Latvia for Latvian(s)? - The politics of memories of WWII in Post-Soviet Latvian society and the limits of the ethnolinguistic divide
This is an assignment written long before I finally stayed in Riga in 2024 for almost a month, doing nothing besides attending a summer school at the University of Latvia and wandering aimlessly to see Art Nouveau buildings, Soviet modernist architectures and Soviet mass housing blocks (Microcrayon). I continued to stand by what I had written, knowing that nationalists would accuse me of parroting Moscowâs talking point, as now identity issues in the post-Soviet Space are pretty much securitised. ((Un)surprisingly, the far right in the US is also eager to turn identity issues into a national security issue, proclaiming to protect the core American ideals, as they defined, from being eroded by undesirable elements from within and without.). Another piece of reflection may, or may not, follow, as my understanding of language(s) and national identity has improved for some reason. But it will take away a large chunk of my time which could otherwise be spent on language learning.
How to deal with the Soviet past remains a politically and emotionally charged issue in Latvia after restoring its independence in 1991. Domestically, The Soviet legacy has left Latvia with sizable Russophones (37.7% as of 2017) and a state with low levels of ethnic and cultural homogeneity (Duvold et al., 2021, p. 20). The mismatch of nation and state has frustrated the Latvian ethnonationalist in building a Latvia for latvieĹĄi (Ethnic Latvian)/ latvieĹĄu nÄcija (Ethnic Latvian nation). At the transnational level, Russia is seen as a security threat with renewed neo-imperial ambitions. The significant presence of Russophones in Latvia gives Russia the leverage, as their âexternal national homelandâ, to devalue Latviaâs national historical narrative through kin-state activism (Paknomenko & Hedo, 2020, p. 529). At the European level, Latvia has to reformulate its national memory and identity to prove itself as a European nation âreturning to Europeâ, while pushing for the recognition of victims of communist crime and distancing itself from Russia. For this purpose, Latvian political elites seek to reinterpret their national histories and memories of WWII and the soviet era as nothing but a âheroic struggle for national freedom and independence against external invadersâ (Torbakov 2011, p. 216). The soviet past in Latvia, thus, is exclusively framed in terms of resistance and soviet oppression, the loss and regain of independent statehood, and victimhood under totalitarian occupations and atrocities (Spurina, 2017, p. 7-8). Russia, as the former imperial lord, and its people, are positioned as the hostile cultural others, a threat that will obstruct Latvian nation-building and its European destiny (Torbakov, 2011, p. 213; Laruelle, 2021, p. 64). I argued that this Latvian state-sponsored ethnocentric national memories shared common features with other post-communist countriesâ national memories, which seeks to promote a Manichean, dichotomic and totalizing re-definition of the categories of victim, hero and perpetrator within Latvian historical experience. Latvian political elites tried to portray Latvians as only victims and heroes but downplay their roles as perpetrators and collaborators under Nazi Germany and the communist regime. Russian speakers who settled and worked in Latvia during the Soviet time are seen as perpetrators of suppressing Latvian culture through mass migration by the Soviet Union. All these issues have resulted in disputes on responsibility for the Holocaust at the European level, a memory war with Russia and domestic exclusionary policy decisions towards Russophones. Ultimately, Latvian political elites have to resort to legislation to securitise their national historical narratives from being challenged.
At the European level, the demand for recognising collaboration and the responsibility of the holocaust makes Latvia's ethnocentric narrative at odds with the pan-European memory frame of the West. To begin with, The state-sponsored national memories find it hard to reconcile with its sense of victimhood and the Western sense of âresponsibilityâ for the Holocaust. Western European Countries have developed a cosmopolitan and unified memory regime based on the recognition of the Holocaust as the central event of the 20th century and the imperative for all European countries to bear responsibility to prevent similar crimes and atrocities from happening again. Yet Western nations and Russia can shift all the blame for war crimes and atrocities to Germany, leaving aside the collaborationist trend and framing their WWII experience as a triumph over evil, resistance against evil, or victim of evil (Miller 2020, p. 6; SubotiÄ, 2019, p. 28; Laruelle, 2020, p. 63), while Latecomers of the European Union, these Central and Eastern European countries, have to integrate the holocaust into its national memories of âheroic struggle for national freedomâ in order to be recognised for their credential as European countries. At the same time, they are forced to face the cracks and contradictions within their Manichean, dichotomic and totalizing collective memories â that collaboration with Nazi Germany and the USSR existed; some âfreedom fightersâ or ânational heroesâ are also perpetrators; that there were Latvians who subscribed to the communist ideals and feel nostalgic to the Communist past (Laruelle, 2020, p. 63-64). Latvia and other Central and Eastern European countries see the recognition of the holocaust as their ticket âto return to Europeâ, a necessary step for accession to the EU, rather than genuine repentance to their citizensâ involvement in mass killings and collaboration with totalitarian regimes (Judt, 2007, p. 887-8).
