tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-235830202024-03-07T17:54:53.741+02:00MarginaliaPēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.comBlogger90125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-70392906430117614632009-04-07T10:59:00.003+03:002009-04-13T09:17:57.048+03:00Do Latvians have a navel?<span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" ><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSMoEV6jq601WBlOdd1cCPGCtGVPGM0Xa_oPiF2okGYfmjNTs9m9El7c8dJ9NP9SuXlJNuKfIFh92JNPuJjRodBrply7lQpZLfWClPlZjb8PrisuYdLtZMPSNeVonpzvmwHnRf/s1600-h/delfi+uguns+2.jpeg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 224px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSMoEV6jq601WBlOdd1cCPGCtGVPGM0Xa_oPiF2okGYfmjNTs9m9El7c8dJ9NP9SuXlJNuKfIFh92JNPuJjRodBrply7lQpZLfWClPlZjb8PrisuYdLtZMPSNeVonpzvmwHnRf/s320/delfi+uguns+2.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5268130601711293154" border="0" /></a></span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >Gravely ill and suffering from the economic collapse -- dead broke and feeling somewhat like the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Man-Holocene-Max-Frisch/dp/1564784665"><span style="font-style: italic;">Man in the Holocene</span></a> -- I've not blogged during a period in which Latvia has been featured in the world media as <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/02/26/f-rfa-parry.html">"Europe's sickest country."</a><br /><br />I was commissioned to write a brief condensation of the history of Latvia, my work on the first draft falling, <span style="font-style: italic;">par hasard,</span> between two of our most important national holidays -- November 11th and November 18th. The celebration on the 11th -- Bear Slayer's Day -- dates to 1919, when Bermondt-Avalov's forces were driven from the left bank of Rīga by the swelling ranks of Latvian volunteers and British and French warships. November 18th is our national day. In 1918 -- a year <span style="font-style: italic;">before</span> that victory -- the independent Republic of Latvia was proclaimed in the National Theater (then the Second Municipal or Russian Theater). This being the 90th anniversary of that proclamation (of which event there is only <a href="http://latvija90.leta.lv/en/pagatne/november-18-1918-proclamation-of-latvias-independence">a single photo</a> -- a freshly released documentary film on the subject is entitled <a href="http://www.latfilma.lv/ss/523/index.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Only Photograph</span></a>), this November was suffused with more patriotism than is usual (<a href="http://www.lv90.lv/">this site</a> -- in Latvian, English, and Russian -- has a calendar of events as well as a wealth of articles and links).<br /><br />I wrote about <a href="http://lettonica.blogspot.com/2007/11/bear-slayers-day.html">the meaning of Bear Slayer's Day</a> last autumn. This year, between translating a cantata (Beļskis' and Kulakovs' <a href="http://www.ltv1.lv/lv/arhivs/12624/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Vēstules uz bruģa,</span></a> released on DVD with English subtitles this week -- also a patriotic endeavor), a couple of hefty art books, the program for the Latvian pavilion in Gothenburg, the yearbook of the House of Language and an annual report on corruption -- and condensing several centuries of history and a few more of prehistory into twenty-five pages -- I find time only for tired debates so dismal I won't link to them here. With a host of ideas swooping down into my swirling head, however, I thought I'd sketch a few fleeting half-formed thoughts before they flew away.<br /><br />I did go to the bridge that spans the Daugava to mark the rainy 20th anniversary of the founding of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Front_of_Latvia">Popular Front</a>. The demographics and politics down here being what they are, it was a somewhat sad event, the police shouting at us to get out of the road in Russian (for an instant, the only difference between now and then was the replacement of "comrades" with "ladies and gentlemen," the thickness of the traffic and the lack of Ladas therein). Finally the bridge was closed as several hundred people cradled oil lamps and shielded candles in honor of the occasion. Nearly inaudibly, a choir sang what has become the Latgallian hymn -- <a href="http://www.dziesmas.lv/index.asp?page=lyrics&id=3218"><span style="font-style: italic;">"Skaidra volūda."