Balticum

Reimagined Latvian Museum reopens

On December 7, 2022

Arrival

December 4, 10:54am. Just in time for the 11:00 church service. I was glad to be able to make the time (325 mile round trip!) to attend the reopening of the Latvian Museum at the American Latvian Association in Rockville, Maryland. And through sheer luck, as I went down the aisle along the left side of church, finally finding an open pew seat and asking if it was taken, it was — by the very couple I had hoped to meet at the opening: JBANC managing director Karl Altau and wife Rita Laima née Bērziņa. I accepted their invitation to scoot in and sit next to them. What were the chances? In Latvian circles, more common than one might think.

Service

Growing up, the church was the center of the Latvian community simply as a matter of practicality. Every weekend during the school year featured Latvian school. Celebrating Latvian holidays, Latvian Independence Day,… all took place in the church events hall. Now, two generations later, I was glad to see that community relationship and tradition continues in the Washington DC area since I expect we will be joining the church at some point.

The second Sunday of Advent service focused on John the Baptist and included a reading from John 1:19-28 (in both Latvian and English):

¹⁹ Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. ²⁰ He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.” ²¹ They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” He answered, “No.” ²² Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” ²³ John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’” ²⁴ Now the Pharisees who had been sent ²⁵ questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” ²⁶ “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. ²⁷ He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” ²⁸ This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

For those in attendance for the Latvian Museum opening and reception following, it was also a parable for the life and service of Lilita Bergs, founder (1978) and Director of the museum until her unexpected passing during the summer as the renovations approached completion. Selfless service, a tireless champion for the promulgation of knowledge of Latvian history, someone who eschewed any aggrandizement of her position,…. Those who knew her could not help but draw parallels to the life of John, celebrating a life of service to a far greater cause than oneself, and shared in acknowledging her presence in spirit.

Opening celebration

The full title of the day’s celebration was: “Tūkstots gadu latvju vēsture saritināta 800 kvadrātpēdu kamolā — ALA paspārnē jaunveidots Latviešu muzejs”, A millennium of Latvian history bndled up into an eight-hundred square foot ball [typically of string or yarn] — the newly remade Latvian museum under the wing of ALA (American Latvian Association).

The host for the celebration was Pēteris Dajevskis, son of the well-known (in Latvian circles) pre- and post-WWII artist and scenographer Ēvalds Dajevskis and himself a museum and heritage area consultant, who managed the museum reimagining project along with Lilita Bergs — who had headed the museum since its inception until her untimely passing. Lilita was posthumously awarded a plaque of gratitude.

Grand Reopening of the Latvian Museum – December 4, 2022

Speakers included:

Marisa Gudrais, Executive Director, American Latvian Association (ALA)
Valda Grīnbergs, Director of Cultural Affairs, ALA
Martiņš Andersons, President, ALA
H.E. Māris Selga, Ambassador of the Republic of Latvia to the United States
Karl Altau, Managing Director, Joint Baltic American National Committee (JBANC)
Māra Pelēcis, Emmy Award-winning director — who led the creation of the museum’s new media presentations
Laila Robiņš, stage, film, and television actress — who narrated all the museum’s new media presentations
Daina Block, Head of the Washington DC Latvian School
Edward Gebhardt, graduate of the Philadelphia Latvian School, now a high-schooler — and “test” audience for the museum’s ability to engage a younger audience
Ann Clausen, exhibit developer, for the Latvian Museum Project

Also featured were pre-recorded messages from

Kristaps Ločmelis, UK-based video creator and animator, who produced three videos for the museum
Andrejs Plakāns, eminent now retired Latvian historian who assisted the museum with crafting reimagined exhibits and new narratives

A common thread to the Latvian experience in the diaspora is its relatively small size — California has the largest Latvian population, still less than 10,000. That small size is not necesarily a disadvantage. Rather, it often spawns serendipitous meetings which blossom into projects of mutual interest and life-long friendships. Such was the case with Dajevskis and Bergs. From recollections Dajevskis shared at the celebration:

Peter and his wife Ann first crossed paths with Lilita decades earlier, in Kansas. [Peters’ godfather’s family also first wound up in the midwest upon arriving in America.] Lilita later came to Pēteris to discuss the creation of a Latvian Museum in Washington DC. Pēteris thought it made for a fascinating story and project, and that was how he got “sucked in 45 years ago.” Lilita became not just a colleague but a friend, making this a day of joyousness and of celebration in memory of Lilita and for the museum as it entered its next stage into the future.

Multiple acknowledgements, presentations of the traditional boquets of flowers, a visit to the museum, and a reception followed.