In addition, as SubotiÄ (2019, 2020) and Miller (2020) argue, Anti-communism and ethnic nationalism are the dominant organizing narratives of post-communist countries in interpreting their 20th-century experience, not the Shoah. Like other Central and Eastern European countries, Latvia concerns more about the suffering of its ethnic majorities and communist crime than the Jewish loss in the holocaust under Nazism (Karn, 2015, p. 127). CEE countries appropriate images and narratives of the holocaust to elevate the suffering of non-Jewish national majorities and equate it with the Holocaust. By drawing an equivalence of communism with Nazism, they try to reposition the crimes of communism as the dominant criminal legacy of the twentieth century on a par with, and sometimes overtaking, the legacy of the Holocaust (SabotiÄ 2020, p. 1-3). The promotion of double victimhood and the canonization of twin totalitarianism, that is, equating the totalitarian evils of Nazism and Soviet Communism, as Tobarkov argues, is crucial for strengthening separate identity, giving a boost to populist nationalism, externalizing the Communist past, and casting their particular nation as a hapless victim of two bloodthirsty totalitarian dictatorships. By conferring on their nation a status of double victimhood, they are able to obtain the moral high ground and eschew the problem of guilt. Torbarkov proposes that if CEE countries can liberate themselves of the sense of historical, political, moral or whatever responsibility, it is arguably much easier to take pride in their newly minted âunblemishedâ identity based on the celebratory interpretation of oneâs countryâs âglorious pastâ (2011, p. 209, 215). Moreover, the Memory of WWII and the Soviet period became a space for political use of memory, which was securitized with a focus on the Constitutive, Dangerous Otherâthat is, totalitarianism, and its current embodiment in the Russian Federation. This allows CEE countries to position Russia as Europeâs existential threat and âkeep Russia out of Europeâ (Miller 2020, p. 8).
All these reasons above explain why Latvian political elites today remain ambivalent towards the involvement of Latvians in the holocaust and collaborationism. Like other CEE countries, collaboration is common during WWII and the Soviet era in Latvia's historical experience. Since the inter-war republic of Latvia had already collapsed at the beginning of WWII, Latvian residents were caught between the domination of two geopolitical great powers â Nazi Germany and the USSR. Latvian collaborators can be found on both sides carrying out crimes against humanity. For example, after the Soviet Union controlled Latvia in 1940, there were already Latvian residents, be they ethnic Latvians, Russians or Jews, who co-opted with the Bolsheviks and implemented the mass deportation scheme. Jews constituted 5% of the population, yet 12% of the deportees were Jewish (Rislakki, 2008, p. 109-110; Bunkis, 2022). While the horror under Soviet rule during 1940-1941 pushed some Latvians to the side of Nazi Germany, the German oppression during 1941-1944 again impelled a small share of Latvian residents (around 100,000) to join the Soviet partisan movement. Yet most just held ânon-attitudesâ with no clear ideological preferences and tried to survive (Edele, 2013, p. 259-260). No matter how hard Latvian historical memory emphasizes its resistance against communist oppression, records on the self-organized national resistance against Nazi rule are suspiciously scant. (Gluckstein 2012 , p. 70, 74). Some Latvian historians only regard those who fought against Russia as true resistors, while those who fought alongside the Soviets as collaborators (Gluckstein 2012, p. 70-71).
