Peteri, you wrote: I’m delighted that Aleksei has succeeded in provoking your return, but—“Uzvaras” parks? Why the quotes?

It’s not Aleks who has provoked my return but the people of Latvia marching in Riga for “Soviet Occupation Day.” But I’m even more delighted than you to see that Aleks has managed to “get [your] hackles up” and tear you away from little Shamils and your “hiatus” with his query challenging “the official Latvian interpretation of history.” Your answer is worth repeating since it also serves to explain why I would write with my own hackles raised (shucks) - “Uzvaras” Park: 

Aleksei asked: And is it really such a deadly sin to question the official Latvian interpretation of history? This is where you get my hackles up. I don’t know of any “official” interpretation, unless you mean that some commissions, books, and sites by very diverse historians get sponsored by different government agencies.

What I will not accept is the Stalinist falsification of history, which is what many if not most Russians in Latvia indulge in. You pepper your own blog with recognition of that—just how anti-Latvian 9 May is [my bold], for instance—and it is unutterably silly to try to pretend that that’s just another interpretation.

There is no way whatsoever that one obtains “unity” (this is Vienības diena, is it not, heh) by compromising between truth and propaganda, Russia and Latvia, or fact and fiction. It just doesn’t work that way. Everybody has a right to his or her opinion or interpretation—but we are talking about people who live in Russian media space, complete with its venom, vs. people who are more or less committed to Latvia (which can contain its own venom, usually in polite doses).

Those are very different spaces, and one of them is alien, and necessarily so.

Here you are in kojinshugi (http://www.kojinshugi.com/?p=533):

[Peteris to Sam:] [Y]our dwarf country was so very stupid to touch a religious symbol .  And what is the religion?  Stalinism, basically - and it never suffered a reformation.  You can mix it with 19th C Orthodoxy and worship Ivan the Teriible but don’t you touch the icons of Iosif Vissarionovich.  His interpretation of the Great Patriotic War is sacred!
[Sam to Peteris:] I think we were smart to do so. We had ignored the Russian problem for 15 years, busy building up the economy destroyed by 50 years of occupation. We let the Russian chauvinists get comfortable, we let them think we were going to forget the “disagreements” about our history and our claim to this land as our ethnic home. This boil had to be opened, and in the next months and years it will need to be drained. Ansip’s approval rating among ethnic Estonians is 82% now. A nearly identical percentage of non-Estonians disapprove of him. It is time for the other side to realize that 82% of us is more than twice than 82% of them, and they had best start listening to what we have to say, instead of just the Kremlin-controlled cable channels.

Re:[Ambersun writing] The English translation of “people of Latvia” is inadequate and fails to convey an essential unity.
It’s not that complicated to see that the original intent of “Latvijas tauta” as is written in the Latvian Constituion is an essential unity of “we, the people” (of Latvia).  Every healthy nation-state needs this sense of “nationness” - for a healthy Latvia - Latvianness.  In the kojinshugi exchange between you and Sam (http://www.kojinshugi.com/?p=533), you mention Mavriks Vulfsons as even supporting the concept of a “latviska Latvija;” that Latvianness was not xenophobic to him.” (So what happenend to the once-popular Vulfsons? and Jurkans?) I can be sure that the original intent of “Latvijas tauta” was also to support a “latviska Latvija.” No need for you or anyone to read xenophobia into a very normal and valid concept expressing the need for a nation-state’s national unity. 

Peteris response: As a translator—I can’t agree. “The Latvian people” is not “the people of Latvia,” and the latter phrase does indeed convey the meaning, and that was and is not only the letter but also the spirit of the law; it was devised by Miķelis Valters, who later regretted his device…[my bold] but the “essential unity” idea contained therein is exactly the sort of unity—that of the political nation—that you and Mr LL would have trouble with.

Peteri,
Re:  The minorities back then were just as troublesome as they are now—less of a percentage, and different by their diversity and structure (and—even—nature, but let’s not get into that...).

Yeah, that’s absolutely right and I agree with you.  Except for the dramatically lesser percentage, the dramatically different diversity and structure (and -even-nature, but maybe Peteris or someone else will get into that...) and, oh yes, the occupation, the Russificaiton, the colonization, except for these minor and inconsequential differences, the “minorities back then were just as troublesome as they are now.”
What I do disagree with you about is using a word like “troublesome” to describe an “overwhelming, crushing, and nation-destroying” problem in Latvia.

