latviski
Album coverIn 2002, Peters found this commemorative book dedicated to the 1905-1907 communist revolution↗ in Latvia. This had always been a period of interest. The Bolsheviks killed one of Peters' relatives and one of his godfather's relatives during the 1905 revolution — only to later have the Latvian SSR erect red granite monuments over their graves extolling their sacrifice to the proletariat cause.
What was the history of the Latvian "left" in the denouement of Tsarist rule? What dynamics came into play when Latvian (rooted in the European communist tradition) and Russian communism combined? colluded? conflicted? collided? What can we glean from this history written by the occupier?
A proper history of the Industrial Revolution in Latvia has suffered on multiple accounts, first, among the post-WWII refugee diaspora:
- It was better to forget Latvia was a hotbed of social revolutionaries, given that "C"ommunism brought about the loss of their homeland; forgetting stories such as bands of workers setting upon the countryside and burning down the houses of the not-our-class Baltic Germans — there's the heartbreaking account of an elderly German couple, the husband had spent a lifetime collecting Latvian tales and songs and was now blind, his wife would read them to him — and the Latvians came and torched every last piece of paper knowing exactly what it was they were destroying.
- Studying the Industrial Revolution was pointless anyway since in WWI and the war of independence all Latvia's heavy industry was (a) destroyed, (b) evacuated to the Russian interior, or (c) irreparably sabotaged — the classic story is that of factory looms which were too large to move, so essential parts were destroyed, replacement was not possible, thereby rendering the equipment useless.
More generally:
- Latvian communism originated out of European communism with its roots in social theory and workers' rights, while revolutionary Bolshevism was a communist derivative already once removed whose roots could be found in the assassination of czar Alexander II↗ and its Russian-originated embrace of nihilistic terror as a necessary and justified means to an end.
Rainis on the one ruble Soviet coin. Rainis's
works are those most closely identified with
defining the modern Latvian identity. Note the coin and book incorrectly refer to Rainis (Jānis Pliekšāns) as "Jānis Rainis." This was a common error. - The Latvians at the time, whether the intelligentsia or working class, certainly weren't aware of this historical distinction. There's a reason that a visiting Lenin wrote glowingly of Latvians' purity of spirit and conviction of purpose. But it's not because the Latvians were more Bolshevik than the Bolsheviks, and that's why the Latvian Red Riflemen saved Lenin and the revolution... — somewhat true, but another oversimplification passed into legend. Latvian social activist poet-playwright Rainis'↗ image on commemorative Soviet coinage is, in the end, an act of propagandist cultural appropriation.
Eventually, the notion of a semi-autonomous Latvia within Russia — it wasn't always about "independence" — gave way to a growing fear that such an arrangement would not be possible under the Bolsheviks, redirecting nationalism from class warfare throwing off the Baltic German yoke to the struggle driving out Russian, then German, forces in the war of independence.
↗