Contrary to the state-sponsored national memories trying to portray Latvians as either freedom fighters or victims and unlikely to be perpetrators, during WWII and the soviet era the boundary between resistance and collaboration was blurred. In some cases, a person in Latvia during WWII can simultaneously be categorized as a nationalist, a collaborator and a member of resistance (Gluckstein 2012, p. 70; Lauralle, 2020, p. 82-83). Among them were the once-banned extreme-nationalist group, the Perkonkrusts. Its members voluntarily joined the Latvian auxiliary police battalions and Arajs Commando to carry out the German genocide and deportation of Jews, Saitis, and Romas. These 1200 members of Arajs Commando were also involved in operations which took at least 60000 lives in Latvia (Rislakki, 2008, p. 118). By the time the Soviet Army retook Riga in 1944, almost all of Rigaâs Jews had been killed. An estimated 70000 out of 93479 Latvian Jews were killed. (The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Today there are still attempts to whitewash Herbert Cukurs of the Arajs Commando as a national hero (Associated Press 2014). The controversies on whether Latvians had unleashed their anger of Communist collaborators on Jews on a large scale before the German arrival remains unresolved. It also remains a sensitive topic as to whether the Latvian Waffen-SS legion should be honoured as âfreedom fightersâ, national heroes and resistors against communists. They fought with the Red Army and has nothing to do with genocide, but they thought alongside Nazi Germany, wearing German Army uniforms and incorporating numbers of Arajs Commando in their ranks. In short, in Latviaâs experience collaborationism with Nazi Germany and the USSR is not uncommon. But the predominant focus of the Latvian historical narrative on anti-Sovietism and Soviet crimes has downplayed the moral responsibility of localsâ involvement in the Holocaust under Nazi occupation.
This ambivalent attitude among Latvian political elites towards the moral responsibility of Latvian involvement in the Holocaust can be reflected in political resolutions related to the Holocaust from the Latvian Parliament, Saeima, in recent decades. It is only under the pressure of Brussels and the Jewish communities that the Latvian government initiated research and tried to incorporate the knowledge of local involvement in the holocaust into its historical narrative, but political elites are still ambivalent in assuming responsibility (Zelce, 2009, p. 53). In 1998 Latvian President Guntis Ulmanis publicly apologised for âLatvian participation in the genocide of Jews during the Nazi occupation of the country from 1941 to 1944.â during a trip to the United States in January (JTA archive Feb 18, 1998). He expressed regret over Latvian participation in the Holocaust later in Israel in February (Zelce 2009 p. 48). The Latvian parliament is reported to be furious about Ulmanisâs apology and called on Ulmanis to appear before them and explain his remarks (JTA archive Feb 18, 1998; Feb 23, 1998). The reception of Ulmanisâs gesture reflects a lack of understanding of the Latvian public in their historical past, as admitting Latvians as perpetrators have deviated from the master narrative of Latvians as double victims. On 10 February 2022, the Latvian parliament passed the âLaw on the Compensation of Goodwill to the Latvian Jewish Communityâ, whose objective is to ârestore justice and support the Jewish community of Latvia to eliminate the consequences of the crimes that took place during the Soviet communist totalitarian regime and the Nazi occupation and Holocaust.â (the Council of Jewish Communities of Latvia). The bill has been negotiated since 2005 with the involvement of the United States and Israel. It only got passed under the condition that the Latvian state was not responsible for the holocaust during the occupation of Latvia and the actions of the Soviet occupation regime. Latvian government may argue that since the legitimate government collapsed before these crimes happened under foreign occupation, they are not responsible for what Latvians have done to the Jewish populations, thereby externalizing blame to Nazi Germany and the Soviet regime. But this does not prove Latvians are innocent in their participation in the Holocaust and seizing Jewish properties and somehow contradicts the reconciliatory gesture former President Guntis Ulmanis has made in the past.
As to Russia and Latvian Russophones who still adhere to the Soviet narrative, CEE countriesâ attempt to equate communism to Nazism and call for the criminalisation of communism in the European Union is seen as historical revisionism and a direct attack on Russian national memories of the great patriotic war â that Russia is both the victim of Fascism and the hero who fought alongside the allies to save Europe from Nazism. As Laurelle aptly puts it, the Memory war between Latvia and Russia was focused on historical interpretations like âWho was fascist?â and âWho colluded with Nazist?â â The Soviet Union which signed the MolotovâRibbentrop Pact in 1939 or the collaborationist force in CEE countries (2020, p. 62). To the Baltic states, the secretly signed MolotovâRibbentrop Pact in 1939 between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to divide Eastern Europe marks the loss of their independent statehood and mass deportation under the Soviet annexation. The late recognition and denunciation of the secret pact by the Supreme Soviet in 1989 also allowed Baltic nationalists to challenge the Soviet narrative of the âvoluntary accession of Baltic states into the USSRâ. The date of signing of the secret pact, August 23rd, also marked the Baltic Way in 1989, when 1.4 billion Baltic citizens commemorated and demanded the full and open disclosure of the pact to the Soviet public (Wezel 2015, p. 568). On the very same day in 2006 and 2008, the Baltic states successfully pushed through the resolution of âThe Need for International Condemnation of Crimes of Totalitarian Communist Regimes.â and instituted the âEuropean Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazismâ In 2009, the subject for remembrance has enlarged and diluted the parallels drawn between the Stalinism and Nazism, encompassing victims under totalitarian and also fascist regime (Laurelle 2020, p. 71).