Clarification of who said what to whom when from post #16:

Ambersun to Peteris:  I wrote in support of exactly the “essential unity” idea of the political nation.  (Plus it’s just not pc to speak for others or to hook them up in non-existing unions.) Don’t labor first with the English translation of “the people of Latvia” versus “the Latvian people” since the original essence and concept is expressed in Latvian: “Latvijas tauta.”

Sam, in kojinshugi, to Peteris: “[The Estonian constitution] uses “Eesti rahvas” [rahvas=tauta] in the preamble, which is more unequivocally a reference to ethnic Estonians.  In the constitution proper, though, the power is clearly vested in just “the people”.  I can appreciate the subtleties of language here, while at the same time appreciating that Estonia’s raison d’etre really is the preservation of ethnic Estonians.”

Ambersun to Peteris: You also fail to state here, as you do elsewhere, that Mikelis Valters was a “Socialist Revolutionary.” This would add to an understanding of the language chosen and thinking behind.  And am I the only reader who tripped on “who later regretted his device” when you’re assuring the reader you know what was and still is “the true letter and spirit of the law?” You always seem to get a pass from the “international friendship brigade.”

Labrīt,

As you know from the hiatus at my blog, I’m pressed for time—among other things, I’m translating materials for the song festival (materials which include a mention of our favorite dictator and his victory park, btw—I informed them that the truth might make some people cry). As it is, there’s little I can really respond to in your collage above, Ambersun, that we haven’t gone over again and again. But, a few notes on Valters…

You also fail to state here, as you do elsewhere, that Mikelis Valters was a “Socialist Revolutionary.” This would add to an understanding of the language chosen and thinking behind. Would it? Perhaps so. But what would it add, exactly? I have written about Valters’ politics here in the past (and the stubs on Valters and the Latvian эсеры at Wiki were begun by me—see, for example, Latvian Social Democratic Union ).

Valters, of Liepāja, was exiled to Dvinsk (!) in 1897 as a member of the New Current, whence he fled to Switzerland and studied law (and wrote poetry). Active in SDS in exile (whence the first demands for a democratic Latvian nation-state, published in the West), he penned lengthy, eloquent polemics about the Latvia he envisioned and argued against both the denationalized, pro-Russian Left and the reactionary, pro-Russian Latvian bourgeoisie.

There are a few strains of thought in Valters’ national socialism (and yes, that’s what it was, though the term is obviously now sullied by later associations...). In his own words, however: Mūsu politiskā programma ir pirmā kārtā personas stiprināšanas programma. Valdības nomācošam virzienam viņa stāda pretim citu: atsvabināšanu. Kādam tam jābūt, zīmējoties uz atsevišķu cilvēku, par to nav domu starpības, bet neskaidrāki ir uzskati, zīmējoties uz tautas personu. (“Patvaldību nost, Krieviju nost!” Proletārietis, 1903).

Arnis (Runcis’) book on the Latvian political awakening (first published on the eve of Ulmanis’ coup and reprinted in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1971) summarizes Valters’ thoughts quite well, with extracts from his writings. There’s a lengthy polemic against Andrievs Niedra, for example, also printed in Proletārietis in 1904. In response to Niedra calling the national socialists traitors to the fatherland, Valters explains that a fatherland is a state, consisting of land, people, and government. This last component must reflect the will of the people. Valters writes that we can see what the fatherland of Niedra and those who side with oppressors is—”tie ir svešinieki, svešais kaŗa pulks, kas nāk laupīdams mūsu zemē, svešie ierēdņi, pātaga un kulaks. Mūsu tēvu zeme ir cilvēki, mūsu tauta. (Valters’ emphasis on “[m]ūsu.")

Throughout these writings, Valters consistently emphasizes citizenship, especially active participation by the citizens in government. ”Tauta” can have a variety of meanings, from народ to nation. Ethnicity, tautība, is inferior already in the 1905 resolution of the SDS—the right of self-determination belongs to its citizens, regardless of their gender, religion, or ethnicity (6. punkts).

