I just got a private message which pointed to another sub-blog
"In fact there was no tradition of academic publishing, research or Estonian universities before Bolsheviks."
I was told that this is a lie as Estonian universities are in fact ancient.
As a proof I was given a link to the Wikipedia article on the so-called University of Tartu
The article claims that the University of Tartu was founded in 1632 and thus is one of Northern Europe's oldest universities.
This is patently false because present day university of Tartu has nothing in common with the Acadeinia Gustaviana to which Soviet propagandists and today's Estonian ethno Nazis ascribe, preposterously, descent of the Tartu University with which it has no relation rather than both being historic flukes and sharing a similar geographic location.
Wikipedia is controlled by the CIA - the English part - with management over certain geographical parts ceded over to pro-American ethnic communities. All articles on today's Estonia and Latvia are managed by the local ethnic Nazis and other editors or would-be editors are routinely banned for attempting to contradict ethno-Nazi myths even on the level of a benign discussion.
Here we face a severe problem of wholesale history usurpation, when an emergent tribal group that was brought to the surface of the historical cesspool (by Bolsheviks in this case, who were swimming in the contents of the same vessel) not just invents history but usurps, steals, pillages it from other people. The problem is endemic to the ethnic satrapies in the Baltics and to some extent is present in many other ethnic states like the Czech Republic, though in the Baltic states, in all three of them and not just in Estonia (which among the three nasty sisters is in the champion in the fields of ethnic and linguistic discrimination and other not-so-noble endeavors like Nazism glorification), the disease has long reached the terminal stage and is probably irreversible unless their very existence is reversed. As a disclaimer it has to be added that the ethnic-nationalist rot and other people's history usurpation flourished under the Soviet Union because wholesale invention of historical fictions or eradication of historic names began under Stalin . Like the UN, which in an act of ultimate wisdom decided that every "state" on earth must have at least one UNESCO heritage site (and Estonian ethno-nationalists managed to turn their "award" to propaganda objectives quite well, why not) , so Stalin propagandists decided that every titular tribe in each Soviet republic must have an ancient history of its own and went forward with fabricating it.
In any case, I was reminded that the Swedes founded the Tartu University in the year 1630.
Sorry guys, the Wikipedia falsifiers notwithstanding, the current nucleus of the ethno-Nazi thought (which is language-specific as it brews therein in Estonian and pig-English simultaneously) has nothing to do with the gymnasium that was founded in about same geographical locale, more or less, in the year 1630.
The gymnasium was not founded in Tartu, as the word was yet unknown or at least not yet written, but in Dorpat or in Russian Iuriev (Juriev) 5 years after the Swedes (Occupiers? Genocidal aggressors? Invaders? ) took control over Livonia. Note that Dorpat ( Tartu in the dialect of the Esths) was not located in Estonia (Esthland) but in Livonia. The gymnasium was transformed legally to a university of rather to an academia with the name of Acadeinia Gustaviana in 1632 and survived until 1656. That's somewhat longer than the longevity of the first Estonian and Latvian ethnocracies but still not particularly impressive.
The languages of instruction at the Acadeinia Gustaviana were Swedish and Latin, its instructors were Swedes and it was open to the children of Swedish officials. Now we have a claim of "research being done at an Estonian university" or that today's Tartu university was founded by the Swedes as an Estonian university in 1632 (I wonder why wasn't it founded by Estonians, well because they did not exist yet or tribal members did not yet know they are Estonians because even that appellation has not yet been invented for them) and the answer is following:
The Acadeinia Gustaviana was not an Estonian research university for the set of simple reasons such as:
the university was not in Estonia
it was not founded in Estonia
it never operated in the province of Estonia
it had no instructions in Estonian
it had no books in Estonian
it never did any research in Estonian
shall I continue?
Thus "Academia" as a purely Swedish institution ceased to exist in 1656 when forces of Alexis I (the father of Peter I) liberated the Russian city of Iuriev (Yuriev, Iuriev), which in 20th century Esths or now Estonians officially call Tartu.
Let's close the book. It is over. End of story: year 1656.
The Swedes never resurrected the university but started another one in 1690 they began a puny school project (just with 10 instructors) called Academia Gustaviana Carolina , which moved to Reval (Tallinn ) and Pernov, Pernow (Pärnu in Estonian dialect). That university literally expired as Swedish instructors left for Sweden after Baltic provinces were united with Russia and by 1710 the university ceased to exist for good and was never resurrected. That chapter is closed.