</span></a><br /><br />In Anna Rancāne's poem, set to music by Eugeņs Karūdznīks, language is as clear as water from a spring. The wood sings, stone exults, the corncrake calls, grain ripens, fire crackles, the dog barks -- and the fatherland speaks to us as they do, as clearly as water at its source. Despite its being wildly popular from the Third Awakening of the late 1980s, some still mistake it for a folk song -- its language <span style="font-style: italic;">is </span>as clear as spring water in terms of sound, at least to the Latvian ear (though it is in Latgallian). As <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuts_Skujenieks">Knuts Skujenieks</a> once pointed out to me, no Latvian poet has ever attained the clarity of the <a href="http://www.li.lv/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=40&Itemid=484&lang=en"><span style="font-style: italic;">dainas</span></a> and few have even come close. Though many translators have tried their hand at the <span style="font-style: italic;">dainas</span> -- even <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Rothenberg">Jerome Rothenberg</a> -- the goose-flesh they can conjure are as elusive as corncrakes. Rancāne's poem echoes folk songs:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Grieze grieza rudzīšos,</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Paipaliņa kārkliņos.</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Grieze rudzus briedināja,</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Paipaliņa kāsināja.</span><br /><br />The corncrake (<span style="font-style: italic;">grīze</span> in Latgallian, <span style="font-style: italic;">grieze </span>in Latvian; the verb <span style="font-style: italic;">griezt</span> means both "to cut" and "to shriek," the bird taking its name from the latter meaning, <span style="font-style: italic;">dainas</span> usually using both senses), is a bird most often heard but not seen, associated with the ripening of rye. Without an understanding of the relations between corncrakes, grain, and even dogs, the sense of the song falters. Latvian speakers can avail themselves of resources like <a href="http://www.liis.lv/izpete/izpete.html">Elina Kūla-Braže's</a> marvelous <a href="http://www.liis.lv/putni/p_dienas.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">Putnu dienas,</span></a> in which 25 of the most notable birds in Latvian folklore fly between God's gardens and Hell (<a href="http://www.liis.lv/putni/grieze.htm">the adventures of the corncrake</a> being especially interesting). As a matter of fact, you can now search and <a href="http://www.dainuskapis.lv/index.php">access more than 200 000 <span style="font-style: italic;">dainas </span>from your mobile phone</a>. But -- if you've never seen rye ripening and never heard a corncrake call, you will still be at a loss.<br /><br />On to the fatherland. <span style="font-style: italic;">"Skaidra volūda" </span>is clearly, at least superficially, as "primordialist" as can be, to use a term scholars of nationalism like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_D._Smith">Anthony D. Smith</a>, the author of <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=740O4K52DCwC&printsec=frontcover"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Ethnic Origins of Nations</span></a>, would employ; it could be a perfect illustration of the nationalist view in contrast to the perennialist, modernist, and post-modernist takes <a href="http://www.nationalismproject.org/what.htm">as summarized here, for example</a>. Smith concludes: "None of these formulations seems to be satisfactory. History is no sweetshop in which its children may 'pick and mix'; but neither is it an unchanging essence or succession of superimposed strata." In the riveting <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/gellner/Warwick0.html">Warwick Debates ("The nation: real or imagined?")</a>, Smith identifies three problems with the modernist theories: their generality, their materialism, and -- "most crucial, since it stems from their commitment to modernism, the idea that nations and nationalisms are the product of modernisation."<br /><blockquote>What this systematically overlooks is the persistence of ethnic ties and cultural sentiments in many parts of the world, and their continuing significance for large numbers of people. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hobsbawm">Eric Hobsbawm</a>, indeed, goes so far as to deny any connection between the popular 'Proto-national' communities that he analyses and subsequent political nationalisms.<br /></blockquote>Introducing an approach he terms "ethno-symbolic," it is here that Smith parts company with his teacher, Ernest Gellner:<br /></span><blockquote style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">This is exactly where I disagree. Modern political nationalisms cannot be understood without reference to these earlier ethnic ties and memories, and, in some cases, to pre-modern ethnic identities and communities. I do not wish to assert that every modern nation must be founded on some antecedent ethnic ties, let alone a definite ethnic community; but many such nations have been and are based on these ties, including the first nations in the West - France, England, Castile, Holland, Sweden - and they acted as models and Pioneers of the idea of the 'nation' for others. And when we dig deeper, we shall find an ethnic component in many national communities since - whether the nation was formed slowly or was the outcome of a more concerted project of 'nation-building'.</span></blockquote><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >Smith's opening statement is entitled <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/gellner/Warwick.html">"Nations and their pasts."