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This article focuses on the position of leading Latvian pedagogues in cooperation with Nazi occupiers and the paradoxical transformation of Latvian nationalism into resistance against fascism and communism. Latvian attitudes towards Nazism were formed during Soviet occupation in 1940 when Latvian society, especially the intelligentsia, suffered under severe Communist oppression. Upon occupation by the Nazis in July 1941, teachers expected to return to the "good old days" of the nation state. However, the new occupiers had their own agenda, which did not coincide with Latvian interests. We discuss planned Nazi reforms for the Latvian education system and Latvian pedagogues' interpretations of the Nazi concept Volksgemeinschaft by comparing the Education Monthly (EM) journal published from 1937 to 1939 with EM published from 1942 to 1944. We conclude that Latvian pedagogues viewed Volksgemeinschaft and its associated reforms as a means to unify the Latvian nation and protect it from external enemies – communists as well as Nazis. Although the Nazis hoped that Volksgemeinschaft would be a monolithic concept in pedagogy, opportunities for interpretation existed and Latvians as far as possible adapted it to suit their own national interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In late June 1941, Nazi Germany stormed the borders of the Soviet Union, occupying the three Baltic republics within weeks. By the end of 1941, a significant proportion of the Jewish population had been murdered by German forces and local collaborators. In the days before full Nazi occupation of the territory, Latvia’s Jews confronted the question of whether to flee into the Russian interior or stay in their communities. History shows that this would be a critical choice. Testimonies and memoirs of Jewish survivors illuminate the competing motivations to leave or to remain. This article highlights the key factors that figured into these calculations and the interaction between individual agency and structural opportunities and obstacles in determining where Latvia’s Jews were when Holocaust in their homeland began. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this article is to reveal how through school theatre activities under authoritarian rule, changes took place in pupil knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviour regarding culture, namely, how the process of cultural learning occurs. I use a historical case study, specifically the case of the Valmiera School Theatre, which was the leading theatre group, not only in Soviet Latvia, but also in the entire Soviet Union. My primary sources are eight unstructured interviews, 20 published memoirs, articles in the press, theatre programmes, and photographs. One part of Soviet pedagogy was aesthetic upbringing, which was implemented through state-funded collectives, including school theatre groups. By participating in theatre activities, students gained knowledge of cultural heritage (literature, theatre, art, etc.), the ability to perform and acquire skills in other practical fields, and developed an appreciation of culture as a value. I argue that cultural learning through theatre was demonstrated by the fact that the students transferred their knowledge, skills, and attitudes to a new context, namely, their places of work and public cultural activities (e.g. amateur theatres). This case study also reveals the specific role of school theatre in the process of cultural learning, as well as some sensitive issues in the relationship between knowledge-orientated or formal educational environments, and the informal creativity of school theatre. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purge of the Latvian national communists was the most extensive of the Khrushchev era. This article offers the first comprehensive examination of the purge, based on research in Russian and Latvian archives, and utilizing recently released Communist Party personal files. Previous works rarely proceed beyond the beginning of the purge in July 1959 or provide only a cursory overview. This article, however, identifies patterns in the purge with a comprehensive analysis. The methodology of Arvīds Pelše, the purge’s architect, is explored, exposing the purge’s six distinct phases, which ousted the national communists and defined Latvian politics for a quarter-century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In their battle to succeed Stalin in 1953, Lavrentii Beria and Nikita Khrushchev temporarily cooperated to launch an indigenising nationality policy in the Soviet Republics to compete for support among the non-Russian nationalities. The impact of this little known collaboration was the ‘New Course’ for the Soviet periphery. This essay examines the ‘New Course’ and its repercussions in Latvia. Moscow struggled to control the programme after it unleashed a wave of anti-Russian sentiment. With encouragement from nationalists in the Latvian leadership, Russian cadres were ousted from leading Party and government positions, sent back to Russia and replaced by ethnic Latvians. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the colonial and national condition of the musical life in Latvia following its first postwar years in 1944 to 1946. It chronicles how most of the Latvian communists hoped for the socialism intertwined with national and Humanism traditions as their means of national survival. It also mentions how the consolidation of such movements helped promote the value of national talents, musical forms and facilitation of ethnic celebration traditions.

