Latvia - A Work in Progress?

The two interwar decades turned out to be too short for a “national narrative” to be consolidated. Two occupations—the Soviet (1940–1941) and the Nazi-German (1941–1944)—rendered impossible for a half-decade any written version of Latvian history that was not Communist Party-approved during the first and did not fit with Nazi ideology during the second.

To the Communist Party, the interwar Republic meant domination of the “Latvian working people” by a “bourgeois clique” and after 1934 by a “fascist dictatorship”; Nazi propaganda foresaw Latvians—a racially somewhat inferior population—either being expelled from the Baltic region or Germanised if continuing to live there. The imperfectly formulated “master narrrative” of the interwar decades, however, lived on in the work of a handful of Latvian historians who in 1944–1945 fled Latvia and after the late 1940s came to settle in such new homelands as Sweden, the United States, the Federal Republic of Germany, and Canada.[7] In exile, no organisation of Latvian historians existed, however, and individual professionals were on their own. Some of those who had been trained as historians in the late 1930s entered other lines of work and continued to write Latvian history in their spare time. Given their very small number, their efforts hardly constituted a “master narrative” in the normal sense, i.e. an agreed-upon version accepted by hundreds of professionals, the consensus view of an entire field. Generally, the first generation of Latvian émigré historians (with some exceptions) continued to have weak institutional anchors in their new homelands; those who did, did not seek to launch a new narrative but continued to work within the general framework of interwar national history.[8] In the course of time, the first and second exile generations had to yield the stage to younger professional historians of Latvian background whose approaches to the Latvian past were influenced far more by interests and research directions in the Western historical professions than by the formulations of their senior Latvian colleagues.

In the meantime, during the decades of the Cold War the historians of the Latvian SSR produced several successive editions of Party-approved “master narratives,” of which the most recent (1986) replaced an earlier Stalinist-era version.[9] Ironically, this last work appeared just at the start of the internal upheavals that eventually destroyed the USSR and returned state sovereignty to Latvia, so that for all intents and purposes the 1986 “master narrative” of the Soviet era was stillborn. Latvia entered a new phase of its history without a “master narrative” other than the rather sketchy variant on offer from the émigré Latvian historians. Convinced that a “master narrative” was needed, however, the researchers of the post-1991 Latvian Intitute of History and the Faculty of History (both entities eventually at the University of Latvia) set out to create one dealing with the history of of the Latvian tauta (people) and state during the 19th and 20th centuries. As of this writing, three volumes have been produced by this effort but the intended series remains unconcluded.[10] The intent of the series was to lay out the interpretation of the past that Latvian historians could produce after being freed of ideological contraints. Unfortunately, during the first decade after renewed independence, the reading public remained deeply suspicious of the entire historical profession in Latvia. Pre-1991 historical writings had for decades formed a kind of easily recognised congealed orthodoxy that demanded repeated demonstrations of loyalty from researchers and from several generations of secondary school pupils and university students. The suspicion was extended to all manner of official-sounding and official-looking historical publications, even though they were being produced in the total absence of a “Party line.”

Unsurprisingly, the further development of the Latvian historical profession during the past two decades has not brought into prominence a new commanding version of Latvian history in the long term—i.e. no “master narrative.” Nearly every component of previous “master narratives”—especially of the Marxist-Leninist variant but also of the interwar era and of the writings of the émigré historians—has been evaluated, reexamined, deconstructed and if necesary disagreed with.[11] The period since 1991 has thus been an era of contestation, but not—it should be noted—of ringing condemnation of earlier Latvian historical writing. Some descriptions of short streches of the Latvian past have been accepted, possibly becoming candidates for a later “master narrative,” if one appears. Some have been closely reexamined (Kārlis Ulmanis’ authoritarian rule, for example) and new interpretations offered, while entirely new research domains have been opened and as of this writing are in the process of gaining currency.[12] New versions of monographs published in the Soviet decades have been produced, with their empirically-based sections preserved and the Soviet-era theoretical framework discarded. Headway has been made in new fields of historical work—oral history, the workings of historical memory, cultural history—but the products of these still remain discrete and unmerged into an all encompassing long-term story. The role of Baltic Germans and other minority populations of historic Latvian geographic space is seldom treated any longer as involving “outsiders”, but is described respectfully or at least without the assumption that non-Latvians in the Baltic littoral were always oppressors.

