Worth reading.

Vysu lobu,
/P

P.S. And there are inaccuracies in that, yes I know—what is here called the drukas aizliegums was actually lifted in 1904.

/P

P.P.S. To Mikus, re: Latgola joining Latvia last—that is obviously a major reason for the retardation. The Latgalian Awakening began only after the ban was lifted; the rest of Latvia’s began half a century earlier.

/P

Paldies Pēteri.
sadly, even with hundreds of years of political stability and no occupation of the continental USofA by a muslim power, there are many people here whose feelings about this issue are disturbingly similar to some of the opinions voiced on this forum about ethnic minorities in Latvia.
The scary thing I see here on the forum is the almost blind ignorance of the crass thievery and manipulations to selfish ends by Latvians. As if they get a free pass as long as they toe the nationalist line. Ambersun does qualify the free pass with a denigrating “soviet-deformed” reverse compliment for those who were subject to the occupation.
I hope this one lesson is taken from the Durbin article. We need to acknowledge, support and champion those who champion Latvia, regardless of their ethnicity, just as Americans should do with those who champion America regardless of ethnicity, religious or other persuasion.

Cheers,

PC factually notes:

To Mikus, re: Latgola joining Latvia last—that is obviously a major reason for the retardation. The Latgalian Awakening began only after the ban was lifted; the rest of Latvia’s began half a century earlier.

Within the same post, PC mentions 1904. Hmmm, is PC saying that Latgola was directly responsible for the unified want of a Latvian “country”? If so, then thank you all Latgalians. But what of the “unintended intentions” of the Germans? Should we thank them as well?

Mikus E.

P.S. But Into wants to contribute as well:?

As if they (Latvians) get a free pass as long as they toe the nationalist line.

Then now claiming clarity with:?

We need to acknowledge, support and champion those who champion Latvia, regardless of their ethnicity, just as Americans should do with those who champion America regardless of ethnicity, religious or other persuasion.

But what Intro ignores, is that when it comes to issues of “black and white”, the US has in the past remainded on the cautious side.——Be it with the American-Japanese during WWII or of the American-Italians of the same war period. Can we include, as well, the religious Mormans of pre-WWI?
What though should be realized as being far more important… is that these WWII-era American-Japanese, American-Italians; ...yes, even Mormans, often continued to see themselves as true Americans, in spite of their host’s official cautions.(——As for “other persuasion”... is there really another true persuasion beyond ethnicity or religion?)

Mikus wrote:

Within the same post, PC mentions 1904. Hmmm, is PC saying that Latgola was directly responsible for the unified want of a Latvian “country”? If so, then thank you all Latgalians. But what of the “unintended intentions” of the Germans? Should we thank them as well?

1904 is the year that the ban on printing other than in Cyrillic was lifted; the ban did not apply in the Baltic Provinces; Inflanty (“Polish Livonia,” now roughly coterminous with Latgale—the term “Latgale” [“Latgola” in Latgalian] was introduced by Kemps and Trasuns c. 1900 and wasn’t used by Latvians until a few years later) was not a Baltic Province—it was part of the guberniya of Vitebsk at the time (parts being part of the guberniya of Pskov). The Latvian National Awakening had begun in the 1850s—in Latgalia, it didn’t begin until the early 1900s, with the city of Vitebsk (now in Belarus) as its first intellectual center.

Latgalian delegates first met in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) in March 1917 to debate the question of a Latvian state, voting 43-23 in favor of uniting with the rest of Latvia. This was followed by the Congress in Rēzekne (Rēzne) in April, which turned violent after the vast majority of 283 delegates backed Trasuns rather than Kemps as its chairman. Kemps’ faction, backed by local ethnic Russians, some from other minorities and workers from Petrograd, left the hall, which had to be guarded by Riflemen, and took to the streets. The remaining delegates voted unanimously that the Latvian nation is indivisible and includes Latgalia. In July, ethnic Russians later held their own congress proclaiming Latgalia to be an indivisible part of Russia. After the Bolsheviks took power, there was yet another congress dominated by Bolsheviks and what are often referred to as Latgalian separatists, as well as delegates from the minorities—and again a majority chose unity; Latgalia was then separated from Vitebsk guberniya.

What “unintended” German intentions do you mean?

Vysu lobu,
/P

Mikus emotes :?

Mikus E_ - 02 September 2010 07:20 PM

P.S. But Into wants to contribute as well:?

As if they (Latvians) get a free pass as long as they toe the nationalist line.

Then now claiming clarity with:?