</a> In his response -- <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/gellner/Warwick2.html">"Do nations have navels?"</a> -- Gellner wanders into our part of the world:<br /><blockquote>There are very, very clear cases of modernism in a sense being true. I mean, take the Estonians. At the beginning of the nineteenth century they didn't even have a name for themselves. They were just referred to as people who lived on the land as opposed to German or Swedish burghers and aristocrats and Russian administrators. They had no ethnonym. They were just a category without any ethnic self-consciousness. Since then they've been brilliantly successful in creating a vibrant culture. This is obviously very much alive in the Ethnographic Museum in Tartu, which has one object for every ten Estonians and there are only a million of them. (The Museum has a collection of 100,000 ethnographic objects). Estonian culture is obviously in no danger although they make a fuss about the Russian minority they've inherited from the Soviet system. It's a very vital and vibrant culture, but, it was created by the kind of modernist process which I then generalise for nationalism and nations in general. And if that kind of account is accepted for some, then the exceptions which are credited to other nations are redundant.</blockquote>Later in his response, Gellner says that "the Estonians created nationalism <span style="font-style: italic;">ex nihilo</span> in the course of the nineteenth century." Gellner passed away prior to the planned third lecture. Smith offered "Memory and modernity:<br />reflections on Ernest Gellner's theory of nationalism" in his stead. Though it's unavailable at the London School of Economics <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/ASEN/conference2008.htm">ASEN site</a> without a password, <a href="http://www.tamilnation.org/selfdetermination/nation/smith.htm">Tamil nationalists offer it here.</a><br /><blockquote>I could quibble here, and say that the issue was not whether the Estonians created nationalism ex nihilo in the nineteenth century, but whether the Estonian nation was created by the Estonian nationalists ex nihilo. And while we would both agree that Estonian nationalism, indeed any nationalism, was modern, where Ernest and I would differ is whether the nations that nationalism creates are wholly modern creations ex nihilo.<br /><br />[...]<br /><br />Now here lies the rub. If we pursue the analogy, we recall that God created Adam, fashioning his body and then breathing life into it. Not even the most megalomaniac nationalist has claimed quite that power. They have, of course, seen themselves as awakeners; but the body of the nation merely slumbered, it was not without life. Should we confer on nationalists that divine power, to create ex nihilo?<br /><br />Of course, Ernest wants to confer that power through nationalism ultimately on modernity, on the growth society, on industrialism and its cultural prerequisites. For Ernest, the genealogy of the nation is located in the requirements of modernity, not the heritage of pre-modern pasts. Ernest is claiming that nations have no parents, no pedigree, except the needs of modern society. Those needs can only be met by a mass, public, literate, specialised and academy-supervised culture, a 'high culture', preferably in a specific language which allows context-free communication. A 'high culture' is the only cement for a modern, mobile, industrial society; and this is the only kind of society open to us today.<br /><br />For Ernest, the world was irreversibly transformed by a cluster of economic and scientific changes since the seventeenth century. Traditional agro-literate societies were increasingly replaced by growth-oriented, mobile, industrial societies. The rise of high cultures and nations is a consequence of the mobility and anonymity of modern society and of the semantic, non-physical nature of modern work. Today what really matters is not kingship or land or faith, but education into and membership of a high culture community, that is, a nation.</blockquote>Smith observes that "the Estonians did have a navel after all" -- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalevipoeg">the Kalevipoeg</a>, as the Finns had <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalevala">the Kalevala</a>.<br /><blockquote>Both epics traced the descent of the Finns and Estonians to Iron Age culture-communities, and thereby provided these dispossessed and subject peoples with a sense of their dignity through native ancestry and an ancient and heroic ethnic past. In this way, they confirmed the worldwide belief in the virtues of national geneologies. To dismiss this by attributing it to the ubiquitous influence of nationalism again begs the question of why so many people have been mobilised on the basis of this particular belief in the genealogy of nations. Besides, nationalists have usually managed to find some historical antecedents for their nations-to-be, albeit often embellished and exaggerated, and this suggests that there are mechanisms at work which ensure some connection and even continuity between the modern nation and one or more pasts.