latviski
Trimda and the preservation of Latvian culture
Exile in context
In the final year of World War II (1944–45), approximately 175,000 Latvians fled their northeastern European homeland. These refugees eventually resettled across some four continents and twenty different host societies.
For about decade following the war, the official status as well as self-identification of these individuals remained in flux, variously described as bēgļi (refugees) or emigranti (emigrants). Eventually, the accepted frame of reference became trimda, meaning a place and condition of punitive or forced exile.
Historian Andrejs Plakans noted that trimda evolved beyond a physical location; it became the dominant trope, referring to a "not-Latvia" that held a reality comparable to that which Hell, Heaven, and Paradise held for ancestral generations. He described trimda as an unbounded location as well as a state of mind. Latvians in the West lived concurrent lives: one in the trimda or its synonym svešumā (foreign place), and the other within their large number of host countries such as Sweden, Germany, Australia, and America.
For the descendants of these refugees, the joy of visiting post-Soviet Latvia is tempered by the bittersweet knowledge that they should have been born and raised in a free Latvia. Their parents passed on the palpable pain of separation and unfathomable loss, and more importantly, love of country and heritage.
Supporting culture and heritage
The exile community’s self-anointed task was to keep Latvian identity alive—while the politically minded also worked toward the liberation of Latvia. From the 1950s through the 1980s, Latvians instituted a broad cultural framework within the trimda community, informing and guiding much of its social, cultural, and political activity.
Its roots lay in the post-World War II displaced persons (DP) camps in Allied-occupied Germany.1
Preserving culture and community in print
- Every DP camp had its own newspaper keeping resident informed of local and international news and camp life across the American and British zones.
- Latvians reprinted copies of books that refugees had brought with them. Miniature pocket books of poetry and literature were published so refugees could take with them wherever their new lives led.
- Practical materials were published as well: language instruction, dictionaries, and reference materials to assist int the process of starting over.
The 1947 Latvian Exile's Calendar (Latviešu Trimdinieka Kalendars 1947), for example, portended the Western trimda identity. It preserved Latvia in scenes of the dzimtene (homeland), poetry, and name's days — as important as birthdays in Latvian culture. It included practical information such as global timezones relative to Germany, postal and telegram costs from Germany, and populations of the largest German and global cities. For example, New York topped the list of global cities with a 1930 figure of 13,860,886. Perhaps most importantly, the calendar listed addresses for Latvia's sovereign representatives in countries such as the U.S., Great Britain, and Sweden. This reflected the official position that as far as Latvia and international law were concerned, Latvia was an occupied country.
This organized preservation drive parallels the historical Latvian efforts, such as when Krisjānis Barons began collecting Latvian folksongs—previously passed on orally—in 1878. Barons’ collection, stored in a special cabinet called the daiņu skapis, ultimately contained 217,996 texts.
Passing on and celebrating heritage
Despite the inevitable toll taken by adaptation and assimilation as Latvians became permanent residents in their host countries, energetic organizations found success in the transmission of Latvian-language use to many in the younger generations.
Wherever a critical mass of Latvians settled, they founded churches and built communities around them. Education became a primary vehicle for cultural continuity. In developing major Latvian centers such as New York City, Peters attended Latvian Sunday School. Religious instruction lasted about a quarter of an hour, while the rest of the morning and early afternoon was dedicated to history, geography, and literature. (By the time Peters graduated grammar school, he and his fellow classmates knew the history of Latvia from the Ice Ages, could name rivers, "mountain" peaks, and towns/cities on a map of Latvia, and had memorized poetry.) Community events like celebrating Latvian Independence Day (November 18, 1918) featured full-school participation, including speeches and performances of literature, song, and instrumental music.
The First Latvian Song Festival in America was held in Chicago in 1953.
From trimda to diaspora
With the collapse of the USSR and the full restoration of Latvia's independence in 1991, the notion of trimda became anachronistic. Western Latvians could no longer claim to be in exile.
After two decades of discussion about post-Soviet identity, Latvian authorities and social-scientists proposed the term diaspora for all Latvians living outside the country’s borders. This term has been generally accepted. Today, the World War II refugees and their descendants refer to themselves as the vecā trimda (old exile) component of the diaspora.
| 1 | Baltic-population DP camps were housed in the American and British zones. A small number of Baltic DPs could be found in smaller, mixed-nationality camps or labor camps within the French zone or, very commonly, sent to work camps in France itself. There were no DP camps in the Soviet zone. Ethnic Germans were brutally expelled, and refugees were largely repatriated or imprisoned depending on their circumstances. Latvians unlucky enough to be stranded in the Soviet zone first passed through NKVD filtration camps. “Traitors” were condemned to the Gulag or executed while others were relegated to internal exile owing to the strategic nature of Latvia's location on the Baltic sea. |
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