We need to acknowledge, support and champion those who champion Latvia, regardless of their ethnicity, just as Americans should do with those who champion America regardless of ethnicity, religious or other persuasion.

But what Intro ignores, is that when it comes to issues of “black and white”, the US has in the past remainded on the cautious side.——Be it with the American-Japanese during WWII or of the American-Italians of the same war period. Can we include, as well, the religious Mormans of pre-WWI?
What though should be realized as being far more important… is that these WWII-era American-Japanese, American-Italians; ...yes, even Mormans, often continued to see themselves as true Americans, in spite of their host’s official cautions.(——As for “other persuasion”... is there really another true persuasion beyond ethnicity or religion?)

This blizzard of punctuation keeps me from seeing your point:?
The post is about what is seen as a comparison between two countries (USofA and LV) and the issue of ethnic minorities. In particular the muslim ethnic minority in the USofA, which is what the Durbin article is about.
As I never claim the USofA is in any way perfect, in particular the point was made that “...just as America should do…” not as they do. The only distinctions made were of relative political stability compared to LV and the difference of not having an ethnic minority effectively being an occupier for fifty years as the Russians obstensibly were.
As to ethnic minorities in the USofA, he attempts to claim his own clarity

What though should be realized as being far more important… is that these WWII-era American-Japanese, American-Italians; ...yes, even Mormans, often continued to see themselves as true Americans, in spite of their host’s official cautions.(——As for “other persuasion”... is there really another true persuasion beyond ethnicity or religion?)

Is he trying to tell us that similar to the USofA, the ethnic minorities in LV consider themselves true Latvians,

in spite of their host’s official cautions.

?

Finally

“other persuasion…is there really another true persuasion beyond ethnicity or religion?

Who might this arbiter of “true persuasion” be? (oops) :?
Consider gender (about half of the population being female), political or sexual persuasions unless these are not “true”.

Ints -a wannabee i.e.; not a “true” contributor

One small note to Ints (I won’t wade into most of the debate)—Muslims are not an ethnic minority but a religious one.

Vysu lobu,
/P

Thank you for pointing out my mistake.

Would this distinction make a significant difference?
Another open question: Is the religious persuasion of the Russian ethnic minority in LV predominately Russian Orthodox? Is this ethnic group religiously homogenous?

Cheers.

Well, it does make a difference in that the mistake is often made, which blurs many a boundary; much of the Islamophobic rage in the US is directed at a blurry entity with no distinctions made. “They hate us,” and so on—well, no, “they” don’t; Albanians, mostly Muslim, are insanely pro-American, for instance, and have a penchant for naming streets and squares after George W. Bush. One of the best articles on the New York controversy I’ve read is by William Dalrymple, “The Muslims in the Middle.” The failure to perceive the distinctions adds to the poisonous slop. Then one slips more easily into Dubya’s polarization: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

Re the Orthodox Church, there are not a few ethnically Latvian Orthodox, and many ethnic Russians are Old Believers (who do not always get along very well with the Orthodox and vice versa, even now), or Greek Catholics, or whatever, not to mention a great many agnostics, atheists, and people not into hierarchies. Of course, there are degrees of belief, too—people who go to church to get married and maybe on Easter. But another subject is the entwining of religion and politics, and the state; the Saeima just rejected a bible study law (surprising, considering the approaching elections). The Latvian Orthodox Church is now subject to Moscow—in England, a similar move brought about by ex-Soviet immigration to the UK caused a major rift.

But this is too big a subject—suffice it to say that there most certainly is a danger in Islam, which is Islamism. I don’t think this can be underestimated; even the one stable, secular state that has been around for some time, Turkey, is veering dangerously in that direction. Separating it out is not so easy; simply pretending that you can recognize and isolate radical Islam is in my view too simplistic. There is even an ethnically Latvian Muslim here who is hoping to create a caliphate. There are, of course, also fanatical Christians—the sect that Šlesers cultivates, for instance, is essentially theocratic in its desires. Then there is the degree of separation of church and state, which is questionable when it comes to the support for “the traditional denominations.”

Vysu lobu,
/P

By the way, as long as we are on the subject, perhaps of interest—ir reported on this Gallup poll—essentially, “religiosity is highest in the world’s poorest nations.” A notable exception, of course, is the United States, where 65% of respondents said religion is important in their daily lives. In Latvia—39%. In Estonia—16%. In Sweden—17%.