Eras and key moments in Latvian history…our photos, comments and our own small contribution to the museum exhibits…

1200-1600 Invaders!
Germans first arrived in 1158, en masse in 1201. 1600 marked the beginning of wars between Sweden, Poland-Lithuania, and Russia sweeping over Latvian territory.

1600-1819 Serfdom
Sweden invades in 1600. Wars ebb and flow over Latvia culminating in the devastating Great Northern War a century later and eventual subjugation under the Russian empire by 1789. Latvians spend centuries as serfs in service to German baronial hegemony.

1819-1917 National Awakening
Serfdom is abolished 1818-1820 in Kurzeme and Vidzeme, but lasts until 1863 (with the rest of Russia) in Latgale. Latvians become indentured servants, still unable to own land. They begin to dream of a Latvian homeland.

1905
Czarist troops fired on demonstrators led by Father Gapon in front of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg on January 9, 1905, killing 200. Four days later, troops shot and killed 70 more demonstrators in Riga. Latvians supported and voted for Bolsheviks, hoping for autonomy under Russia. Support for independence solidified when that hope faded.

1917-1920 The Great War
At one point, the newly declared provisional government of Latvia was ensconsed on a ship in Liepāja harbor. Germans — defeated in the west but supported against Russia in the east, held a small corner of Latvia, Russians the rest. Latvians allied with Germans drove out the Russians and then rid themselves of the Germans to finally achieve independence.

1920-1939 Freedom!
Latvia was left utterly devastated, but free. Its industry evacuated to Russia, saboutaged, or destroyed, the government broke up the massive baronial manorlands in the Land Reform of 1920, founding an agrarian nation of farmer-homesteaders. Latvia rebuilt with industrious zeal.

1940-1985 Terror!
Latvia once again became a stomping ground for foreign powers: the USSR, the Nazis and the Holocaust, and the USSR once again. Already promised by FDR to Stalin in 1943, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia were the only countries to disappear off the map after WWII, albeit never legally incorporated into the Soviet Union.

Soviets return
Some 170,000 Latvians fled the reinvading Red Army. For those who remained behind, the Soviet return marked a return of brutality, of more mass deportations, and Russification. Latvians become second-class citizens forced to sing the glories of Stalin.

The DP Camps
Tens of thousands of Latvian refugees spent the next five years after the war in Displaced Persons camps in war-torn Allied-occupied Germany. Latvians established their own schools, workshops, hospitals, working with scraps, obsessed with preserving their culture and way of life, whatever the circumstances.

Preservation
Latvians fleeing into exile took only what they could carry. Taking only those few things that were most precious to them, the most evocative of home. Peters still has his parents’ wooden suitcases, one of which still holds his paternal grandmother’s-woven cloth. Peters’s (second) cousin’s mother’s loom built from scraps in the DP camps made it to a new home in Australia.

Into the unknown
How best to prepare for a new life in a new country? Language lessons. Pocket dictionaries. And for those heading to America, Jānis Širmanis’s Kriksis un Tomiņš Amērikā, Kriksis (a classic dog’s name) and “little” Tom in America, a collection of stories with which to acquaint young readers with the unique aspects and customs of their new home.

1985-1991 Dievs Svētī Latviju!
God Bless Latvia! Gorbachov’s rise in 1985 and his introduction of glasnost and perestroika opened the door. The Soviet Union swallowed the Baltics twice in WWII but neither social reforms nor the passage of time could stave off the geopolitical indigestion which hastened, perhaps even triggered, its demise. Latvia fully restored its independence in 1991.

Who are the Latvians?
Latvian and Lithuanian are the oldest living Indo-European languages — some 3,000 to 3,500 years old. Their sister peoples are heirs and custodians to a unique and rich cultural heritage.

The Georgian Mail, January 28, 1920

By peters vecrumba

On October 12, 2022

In Central-eastern Europe, Ukraine

As Putin threatens Ukraine with tactical nuclear weapons in the wake of explosions on the Kerch Straits bridge, talk of “off ramps” has once again taken root in the media and public discourse. The only “off ramp” is Russian withdrawal and reparations to fully rebuild Ukraine.
This account of horrors inflicted in Odesa a century ago proves barbaric horrors are not new to either the Kremlin as perpetrator or the Ukrainians as victims. The West must insure, this time, that the Kremlin can never inflict such destruction again.
We have reproduced the full article.

HORRORS OF BOLSHEVISM.
EYE-WITNESS’S ACCOUNT.
REIGN OF TORTURE AT ODESSA.
MURDER, BESTIALITY AND RAPE.

(By the Rev. R. Courtier-Forster).

