Remembering that on this day in 1944 Riga fell to the Russian Hordes and once again the Slav would rule as Germanic culture was pushed out....

And such a great culture, too, now resurgent? It had saved so many souls from Latvianness, for instance at Salaspils.

/P

Here’s something that’ll interest you....
I considered posting it before but didn’t.
A year or two ago my wife and I went to the Estonian House in NYC for the Culture Days which are usually the weekend of Easter. They have all sorts of neat cultural events speakers, artists, etc.
Well your pal with the bowtie, (now Estonian President Ilves), was there and gave a speech. In Estonian of course. He would not dared to have given such a speech in English.
In this speech he spoke of the Germanization of Estonians that took place centuries ago and how their acceptance and INTERNALIZATION of the superior Germanic culture was the best thing that could have happened to the Estonians because this infusion of Germanic culture ensured that they would too in the long run survive and not go the way of the American Indian in a weak, alcoholic culture of nihilism had they resisted Germanic culture.
The NOW President of Estonia made those statements. And you aint going to find em in the New York Times.
Didn’t somebody recently talk about an wild race thru Europe with bribes to border guards all the way that went smoothly through muttsie Lietuva and Latvija but came to an abrupt halt when the “German appearing” borderguards were approached in ESTONIA???

Oh yeah and about Salaspils?… When cultures clash people get killed just as they did in pagrabas of the NKVD!

Despite all the Soviet and Post-Soviet hype, Salaspils was just a minor detention camp.  The statistical data are available at the Occupation Museum in Riga for interested persons to see.

If it had not been for the Germans, the Russians in all likelihood would have conquered Latvia, and the Latvian nation would have disappeared from history, a fate similar to that of Yatwings, Sudovians and Galinds.

>If it had not been for the Germans, the
>Russians in all likelihood would have
>conquered Latvia, and the Latvian nation
>would have disappeared from history, a
>fate similar to that of Yatwings,
>Sudovians and Galinds.

I’ll probably regret asking, but I just have to know. Do you actually think these things through or are most of your thoughts randomly generated?

The Russians did conquer Latvia and ruled it for 50 years. And most of the peoples conquered by the Germans were swallowed faster than you could say gesundheit. Whether you love or hate the Russians is besides the point. History is history. Latvian national identity started to flower in places like St. Petersburg, while those who went to places like Berlin were quickly assimilated into German identity never to be heard from again.

Andrejs

>
>The Russians did conquer Latvia and
>ruled it for 50 years. And most of the
>peoples conquered by the Germans were
>swallowed faster than you could say
>gesundheit. Whether you love or hate the
>Russians is besides the point. History
>is history. Latvian national identity
>started to flower in places like St.
>Petersburg, while those who went to
>places like Berlin were quickly
>assimilated into German identity never
>to be heard from again.
>
>Andrejs

Good point, Andrej,...regardless of your personal views, dislikes, likes; I tried to make the same point once here on this forum and was nearly creamed, but,that was then and who knows, water under the bridge and perhaps I didn’t clarify, express my thoughts clearly; these things do happen, and pretty frequently,yes, indeedie…

Irena

This is what happened to some latvians
in Petrograd.
Didn’t find anything from Berlin, yet......
Was Zucker there?

The Second Congress of Soviets met in the great hall of the Smolny Institute in the evening of November 7 while the Winter Palace was still under siege. The Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries denounced the uprising. A delegate from the 12th Army protested the revolution as a stab in the back of the army and a crime against the people. Khinchuk, an officer from the 5th Army, declared that the Congress of Soviets was not necessary because a Constituent Assembly was scheduled to be held in three weeks. Khinchuk read a Menshevik declaration of withdrawal from the Congress. The delegates hesitated - perhaps the Bolsheviks did stand alone, and perhaps the army was marching on Petrograd. Then, as described by the American correspondent John Reed[9], a delegate of the Latvian Rifles, Kārlis Pētersons, leaped upon the speaker’s platform:

“Comrades!” he cried and there was a hush. “My name is Pētersons - I speak for the 2nd Latvian Rifles. You have heard the statements of two representatives of the Army committees; these statements would have some value if their authors had been representatives of the Army.” Wild applause. “But they do not represent the soldiers! … Our Committee refused to call a meeting of the representatives of the masses until the end of September, so that the reactionaries could elect their own false delegates to this Congress. I tell you now, the Latvian soldiers have many times said, ‘No more resolutions! No more talk! We want deeds-the Power must be in our hands!’ Let these impostor delegates leave the Congress! The Army is not with them!”

