...many so-called common men who on the day of Jurģi (moving day) went from house to house and job to job, thus often traversing and binding significant geographical areas…

& yeah, romanticize the landless, why dontcha. Pathetic.

/P

“Would then the burden of “moving on” be on Latvians first and foremost, rather than establishing a policy of what can appear to outsiders as revenge?”
If I have read correctly. even Prof Snyder has stated that most of the westen world cannot relate to the circimstances of the time yet alone the resultant (continuing)consequences.
Revenge? ... what revenge? Most of Nato did not experience what the Baltic (and other countries) went throgh for 50 years.
If you are the Alekejs Y. aged 36 I found on google, then we are of completely different generations.Your experiences are completely different from mine. All of your adolescence was during the uSSr regime - the remainder under the demise of communism ie some form of freedom; hence it is easy for you to say “move on”.
There are a lot of reasons for revenge; but I don’t believe that is what is happening.
Somewhere the line had to be drawn as to who is a natural citizen and who is not.
Obviously the poliical powers at the time decided that a certain element of russian imports and ex-red army personnel were not. From my distance, it seems quite fair and logical. No doubt there are those that did/will fall through the legislative cracks.
As for russians in Latvia also suffering under the naSSis and uSSr, yes,I am aware of that. But that doesn’t lessen anything.

As for “PS Take a look at this analysis of a Russian state exhibit about Latvia’s “collaborators.”
You must be joking!
A. Dyukov is a (past? / present!) Krimeline glove puppet. Wasn’t he the one who stated that all deportees where sent to Siberia in “summer carriages .. warm, well fed etc”.

Why do you defend them?
Sounds like your mother country is still russia.

Marisr,
What generation do you belong to?
On what basis do you give yourself the authority to draw the line: “Somewhere the line had to be drawn as to who is a natural citizen and who is not.”
Are you of the 1930s? 1940s? Earlier?
There are at least a few of one generation of Latvians, apparently from Chicago, who are wandering lost in the woods and shouting that the trees do not know what language the lost are talking.

On what basis do you give yourself the authority to draw the line…

Sorry, honey, but drawing the line is really rather simple—citizens should be able to decide if and how to extend citizenship.

/P

If a citizen of Latvia is so unknowing of the Latvian past as not to know that a half a century ago all Latvians carried their songs in their memories and delivered the songs themselves, rather than go around with plastic plugs in their ears? In my youth, the countryside troubador of Latvia was the accordian player. What is one to make of a citizen ignorant of allegedly his country’s past culture? Is he-she to determine Latvia’s future?

Is Latvia to surrender its forests to “plantation forests” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agroforestry, and are Latvians to be so simple minded as not to know that while plantation forestry increases the “area” of forests, it also decimates forest wildlife?

Is Latvia to surrender its future to an American-Latvian’s idea of what Latvia should be like now and in the future?

Jaņdž, I obviously mean the real troubadours. Not the word as it is used to apply to… well, for instance, a weedy dude gone to seed, crooning šlāgeri to the strains of a cheap synthesizer on the Riga-Stockholm ferry MS Romantika.

There is no troubadour tradition in Latvia, and there never was one. Courtly love was and is alien, except in exotic pastiches and fantasies. If you look at the theories of origin, you will find the crypto-Cathar theory—one theory among many. There is nothing even remotely like that in Latvian verse. Or in Latvian thought. You can pretend to see Albigensian heretics hanging out by the Baltic as much as you like, but I find that patently ludicrous.

In my view, real life—life itself—is mysterious enough. It doesn’t need enhancement by way of faux etymologies and/or Fomenko. I don’t need people spouting off about having “one of the oldest languages in the world” to appreciate the dainas. I do not need to compare the local accordion player to Guillaume IX de Poitiers. I do not need to claim that x or y are the ancientest, boggle the mind with parallels to Sanskrit, or imagine Jersika as an advanced society watered by wandering johns in order to savor our music or myth.

Plantation forests, Jaņdž? Forests in Latvia have been tended since the time of Duke James. I’m the translator of Mežu zemē Latvijā by Imants and Rimants Ziedonis—the book never came out in English, but you can easily find it in Latvian.  But it was published by your archenemy, Latvijas Valsts Meži. It probably contains NATO propaganda. It doubtless does not endorse the idea that we should live in the trees and eat mushrooms so that Eso can sip john’s-milk all day, dreaming of an abstract wilderness whilst eliding medieval centuries and slouching toward Byzantium.