The new Imperial Russian University at Dorpat, with German language instruction, was opened in 1802, its founder was Alexander I of Russia. In 1902 that university celebrated its first centenary anniversary. With pomp, commemorative medals, champagne and fireworks. Nobody in right mind linked it with the long extinct Academia Gustaviana of 1630s or with the laughable Academia Gustaviana Carolina of 1690 vintage, as there was no political or cultural need for inventing long histories of affiliations with nominally Aryan people or cooking up fake pedigrees - something Estonian ethno-nationalists who now run Estonia feel a pathological need for, especially in confirming in their own little minds and in those of their ignorant sponsors that special Nordic relation, which isn't there but which they really long for, exists.
Let's keep going. The Imperial University of Dorpat became Russian language institution in 1880 and in 1884 received the charter of Emperor's Russian University - one along with Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, Kazan, Charkov (Kharkov) and so on and on. The Unviersity of Yuriev (Juriev, Iuriev) as it was then called and should be called by its proper historic name was not a prestigious one. According to memoires by Milukov it was ranked a bit lower than Kazan but attracted many liberal students from entire Russia and not just Livonia. By then the language of instruction was Russian.
In 1918 Yuriev (Juriev, Iuriev) was ceased by the German troops and after appearance of the ethnic states created in concert with the Bolsheviks, the old University was eliminated. Many of its stuff moved to Soviet Russia along with evacuated instructions material, so the old Dorpat University or Yuriev (Juriev, Iuriev) university can be considered - by staff and tradition - the parent of the Voronež (Voronezh) State university and not the Estonian language school called Tartu Ülikool that still occupies its buildings.
The Estonian school, called Higher School (Ülikool), loosely translated now as university (with the meaning of the concept of university being totally lost in the process) appeared in 1919 with a limited number of courses offered in newly developed written Estonian.
The current university dates from 1944 and its origins are Stalinist and Soviet, not royal and Swedish.
I have a smallish house in Moravia that is about 500 years old which I converted to a small though still not operational bed and breakfast outfit. In the 18th century there in my very house was a tavern with guest rooms. It would be incredible if I pretended that my operation is descended from the old tavern because it would clearly be a lie though of course both establishments share profile and exact location (Tartu University shares neither with the Academia Gustaviana).
Estonian ethno-Nazis (and their brethren in many other ethnic states) feel that they can usurp history merely by geographical association. There was a bakery in a town and you opened a bakery in same town three hundred years later, it isn't the same bakery, is it? The ethno-Nazis claim it is and convince the world around that this is same thing. This obviously degrades the pedigree of other bakeries - and universities which do stretch their descent over centuries.
Despite current claims and assertions (which 19th century university in Dorpat and Yuriev / Iuriev never made), the current so-called University of Tartu in Estonia has no direct line of descent to the Academia Gustaviana, established in 1632 and eradicated in 1656.
Why?
Because there is no evidence that any connection exists, save for desires of the current ethofascists to appear Nordic or ancient ot whatever, in any field like
- terms of professorial tradition
or faculty or language of instruction
or library collections
or research
or types of courses offered
or nationality
or in fact anything including the buildings as today's Estonian language (Soviet and then ethnofascist) university occupies buildings built for and by the Imperial Russian university in the 19th century and some Soviet structures, not those of semi-mythical Academia Gustaviana.
In fact the only connection there is might be geographical because there was a university in the past in that geographical locale, more or less, though even the town itself was named differently.
It is as if all circuses and theatres in and around Rome began suddenly claiming that it is they, each individually, who descend from the Roman Coliseum. The claim of every single establishment of the sort would however be less preposterous than Estonian ethno-nationalists fantasies about Academia Gustaviana being the ancestor of their Tartu University, because Rome stays Rome and was Rome there and the Coliseum is still there to see but nothing is left of Academia Gustaviana and it was certainly not founded in Tartu or in Estonia.
It is comical: as if a library in Alexandria, Egypt would claim that it descends from the Library of Alexandria, which as far as I know is long gone.
The crux of the matter is the historic role of the Estonian SSR, the occupation mythology and the current identity in Estonia which is being presented as the only true one.
According to the fairy tale presented as fact -the university in Tartu is an old Estonian institution that was founded by good Swedes in the 1630s.
The actual story is different - the Estonian university one sees today is a Soviet progeny, its departments, auditoriums, many of its buildings and scientific or liberal arts research in Estonian language are recent and date from the Soviet era, principally from the period of Stalin through Brezhnev, not Gustavus Adolphus through Charles XII. The university also uses facilities such as its main building that were left over from the days of the old imperial Russian university, which had German and Russian as its instructional languages, but that institution is also long gone, little if any continuity with it exists save for architectural surroundings.
Brockhaus & Efron academic dictionary (1908) history of universities in Dorpat / Yuriev
Imperial Iuriev University
http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/brokgauz_efron/120250/%D0%AE%D1%80%D1%8C%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9
История Российский Университетов
History of Russian Universities, a monography (PDF)
http://window.edu.ru/window/library?p_rid=46980
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