The Fifteenth of May

The first fortnight of the merry month of May is rife with red-letter days. Having blogged about May Day, the Fourth of May, Europe Day and Victory Day, I may as well end this bout of calendrical focus by writing about the Fifteenth of May.

Seventy-three years ago, slightly over six years before Stalin destroyed our Republic, the gentleman in the waxwork pictured at left destroyed our democracy.

Kārlis Ulmanis is a figure Latvia has not yet come to terms with. He still has his hagiographers. In 2003 a statue of him was unveiled in Rīga, paid for with contributions from admirers -- not a few of the donors were Western Latvians, especially Australian Latvians. Raivis Dzintars' young radicals and nostalgic elderly people gather there for a candlelight vigil to celebrate the 1934 coup. I'm with those who wonder why a democracy needs to erect a monument to a dictator, but the nostalgia of those who remember "the Latvia of 15 May" is understandable -- he is styled as a "benevolent dictator," and by comparison to Hitler, Stalin, Antonescu, et al., he certainly was; he didn't snuff anybody, and that's a rather admirable characteristic. His earlier career, which included study and dairy farming in the United States, was positively noteworthy -- as the first Prime Minister of Latvia, from 1918, his faith in the Republic and strength of resolve were peerless; not too many people could so determinedly run a state without a territory (for a while, he governed from a ship, the Saratov).

Nonetheless, as the great poet Knuts Skujenieks pointed out not long ago ago, his dictatorship was a prelude to Soviet totalitarianism -- the Vadonis ("the leader") was the nation, though he never received the nation's consent. Even local government was dependent upon him. Even bus schedules were censored (to remove Slavicized toponyms). Classic plays that depicted the evils of peasants had to be reworked before being staged -- the peasant was to be exalted. "A Latvian Latvia" was supplemented with the slogan "in Latvia, the sun shines upon everyone."

There are a multitude of takes and sidelights -- this one, for instance. It's skewed. From the most recent book on Latvian history available in English (this is not a plug -- though I'm one of the translators, I'm not too fond of the book) --

p. 151: “the coup of 15 May was not a preventative action but an illegal act consciously directed against Latvian democracy.” See also p. 149: “Ulmanis informed the President of what happened [on 16 May 1934]; according to the Satversme, Kviesis was to defend democracy with all his powers. Without the slightest formal protest, he accepted the coup and betrayed democracy. Nothing threatened Latvia at the time that could have justified killing democracy. Neither a political nor an economic crisis encouraged the coup; to the contrary—the approaching end of the economic crisis would have prevented Ulmanis from accusing democracy of weakness.”

p. 153: “Latvia in the time of Ulmanis was characterized by a distinctly anti-democratic government. The May 15th régime was the most authoritarian in the Baltics and possibly in all of Eastern Europe. Furthermore, it was virtually the only dictatorship in Europe that retained no formal elected representation whatsoever.” p. 159: “The idea of the unity of the people was closely allied with an idea of leadership opposed to parliamentary democracy—an idea of leadership practiced by Ulmanis in making decisions as a dictator with practically unlimited powers. Official propaganda attempted to portray him as a leader given to the Latvian people by God himself. [...] The praise and flattery accorded him very quickly developed into an exaggerated and ridiculous cult of personality—the Vadonis was dubbed ‘the greatest statesman in Europe’; he was ‘the Great Sower’ and the ‘Double Genius’. This worship of Ulmanis was interwoven with an uncritical assessment of authoritarian rule devoid of any objectivity. Latvia’s monolithic press usually lauded even the least achievement with the words, ‘we’re headed straight up’.”

For people who grew up under Ulmanis, criticism of the Vadonis is often seen as heresy (unless they came of Social Democratic "stock," perhaps...). I've made at least three elders cry, and the reason is simple -- no matter how noxious "the Latvia of 15 May" was, what came after was incomparably worse. I highly recommend this study of minority policy for some insight -- "The Price of Free Lunches: Making the Frontier Latvian in the Interwar Years." The difference between free lunches and Siberia is vast, and most Latvians understand the difference most intimately.

The political scientist Jānis Peniķis asks, rhetorically, what it means "to be ready for democracy." Were we? Are we? One of the most interesting things about that period is that nothing indicates that democracy was failing in 1934. On the other hand, other than a Social Democrat firing his pistol into the ceiling of his villa whilst being arrested on 15 May, there was never any real opposition to Ulmanis' dictatorship.

To today -- where are we in time? 1993/1939 -- these transposed digits were well nigh mystical, Guntis Ulmanis becoming President on the strength of his surname. We restored the Republic of 18 November 1918 -- but the elder generation remembers only the May 15th régime. 54% of those surveyed in Latvia yearn for "a strong hand." That's not as bad as it is in Russia -- but it ain't pretty. Other stats explain why -- people feel powerless, basically. We choose between indifference and the lesser evil. This country, or imagined community (pace Benedict Anderson) being small (tiny, my Transylvanian friend would say -- if you open the newspaper in one Baltic state, it shades a neighbor), we all "know everybody." The standard line is "they're all thieves (robbers, bandits, good-for-nothings...) -- you vote for your good-for-nothing, I'll vote for mine."

Only 44% of the population feels that it's possible to influence anything by protesting. Is it 1934 again? Nah, 'cause we're comfortably ensconced in various structures of elastic strength -- no strong hand is rising to try to clean out the Augean stables.

I take some small solace in the number of people turning out to sign for the referendum.

I'll close with the words of Bļodnieks, the last PM before Ulmanis' last election to the post he sullied so. In The Undefeated Nation, Bļodnieks includes a chapter entitled “Unjustified Coup d’État.” He writes how the events of 15 May “filled me and all other true democrats with deep indignation.” Bļodnieks said “that never and under no condition would I renounce the ideals I had formed in my youth and for which I had shed my blood--my determination to go with the people and work for the people, to defend its right to shape its government and life in freedom. I also stressed that any dictatorship, in its essence, was alien and irreconcilable to the Latvian people and the sense of justice and legality and should therefore be inacceptable and combatible.”