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2013, SCIENTIFIC PAPERS. UNIVERSITY OF LATVIA. 2013, Vol. 793 ORIENTAL STUDIES
This work casts a brief glance at the activities of Vello Vaartnou, the Nyingmapa Buddhist, who has been active in culture, science, Buddhism, art, architecture, politics and social life for decades. Keywords: Vello Vaartnou; Nyingma; Estonia; Buddhism; Thangkas; Buddhist Brotherhood; Tallinn; Estonian National Independent Party; Stupas; KGB; Buryatia; Ivolga; Hambo Lama Zhimba Erdineev; Hambo Lama Munko Tsybikov; International Conferences;
Ivolginsky Datsan (Russian: Иволгинский Дацан) is the Buddhist monastery, Buryatia, 23 km from Ulan Ude, near Verkhnyaya Ivolga village.At the end of the 17th to the beginning of the 18th centuries, Buddhism spread throughout the Transbaikal region. The highest development period for Buryatian Buddhism has been considered from the second half of the 19Th century until the 1930s. After communist revolution in 1917, between 1927 and 1938, all 47 datsans that existed in Buryatia and Transbaikalia were closed or destroyed. Highly learned lamas were sent to prison or were simply shot to death without any trial. Shortly after the world war II, Stalin allowed a host of Buryat lamas, those who survived the purges of the 1930s, to resume the performance of Buddhist rites though on a very limited scale, under the strict control of the state officials and, of course, under constant KGB surveillance. In 1945, the Ivolginsky Datsan was opened as the only Buddhist Spiritual centre of USSR. Several years later the Aginsky datsan resumed operations. According to the Soviet legislation, it was only in these two places that the Russian Buddhists were allowed to practice their religion, and any religious propaganda was officially forbidden. In my presentation I will focus on two decades of the Ivolginsky Datsan (the 70s and 80s). How was given permission to build a Buddhist Datsan and how was selected the place for Datsan; who were these old generation Buryat lamas who had survived from prisons and came to Ivolga and started to build up Buddhist Sangha again. An Estonian Buddhist, Vello Vaartnou, studied from 1976-1987 under the guidance of a number of teachers of Ivolga monastery including a famous doctor-lama Ven Munko Tsybikov and Ven Zhimba Erdineev, and is a rare example of a non-Buryat student at this period. In my proposed article, I introduce the life stories of two Hambo lamas, Ven Zhimba Erdineev and Ven Munko Tsybikov. My interview with Vello Vaartnou casts a brief glance at everyday life and studies in Ivolginsky Datsan, and the old-time events/stories told by the elder lamas to Vaartnou.
The essay deals with the activities of the Relief Centre for the Political Prisoners in the USSR (Eesti Vangistatud Vabadusvõitlejate Abistamiskeskus – EVVA), established in Stockholm in 1978 and managed by Ants Kippar. The EVVA was the first emigre organization that created contacts with the resistance movement in occupied Estonia. For the Estonian resistance movement, the EVVA became the foreign center, which mediated public protest letters and other materials of the Estonian resistance movement from Estonia to the Western media. According to the statute, the EVVA was a humanitarian organization for the relief of imprisoned freedom fighters. Practical relief activities consisted of moral and financial support of political prisoners and their family members. This support could be done by writing letters and sending support parcels to them. With the regard to the assistance of political prisoners, the EVVA co-operated with international organizations such as the United Nations Organization, Amnesty International, the Baltic Prisoners of Conscience Group, and other relevant organizations. The essay is the translation of the book “The EVVA. Eesti Vangistatud Vabadusvõitlejate Abistamiskeskus”, which was published in Estonian as the eBook in 2013.
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While Timothy Leary was preaching " Turn on, tune in, drop out " in the late 1960s in the United States, young people in the Soviet Union were practising another kind of tuning in. Radio Luxembourg and other foreign radio signals leaked through the Iron Curtain, bringing with them " the strange vibration " that sparked new social arenas and aff ective engagements. Iconic hippie-era albums were illicitly distributed , copied on reel-to-reel tapes, and exchanged within the networks of music lovers. In Soviet Estonia a distinctive rock music scene evolved. Rock music was the key source and the means of divergence for the nonconformist youth of Soviet Estonia, many of whom identifi ed as or were connected to the hippies. The radically diff erent sound of psychedelic rock prompted ecstatic states of mind and triggered new imaginaries. The aff ective engagements with music created a sense of connection with the global pop culture and youth movements and, ultimately, fostered the sense of an imaginary elsewhere. Since these engagements diverged from the predominant discourses, and the Soviet authorities often regarded them as dangerous for societal well-being, the aff ectively loaded practices and experiences of music guided the youth to redefi ne their relationship to the daily reality and ideology of Soviet life. Hence, the rock music milieu became the site in which certain aff ects (interest in rock music), aff ective states of mind (kaif) and expressions (practices of style, artistic languages) fostered the agency of the nonconformist youth by creating a space of sensory divergence.
This is a translation of an article published in Estonian academic journal Tuna [Past], no 3/2013, pp 65-81. Abstract: Religiously motivated repressions in Estonia during Soviet era can be divided into two: first, a particular kind of coercion, which violated Human rights but was backed up with Soviet law system, included the administration of religious life (i.e. legal restrictions and obligations) and atheistic propaganda along with the lack of the liberty of religious speech. The second category encompasses direct repressions with much harsher ways of neutralizing opposition. Until the end of Stalin’s era the control over churches was achieved by mass repressions, fear and agreements between churches and the state. Later, preventive methods and coercion (“administration”) became the main methods of dealing with the “religion problem”; repressions were mostly personal and were used only when one tried the limits and boundaries. Soviet Union was no rule of law and its laws violated human rights, including the limiting of the freedom of speech. Therefore, regarding religion, most of the aspects of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 18 were more or less violated in Estonia. Meanwhile, when compared to the rest of Soviet Union, the situation in Estonian was quite mild due to the lack of tense religious situation. This was a result of at least four causes: control over the governing bodies of churches was achieved quite quickly; churches held low profile; due to the Soviet secular rituals the religious traditions were discontinued and religion was forced to the periphery; weak connection between religion and nationalism. Although the methodology of the control of the religion problem was quite diverse, the outcome was quite poor and even chaotic. It points to the fact that zeitgeist and fear played quite an important role in creating the atmosphere of coercion and hostility toward religion.
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