</blockquote>Smith goes on to discuss "high" culture, key to Gellner's theory:<br /></span><blockquote style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;">In an interesting section of Nations and Nationalism, Ernest contrasts the 'high' culture of modern societies with the 'low' cultures of agro-literate societies. A 'high' culture, as we have seen, is a literate, sophisticated culture, serviced by specialised educational personnel and taught formally in mass, public, standardised and academy-supervised institutions of learning. It is a highly cultivated or 'garden' culture. A 'low' culture, by contrast, is wild, spontaneous, undirected and unsupervised. These are the cultures that readily spring up, unbidden, in societies where the great mass of the population are food-producers servicing the needs of tiny specialised elites - clerisies, aristocracies, merchants and the like - who are almost completely cut off socially and culturally from the peasant masses. In such a society, there is neither need nor room for nations and nationalisms, since the many 'low' cultures of the peasants are local and 'almost invisible'. Thus, in agro-literate societies, in Ernest's words: 'Culture tends to be branded either horizontally (by social caste), or vertically, to define very small local communities'.<br /><br />Now, for Ernest, all these 'low' cultures are doomed. They are cut off, like so many umbilical cords, because they are simply irrelevant in an impersonal, mobile modern society. If they are remembered at all, it is only through some symbols, in the same way that navels remind us of our origins. Nationalism, Ernest claims, is basically a product of modernity. It is, he says, essentially, the general imposition of a high culture on society, where previously low Cultures had taken up the lives of the majority, and in some cases the totality, of the Population ... it is the establishment of an anonymous, impersonal society, with mutually substitutable atomized individuals, held together above all by a shared Culture of this kind, in place of a previous complex structure of local groups, sustained by folk cultures reproduced locally and idiosyncratically by the micro- groups themselves. That is what really happens.<br /><br />Nothing could be clearer. The many, old 'low' cultures vanish. They are replaced by a single, new 'high' culture, or 'nation'. This is the true meaning of nationalism.<br /><br />But there are two problems here, of which Ernest was well aware. Some 'low' cultures are not severed. Instead, they become 'high' cultures. The Finns and the Estonians clearly fall into this category, as do many of the cultures of the other smaller, subject peoples of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The other problem is that certain old elite cultures become 'high' cultures. The literary cultures of the Jews, the Armenians and the Greeks clearly fall under this heading, as do several of the cultures of Western peoples like the Catalans, Scots and French. Awareness of the difficulties posed for modernism by both these problems is an important source of its ambivalence.<br /><br />How do 'low' cultures become 'high' cultures? Why does Estonian win out over German, Swedish and Russian cultures in Estonia, and Finnish over Swedish and Russian cultures in Finland? Both these cultures were local, popular, largely confined to the peasants, at least at first. Why do these 'Ruritanians' become conscious of their local folk cultures and seek to turn what were 'low' cultures into 'high' ones for the nation-to-be?<br /><br />Or were they really such 'low' cultures? And is the contrast between 'low' and 'high' cultures as sharp as Ernest alleges? In the case of Estonia, we know of Estonian language religious texts during the Reformation; and certainly by the seventeenth century, with the establishment of the University of Tartu and later Forselius' school system, the basis of a literate Estonian culture emerged a century and a half before the arrival of the Romantic movement in the Baltic states in the mid-nineteenth century.<br /></span></blockquote><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">Nihil ex nihilo</span> is Smith's conclusion. No primordialist he, however -- he stresses the fact that "that pre-modern ethnies are not nations"... but "what they do have, and what they bequeath, albeit selectively, to modern nations, is a fund of myths, symbols, values and shared memories, some distinctive customs and traditions, a general location, and sometimes a proper name. Without these shared memories and traditions, myths and symbols, the basis for creating a nation is tenuous and the task herculean."<blockquote>So: to paraphrase Rousseau, a nation must have a navel, and if they have not got one, we must start by inventing one. And it is because nations have navels, and because those navels, and the memories and traditions, myths and symbols they represent, mean so much to the people that have them, that we are so unlikely to see the early transcendence of nations and nationalism.