GalleryArt for the People
A large number of cultural and educational establishments have been set up in Latvia since the war. More and more Houses of Culture and recreation centres are opened each year in both towns and rural localities.
In the coming seven years Latvia will build a new drama theatre in Riga, sixteen Houses of Culture, a film studio producing seven or eight full-length pictures a year, a circorama theatre in Riga seating 2,500, and a new building for the Latvian State Library.
By 1965 almost every district centre will have a well-equipped House of Culture, library, children's library and park.
Lettish literature is well-known in the Soviet Union and abroad. The prominent French author Louis Aragon, who has been popularising Lettish literature in France for many years, says: "I have long been interested in Lettish literature and am proud to have been the one to introduce Latvia's classical novelists, poets and playwrights to the French public. I believe Andrei Upits to be among the world's greatest writers, worthy of being ranked with Romain Rolland, Mikhail Sholokhov and Leon Feuchtwanger."
Among new works which have appeared in Lettish literature in recent years there are the novels With Heart and Blood by Bredele, The Road of Life by Griva, The Siline Estate by Selis, Fimber's The Grey Land and The Nevel Captain by Zadornov, and poetry by Luks, Kampe, Balodis, Vatsietis and Stulpan.
Literary criticism includes Upits' Problems of Socialist Realism in Literature, Volume III of the Lettish Literary Critic and Essays on the History of Soviet Lettish Literature.
Latvian theatres stage modern Soviet and foreign plays, as well as Lettish and world classics. The most popular plays in 1958 were Pogo-din's Third Pathetique and Deglav's Riga staged at the Academic Drama Theatre, Gunar Priede's Girl from Normund at the Rainis Art Theatre, Typhoon by Tsao Yui, Chinese playwright, at the Russian Drama Theatre in Riga, Fire and the Night by Jan Rainis at the Liepaja Music and Drama Theatre, and Zarin's comic opera The Green Mill at the Opera and Ballet Theatre. Latvian theatre companies go on tours of the Soviet Union every year.
In 1958 the Riga studio completed filming of two full-length feature films, Tale of a Latvian Rifleman and Stranger in the Village, and put out more than fifty documentaries and popular science films. It also dubbed twenty-five films into the Latvian language.
Latvian artists displayed their work at the Art Exhibition of the Social-ist countries in Moscow, and at the Brussels Fair, where the painter Kalnins was awarded a silver medal for his Latvian Fishermen in the Atlantic.
Literature and art that reveal the new features of contemporary life are particularly valuable in educating man for life in a communist society. Interpretation of the contemporary scene is especially successful when the writer or artist has lived in close contact with the common people.
To realise the topicality of Soviet art and its genuine closeness to the people one should recall the period thirty years ago when the whole capitalist world, including little Latvia, was in the grip of an economic crisis and poverty and insecurity were the lot of the working people.
Then frivolous operettas at the music theatres, shallow comedies at the drama theatres, formalistic art at the exhibitions, and books that praised the existing system were typical of literature and art.
The idea of social progress was found only in illegal books and in whatever writing by progressive authors managed to get past the censor.
The time is not distant when every Soviet person will have sufficient leisure in which to study music, painting, acting or any other form of art.
Thousands of factory and office workers and collective farmers already devote their free time to amateur talent activities.
Performances by groups of amateurs are frequently of such a high level as to approach professional standards. In recent years seven amateur drama clubs have been turned into People's Theatres. One is the People's Theatre of Talsi, which, at an all-Latvian theatrical review, many mem-bers of the jury considered was more successful with its staging of Gunar Priede's Girl from Normund than the Rainis Art Theatre.
Latvia holds song and dance festivals every year. One of the largest takes place at the time of the colourful Ligo holiday that the Latvian people celebrate in the middle of summer. The festival is attended by people from the neighbouring republics and from many other parts of the Soviet Union.
As Soviet Latvia's cultural contacts with foreign countries widen, artists from abroad appear more and more often before audiences in the republic, and Latvian performers are making more and more foreign tours. Des-cribing the successful appearance in Czechoslovakia a short time ago of the ballet company of the Latvian Opera and Ballet Theatre, the Czech newspaper Rude Pravo said:
"The extensive and striking programme which our Latvian guests have brought to Prague enables them to display their versatility to the full. Besides selections from ballets by Tchaikovsky, Gliere, Solovyov-Sedoy and other composers, the company has presented a number of delightful Latvian folk dances, thoughtful dances and dances sparkling with merri-ment. Nor have they forgotten to show us selections from modern Soviet Latvian ballets.
"With its high standard of technique and wealth of expression Latvian ballet dancing is in the tradition of the Soviet ballet."
Prague audiences were particularly appreciative of the dancing of Velta Viltsin and Vladimir Tsukanov.
as part of the series "THE FIFTEEN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS OF TODAY AND TOMMORROW."
We do not endorse the Soviet account of historical events or their circumstances contained therein as factual.
