Work of which he was the patron. (Not that there was anything worthwhile under the big C; not that “patron” isn’t confined to a malefic traditional gender role, etc., etc. ...)

Lai viņam vieglas smiltis.

/P

Kokars conducting a song by my fellow Cry Banka depositor, the Maestro. Note to Ambersun: this is not your dzimtene. A родина is not a tēvzeme. But I still don’t understand what the difference between this and Ulmanistic delight might be? As per your previous post, after which I cannot possibly invoke you—I just don’t get it. What is wrong with the big C, other than tee many martoonies; I mean Russkies? An organic tomato is more bio if it switches its gender role? If the man milks the cow and you slaughter the lamb? 

/P

Paldies, Peteri!  Vieglas smiltis.

PC,
The evil C did not create Imants Kokars.  If only Imants Kokars had lived in a free Latvia and if only all of us Latvians would have lived with his genius together with him in a free Latvia. Your logic fails you, Peteris, for offering that evil spawns any good.  Good is always there despite the evil.  Evil cannot extinguish good and it cannot hide behind good as you seem to think it can.  That any good appeared in a system built with murder and destruction as its basic tools, should make everyone embrace survivors like Kokars while examining and condemning your big C for killing more Kokars than it allowed - not produced or created, as you keep pushing.  Put yourself back in Latvia during Kokars time and imagine yourself milking cows in the kolhoz, listening to your secret tape of Bob Dylan, writing cleverly-disguised nationalistic poetry and see how free and happy you feel.  The evil C system caused your family and so many others to flee from Latvia and murdered, deported, repressed, terrorized more genius than it allowed to emerge merely deformed by second-guessing what would please the Big Terror Leader of the Day.  Read some biographies starting with Stalin (Montefiore’s is repellingly excellent in the details of Soviet Communist perversity.  Not a good time for Jewish doctors or the wrong kind of Jews, PC. )  Move on to “progress” with Kruschev (he doesn’t remember how many Ukrainians he murdered) and Brezhnev (jokes and stagnation aplenty).  Maybe read some women’s views (if only) like Svetlana’s to start about her life of garish “capitalist” privilege among the Bolshevik elite building Communism for Chumps and overflowing with idealism for the humanity that they did not kill.

If only Imants Kokars had lived in a free Latvia and if only all of us Latvians would have lived with his genius together with him in a free Latvia.

I haven’t much time to waste on the likes of you, Ambi—but I do live in a free Latvia, as did Imants Kokars. Latvia has been free for quite a long time, ex-trimdiniec Embīt—I shall shortly celebrate two decades of life in a free Latvia under Latvian (and indeed ethnic Latvian) rule! By contrast, your idea of “free” has little to do with real freedom. Ulmanis’s dictatorship seems quite free to you, no, and shouldn’t even be called a dictatorship?! Latvia, Embi, has been freer than it ever has been for longer than it ever has been—and is, despite (or even because of) whatever bogeymen you can dangle. And sorry, but the Brothers Kokari were quite privileged in Soviet Latvia, too—that is what many spoke of here today. Count ‘em up, Ambi—sorry, but I suggest that you read what (the nationalist!) Imants Kalniņš wrote recently, quoted in the other thread.

/P

Lest you pretend to have missed it, Imants Kalniņš:

“Vēl esam pazaudējuši cilvēkus laukos. Man sāp sirds, redzot, cik lauki kļūst tuksnesīgi. Kritizējiet kolhozus, dzelzs priekškaru uz robežām, taču tajos gados laukos bija dzīvība! Tur bija papilnam ražošanas, skolu un bērnu, medicīniskas un sociālas palīdzības, taču šo dzīvību neesam nosargājuši. Situācija ir tāda, ka ekonomiski realizējam politiku, ko mums nosaka Brisele un aizdevēji, bet politiski darām to, uz ko parāda Vašingtona.”

I agree with almost nothing in his politics, but respect him quite a lot for his past work. But I have also lived here long enough to know that your thoughts on how “culture” may have flourished are a crock. I remember the recently deceased Brūveris staggering into the Writers’ Union one morning in 1993 to say: some people think things are starting—to me, they’re over. Ulmanis really would hate today’s free Latvia, Ambi—he didn’t let folks emigrate, either, y’know, when it came down to it. Really free Latvians, Ambi, can get the hell out of here, or languish near Lake Michigan. Slucis can pine for compulsory armed service all he likes. And that brand of bloated false pride and nationalistic coercion and convention blending bad biology and antiquated ideas of nationhood that add up to less than zero. 