<br /></blockquote>I've quoted Smith at such length (though I do hope readers will read <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/gellner/Warwick0.html">the Warwick Debates</a> and <a href="http://www.tamilnation.org/selfdetermination/nation/smith.htm">the Memorial Lecture</a> in full!) because anyone familiar with political and historical discourse in Latvia will immediately call to mind many a local specific that sheds light upon, and/or is illuminated by, Smith's ethno-symbolic approach. Gellner's remarks about the Estonians ("They were just referred to as people who lived on the land...") echo Pastor Brasche's response to the Young Latvians, for instance; he called them a <span style="font-style: italic;">Jung-Bauernstand -- </span>a peasant class without a past (see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Latvians">this Wikipedia article about the movement</a>, which has remained curiously intact since I wrote it). Smith again:<br /><blockquote>What 1 am arguing here is that most modern languages and cultures are not 'invented': they are connected to, and often continuous with, much older cultures which the modernising nationalists adapt and standardise. By Ernest's criteria, many of these older languages and cultures were 'high' cultures. But, even where they were 'low' (or 'lower'), spontaneous, popular cultures, they could become the basis for a subsequent 'high culture'. Ernest hints at this when he speaks of Ruritanians in the metropolis of megalomania who, faced with the problems of labour migration and bureaucracy, soon come to understand the difference between dealing with a co-national, 'one understanding and sympathising with their culture, and someone hostile to it. This very concrete experience taught them to be aware of their culture, and to love it (or, indeed, to wish to be rid of it).' In other words, it is the old 'low' culture to which they cling, or not, as the case may be. And it is the old 'low' culture which, far from being cut off and thrown away, will soon become the modern 'high' taught culture, albeit for several hundred thousands or millions of people.</blockquote>These processes stand out prominently in Latvian history since Krišjānis Valdemārs -- assimilation and resistance to it, the interplay of continuity and discontinuity, and the creation of a "high culture" on the basis of a "low culture," as well as the exaltation of the "low culture" and its reshaping to meet expectations of what a "national culture" ought to look like (according to this German or that Russian, or diverse ideologues, dreamers and fantasists of our own), not rarely grotesquely.</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">The photograph is from <a href="http://foto.delfi.lv/album/16019/?page=1">a gallery at Delfi</a> of events marking Bear Slayer's Day.</span><br /></span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-61549632495199828262008-12-18T10:58:00.022+02:002008-12-21T09:08:22.014+02:00Baby, Bathwater, Books<span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" ><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX26ZE-7Ceu_vIVO7GkEaymq1PaPxzD8a5ULu1ZbMoafOttPUmvCyytMr90hN9vgiRrRgLOPLMC7NCzJBg_sQobVbsoGidZVVRpdyIEsMKRLjDxutYoWGMp-xOyIBzXAQPRFby/s1600-h/reinis+oli%C5%86%C5%A1+apollo.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 222px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX26ZE-7Ceu_vIVO7GkEaymq1PaPxzD8a5ULu1ZbMoafOttPUmvCyytMr90hN9vgiRrRgLOPLMC7NCzJBg_sQobVbsoGidZVVRpdyIEsMKRLjDxutYoWGMp-xOyIBzXAQPRFby/s320/reinis+oli%C5%86%C5%A1+apollo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5281052349068363042" border="0" /></a>My parents crossed the ocean to begin their new life in the New World with only four crates. Three of those crates held books. Much of my father's library --which continued to grow even after his death, the last volumes he had subscribed to still arriving -- lines the walls here in Daugavpils now, the core of my own collection.<br /><br />Latvian publishing was astonishingly continuous; frail pamphlets were published in the d. p. camps even before the war's end. High quality reappeared remarkably quickly -- the monthly </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >Laiks</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" > boasted a full color reproduction of a <a href="http://www.antonia.lv/en/index.php?nod=2&id=85">Lūdolfs Liberts</a> painting as the frontispiece of its inaugural issue in April 1946, when nearly all Latvians in the West were still destitute refugees. Helmārs Rudzītis, the publisher, wrote in his preface of how those fleeing the Soviet advance had to abandon their libraries -- "God only knows who is leafing through our beloved books now." Rudzītis observed that the odd book that had been carried westward was held to be almost holy, the words pored over again and again.