(Late British Chaplain at Odessa and the Russian Ports of the Black Sea. (In the *Times).

Do English people really imagine that the published accounts of the appalling atrocities and brutal tyranny of the Bolshevik rule in Russia are an exaggeration?

Before God I wish I could believe they are not true to the actual facts. Could I but find them untrue. I would speak for the Bolsheviks from end to end of England, for I have always done what lay in my power to alleviate the conditions of life of the manual workers and to raise the standard of living and the opportunities for personal development under which they live.

Unhappily, I have spent nearly a year in Soviet Russia, and was in the hapless country over seven years before that. I have read and re-read the letter from a British officer to his wife respecting the unspeakable horror of the brutalities practised by the Bolsheviks on their martyred victims and can find nothing which my own experience tells me is probably inaccurate.

Odessa an Inferno.

While I was still British chaplain of Odessa the city was deluged with blood. When the Bolshevik elements, grafting on to their main support the 4,000 criminals released from the city gaols, attempted to seize the town, people of education, regardless of social position, offered what armed resistance was in their power. Workmen, shop assistants, soldiers, professional men, and a handful of officers fought for freedom and liberty through the streets of the great port for three days and nights against the bloody despotism of the Bolsheviks. Tram cars were overturned to make barricades, trenches dug in the streets, machine-guns placed in the upper windows of houses to mow the thoroughfares with fire. The place became an inferno. The Bolsheviks were victorious. On capturing Odessa Railway Station, which had been defended by a few officers and a number of anti-Bolshevik soldiers, the Bolsheviks bayoneted to death the 19 wounded and helpless men laid on the waitingroom floor to await Red Cross succour.

Scores of other men who fell wounded in the streets also became victims to the triumphant Bolshevik criminals. The majority of these wretched and unhappy sufferers completely disappeared. Inquiries at the hospitals and prisons revealed the fact that they were not there, and no trace of them was to be found. A fortnight later there was a terrible storm on the Black Sea, and the bodies of the missing men were washed up on the rocks of Odessa breakwater and along the shore: they had been taken out to sea in small boats, stones tied to their feet, and then been dropped over alive into deep water. Hundreds of others were captured and taken on board the Almaz and the Sinope, the largest cruiser of the Black Sea Fleet. Here they became victims of unthinkable tortures.

Victims Roasted Alive.

On the Sinope, General Chormichoff and some other personal friends of my own were fastened one by one with iron chains to planks of wood and pushed slowly, inch by inch, into the ships’ furnaces and roasted alive. Others were tied to winches, the winches turned until the men were torn in two alive. Others were taken to the boilers and scalded with boiling steam: they were then moved to another part of the ship and ventilating fans set revolving that currents of cold air might blow on the scalds and increase the agony of the torture. The full names of 17 of the Sinope victims were given me in writing by members of their families or their personal friends. These were lost later when my rooms were raided, my papers seized, and I myself arrested and thrown into prison.

The house in the Catherine Square in which I was first in captivity afterwards became the Bolsheviks’ House of Torture in which hundreds of victims were done to death. The shrieks of the people being tortured to death or having splinters of wood driven under the quick of their nails were so agonizing and appalling that personal friends of my own living more than a hundred yards away in the Vorontsoffsky Pereulok were obliged to fasten their double windows to prevent the cries of anguish penetrating into the house. The horror and fear of the surviving citizens was so great that the Bolsheviks kept motor lorries thundering up and down the street to drown the awful screams of agony wrung from their dying victims.

This House of Torture remains as much as possible in the condition in which the Bolsheviks left it and is now shown to those who care to inspect its gruesome and blood-bespattered rooms.

There are people who maintain that, with theatres open and electric trams running, anarchy does not exist, and that life in Soviet Russia is both secure and pleasant. I did not find it so. There is a halting place for the electric cars at the corner of Kanatnaya and Grecheskaya. Returning from the town at 11.30 one morning I encountered a scared and frightened group at this point. Inquiry revealed the fact that the Bolshevists had just successfully murdered two unprotected and defenceless women waiting for the tram, to go into the city shopping. Their crime was that both clothes and manners showed them to be “Bourjouie”. Also in the Kanatnaya one morning a working woman was shot for the sport of the thing while running across the road to purchase a bottle of milk for her children. Her body was lying by the kerb as I came by, the bottle smashed, and milk and blood streaming down the gutter. The house door stood open, her two little children crying with grief and terror at the entrance.

Treatment of Women.