/P

Further, to get back down to really simple things—your speculation is pure filth. What is—is. Does anybody really care about what may have been in a way that leads to anything other than a pathetic nostalgia for what is not? Your brand of sentimentality is especially poisonous because you would like to chuck some things and preserve others in an obscure inward patchwork. You don’t like them gender roles—but the Vadonis is fine by you. You want to spit the fatherland out of the… fatherland. The extreme right does not bother you as long as it is Lettish. Make sense of yourself, baby.

/P

PC,
“Ambi baby"makes a lot of sense to me and maybe some others as well.
What is so wrong wanting your country back,as it was pre-WW2.Yes even with
Ulmanis in charge.Remember,you did not have to speak a foreign language
to get or seek employment.
You say that the country has never been as free as it is now,that’s great,
how come so many people are heading for the EXIT sign?

Trying to absorb your comments,aivars t

l

Labrīt, Aivar!

What is so wrong wanting your country back,as it was pre-WW2.

Ambersun wasn’t around then. Most of those alive today were not adults back then. As I’ve pointed out before, direct experience is anyhow quite limited; a veteran knows what it was like to be a soldier, but most often experienced only a small part of the war. If he was an infantryman, a very tiny part, being caught up in his part of the battle. A general probably experienced more, perhaps not enduring the hardships an infantryman did, and might know less about hand-to-hand combat. But even a general doesn’t experience everything—he might have involved himself deeply in politics (not a rare thing!), but most generals do not understand diplomacy or economics, both of which are extremely important aspects of a war. There have been not a few generals with incredibly broad and diverse experience, of course. But few of us, generals or just plain kareivji, “get the big picture.” 

I would be far more polite to Ambi if she weren’t such a hypocrite and didn’t incessantly indulge in a weird sort of cherry-picking. There are a lot of problems in what you suggest is Ambi Baby’s desire, Aivar. I mean—even if that were really her desire (it ain’t) and she really wanted to turn the clock back. Any such desirous anachronism runs into trouble in its incoherence, I s’pose—radical Islamists who would love to return us to the Middle Ages don’t seem to spurn cutting edge technologies, as long as these help accomplish their purposes.

Ambi doesn’t really wanna live under Charlie Ulmanis the First. I doubt that she wishes to return to an era without contemporary washing machines. Mounting her brand of feminism would be too difficult, though I like to think of her playing a washboard. She accuses me, among others, of being sickeningly traditional, not to mention male. The problem is that one assumes we’d be very different and rather resplendent if we’d been left alone. We weren’t, Aivar, and that’s just plain fact—I can’t count the number of texts I’ve translated about the loveliness of our location; we’re the gate to the East, the bridge to the Third Rome, the hub that lets you fly to Central Asia, and so on. Can we just get the “good” parts? Sorry, but no. Being at a crossroads between two empires spells trouble, too. It always will.

Ambi loves to oversimplify. I recently reread Niedra’s Memoirs of a Traitor to the Nation. It’s quite a brill book in parts. His understanding of the horrors of Bolshevism is superb—reading, you can picture it as if you were there, the idealistic ideologue in each parish being accompanied by the selfish con man. They were Latvians, mind you—in fact, if you check out the folks who brought the capital C to Latvia, you’ll find that they were ethnically quite Latvian. I won’t even get into the fact that we were disproportionately represented in the Soviet empire at its inception—not a few of the organs of terror we so resent in retrospect were created and/or staffed by ethnic Latvians. Many of those people were far more complex than we like to think. I can also recommend the Voldemārs Šteins biography of Jukums Vācietis, who commanded the Red Army. I read somewhere that the forgiving Charlie the First forgave everybody except Jukums. But to turn such people into cartoon characters is actually impossible—Niedra on the right and Vācietis on the left were both patriots who loved the Latvian people. I can see a really upset Ambi Baby reading Niedra’s lengthy tirades about how Latvia needs Russia more than anything in the world.