I would like to point out that the reactionary period—the “First Falling Asleep” that followed the First Awakening, from the late 1880s—is often referred to as the “tautiskais laikmets,” and the bourgeois Latvians Valters opposed inherit the name “tautībnieki” from the Lettophiles of the Awakening, but in a derogatory sense. Even with regard to the song festivals—Valters looks back upon Festivals I, II and III (held in 1873, 1880, and 1888) as involving the masses (tautas masas); by IV (1895), the angle of emphasis on Latvian culture had become mere butaforija. The middle classes were for the most part content in the Russian Empire, for material reasons.

Essentially, what Valters and Rolavs did was transform the cultural awakening that had begun in the 1850s, but had petered out by the 1880s, into a political wakening, which is the subject of Arnis’ book. This took place in a narrow circle of people, in exile—one couldn’t publish such things in the Baltic provinces, and as far as I know, not many issues were smuggled in or disseminated.

Valters did not look upon the Russian Empire as a state in his sense of what a state must be, and he didn’t see the Tsar’s subjects as citizens. He was well-educated, and I think the “Latvijas” is more of a reflection of his legal training and his study of Western Europe than it is of his socialism. You can say that he was an SR, true—but he and Rolavs were clearly nationalists from the very beginning (their views also diverged after a time, btw), and time is important here; Valters was in the Farmers’ Union, Ulmanis’ party, when he was a member of the provisional government.

This is not at all surprising—it’s a direct consequence of their understanding of Latvia and democracy. Both looked carefully at Switzerland (which, as you know, consists of German, French, Italian people, and others, who are politically Swiss). Rolavs even tried to envision an overhauled Russia as a giant Switzerland, and he contrasted France to the Confederation as undemocratic, because of its centralization.

[to be cont’d.]

[cont’d]

Both men were highly critical of the mainstream Left—the New Current and the Social Democrats. They both write of Latvia’s intellectual poverty—Rolavs observes that our culture is only half a century old [sic!], and notes that we had only 16 students in 1856. They see the jaunstrāvnieki as providing bad translations of alien German and, later, Russian Marxist thought, copying what they only superficially understand until they are blind to how ludicrous they are. Valters also attacks the deracinated Jewish cosmopolitan, btw, as a supporter of Empire (one sees this throughout Eastern Europe), and criticizes the New Current as composed of the deluded sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie.

So, if you are suggesting that being an SR made him less of a nationalist, you couldn’t be more wrong—nationalism suffuses his work. He rails against the Latvian bourgeoisie both grande and petite, for example, observing that building a border between Russia and Latvia even in thought was a threat to their material interests; that not teaching Russian in the schools would have led to material losses for them, and that the mass movement (Social Democracy) that they bred made them more Russian than the Russians.

He placed his faith in the Latvian farmer, seen as the next recipient of the democracy that had broken down feudalism in the cities. Valters came from the working class, but in his notes on his intellectual development—which primarily concern philosophy and poetry, not politics—he writes of how the excitement of youth brought different Latvians together… how learning took him from the “alcoholic proletariat” of the lower class suburbs of Liepāja (“[t]e sabiedrības vai tautības jēdziens neeksistēja”) to the Ancient Greeks and Kant, overcoming seemingly insurmountable differences in background with the sons of vain Semigallian landowners. (In Trimdas rakstnieki, 1. sēj., ed. Pēteris Ērmanis. Kempten [Allgäu]: Viļa Štāla Apgāds, 1947). 

You are incessantly raving about Russians, your “overwhelming, crushing, and nation-destroying” “problem” (and you do so in a slippery way—I would note that 50 000 is far fewer than 14%, that not a few of the people who go to the Victory Monument are not Russians, and that many people go there without anti-Latvian sentiments in mind, which sentiments anyway come in different colors and degrees). The most overwhelming, crushing, and nation-destroying problem the Republic faces is posed by Latvians, Ambersun. As has been pointed out to you time and again, the “Russian parties” aren’t in government and have had almost no influence at all upon Latvia for the last seventeen years. Further, re the percentage, as I already suggested—non-citizens don’t count; the percentage of minorities as a portion of the electorate is not as dramatically different as raw demographics would make it seem. Hanging out a few auseklīši and playing ethnopolitical games to get the vote doesn’t obscure the mercenary instincts of the Latvian (latviešu!) elite.