These moves from the Baltic states are to Russia a direct rejection and negation of the Soviet/Russia narrative of Russia as âthe liberator of Europeâ and its symbolic capital for claiming its âEuropeannessâ. As Torbakov points out, Russiaâs victory over Nazism legitimizes its âgreat powerâ status and its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe (2011, p. 217), which is the story the national narratives from the Baltic States seek to challenge and discard. To Russia and Latvian Russophones, if, as CEE countries claimed, the signing of the MolotovâRibbentrop Pact marks the partition of Eastern Europe and the beginning of WWII, which means the USSR entered into the war as an ally/collaborator with Nazi Germany, not with the Allies, and the occupation of Poland, Finland and the annexation of the Baltic states constituted as an act of aggression (Laurelle 2020, p. 76). Unlike the Soviet Union under Gorbachev, Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks to legitimize the signing of the secret pact by arguing it is a necessary act to avoid immediate war with Nazi Germany and Stalin has no alternatives in 1939 (Wezel 2015, p. 569). Another argument President Putin put forward is a kind of Whataboutism, equating the secret pact with the Munich Agreement in 1938, in which the Allies agreed Nazi Germanyâs annexation of the Sudetenland to avoid direct conflict. If the Allies colluded with Nazi Germany, so can the USSR (Laurelle 2020, p. 76). As to the annexation of the Baltic states, President Putin recites the soviet narrative of the voluntary accession of Baltic states into the USSR in 2005 and opined that the independence of the Baltic States is the result of collusion between Vladimir Lenin and Germany. If they subsequently joined the USSR in 1939-1940, then when the Soviet Union took control of the Baltic states again in 1945, it can only be seen as liberation but not reoccupation, as the national memories of the Baltic States claimed. Plus the post-war territorial agreement is confirmed by the Yalta conference by the US and the UK (Laurelle 2020, p. 77).
At the national level, Political elites in the Latvian state feel the need to protect their national narrative from internal and external threats through legislation. They believe the securitisation of memory is needed in response to a more assertive reaction and challenge from Russia and Latvian Russophones in Latvian national historical reinterpretation on issues like the Soviet illegal occupation of the Baltics, Stalinist crimes and collaboration. The national historical narrative justifies the Latvian state to implement exclusionary public policy decisions for renationalising Russophones, like citizenship and medium of instruction at Schools for Ethnic minorities. But now the state-sponsored national memories of the ethnic majority have to be securitised as a matter of national security in countering the nationalism of Russophones from their âexternal national homelandâ, the Russian Federation (Pakhomenko & Sarajeva 2020, p. 405). In 2015, The Russian media like the First Russian Channel and the First Baltic Channel successfully mobilized 150,000 - 200,000 participants, about 25% of residents of Riga, in joining the commemoration of the Soviet Victory Day on May 9th in front of the Monument to the Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from the German Fascist Invaders. At that time, It is viewed by Latvian political elites as a failure of its renationalising policies towards these Lativan Russophones and a sign of their attachment to the Russian Federation (Wezel 2015, p. 570). Yet according to Cheskin, a survey conducted at the time when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, about 76.4% of non-Latvian residents felt a close or very close sense of belonging to Latvia, while only 22.4% felt very close or close to Russia (2016, p. 198). Fear of Russophones being mobilized by their âExternal national homelandâ has been unfounded as Latvian Russophones only want to preserve their linguistic and cultural identity, placing their demand under equal rights protection (Cheskin 2012). Yet Russia after the annexation of Crimea has repeatedly blurred the existing borders as to what constitutes Russian identities, Russiaâs compatriotic policies and discourses often see the ability to speak the Russian Language as a key identifier for Russian identity. This allows Russia to lay extraterritorial claims to their compatriots abroad, and see Russian speakers scattered across Eastern Europe as part of the âdivided Russian nationâ (Cheskin & Kachuyevski 2019, p. 8). Russia has made the same arguments for supporting the Russian-speaking majorities in the Luhansk and Donetsk Peopleâs Republics to leave Ukraine in 2022.