<br /><br />Even in those straitened circumstances, Latvians swiftly set about building a publishing industry in exile. Benjamiņš Jēgers' bibliography of Latvian publications published outside Latvia 1940-1960 fills two thick volumes. Books were seen as vital to national survival. The nation had been born in books -- we date the Awakening to the publication of </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >Dziesmiņas latviešu valodai pārtulkotas </span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >in 1856</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >, </span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >Alunāns' translations of poetry proving that Latvian is more than a tongue for churchmen and peasants (the peasants getting their due as the study of folklore took off).<br /><br />When the 300th anniversary of the Latvian book was marked in 1885, 3000 books had been published in Latvian -- 85% of them since 1863. From 1585 to 1918 -- 12 500. In independent Latvia, between 1919 and 1929 alone, nearly the number of titles had been issued </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >in a single decade</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" > as had been since Petrus Canisius' catechism (the first known Latvian book) appeared in Vilnius in 1585. Between 1919 and 1939, 26 754 titles were published. In terms of titles </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >per capita</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >, Latvia ranked second in Europe, after Denmark.<br /><br />There were 166 publishing houses when the Soviets invaded in 1940 -- these were reduced to one, the State Publishing House (later Liesma, which was then joined by other state-controlled entities like that of the Academy of Sciences, Zinātne). In addition to being subject to censorship and other restrictions (something that began during Ulmanis' dictatorship), publishing became a vehicle for Russification -- by 1964, 37,5% of the books published in Latvia were in Russian, and half of the titles published in Latvian were translations from Russian.<br /><br />I remember a prominent diaspora Latvian (who hoped to be received as an elder statesman here) addressing the Writers' Union during the economic... transition I suppose it was, though trying to describe the early 1990s here to anyone who didn't experience them is like trying to explain a wilderness of pain in a parallel universe through which one stumbles in the dark. The would-be statesman basically said -- you're free, so what are you waiting for... write!<br /><br />This is not the place to contemplate the legacy of the captive mind or the ravages of laissez-faire à l'orientale<em></em>, though. Latvia had faced devastation before (though life was different in 1920, wasn't it, when academics from as far away as China returned to Rīga to build the University... this Christmas, as a sign of an opposite process, 17 worship services will be held in Latvian in Ireland, from Galway to Limerick).<br /><br />In 1920, too, there were politicians who wanted to nip support for culture in the bud. They had to face <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspazija">Aspazija</a> in the Constituent Assembly, though. Latvian publishing between the wars depended upon strong state support.<br /><br />After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Latvian publishing slowly but steadily revived -- 1387 titles in 1991, 1509 in 1992, 1614 in 1993... of late, around 2500 Latvian titles are published each year. There was no drop after the crisis of 1998. Many of these books are irredeemable trash, to be sure. Then there are publishers like <a href="http://www.neputns.lv/en/">Neputns</a> and the <a href="http://www.lcca.lv/about/">Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art</a>.<br /><br />The Government's and the Saeima's decision (Parliament practically rubber-stamp by now, though the "Green Peasants" seem to be losing their enthusiasm for the coalition, the "moderate" "Russian party" eagerly angling to replace them) to try to squeeze blood out of a stone by increasing the VAT on books </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >more than fourfold</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" > is criminal. It is spit in the face of those who brought this nation into being and those who keep it alive. It is a sadistic crime, as the cash the Government hopes to collect amounts to no more than a pittance, comparatively.<br /><br />In <a href="http://diena.lv/lat/tautas_balss/lasitaji_raksta/ineses-zanderes-atklata-vestule-valsts-prezidentam">an open letter to the President</a>, the writer and publisher <a href="http://www.literature.lv/en/dbase/autors.php?id=96">Inese Zandere</a> writes that children (whose numbers in Latvia have at last begun to rise, if slowly) are being thrown out with the bathwater in which our Government is trying to wash itself. The photo above was taken outside Parliament Thursday morning (by Reinis Oliņš for Apollo, where there is <a href="http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/144565/galery/3/article">a photo gallery</a>... you can also see how dark it is here at this time of year... that's <span style="font-style: italic;">morning,</span> really). Slogans included "Latvia wants to read in Latvian," "down with the dictatorship of those who do not read," and "a tax on books is a tax on the mind."