I’m not sure if there’s anything wrong with “wanting your country back,” Aivar, eo ipso—but nothing prevents Ambi from coming here and starting the sort of collective she fantasizes about. But I will not swallow even a drop from her cesspool of poisons—read the recent rants directed at Anita. The Ann Arbor Baby does not make sense, Aivar—I can’t find anything in what I have written that might suggest I think the occupation was wonderful. It happened, though, and that’s the breaks—we might transcend time and fly in our dreams, but we can’t help being here and now. Wanting to revive the past might lead to lovely reveries—but Latvia is a very real place. I live in it. So do a lot of Russkies. Whatcha gonna do? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—reading a smidgen of Ambi often makes me want to go out and do something drastic, like… khe, sign the petition. There is no space in Ambi’s thought-world for anybody not marching lock-step into her putrid, puffball vision.

Zellis: Nemitīga atsaukšanās uz iedomāto sabiedrības bināro raksturu tikai pastiprina atsevišķu kontroversālo sociālo grupu antagonismu. That’s Ambi’s game. I don’t like it. You can pine for things as they were—how did it end? Bet vai mums ir atvainojusies Latvijas valsts par to, ka tās priekšstāvji pieļāva situāciju, ka mēs tikām okupēti? You wanna go back to the 1930s—really? Guys like Meierovics would have died for the freedom we have, y’know—this security. Zellis, 20 November: ļoti sen uzrakstīju vienu komentāru, šķiet šodien ar to parakstu vākšanas vadību, tas atkal ir aktuāls! Here it is.

I live here, Aivar. The throwing of rotten fruits from a distant past known only from bad books, ill-read across a shallow ocean, annoys the hell out of me.

/P

PC,
You’ve managed to turn around your pushing into my face how everything was not all bad during those Soviet times to make it appear I am stupidly sentimental about Ulmanis and represent naive trimda nostalgia.  You friggin did not live in the Soviet times - coward - like I did not live in the Ulmanis times.  Then you reveal your true agenda as you rant against the past you hate - the free Latvia that had far fewer ills in any normal person’s perception than the Soviet Latvia you found worth defending for its “good.”  If you hate Ulmanis and free Latvia before the disfiguring and humanity-destroying Soviet occupation so much, just write about that and stop making it appear that anyone who hates the Soviet occupation does so because they love Ulmanis and are nostalgic for the things of free Latvia you can’t wait to list as worth hating. Get it out of your system - list all that was so much worse before the Soviet times that makes you see the “good” in anything Soviet.  I certainly don’t get it.  I see nothing worth defending about the Soviet occupation!  NOTHING!  That period ruined Latvia not because it was not a continuation of Ulmanis time but because it started with devastating war, death, destruction, displacement, disorientation, family death - nothing good.  The continuation of foreign Soviet and foreign Russian-speaker occupation was disfiguring and robbed all people of their humanity.  Read 1984, the Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milos, any number of books available to you before you promote your happy kolhoz workers.  Latvia as a democratic republic could have chosen a much better version of government if the nightmare of sovietization and russianization had not been imposed on Latvians, just as capable as Danes and Swedes to take care of themselves in normal times and circumstances.  What you see with Kokars is the manifestation of Soviet deformity that affected everyone living in a country where “night is day.”  Kokars lived “privilege” that was not supposed to exist.  If you were still stupidly romancing red even after Stalin’s vision of nirvana had been exposed for the vile pit of perversity and barabaric murder it was, you too could have headed off with all the other naive and deluded “idealistic” “radical socialists” as they promoted themselves to be while living hypocritical personal lives with disgusting discrimination against women (no time for inconvenient liberation from patriarchal privilege) and struggles for personal power (so much for cooperative and communal values when everyone still longed to be The Leader), often family trust-fund supported lives ( sort of like Marx).  I can unequivocally say that I can find loads to defend of the Ulmanis time compared to your Soviet time you cherry pick for the good that would have been even better in the Ulmanis time.  I am not nostalgic for some idealized Ulmanis time since I am not into male leaders as the end-all-be-all like you are.  It was the Latvian people who built Latvia and made it prosper! I don’t support dictatorships so why would you keep trying to tie me to one in Latvia. Yes, “change” happened and you need to get over some old struggle of yours with Ulmanis and the abused trimda. The trimda has unequivocally provided more good to Latvia than the Soviets!  Shame on those Latvians in Latvia for so ignorantly longing for anything Soviet while disparaging trimda Latvians.  Ulmanis was a far better leader than any Soviet deformed leader we’ve seen during the last twenty years that Latvia Latvians with the occupation Russians have managed to provide for Latvia.  Latvia is off balance because you and too many other non-trimda Latvians can’t keep your Latvian centers any time an demanding occupation Russian appears on the scene demanding rights a Latvian never had under any Russian - ever.  You rage against any appropriate Latvian nationalism but seems mostly mute about inappropriate Russian nationalism in Latvia. How about that May 9?  My heart breaks that Latvia had a shattering war of Soviet and Nazi aggression on its territory that killed way too many industrious, hard-working, aspiring, even brilliant Latvians, destroyed most Latvian families, radically altered life in Latvia for the bad.  You can’t undo this but you can at least recognize and factor in how disfiguring - deforming - the Soviet /Russian aggression into Latvia was and still continues to be and stop promoting “night as day.”

