1945 Literary AlmanacSelected Translations

A common theme of Soviet era propaganda is that Soviet power is glorious, everlasting, and uplifting to all Soviet peoples.

“For Latvia”

About the author

Andrejs Balodis (March 24, 1908–April 6, 1987) was a Latvian poet and politician. Balodis embarked on his Communist career earlier than most, arrested at the age of 13 for his contacts with the Communist underground. He first published his poetry in 1924 in Domas ("Thoughts"), Vienība ("Union"), Kreisā fronte ("Left Front") and the banned Uz Barikādem ("On the Barricades"). He formally joined the illegal Communist party in 1925. After graduating Riga 4. Evening School in 1927, he worked as a longshoreman in Rīga harbor and continued his Communist activism, including editing for leftist journals and translating revolutionary poetry. Balodis spent a total of a decade in jail for his Communist activities.

Andrejs Balodis at litertura.lv, credit: J. Krieviņa foto. Avots: Latviešu rakstniecība biogrāfijās, Rīga: Zinātne, 2003.

Balodis served in WWII as a Red Army machine-gunner. Later, as a company political officer, he participated in the defense of Leningrad. During 1942 he worked for the Cīņa ("Struggle") editorial office in Kirov. He continued to compose poetry during the war, focusing on defense of one's homeland, Soviet patriotism, and friendship between peoples.

Following the war, Balodis published numerous poetry collections, including those he had written while in prison before the war. He spent many years, 1948–1963, as the managing editor of the journal Karogs ("The Flag"), and received several Soviet awards.

Despite such (from our vantage point) impeccable Communistic credentials, Balodis still managed to run afoul of authorities. Per the newspaper Literatūra un Māksla ("Literature and Art"), love and nature were not prohibited as poetic themes, but they must never be portrayed divorced from portrayals of brotherhood, work, and the Soviet future. Balodis was sternly rebuked by a (state) literary critic for a poem he published in Karogs which proffered that there was nothing more beautiful in the world than love. The critic asked: Where then are the great goals of socialism, the ideals of justice and freedom? (Latvian poets writing lyric poetry were generally compared to Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova, to whom critics maintained love represented struggle, pain, and suffering. Such poetry was like harmful weeds to be yanked out at the root from our lyric pastures.)

"Adapted from Balodis' biography in the Latvian SSR Concise Encyclopedia and an article about the treatment of Latvian poetry under the Soviet regime appearing in Mājas Viesis ("House Guest"), July 25, 2005."

Latvijai