<br /><br />Among our neighbors -- VAT on books in Estonia is 5% (0% on approved textbooks -- yes, Latvia's new 21% rate will apply to textbooks also!). Finland -- 8%. Sweden -- 6%. Poland -- zero (it's zero in Britain and Ireland, too).<br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >How dark it is.</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" > Gustavs Strenga suggests <a href="http://www.strenga.lv/beztema/2008/12/19/visi-lasitprateji-vai-nu-janosauj-vai-ari-jaiesloga-nometnes/">a simplified crisis plan</a> -- why don't we just arrest those that can read (except those in the coalition and their supporters) and shoot them, or place them in internment camps... before dread March comes and they try to make trouble?<br /><br />Ikars Kubliņš notes that little demonstrations like yesterday's mean nothing. The ruling clique sips coffee and enjoys the show from the Saeima windows. Kubliņš, like some others of late, is wondering aloud <a href="http://diena.lv/lat/tautas_balss/lasitaji_raksta/cik-augsts-ir-latvijas-tautas-sapju-slieksnis">about our pain threshold</a> -- looking at the Greeks or the Thais, it's impossible not to.<br /><br />But that's another topic I will try to address in the coming days. For today, I simply want to emphasize what darkness emanates from this Saeima -- <em>del no, per li denar</em>, <em>vi si fa ita. </em>(<a href="http://www.divinecomedy.org/divine_comedy.php3?contents?Italian?Inferno?0?0?0?1?????1?">Inferno XXI: 42</a> -- "No into Yes for money there is changed"). Since some in Government were so offended by being called a "gang," I would like to go further -- this coalition consists of shameless creatures who belong in Malebolge <a href="http://www.diena.lv/lat/tautas_balss/blog/valdis-krastins/netradicionali">dragging us into eternal night</a>. I say that in the name of everyone I have known who cared as much about books as they did about their crust.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >You're free, so what are you waiting for?</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" > But we're </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >not</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" > free -- and we won't be until we finally free ourselves, for real this time. Baby, bathwater -- cart, horse?<br /></span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-74301164977299534792008-12-12T15:01:00.026+02:002008-12-13T00:21:38.326+02:00Under the Latvian Yoke<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJq8kwau6LYX_jhWf94wTuVZRJTBEW8U-ykhtnRyr02dQfnDdxuYVHm3q0JqvEYzvhKpOnyouybHhQq8TV-2RO-ZpPZ_NSC66WrhPYrexj73sQT1m4mnSCfDom8O7IEJrmBAkG/s1600-h/kristians+putni%C5%86%C5%A1+diena.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJq8kwau6LYX_jhWf94wTuVZRJTBEW8U-ykhtnRyr02dQfnDdxuYVHm3q0JqvEYzvhKpOnyouybHhQq8TV-2RO-ZpPZ_NSC66WrhPYrexj73sQT1m4mnSCfDom8O7IEJrmBAkG/s320/kristians+putni%C5%86%C5%A1+diena.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5278888236624230754" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >Under the weather and still struggling with my history text, I haven't had the time or strength to blog in these most blogospherical of days-- but I can't let the latest nails in the coffin of the Latvian nation pass without brief comment.<br /><br />The Saeima ("the strongest Parliament in Europe" -- so our PM dares to call this completely discredited assembly) was in session for ca. 20 hours, until 4.30 this morning, mostly debating the rescue package upon which IMF and other neighborly help is contingent ("the fiscal restructuring program is one of the most credible that we have seen," <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aQc1lqfgsakk&refer=europe">Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg said</a>).<br /><br />The photo is of a newsstand yesterday; the front pages of Latvia's major papers were identical -- <a href="http://www.diena.lv/lat/politics/blog/juka_rislaki/seru-vests">obsequies for the Latvian press, 1822-2009</a>. Having done all it could to weaken public television (commercial TV is now suffused with dreck direct from Russia, in Russian -- even fresh films about the glorious Red Army), the Government decided to deliver a few more death blows to Latvian culture: quadrupling the VAT on books and newspapers and slashing the budget for state radio and TV to the point where only skeletons could remain. (Unlike book publishers, the press has since been given a slight reprieve -- VAT will only be doubled, like for baby food... yes, baby food; VAT will also be doubled on medicine).