Another good thing about Soviet rule is that because there were no official private electricians, plumbers, mechanics, joiners, etc., Latvian men had to be far more resourceful than western men, and this culture of self-dependency continues to this day, especially in the countryside.  As a city boy from England who had little skill in DIY, I felt a little inadequate among other Latvian men, but little by little the local culture has changed me to the extent that with some help I have built my own sauna house, and I now do all my own plumbing, electrical and other repairs on my house myself (occasionally with a little help from friends).  I think I am intelligent enough to know when a task is beyond my abilities! :)

So anyway, Ambersun, this account of a positive result of Soviet Communism is in no way an endorsement of that evil system where people weren’t free to engage in private business and sell their skills legally.  Just as PC’s account of the more cohesive community life in the countryside in Soviet times was not an endorsement from him of that system, and he made that clear many times.  I don’t know how good your Latvian is but it is clear that your English reading comprehension skills are sorely lacking from your frankly bizarre responses to Peteris.

Funny, isn’t it, that no Latvian living in Latvia has posted here in agreement with your views.

Džons writing from the real and free Latvia

Hi Džons!

Good observations about the DIY spirit readily observable in Latvia today when you get away from “the big city”. Your observations are in sync with my limited ones, as well. I’ve marvelled at my Latvian relatives’ abilities to build things, to repair things, to “jump off the cliff” and just launch into things.

Though my dad grew up in the countryside on the outskirts of Rēzekne and was a very smart man who was the first in his extended family to go to University in pre-war Latvia, his greatest DIY proficiency was the aplomb with which he wore shirts, ties, and suits. I don’t know about you, but I’ve found it extraordinarily unaccomodating to tackle DIY projects when dressed like that. I grew up in a household that had a hammer, a couple of screwdrivers, some nails and some screws….that was it when it came to tools.

Everything of any DIY importance I learned while living on a counter-culture farm in the hinterlands of North Carolina during the flower-child period in ASV history while attending college. My roommate was a university dropout mechanic and quite handy and taught me a lot. I still have a long way to go, but thankfully YouTube instructional videos fill in many gaps for me. I successfully tackled some odious plumbing tasks this weekend and saved myself a small fortune in plumbers fees. Anyone else here notice that plumbers and electricians in the States are commanding greater fees than neurosurgeons?

Alberts

Džons Brauns et al.,
“Another good thing about Soviet rule is that because there were no official private electricians, plumbers, mechanics, joiners, etc., Latvian men had to be far more resourceful than western men, and this culture of self-dependency continues to this day, especially in the countryside”

Baloney.  It is a question of city versus country (farm) living.  Particularily on an individual farm and not a “kolhoz”.  The individual homestead farmer was self suficient long before your “Soviet rule” era.