Week by week the newspapers published articles for and against the nationalization of women. In South Russia the proposal did not become a legal measure, but in Odessa bands of Bolsheviks seized women and girls and carried them off to the Port, the timber yards, and the Alexandrovsky Park for their own purposes. Women used in this way were found in the mornings either dead or mad or in a dying condition. Those found still alive were shot. One of the most awful of my own personal experiences of the New Civilization was hearing at night from my bed-room windows the frantic shrieks of women being raped to death in the park opposite. Screams of shrill terror and despair repeated at intervals until they became nothing but hoarse cries of agony like the death calls of a dying animal. This happened not once, or twice, but many times. Never to the day of my death shall I forget the horror of those dreadful shrieks of tortured women, and one’s own utter powerlessness to aid the victims or punish the Bolshevik devils in their bestial orgies.

To be decently clothed and washed was a crime in the eyes of the Bolshevik proletariat. Both men and women were stopped in the streets of Odessa, robbed of their boots, stripped of their clothes, and sent home naked through the frost and snow. So many hundreds of people were treated in this manner under the Soviet rule, that the satirical paper of South Russia, the Scourge, brought out a fullpage cartoon representing one of the chief streets of the city, with a naked man and woman departing hand in hand up the road while a group of unkempt Bolsheviks with men’s trousers and women’s underclothes fluttering on their arms were seen running in the opposite direction. Beneath was the satirical observation, “In Odessa the World finds Paradise anew”. For this reflection on the glorious new civilization of the Soviets, the windows of the Scourge offices were smashed and the paper fined.

Martyrdom of Christians.

It was the martyrdom of the two Metropolitans and the assassination of so many Bishops and the killing of hundreds of various Christian ministers of religion, regardless of denomination or school of thought, that proved the undoing of the Scourge. Russian Orthodox clergy, Protestant Lutheran pastors. Roman Catholic priests, were tortured and done to death with the same light-hearted indiscrimination in the name of Toleration and Freedom. Then it was that the Scourge, seeing the last remnants of Liberty ground under the heel of a tyranny more brutal in its methods than a medieval torture chamber, published another fullpage cartoon representing Moses descending from the Burning Mount bringing in his arms the Tables of the Ten Commandments to Humanity and being stoned to death by a mob of workmen’s and soldiers’ delegates.

The following Sunday afternoon I was passing through the Town Gardens, when I saw a group of Bolshevik soldiers insulting an Ikon of the Thorn-crowned Face of Christ. The owner of the Ikon was spitting in the pictured Face, while the others were standing round watching with loud guffaws of laughter. Presently they tore the sacred picture into fragments, danced on it, and trampled and stamped the pieces into the mud.

By this time the devastating corruption of the Holy Revolution had so spread that I saw open acts of indecency being committed in broad daylight in the parks and public gardens. These are but a few experiences from the mass of events crowded into my life in Soviet Russia. In England numbers of people are incapable of believing the ghastly conditions to which Bolshevism has reduced Russia, but those of us who have lived in the country for many years and seen the abominable Bolshevik system bearing fruit, know the absolute truth of these things.

The men at home who are deliberately duping and deceiving our trade unions and manual workers as to the true conditions of practical Bolshevism are not only committing a crime against democracy, but an outrage on humanity.

Latvia’s “oppressed” Russians

By peters vecrumba

On June 11, 2022

In Latvia, Post-Soviet geopolitics

I recently wound up in a still-ongoing Twitter argument about Kosovo, its history, and whether Serbs or Albanians have the more indigenous claim. Serbs are adamant Kosovo is Serbian land, that Albanians are interlopers. Indeed, that Albanians did not even exist as a people until the Ottoman Empire created them. (We note that if language is culture, Albanian is thought to be a millennium older than Serbian.)

The discussion inevitably descended into whataboutism. Who was I to discuss Kosovo when Latvians oppressed Russians?

You’re lying [that Russian propaganda about Latvia’s oppression of Russians is lies]! What Russian propaganda? When I was in Latvia a couple of months ago, Russians are literally second-class citizens. Not only that, they fear for their lives and must not say anything against the policies of your government. And then Putin is a dictator? ~~and~~ In Russia everyone has the same rights and we are allowed to criticize the government. [translated from Serbian]

More troubling than this false Russian narrative is that more than 30 years after fully restoring sovereignty, Latvians must learn Russian order to have any career opportunity. Even the LIDO restaurant chain conducts employee meetings in Russian because Russians still refuse to learn Latvian—and Latvians indulge them.

Our mailer editorial from September 2004 could have just as easily been written yesterday. From our archives:

Editorial, September 3, 2004

I read Boris Kagarlitsky’s thoughts on “A Common Baltic Future” [read article here] with great interest. I found, however, that they share a fundamental flaw with much of the analyses disseminated about the “problem” of Latvian Russians: that the Latvian nationalists fear the application of EU objectivity and norms because it will stop their abuse of Latvian Russians. That is the basis of Mr. Kagarlitsky’s alleged “paradox.”