According to John Reed the hall rocked with cheering and suddenly the delegates stopped wavering-this seemed to be the voice of soldiers. In reality most of the 12th Army was either neutral or against the Bolsheviks, and the Latvian Rifles (plus a few Russian regiments) were the only ones actively supporting them, misled by Lenin’s promises of self-determination for all nationalities.

A part of the dissenting delegates left the Congress. The next day the Congress accepted Lenin’s proposal for immediate peace negotiations and a decree abolishing all private ownership of land. A new government was formed exclusively from Bolsheviks, called People’s Commissars.

[page 28]

History is seldom clear cut and black and white. If you are looking for some equasion which can clearly determine who Latvians had more to fear or gain from, I don’t have one for you. Its not about whether Germany or Russia was better for Latvia. Both had designs which certainly didn’t have Latvia’s welfare or identity in mind. I just always find it amusing to see people presenting Germany as Latvia’s savior when the historical record has very little evidence of that.
Prior to independence they certainly had no interest, and showed no indication of having one, of either protecting or allowing Latvian identity to flower. We were labor and we were property. During WWII we were nothing more than a hedge against the Russians. Had Germany won there is no indication they’ve would have treated us any different than prior to independence. We would have been again labor and property. If not worse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Latvians

Andrejs

It is true that both, Germans and Russians, had designs on Latvia, and the other Baltic States.  It was only geography that made the Germans preferable to the Russians. Germany was separated from Latvia for most of the history by an independent Lithuania and Poland, so no large scale migration and colonization was feasible.  This is in strong contrast with the Soviet Union after WW-II, when the Russian floodgates were opened wide.

>It is true that both, Germans and
>Russians, had designs on Latvia, and the
>other Baltic States.  It was only
>geography that made the Germans
>preferable to the Russians.

Geography “made” Germans preferable to Russians ? Geography ?

I thought people made preferences as a thought based act of human reasoning.

Germany was
>separated from Latvia for most of the
>history by an independent Lithuania and
>Poland, so no large scale migration and
>colonization was feasible.

hehe… Yep, glad those Germans stayed home. Think of all of the wars against the Kryziuociai that didnt have to be fought. Thankfully - the Baltic Prussian lands and areas along the Baltic sea and inland remain free of Germanic influence..

Wait a minute…

Vidas

The Prussians, being contiguous with Germans, were swallowed up.  The Latvians, being at some distance, survived as a distinct ethnic group even under German overlords.

Sveiki, Andrej, Doc, Spectator, Irēna, et al.!

Nice to see that Wiki article cited, Andrej—it’s one I worked on the hardest! You wrote:

Latvian national identity started to flower in places like St. Petersburg, while those who went to places like Berlin were quickly assimilated into German identity never to be heard from again.

The first known appearance of the word “Latvija,” even, was probably in Pēterburgas Avīzes, in 1862. Why there? Because most educated Latvians who refused to assimilate were forced to seek work in Russia proper, due to Baltic German domination in the Baltic Provinces. As I’ve noted before, many of the leading figures in the First Awakening were Slavophiles. “The Russian kulak can never be as dangerous as the Germans’ nails of flint.” (Valdemārs)

Austrums laida brīvas tautas
Saules zemi piepildīt,
Tiesības tām bija ļautas
Pašām sevi pārvaldīt.

Arī mūsu latvju tauta
Cietusi caur Rietrumu --
Kamēr vēl neilgi glābta
Tika tā caur Austrumu.

(Andrejs Pumpurs, 1870—“The East freed nations to attain the land of the sun. They were granted the right to self-rule. The West awaited them bearing chains in its hands, locking them into slavery and introducing serfdom… Our Latvian nation also suffered due to the West—until only recently it was rescued by the East.")