Visu labu,

Dzons loves being a “survivalist” in his new life as a “Latvian” in Latvia.  Unfortunately, you are late to both experiences but it’s still cute the way you take your new knowledge and limited experience, and - without any embarrassment or reservation - run wild with them to lecture about your new and happy discoveries.  I know I’m being repetitive, but many here, myself included, have been Latvians for all of our lives and think you have some catching up to do in your Latvian knowledge, experience, and country skills, even if you might disagree.  I don’t know what, if anything, you are reading but it’s obvious you don’t have time to catch up on your neglected Soviet history. It’s unavoidable to see how highly you rate your years as Dzons Brauns in rural Latvia since you feel that Latvia is now yours alone to define and explain as apparently no other Latvian without your substantial Latvian credentials gained after actually living full time in Latvia for some ? years.  You now also have also discovered the value of learning auto mechanics, plumbing, carpentry, etc. as people have known without interruption or choice for all of their Third World (or Communist Cuba) years.  I’m sorry that you did not get an earlier start with your grandparents as a Latvian or survivalist of wars, displacement, and even DP camps.  My Latvian gramps taught me how to grow tomatoes and vegetables, how to fish for pike, and how to make tasty fish head soup, among other “old Latvian” survival skills of his.  My gran tried to teach me how to sew and crochet so my dolls and I would have “folk art” clothes.  Tort-making I learned from my Latvian mother, among other “traditional Latvian” survival food preparation.  My architect-educated artist father taught me to sight-measure construction material without a tape measure - and not just because I might be sent to Siberia.  I’d share more but some other time.  Unfortunately, I did not know my maternal grandparents because they were trapped behind that Iron Curtain, as we used to call it.  But they did live authentically in rural Latvia - without indoor plumbing.  I can tell you more about Latvian “survivalist” methods and “authentic” rural life in survival/self-help skill-motivating Soviet Latvia from the correspondence my mother received about how things were going when her parents no longer owned anything including a horse, certainly not a car to repair, but could join together in the happy kolhoz and were free to drink themselves silly at the new Soviet community center (they bought with their appropriated property) - if they made their own alcohol (like you now also have joyously learned to do).  That would have made any Swede or Dane envious for the progress in Latvia after Soviet occupation and the “good” that was life in Soviet Latvia. 

I think it’s good for people to know as much as they possibly can, and not just because the Russians or someone may invade again.  Some things are just lovely and gratifying to know and to do.  Hence, all these new “gentlemen farmers” in Calif are zenning out in their vineyards getting their hands dirty - after working all day creating a new Latvian phone app.  Raising chickens and bees in the city is so “in,” like changing your own car oil used to be.  Progress.  You are too young to remember the “back-to-the-land” and “trade school-after-grad-school” routes to practical solutions and even personal happiness taken by many here in the U.S., now for years, but you can always read about this along with that Soviet history you’ve neglected.

Bruno,

Of course farmers are more self-sufficient the world over, but what I am talking about applied equally to cities.  I’ll repeat myself (as I often have to do here) - there were no official private electricians, plumbers, mechanics, joiners, in the Soviet Union, including Latvian towns and cities.  There was no Yellow Pages (or other business phone book) to call for someone to do repairs.  Of course there were official channels to get repairs done to communal property but they were virtually useless.  Men in Latvian towns and cities did repairs themselves or with help from family and friends.

Ambersun,

I’ve been Latvian for 58 years, and have lived in the independent country of Latvia for 12 years.  BTW, you totally missed the point of my post which was that PC was not in any way whatsoever supporting the Soviet occupation.  The fact that you thought so shows your lack of English reading skills.

BTW, explain to me again why you won’t come here to help improve Latvia.  Your posts on this forum are not helping at all.

Džons

Hi Bruno:

I’m one of the proverbial “et.al’s” that you constantly refer to. The “Al” part fits me well, so I always feel pleasantly singled out by you.

I made a public commitment several months back to not continue to disrespect your mistaken opinions, but once again you’ve earned my disrespect so I’m at long last speaking up to you directly.

Sure, the point that you made that on average country boys have to figure out mechanical/electrical/plumbing things for themselves more than city boys (or girls) do, has always been the way it’s been everywhere….not just in Latvia. That is logical for you. It’s logical for me.

I’m not a vegetarian like my wife, but I still take exception to your “baloney” remark.

But, a greater point was being made by Džons that poverty drives resourcefulness and THAT necessity has always been the mother of “invention”. I found Džons’ remarks honest, unvarnished, and very apolitical.  However, your penchant for categorizing people into “which side are you on?” terminology (which automatically makes me think of Dylan’s “Desolation Row” while you pine for Ulmanis instead) paints Džons and your proverbial “et al’s” into a corner that they didn’t sign up for.

Get a life, or live with the realization that my “Bruno Biezputra” characterization of you many months ago might have been spot on.

Alberts