This work highlights the case of Latvian women volunteers of the Red Army who worked and fought on the eastern fronts of World War II. An estimated 70,000–85,000 Latvians served in the Red Army, some as conscripts, others as volunteers. At least several hundred of those who volunteered were women. How are Latvian women volunteers of the Red Army represented and remembered in Soviet and post-Soviet historical accounts of World War II? Why have they not been remembered in most historical accounts of this period? How are ethnicity, gender, and associated social roles implicated in their historical marginality? These questions are situated in the context of literature on collective memory and microsociological literature on social roles, and used to develop the analytical concept of the unruly actor – historical actors who are challenges to dominant memory narratives because they fail to conform to normative social roles ascribed on the basis of, among others, gender and ethnicity. We use the case of Latvian women volunteers to articulate the argument that the marginality of some groups in dominant historical narratives can be understood in terms of their disruption of the historical “scene”, which is configured to reflect a desired social order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a critique of the article "Die russische Historiographie im internationalen Umfeld: Wege des Wissenschaftstransfers" by historian Irina Savel'eva, published in this issue of the journal, which discusses the contributions of Russian historians to international historiography and the reception of these contributions in the international scholarly community. The author emphasizes the attitudes of historians in Latvia to the question. Issues considered include the relationship of Latvian historiography to Latvian nationalism, the history of Latvia since 1918, and international intellectual cooperation between Latvian, Russian, and Western European historians.

In 1959, Indriks Pinksis, Eduards Berklavs and Vilis Krūmiņš were among the prominent targets of Moscow's National Communist purge of supposed ‘bourgeois nationalists' operating within the leadership of the Latvian Communist Party. A decade earlier all three had been active leaders of the Latvian Komsomol. This article explores the Stalin years of the Latvian Komsomol, and argues that the Komsomol was only able to win an acceptable number of recruits when it abandoned attempts to recruit on the basis of wartime activity or class allegiance and focused on recruiting ethnic Latvians. However, this raised the same issues later faced by the National Communists: as membership was extended to those with a ‘doubtful’ background, and the press played down ‘proletarian internationalism’, Moscow took fright. In early 1953 the Latvian Komsomol experienced a purge similar in tone to that which would take place within the Latvian Communist Party more broadly in 1959. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the Latvian national library in Riga, Latvia, and the building of a new one in the context of the history of the nation of Latvia in the twentieth century. Going back to its founding in 1919 as the "Valsts bibliotēka," the article traces its history through the Nazi and Soviet occupations, and its development since 1991, at the end of the Soviet era. Also described are the functions of the library according to Latvian law, its collections, and proposed building plans.

The article reports on a May 2010 conference of the Baltic Historical Commission e.V. held in Göttingen, Germany, on the theme "The Baltic Soviet Republics 1945-1991." The meeting reviewed such topics as the digitalization of the "Deutschbaltisches Biographisches Lexikon," the origins of the Latvian and Estonian peoples, and the Soviet and National Socialist (Nazi) occupations of Latvia and the racist programs of those regimes.

The article discusses Soviet Latvian campaigns against Latvian émigré and political refugee communities in the U.S. during the Cold War. It focuses on the use of propaganda and cultural diplomacy. The author comments on the work of the Latvian Committee on State Security's (KGB) Fifth Section, the Latvian Communist Party (LCP), and the Latvian Liaison Committee for Cultural Relations with Countrymen Abroad (LCCR), which was supervised by the LCP’s Foreign Relations Section. Tactics included recruiting émigré youth, intellectuals, and academics, spreading disinformation, and disrupting émigré organizations.

While journalists were significant players in Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost (openness), their experience has been underexplored, particularly in non-Russian regions. This study explores Latvia in 1988-91, when a mass movement pushed for independence, and examines the revolutionary nature of the movement and the nationalistic and democratic characteristics of journalism. Thus, it offers a new approach to the study of media and the demise of the Soviet Union beyond the "transition studies" paradigm that has guided most research. It also moves the focus of inquiry away from Moscow and examines key marchers in what Gorbachev called the "parade of sovereignties" that contributed to the Soviet collapse. Most studies have focused on Russian-language, Moscow-based media, despite the significance of others in this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the absence of a land market, socialist-era cities tended to look different from their market-economy equivalents. The difference was made more pronounced by the fact that the command economy also favored industrial investment over infrastructure and housing. Yet, with an increasing appetite for additional labor, needed by production units to ensure plan fulfillment, housing became a means to recruit and retain employees. Not all employers could afford to put resources into such “nonproductive” investment, however, and the literature suggests that the notion of priorities allows for discriminating between those enterprises that enjoyed soft budget constraints, and therefore could afford to spend money on worker welfare, and those that could not. As a heuristic framework based on the economics of shortage, the priority model is compelling, but as yet it lacks empirical substantiation. Setting out to test the landscapes of priority model of urban development, this article details the developments of housing construction in Daugavpils, Latvia, during the Soviet period. Based on extensive archive and field research covering all newly constructed or converted housing projects over the period from 1951 to 1991, it yields considerable, if not unqualified, support for the model that until now has not been made subject to systematic empirical tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on the history of deportations performed in Latvia under the the rule of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Particular attention is paid to deportations of Latvian Germans occurring in February of 1945. An overview is given of German, Soviet, and Russian research on the topic. The author also describes the deportation and seizing of property of the Biermann or Birmanis family, including family members Henrich Biermann and Fanni Biermann. An excerpt is included from the documentation of a state lawyer in German-occupied Latvia, discussing the proceedings involving the Biermann family.