The situation changed by the 1890s, of course, after coercive russification had been introduced. Most Letts still didn’t make common cause with the Germans, however—those who tried to were for the most part utterly disinterested in the Latvian nation, its identity, or its culture. They were the right wing. There was almost no nationalism on the left, either (except among the eseri, who were a tiny group of intellectuals—and their demands were published in the West, in Cleveland, London and Brussels).

Miķelis Valters, in his seminal Latvijas autonomija (1917): “from the second half of the 1890s there was complete indifference to the national question in Latvian society [...] The Social Democrats explained that the proletariat has no interest in the survival of the nation [...] on the other hand, the sense of ethnicity in the bourgeoisie had evaporated, and it found itself without any national ideas at all [...] only a small segment of the revolutionaries supported the idea of autonomy, and it was an idea without deeper roots—an idea that lived only as an ideal and has only now become a question for the entire nation. If this is so, we can thank the Latvian farmer, who for many years was content to demand the zemstvo but now rejects it.”

The First Awakening was not political, except in that the Germans, and later the Russians, opposed even cultural strivings, which were therefore necessarily politicized. There is no reason to love either the Germans or the Russians, from a national point of view, obviously, and anybody who has read any history would know that.

I think Andrejs’ point on assimilation is well made—and thinking about it in broader terms would show that Spectator’s geography is less important than he thinks; there are actually places wholly surrounded by Russia that maintain a distinct identity and culture (e.g., Tatarstan) even today. It wasn’t and isn’t easy, of course, and most of the autonomous regions in Russia are autonomous in name only, and increasingly russified. But can you point to such survivals in Germany (and no, sorry, Bavarians don’t count!)? Later, in all its hypocrisy, the Bolshevik promises of self-determination were at least partially idealistic at first, in my opinion (though we should bear in mind that the first Commissar of Nationalities was Comrade Stalin...).

The German ideology of “scientific” racism, which by the way received considerable inspiration from Baltic Germans, some of whom fled to Munich with the defeat of Bermondt-Avalov, would have found its natural culmination in the utter destruction of the Latvian nation (just as the “New Soviet Man” would eventually have produced the same results for the Soviets). In both World War One and Two, a German victory would have meant colonization. That happened with the Soviets, too, of course, but the ideology forbade the elimination of a Latvian SSR—theoretically, the Soviets had no desire to destroy us so long as we were good Reds. Practically, that wasn’t true, of course. Latvia under the Nazis, however, didn’t even exist—it was part of Ostland, and the only reason our fathers or forefathers got to wear a little patch with the Latvian national colors on their Germnan uniforms was because we were a hedge against the advancing Russians, as Andrejs puts it. Those who think the Germans would have shown much gratitude for our efforts had the Legion miraculously won the war must have interesting dreams indeed.

Our rabid Russophobes have a slight problem, methinks—even they must realize that one of the things Latvians admire about the Germans is their efficiency. Part of the reason so many cultures and languages havesurvived in Russia, besides the nature of the empire prior to the Russophiles’ ascent and the Soviet nationalities policy, is traditional Russian inefficiency.

Some Letts remark that unlike the Russians, the Germans never tried to assimilate us. That’s hardly a consequence of the Germans being warm and fuzzy—it’s primarily because the Germans wanted to prevent our assimilation in order to maintain a slave class. Plans for assimilation did flower once the Germans felt sufficiently threatened by russification in the 1880s—and considerable assimilation was taking place prior to the First Awakening (whose leaders mostly saw the Slavophiles as allies, at first).

Janums wrote:

Oh yeah and about Salaspils?… When cultures clash people get killed just as they did in pagrabas {sic} of the NKVD!

That’s one of the most poisonously absurd things I’ve ever heard. How was Salaspils a symptom of a “clash of cultures”? You think the Holocaust was, um, a cultural event?

The reason I brought up Salaspils was primarily because numerous Latvians who dared to oppose the German occupation were sent there, prior to being sent to other concentration camps. Which side of the “clash of cultures” do you think Konstantīns Čakste was on, Janum?