This process of change in the historical profession has not been accompanied, however, by a diminution in the sharpness of contrasting viewpoints. This is especially so in the realm of media-generated historical narratives in which collisions continue between the perception in the Russophone and Lettophone populations of the country, especially with respect to World War II and the decades following it.[13] There also remains a fairly substantial cleavage between the careful and fine-grained investigations of academic history and the overall mega-visions often preferred by a Latvian-using general readership. The latter has continued to insist that there is already a usable long-term narrative in place—as exemplified by such perennialy popular works as Uldis Ģērmanis’ Latviešu tautas piedzīvojumi (The Adventures of the Latvian People)[14]—and has repeatedly charged that the painstaking investigations of academic historians are too specialised and too hesitant to assist in the “patriotic” education of young Latvians. Finally, due to severe resource shortages, research areas falling outside the time frame of about 1850 to 2014 remain short of specialists and funded projects, which ultimately means that very long stretches of Latvian history will remain unrevised, unsupplemented and unprepared to be included into a new “master narrative” if and when one comes into being. Though one can find consensus about this or that phenomenon in the Latvian past, an overall generally accepted interpretation—a “master narrative” in the usual sense—is therefore as of this writing not close to having formed itself.

2. The Place of the 1918 Independence Proclamation

It is highly likely that a new “master narrative” will assign an important role to the independence proclamation of 18 November 1918, but what that role will be is not yet clear. One meaning that will probably not be resusciated in full would come from the orthodox Marxist-Leninist contention that the 1918 Republic was a “bourgeois” structure. This understanding relied heavily on the idea of historical inevitability and pictured the 1918 state as a product of developments that unfolded according to “historic laws” (Latv. likumsakarīgi). The “national” school—the interwar historians and the first generation of émigrés—also flirted with inevitability, but its historical references referred to different phenomena. In both of these interpretations the persons on the stage of the building that is now the National Theatre on 18 November 1918 were acting out roles prepared for them by “historical change” over which neither they nor any other human beings had full control.

There is a strong possibility, however, that fragments of the two dominant interpretations will make their way into a new “master narrative.” For the national historians, the Republic of Latvia proclaimed on that date represented the culmination of the final phase of a process that had started in the mid-19th century with the activists of the “National Awakening” and perhaps even earlier. The motor of this process of change was the emergence and growth of a national consciousness (not “class conflict”), at first in the minds of a handful of young educated Latvians and in time in the minds of tens of thousands of other Latvian-speakers of the Russian Baltic Provinces. This psychological alteration reflected a very different sense of belonging: a new mentality that differentiated and united simultaneously. The new way of thinking brought Latvia-using individuals to the realisation that in their very beings they were different from other peasants in a particular locality and region in which they were living but also that they were the same as other persons living elsewhere who spoke the same language. Activists believed that they were neither creating nor inventing a new consciousness but rather were uncovering it: its components already existed and had to be “awakened” and “brought into the light.” Ultimately, the goal of the “national awakeners” was to show Latvian-speakers that in the depth of their being they were a tauta entitled to self-determination. Everywhere on the European continent similar “awakening” activities were going on, especially among the long-subordinated peoples of the multi-national empires; and the Latvian “awakeners” felt themselves to be participants in a great historical trend that would produce a new Europe consisting of a large array of self-conscious peoples each making a contribution to a composite European civilisation.[15] The task of “awakening” would be long and hard but it would inevitably reach its culmination when the Latvian tauta reached the highest stage of self-awareness. The “national” narrative would eventually tie together disparate elements of this long story to suggest that no other outcome than the 1918 Republic was possible. The distinction between ineluctability and inevitability was seldom preserved in these later interpretations.

For Marxists-Leninists, on the other hand, the 1918 Republic was only the penultimate step of a much more binding process that was taking the proletariat toward its inevitable triumph. The “laws” of historical development required there to be a period of time when the “bourgeoisie” were dominant, and the interwar period served this ideological purpose. The real turning point in this scheme was to come in 1940–1941 when, with the help of the USSR, the Latvian masses finally rid themselves of the oppressive bourgeoisie as a class and cleared the way for the true revolution. The reason this had not taken place earlier, in the World War I period, had to do with the armed interference in Latvian affairs of the capitalist and imperialist countries. This understanding of Latvian history reduced considerably the importance of the 1918 proclamation, seeing it as creating a temporary state structure that was fated to disappear.

The Marxist-Leninist interpretation of Latvian events of course had virtually no currency in Latvia during the interwar decades. For the national historians the important struggle was between tautas (peoples), not classes, which led them to the medieval era, when the “normal” evolution of the Baltic region had been derailed. The pre-13th century tribal societies had been in the process of becoming states and would have done so had it not been for the invasion of the Baltic crusaders and the subjugation of the native population.[16] It was strongly suggested that throughout the next “700 years of slavery” the desire for political independence lay just outside the reach of the Latvian-speaking population. Certain stylistic mannerisms became charateristic of this discourse, such as the projection of the term Latvija (Latvia) backwards in time and its use as a kind of shorthand to refer to the territory of the Baltic littoral inhabited by speakers of the Latvian language. The name of the political entity that had been proclaimed on 18 November 1918 was used in place of clumsier but more accurate territorial descriptions such as “the territory of the 20th century Latvian state” or “the sector of the Baltic Provinces inhabited by Latvian speakers” or “the territory of the two adjacent Baltic Provinces of Livland and Courland, plus several districts of Vitebsk.” At the same time, similar usage of collective nouns such as “Latvians” (latvieši) in the description of earlier centuries suggested that the littoral sub-population that spoke the Latvian language (and its precursors) already possessed a proto-consciousness of commonality that was standing by in the realm of the spirit and just waiting to enter historical reality. These usages were present even in the writings of historians who understood perfectly well that they were anachronistic, but the desire to rush into existence the Latvian state and and its supportive consciousness appears to have been irresistible. It was a way of “nationalising” the earlier history of the territory that became the state in the 20th century. “Latvija” was an implied reality throughout the complicated history of the Baltic littoral, until in 1918 it was finally made an explicit reality. These usages were an endorsement of the belief widespread among the “national awakeners” of the 19th century that they were simply working to bring to the surface a mentality that was already present among those who spoke the Latvian language—nothing new, in other words, was being created or invented, the 1918 state itself having being always present in the shadows, as it were.

