Johann, Fabian, Ferdinand and Otto, naval officers of imperial Russia, also were Landsleute/kaasmaalased, fellow-countrymen of us Esto nians. They are the protagonists of our following afternoon deliberations…
device otherwise? The added problem is that we will just ignore the alarms coming in the middle of the night. Just like hitting the snooze button on the alarm clock. Roll over, and try to sleep once more. Which defeats the purpose of this system such as presently offensively imple mented. To repeat. The Amber Alert is a fine idea, necessary in our troubled society. But is it right to scare the bejesus out of so many million sleepers in a huge province? With a large popula tion. Wonder how many of them spent their Friday working hours without yawning. This system needs a major and logi cal revamp. TÕNU NAELAPEA