As to Ilves’ supposed remarks—forgive me if I don’t trust your paraphrases, Janum. That the Latvian and Estonian cultures were strongly influenced by the Germans, and that much of that influence was positive, is quite true—but the Estonian national awakening was parallel to ours. “From the Russians we have nothing to fear. Whatever we bear from them is but one-tenth the burden of Germans we drag on our backs.” (Jakobson to Koidula, 1870—the same year Pumpurs’ poem was published). “Internalizing Germanic culture” doesn’t mean adopting German culture—it means developing an Estonian and Latvian culture with the German culture as a model. The Germans did much to attempt to prevent that—and I am talking about the 19th C; seeing the Nazi régime as representative of a “Germanic culture” Ilves would defend is an indication of a sickness you should seek treatment for, Doc, esp. if you use the word “Slav” in this way (exactly as a Nazi would use it—please note that the Czechs and Slovenians, for instance, are also Slavs, and they happen to be among the most “cultured” peoples in Europe).

Spectator,

The statistical data on Salaspils are in dispute, and the lowest numbers are those of one nationalist historian, Heinrihs Strods. Yes, there are also ludicrously “hyped” numbers—some of them are simply the result of error, in which the numbers of those murdered at Stalag 350 or even Šķirotava and Rumbula, etc., are added to the numbers of those who died at Salaspils. There were actually three camps in and around Salaspils, and I don’t know what you mean by “minor”—how many people, of which ethnicities, have to be snuffed before it’s “major”?  Perhaps 90 000 Latvian citizens were murdered during the Nazi occupation, including ca. 18 000 ethnic Latvians.

Vysu lobu,
/P

>That’s one of the most poisonously
>absurd things I’ve ever heard. How was
>Salaspils a symptom of a “clash of
>cultures”? You think the Holocaust
>was, um, a cultural event?

First of all WHOSE Holocaust are you referring to?..Latvians?, Jews?, Homosexuals?, Brivmurnieki?, Poles?, Ukrainians?, Chinese?, Hindus?, Germans in the White Rose?, Russian anti-Stalinists? etc.
All these suffered atrocities during the war and all are evidence and result of clashes between given cultures.
Let’s take any one of the above. Any given one wasn’t a cultural EVENT (as you provocatively call it), but each was a CLASH BETWEEN cultures that left (the inserted) victim coming out (at least temporarily) the loser. 

Doc,

What does one have to do with the other? You dismissing Salspils (whether its the Jews, the Latvians, homosexuals, the White Rose, etc.) as a clash of cultures is just plain silly if not vile. I know you like to roil the waters, but give me a break. In your context anything can be dismissed as a “clash of cultures.” From petty crime to television ratings.

Spectator,

As Peteris pointed out your hypothesis sucks. Geography is not what “saved” the Latvians from being assimilated with Germany. Geography had nothing to do with it. What “saved” the Latvians from assimilation by the Germans is that Germany didn’t see Latvians as important enough to assimilate. One does not try to assimilate a lawnmover. If the lawnmover acts up he simply gets rid of it and acquires a new one.

Andrejs

Comment from Andrejs, (the voice of reason),
>Doc,
>
>What does one have to do with the other?
>You dismissing Salspils (whether its the
>Jews, the Latvians, homosexuals, the
>White Rose, etc.) as a clash of cultures
>is just plain silly if not vile.

What do you mean by “dismiss”?. We all acknowledge that each of (insert one of the above) suffered atrocities.
Nothing dismissed there.

In your context anything can be
>dismissed as a “clash of
>cultures.” From petty crime to
>television ratings.
>

In a sense that’s absolutely correct although it depends on what you define as a “clash”.
But there you go again saying that I’m “dismissing”.
To use you own words to me , “in your context"(meaning my context), actually is a broad generalization on YOUR part and an assumption of what I would call a “clash” in any given different context. Specifically in the context of Salaspils etc., to me a “clash” is equal to an armed confrontation.

You are indeed correct that depending on one’s definition of “clash” in its’ given context, a “clash” can lead to anything from an uncomfortable look given on the street, to a Jewish boy leaving Soviet Latvia for the West in the early 1970s, to atrocities committed with arms.