Yes, Valters changed—he was always changing, actually, though not illogically so. As Stranga writes in the Jumava history, many notable figures who had stood at the cradle of Latvia’s democracy surrendered to the wave of anti-democratic sentiment and themselves helped to strengthen it, Kārlis Skalbe and Miķelis Valters among them. Later, Valters changed yet again, demanding the restoration of democracy—he called his friend Ulmanis and the Ulmanist cabal the “gravediggers” of the Latvian state.

Though at least a couple of our esteemed forum participants apparently live in a dream world shot through with nightmare rather than in Europe, whatever wisdom can be gleaned from the study of Latvia’s coming into being must be tempered with today’s realities, in which the great questions that concerned Valters and our other founding fathers—land reform and class struggle, for instance—are quite simply irrelevant. The establishment of the nation-state is a fait accompli, too, and that was doubtless the most difficult task they accomplished.

A sense of “nationness” in a Europe that just concluded the Lisbon Treaty, giving the EU a president (heh—two, even) and, supposedly, a common foreign policy, is obviously different, too (Lord of mercy, them Berkeley brownies mightn’t be so archaic...). Some things from that earlier era remain valid—the emphasis on governance, for example, and on the need for our representatives to be responsible to the people. One can stew in national romanticism all one likes, and become roadkill—but most Europeans snigger at the Kennedy formulation—people ask what the country can do for them, not the other way around. Government is seen primarily as a service provider.

Finally, I think staring at a few Stalin portraits too intensely has a deleterious effect upon your perception, Ambersun. The fact is that Latvia has become a lot more latviska.

Vysu lobu,
/P

P.S. So what happened to the once-popular Vulfsons? He passed away four years ago. Prior to his death—he was harshly critical of what he saw as Latvia’s ethnocentric policies.

P.P.S. I added an annotated version of this to my blog just now, with crude translations of the Latvian bits—those who don’t know Latvian or the historical background might prefer reading that instead.

Peteris Cedriņs etal.,

........” The most overwhelming, crushing, and nation-destroying problem the Republic faces is posed by Latvians, Ambersun. “............?

Could you please elaborate on the above ?
Visu labu,

Bruno,

That coy phrase relates to the “tautībnieki” Valters opposed—since the Russians in Latvia have little political power, what the Russians do matters little to the polity. If Latvia sells out to Russia, which I think is the greatest danger facing Latvia—the sellers will be the same ethnic Latvians incessantly emphasizing those auseklīši, to the detriment of the people (nation). I should think that would be obvious. That’s been the strategy of Latvia’s elite all along—instill shibboleths, divide, conquer, and get elected—and sell the people down the tubes whilst whistling patriotic tunes.

Vysu lobu,
/P

Peteris Cedriņs et al.,

So, how soon will the nation (Latvia) be destroyed.?  One, 2, or in how many years ?

I remember predictions of grave consequences for Latvia if it joined NATO and EU ( and not by the “auseklīši).  Well it did not happen.

At times you sound a little like Ulmanis.

Visu labu,

‘Twas Ambersun who identified a reportedly “overwhelming, crushing, and nation-destroying problem,” not I… personally, I think the nation is doing okay. It’s just changing.

Then again, Imārs Latkovskis offers this versija --

Jau tuvākajā desmitgadē Latvija labprātīgi pievienosies Krievijai. Varbūt pat ātrāk. ASV ekonomiskā krīze ir cieši saistīta ar Rietumu civilizācijas vispārēju norietu. Rietumi gan zaudē globāla ģeopolitiskā līdera lomu, gan cieš vispārēju dzīves vērtību krahu.

Nē, tā nav patiesība, kuru gribu sludināt. Tā ir idejiska provokācija domu kustībai, diskusijai. Bet nav jau arī tā, ka būtu dūmi bez uguns.

“Desmit gados varam nonākt Krievijas impērijā”

Vysu lobu,
/P

The Russian Empire is in no better shape than the European Union and the US.  The rising star is an Islamic empire.  They hace something to live for.  For the materialists, life is a random event, to be enjoyed while it lasts.  Aside from instant satisfaction, life has no ulterior meaning.  Having no future vison means having no future.  This is nicely reflected in the birth rates:  Western Europe and Russia are well on the way to extinction.

Peteris Cedriņs et al.,

“Nē, tā nav patiesība, kuru gribu sludināt. Tā ir idejiska provokācija domu kustībai, diskusijai. Bet nav jau arī tā, ka būtu dūmi bez uguns.”