Once again I will ask—why aintcha twining with your domubiedri? I mean, they’re really not hard to find! There’s somebody who’s certain terminal moraines are the residue of carefully constructed pyramids erected by enlightened proto-Letts on pretty much every corner. The wisdom of the ages could feed everybody, just as neopagans fed the fascists in the 1930s. 

Visu gaišu,
/P

P.S. Is Latvia to surrender its future to an American-Latvian’s idea of what Latvia should be like now and in the future? If you had your way, my dear old Latvian-American, of course. Bet—tas neies krastā.

‘The Russian in the Market Square’.

For Alyosha & Jaņdžs.

/P

The issue of Eastern Europe, a long forgotten historical a geographical unit, was reawakened by the slaughter of 14+ million of its inhabitants between the years 1933 and 1945. The issues that brought about the slaughter are likely unresolved issued that followed upon the occupation of the area by Catholic Christianity.

However, further awakening of Eastern Europe awaits the economic collapse of the Euro and EU. I agree that the collapse is 100% assured: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA2x1krgoog. The collapse will be underlined by the collapse—heretofore unimagined—of the German economy as well. I concede, that we have a while (though not much) longer to wait.

Sorry, for the typos, re 2nd sentence:
The issues that brought about the slaughter are likely unresolved issued that followed upon the occupation of the area by Catholic Christianity. The 2nd sentence should read:

“The issues that brought about the slaughter (of the East Europeans) are the unresolved issues that were created by the occupation of Eastern Europe by Catholic Christianity.”

jandzs
“Marisr,
What generation do you belong to?”
b. 1946 British Zone, Germany.
“On what basis do you give yourself the authority to draw the line: “Somewhere the line had to be drawn as to who is a natural citizen and who is not.”
I didn’t know I drew the line mate. I thought the re-independent govt did.
Never having been to Latvia until last year, I’m sure I didn’t; but I’ll recheck my emails.

Marisr,
Thanks for the response. Given that it is nearly sixty-eight years since the autumn of 1944, when most of Latvians fled from Latvia, we are in a time zone where with each passing year fewer and fewer Latvians of that time are still alive. I am interested in this, because it makes the memories and contributions of “trimda” Latvians and the transference of same to their descendants, an inheritance of their descendants.

Though “trimda”  community had its own myths about Latvia, I note that their descendants have more—most of them modeled on the traditions of Western nations,; for example, a strong secular and urban orientation.

Many of the Latvians who stayed in Latvia and were born during the Soviet times are now in their forties and early fifties (born, say, between the years of 1960 and 1970) are now going through a “nostalgia” period. Mostly this nostalgia is regarding their youth, but since the years also coincide with the years when the Soviet Union was in its haydays, it also includes nostalgia for the Soviet Union. Interestingly, these years also coincide with an individual’s full maturity and “power years”.

The Latvians of pre-war Latvia have strong memories of the arguments used to justify the existence of Latvia as a sovereign nation. One of these memories concerns Latvian folklore, and involves two men: 1) Krišjānis Barons, collector of dainas, and 2) Ernests Brastiņš of Dievturi (holder of Old Gods) fame. In a sense, Brastiņš http://foto.lu.lv/avize/20012002/14/ernests_.html work concluded the work begun by Barons. To the extent that Barons collection of Latvian folksongs constitutes one of the fundamental arguments why Latvians are due independence (cultural individuation), Brastins concludes the argument. While the True believers (-members) of Brastins followers never exceeded a thousand, there are few Latvians who do not know of his work or who, in one way or another, do not believe in the correctness of his conclusions.

Though I have great respect for Latvian folklore, I am perhaps one of the few who thinks that this aspect has been exaggerated. Since other investigations, readings, and interests of mine have led me to percieve Latvian and European culture in an opposite direction of what has become the orthodox view [specifically, that Brastins folklore constitutes a mythologization of Barons folk poems (dainas)], I argue on behalf of an early Christian influence on Latvians, indeed a Christianity (manifest in the Midsummer Holy day or Johns Day) that precedes the invention of Catholic Christianity by secular powers of the West, who soon took their invention on a Crusade against Eastern Christianity.