Vysu lobu,
/P

Just a few more scattered thoughts, if I may. I do believe that I mentioned before that Meierovics had it in for the Orthodox; I can’t recall where I read it, but he apparently wanted to tear down that lovely church south of the Central Market. The reaction, of course, was to the whole structure of the Russian empire, in which “one God, one tsar, one nation” was a major motif. The census in the 19th C counted religion and not ethnicity; often, if you were a convert to Orthodoxy, you were a Russian (especially in Vitebsk guberniya). This is a pronounced feature Latgalia and Lithuania share—there was little “ethnic consciousness” here until the Awakening, and even then it was weakest here. When Gintautas the Great rails about “polonized Lithuanians” at s.c.b., the same terms were used. You see amazing shifts in some Latgalian parishes, though there was little actual movement—one day everybody is Latvian or Russian, the next day they’re Belarusian.

Many activists in the Awakening and after were fiercely anti-clerical. Then and later, a lot of the friction between Latgalia and “pārnovadnieki” (or shall I say čiuļi, or baltieši) was venomously anti-Catholic. A Catholic = a tumsonis—you can see that in the papers prior to Ulmanis’s coup, when identity politics were actually muted in the interests of “unity.” So—a host of facets; to Laicens (who later became so Red he left Latvia for the Soviet Union, where he was eventually slaughtered), Latgalians drink instead of reading, and on Sundays they crawl to their priests. Since Mikus mentioned Germans, an interesting thing is that Endzelīns (disliked by many Latgalian activists because of his views on Latgalian being a dialect) fought hard for the Latin script rather than Fraktur. The reason was that once the printing ban was lifted, literate Latgalians (who were not many, comparatively) could deal with the Latin alphabet, familiar from Polish and Lithuanian, but not with German script. If you’ve tried reading old Latvian books, that’s obvious (even though blackletter really isn’t that hard once you get used to it).

Religious leaders were prominent on both sides of Latgalia’s identity debates—the Russians who opposed joining Latvia were led by Orthodox churchmen, and it was the Catholic Bishop Rancāns, an ancestor of the poet Anna Rancāne, who was a kind of Patrick Henry of the pro-Latvian forces. These days, relations have changed beyond recognition—the fact that the new Catholic Archbishop (who, compared to Cardinal Pujats, is modernity and liberalism incarnate) is ethnically Polish doesn’t matter one whit except to some marginal fanatics. But in many ways it was the occupation that brought the religions together. Between the wars, Latvia was so worried about Polish pretensions that the government sent spies into the churches to see what language people were singing in. On the other hand, the inherent authoritarianism has had something of a revival—a sovok intellectual I know suggested forcing children into church just as everybody was herded to May Day demonstrations.

Freedom of conscience and worship (and the freedom not to worship) are, of course, critical to a civil society. Unfortunately, many religionists don’t really share that view when applied to others. The filthy PLL rag that I found in my mailbox, besides containing obscene caricatures of gays, also included endorsements from Cardinal Pujats and Metropolitan Aleksandr (I got the Latgalian edition, which differed from the Riga and other editions). Again I want to stress some fascinating facets—I have met many a young Latgalian who is sick to death of the Catholic Church, for instance, and has an identity quite independent of it—primarily linguistic and cultural. But the lines between these things are sometimes so very fine.

Vysu lobu,
/P

Peteri - “blackletter” is the proper English term for “vecā ortogrāfija”??

And P.S. (which I can’t type any longer without thinking of Mikus!)—the Orthodox are Christians, of course. So are Catholics, so are Lutherans, so are Baptists, so (maybe!) are Mormons, and so on, and so was our formative Herrnhut. So when one speaks of “the Muslims” (if not “those Muslims”), one should bear in mind that there are very different sorts of Muslims, from Sufis to Wahhabis—minus a Reformation, however. Throwing ethnicity in—much less politics in—there’s an unbelievably vast believing world between Islamabad, Kazan, Malaysia, Casablanca, Mecca, Istanbul and Dearborn, Michigan, not to mention between the ears. Not necessarily only geographical in the mundane sense—the Arabic concept is the Ummah. Christians and Jews have like concepts, actually—but see also Dhimmi.

Vysu lobu,
/P

Ciao Anita,

No—I’m referring to the script/typeface, not orthography as a whole (e.g., spelling, “sch” for “š,” etc., the current Latvian alphabet in its infancy back then). Fraktur is a form of blackletter.

Visu gaišu,
/P

P.P.S. I should have written that not a few secularists are not so keen on tolerance, either, instead of just bashing intolerant religionists.

/P