Indisputably, Latvian nationalists look to EU membership to re-affirm the Baltics’ western European heritage—even under czarist Russia, the Baltics exercised a considerable degree of autonomy and remained western in outlook. A fundamental point which Mr. Kagarlitsky misses, however, is that Latvian nationalists also look to the EU for objectivity regarding the situation of Latvian Russians. They seek an effective counterbalance to Russia’s wide-ranging and ceaseless assault on the Baltics, from the Duma’s jingoistic pronouncements on human rights violations—the Baltics’ treatment of Russians is apparently more evil than the Russian army’s practice of exploding Chechen bodies to prevent identification—to the Duma’s resolutions that the Baltics joined the Soviet Union voluntarily and legally—and that to suggest otherwise is an anti-anti-fascist—i.e., Nazi—lie.

The true paradox is that Russia, as self-appointed proxy for Latvian Russians, does not seek EU objectivity. It rejects outright any objectivity that fails to fit its anti-Baltic agenda. The OSCE position on the validity of Latvia’s language laws is clear and indisputable; that position is now under frontal assault: Russia and its more oppressive CIS partners, in a joint declaration, recently took the OSCE to task for pointing out their human rights violations—the aforementioned exploding bodies, widening suppression of a free press, et al.—while turning a blind eye to atrocities committed daily in Estonia and Latvia.

Indeed, Mr. Kagarlitsky takes up Russia’s “blind eye” argument in his direct assertion that the Baltics are not being held to EU standards: “attempts by the Latvian government to drastically reduce the availability of Russian-language instruction in public schools flagrantly contradicts European norms,” and, “if the interests of minorities were a concern for Western politicians, Latvia and Estonia would not have been admitted to the EU until they had brought their laws in this area into line with European norms.” This EU-Baltic axis “consipiracy theory” plays well in domestic Russian politics and international posturing, but it is no more than Russian misdirection and misinformation taking on the guise of veracity by way of endless repetition.

If one scrutinizes minority language schooling within the EU, there is no simple declaration demanding such; rather, one finds a formalized process for preserving the languages of centuries-extant indigenous minorities evaluated and executed on a case by case basis. (In Latvia, this could apply to schooling in Liv or Latgalian.) Regardless, there is nothing in Latvia’s language policies which precludes Russian cultural instruction in Russian. As a parallel, I was born and grew up in New York, but attended Latvian school on the weekend, studying grammar, literature, history, and geography in my parents’ native language. Conversely, my parents learned English in order to fully participate in the life-blood of their new home.

And therein lies the true crux of the issue. The situation is not one of Latvians systematically attempting to wipe out the Russian language and culture—even every one of my relative says “Davai!” for “Okay!” It’s not the preservation of Russian that is at issue, it is Latvian Russian refusal to learn Latvian. There is a minority of Latvian Russians who:

continue to hold the Latvians and Latvian language in utter disdain;
continue to believe that Soviet preferential treatment of Russians versus Latvians is a natural state of entitlement;
and that denial of that entitlement is oppression.

When Russian journalists held their worldwide convention in Latvia in August, 2000, to discuss the state of Russians abroad, they expected to hold Latvia—the global epicenter of Russian minority abuse—accountable to the world. Instead, even Duma politicians in attendance freely admitted that what they found was far different from what Russian pronouncements and Latvian Russian “rights-advocates” had led them to expect.

Put bluntly, the refusal to learn Latvian by segments of its Russian minority is not a defiant act of Russian cultural preservation. It is a blatant effort to perpetuate perceived Russian supremacy through denial of the Latvian state. And therein, perhaps, we find the true motivation of the Russian Duma in its endless denouncements of the Baltic “situation”: its collective weltschmerz over how things are—independent autonomous Baltic states—and how it wishes they were—continued Soviet/Russian domination and state-paid vacations for Duma members to Jūrmala, the Latvian Riviera.

Boris Kagarlitsky (Russian: Бори́с Кагарли́цкий; born 29 August 1958) is a Russian Marxist theoretician and sociologist who has been a political dissident in the Soviet Union and in post-Soviet Russia. He is coordinator of the Transnational Institute Global Crisis project and Director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements (IGSO) in Moscow. Kagarlisky hosts a YouTube channel “Rabkor,” associated with his online newspaper of the same name and with the IGSO. (Russia declared Kagarlisky and IGSO as “foreign agents” in 2021). [per Wikipedia]