Tā ir idejiska provokācija domu kustībai, diskusijai.  That is all what Latkovskis (above) says.

Tukša mutes virināšana-that is all.  You can file him with Paiders, with whom you agreed too.

Visu labu,

Though I would love to be Kaža and/or Roberts, I am tiring somewhat of your misdirected crap, my dear Bruno. Wearisome. Yes indeed, Latkovskis’ piece is provocative—that’s stated at the outset. Maybe say something that means something. Be provoked. Can’t? Don’t.

/P

Peteris Cedriņs et al.,

You should stick to translations.  When you stray from translations, it seems as if you are hitting that Daugavpils (oops, forgot you prefer Dvinsk) krutka.

Visu labu,

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11401983
Telling the Soviet story
May 22nd 2008

A new film about Nazi-Soviet links

BEING burnt in effigy on the streets of Moscow by nationalist hoodlums must count as a kind of Oscar if you are a Latvian filmmaker whose aim is to expose modern Russia’s blindness to the criminal history of the Soviet Union. The ire of Young Russia’s protest outside the Latvian embassy this week was directed at Edvins Snore, whose film “Soviet Story” is the most powerful antidote yet to the sanitisation of the past.

The film is gripping, audacious and uncompromising. Though it starts by telling the story of the murder of 7m Ukrainians in 1933, it is no mere catalogue of atrocities. The main aim of the film is to show the close connections—philosophical, political and organisational—between the Nazi and Soviet systems.

As Françoise Thom (one of many anti-communist luminaries appearing in the film) puts it: “Nazism was based on false biology; Marxism was based on false sociology”. The Marxist dream of the “new man”, for example, mirrored the Nazi idea of racial superiority. The Nazis murdered chiefly on racial grounds, while the Soviets concentrated on class. But mass murder is mass murder.

Those who keep a soft spot for Marxism may flinch to hear that the sage of Highgate referred to backward societies as Völkerabfälle (racial trash) who must “perish in the revolutionary holocaust”. Or that the Nazi party in its early days idolised Lenin (Josef Goebbels said he was second only to Adolf Hitler in greatness).

Perhaps the best sequence in the film shows pairs of posters using almost identical designs: muscular workers strike heroic attitudes in support of the party and the state, blonde little girls beam, fists smash enemies, hammers break chains. Without the swastika and hammer and sickle as clues, it would be hard to know which is which.

The illustration of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is compelling: Soviet radio transmitters guided German bombers in their attacks on Poland. A Soviet naval base near Murmansk helped the Nazi attack on Norway. The Soviet secret police helped train the Gestapo and discussed how to deal with the “Jewish question” in occupied Poland.

Cooperation was based on a written agreement—complete with the signature of Lavrenty Beria, head of the notorious NKVD—which is shown in the film. “The NKVD will propose to the Soviet Government a programme to reduce the participation of Jews in state bodies and to prohibit Jews and Jewish offspring of mixed marriages from the areas of culture and education”, reads a final, chilling sentence. Russia says the document is a fake.

Powerful archival footage shows Red Army officers drinking toasts with their counterparts from the SS in Berlin in December 1939. In 1940, the Soviet Union had become a huge supplier of grain and oil to the Nazi war machine, while it encouraged the Communist parties of western Europe to sabotage the anti-Nazi resistance.

“It is comforting to see Parisian workers talking to German soldiers as friends”, a French communist publication gloated in July 1940. Vyacheslav Molotov, who was then the Soviet Union’s foreign minister, called fighting Nazism a “crime”. Along with similar pronouncements, that was published in every Soviet newspaper; such pages were hurriedly removed after Hitler’s treachery.

Something pretty similar happened in the West. Nazi war criminals are reviled; their Soviet counterparts are honoured veterans to this day. Any attempt to bring them to justice prompts angry protests from Russia. “Hands Off Our Granddads”, was the slogan chanted by the protestors from Young Russia. A better question might be, “What exactly happened?”

Mr Snore and his sponsors in the European Parliament have produced a sharply provocative work. Its tone, technique and composition may be open to criticism. But those who want to ban it should try refuting it first.

And so? What does it have to do with Latvia’s Russians? What does it have to do with the subject thread you yourself have started? You seem to be confusing the two. The documentary has been showing here since early May - no burning, no nothing has happened. So what does that tell you? It appears to me you like to lump all of the Russians into one big borscht.