The effort to produce a truly “Latvian” history of the territory that was now a Latvian state came to an abrupt end in 1940 when, as mentioned earlier, the country was occupied and annexed by the USSR and the Marxist-Leninist historical framework became mandatory for nearly a half-century. Most of the leading national historians went into exile in 1944–1945 and, as best they could, continued their work in new homelands. The merger of the efforts of the first and second generation of exile Latvian historians produced a formidable body of work with the so-called “Daugava series”—entitled “The History of Latvia” (Latvijas vēsture)—eventually becoming emblematic of this effort.[17] The series title implied that even if the pre-1918 volumes were about the territory in which Latvians lived, historical change was preparing the resident population for the appearance of the Latvian state. The individual volumes of the series that were sent to friends or colleagues in the Latvian SSR were confiscated by customs officials, redirected to specfondi, or simply consigned to the flames. Though on library shelves the Daugava series physically resembled what a “master narrative” might look like—a row of eleven volumes each some 600 pages long, handsomely bound, all in the Latvian language—it was able to have only a limited impact outside Latvian-reading population in the West and virtually none at all on potential readers in the Latvian SSR.

For understandable reasons, the 20th-century Latvian state has subsequently had a mesmerising effect on Latvian history-writing, which also means that political history—the emergence, disappearance, dependence, reemergence, and inner workings of the state—have been somewhat privileged. How political events have interacted with those in other domains of life—social, economic, cultural—has not received as much attention, but a certain kind of revisionism has been coming to the fore in recent years as a result of the desire to re-examine the impact on Latvian life of the two 20th-century World Wars. Researchers of the workings of historical memory in Latvia have recently published a series of volumes dealing with World War II, and several conferences in Rīga about World War I have produced papers concluding that we simply do not know as much as we should about this complicated earlier period.[18] These developments may turn out to be the first steps toward the recognition that the political dimension of fundamentally important episodes in the history of the Latvian tauta are not necessarily deserving of greater primacy than other aspects of the past. An inclusive survey of the details of the World War I period (1914–1920) does suggest that the relationship between the political events in it and other phenomena is very complicated indeed. There existed sub-state processes that were directly or indirectly changing the mentalité (in the French Annales sense) of the residents of the Baltic Provinces through alterations in the cultural and intellectual environment of their everyday lives, their habitus, and in this sense were reshaping the ground in which the idea of the independent Latvian state had to be realised once it was proclaimed. In other words, the Independence Declaration of 1918 may need to be problematised more than it has been so far. The interplay between the idea of a Latvian state and the social, cultural, and economic history of the territory in which it was to be anchored needs further explication.[19] As an illustration of what is needed, the following sections take up two such elements and their complicated interplay. Borrowing the dramatic terminology in the title of well-known piece of music, these elements will be referred to as “Death” and “Transfiguration.”

3. “Death” and “Transfiguration”

These terms, of course, come from the title of Richard Strauss’ famous 1888 tone poem of the same name—“Death and Transfiguration” (Tod und Verklärung)—in which the composer, pondering the death of a friend, sought to describe musically the experience of dying and the moment of “transfiguration”, when, in the Christian understanding of death, the soul is transported to heaven.[20] The listener is asked to allow the music to bring to the imagination a prolonged period of suffering and decline, as bodily functions slow down, consciousness dims, and the end draws near. The soul prepares to leave the body. The process begs to be described in figurative language since this is a Christian mystery: the cessation of measurable bodily functions is only the middle of the story. “Death” is followed by a moment of “transfiguration”, when earthly material is miraculously transformed into eternal substance and the soul is lifted to a higher sphere of being. This terminology goes far beyond the normal language used to describe on-the-ground historical change and asks the reader to consider the realm of the less documentable: emotion, perception, spirituality, the non-material. On reflection, the two terms do not seem inapproriate for the psychological dynamic operative in the World War I years, when the “normal” socio-economic and political environment in which Latvians were living began, in a sense, to “die,” only to experience a seemingly miracuous “transfiguration” on 18 November 1918, when the Latvian state was proclaimed.