Compared with Latvian Russophonesâ reactions to the Stateâs attempt at renationalisation, Various attempts of Latvian parliament through legislation to protect the state-sponsored national memories are triggered by Russiaâs renewed neo-imperial actions. These legislative attempts are not successful and fall short of what they originally tried to achieve. The criminal code Article 68.1 was established in 1993 to prosecute those who are responsible for crimes against humanity and genocide under the Soviet regime, but only several cases ended with a court verdict. Many of those responsible for atrocities under the Soviet regimes have passed away or are too old to go through the investigation and the court process (Wezel 2015 p. 567). Another criminal code Article 74.1 were amended in 2009 and 2014 to criminalize the glorification, denial or gross trivialisation of crimes against humanity and genocide against the State and its habitant by the USSR and Nazi Germany. The criminal code has caused controversy at the European level as there are no criteria to specify under what condition the denial is considered a criminal offence. If Russophones adhered to the Soviet narrative and contested the national memories of the Soviet illegal annexation of Latvia in 1940, it may constitute a criminal offence (Pettai p. 185-186). Pettai suggests that Article 74.1 serves as a weapon to help the ethnic majority secure the national narrative in the domestic inter-ethnic memory war between Latvian speakers and Russophones (188). Another attempt for the Latvian parliament to settle the memory war through legislation was to introduce the preamble to the constitution in 2014, after the failed referendum in making the Russian language a co-official language of Latvia in 2012. This is another attempt to switch from a civic constitution to a more ethnocentric constitution that seeks to preserve the primacy of the titular nation, i.e., Latvian speakers. The 6th paragraph of the Preamble restricts and specifies who counts as Latvian in a more ethnocentric sense: âSince ancient times, the identity of Latvia in the European cultural space has been shaped by Latvian and Liv traditions, Latvian folk wisdom, the Latvian language, universal human and Christian values. Loyalty to Latvia, the Latvian language as the only official languageâŚâ (Constitution Project 2017) It implies Russophones who failed to adhere to these cultural attributes but seek to preserve their linguistic and cultural heritage may not count as fully Latvians. As Karcian pointed out, the creation of ethnic-based hierarchical division in the preamble contradicts Article 2 of the Constitution, which states âThe sovereign power of the State of Latvia is vested in the people of Latvia.â The people of Latvia include 37.7% of Latvian Russophones who have their respective cultural and linguistic identities. (Karcian 2017). As Ĺ ulmane argues, the preamble is supposed to strengthen and preserve the Latvian culture, language and affiliation to the state, but judging by the fact that the Latvian language is still a minority language in daily business and about 195,159 Latvian residents in 2022 remains non-citizens, the preamble rather shows the deficiency of the Latvian language and citizenship as a means to renationalising non-Latvian speaking population (2015, p. 76).
In conclusion, this paper aims to evaluate the use of WWII memory in Latvia at the European, transnational and national levels. I argued that this Latvian state-sponsored ethnocentric national memories shared common features with other post-communist countriesâ national memories, which seeks to promote a Manichean, dichotomic and totalizing re-definition of the categories of victim, hero and perpetrator within Latvian historical experience. The oversimplified, value-ridden national memory has to overcome contradictions that arise when it encounters the European story and the Russian/Soviet Story considering the Second World War and the Soviet era. With the Western pan-European frame centred on the Holocaust, the Latvian national narrative has to face the problem of collaborationism and the responsibility of the Shoah to be recognised as a responsible European nation. Like other CEE countries, Latvia appropriates the image and narrative of the Holocaust to establish its national victimhood and incorporate its wartime experience into the pan-European memory regime. With Russia and Russophones who subscribed to the soviet narrative, the ethnocentric based memories of Latvia and other CEE countries seek to deny Russiaâs patriotic war and European liberation narratives by criminalizing communism and equating communism with Nazism. Both Russia and Latvia established criminal law codes to deny respective national narratives to challenge the state narratives regarding collaboration, Soviet annexation of Baltic states and Soviet crimes. In Latvia, various legislative attempts to securitise the national memories from external and internal threats, i.e. Russophones and their âexternal national homelandâ, Russia, have had little success in achieving the legislative purposes.
Reference
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