<br /><br />A capital gains tax? Can't have that until 2010 -- businesses have business plans, you see, and our brilliant minigarchs and <span style="font-style: italic;">biznismeny</span> have already worked things out through next year. Publishers don't have business plans, it seems -- not in the eyes of the ruling gang (the PM was compared to the leader of a brigade of racketeers last night... our comically inept Min. of Finance <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atis_Slakteris">Atis Slakteris</a> got compared to Mr. Bean [the Bloomberg interview has mostly disappeared from the 'Net, but the second link at Wiki still works...]; the <span style="font-style: italic;">politesse</span> of our Parliament appears to be slipping...).<br /><br />No other Parliament in Europe could have passed such a package, PM Godmanis proudly said. <a href="http://diena.lv/lat/politics/blog/artis_pabriks/nekur-citur-eiropa-tas-nebutu-iespejams">Former FM Pabriks agrees</a>, but without the pride -- where else in Europe do you stay up all night to adopt plans you haven't discussed with business, labor, or society at large and end up forcing the poor and the middle class to shoulder the entire burden of a high-flying fake economy <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span> smashed into the ground?<br /><br />Māris Matrevics has written <a href="http://diena.lv/lat/tautas_balss/lasitaji_raksta/jauna-pvn-likme-gramatam-cirtis-saknes-latviesu-valodai">an article in </a><a href="http://diena.lv/lat/tautas_balss/lasitaji_raksta/jauna-pvn-likme-gramatam-cirtis-saknes-latviesu-valodai"><span style="font-style: italic;">Diena</span></a> about how the massive VAT increase on books means quite literally taking an axe to the Latvian language. The realities of publishing in Latvia are simple. Maybe a million and a half potential readers (the rest of the Latvian population doesn't read in Latvian). An average printing of only 1200. I could add a lot of detail to this, for instance on how readership shrank because the people who read books were pauperized -- but the point is that the margins in the book biz are tiny and few are in it for the money.<br /><br />The VAT increase, from 5% to 21%, would bring in maybe half a million lats. Only maybe -- because some publishers are certain to go under and book sales are certain to drop. Is it worth snuffing Latvian for half a million? You couldn't tax Maseratis and Hummers instead? (No, but we <span style="font-style: italic;">are</span> doubling the tax on public transportation...)<br /><br />I'll leave Saprge <a href="http://diena.lv/lat/tautas_balss/blog/saprge/bez-radejis-avizu-i-televizejis">in her original Latgallian</a>: <span style="font-style: italic;">Dreiž ar latvīšu volūdu byus taipat kai ar latgalīšu volūdu - bez raidiejumu latgaliski radejā i televizejā, bez regularys informacejis latgaliski presē, bez raksteibys vuiceišonuos školā i bez latgalīšu gruomotu skaiteituoju. Kod vysi latvīši byus sovys volūdys analfabeti, navajadzēs ni latvīšu avīžu, ni latvīšu radejis, ni latvīšu televizejis.</span> That is not what this nation-state is supposed to be.<br /><br />It's time to stop pretending or hoping that this coalition and its shadowy masters aren't intentionally choking off essential communication in this country, whether <a href="http://freespeechlatvia.blogspot.com/">by absurdist means</a> or more sinister censorship, as in the case of <a href="http://lettonica.blogspot.com/2007/12/horizontal-time-code.html">the horizontal time code</a> (Tovarishch Kleckins continues to head the National Radio and Television Council, delighted by the Russian programming).<br /><br />When I first got here and taught at the University in Rīga (winter 1991/92), a colleague told me she had gotten the impression that the destruction of the education system in Latvia was purposeful. It's easier to manage "democracy" that way.<br /><br />Some years ago a wag came up with this condensation of Latvian history: "Latvia -- under the German yoke... Latvia -- under the Polish yoke... Latvia -- under the Russian yoke... Latvia -- under the Latvian yoke..."<br /><br />When the famed theater director <a href="http://www.kultura.lv/en/persons/10/">Alvis Hermanis</a> refused to attend the ceremony where he was to receive the Order of Three Stars a year ago, he noted that he didn't doubt that Latvia would one day be as rich as Western Europe, sooner rather than later. But we've gone morally bankrupt in the meantime, ruining the window of opportunity we've had. Accepting the <span style="font-style: italic;">Diena</span> annual award, Hermanis observed that <a href="http://www.astrologi.lv/astro/index.php?raksts=137">nothing is left of Latvia other than the Latvian language</a>... or what's left of it.<br /><br />It seems the regime is hell-bent on killing that, too -- it's not part of their business project, and can even hinder it. In the meantime, the underbelly Matrevics alludes to swells. Without books, we will end up with nothing but a degraded, degrading Russo-Anglo-Latvian pidgin tongue spoken by functionally illiterate <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mankurt">mankurts</a>. Many already don't know what free speech is -- simply because they have nothing to say.<br /><br />The folklorist Janīna Kursīte said last night that dark deeds are done in the dark. She and others in the Civic Union began to sing ("<em>Bēdu manu</em>, <span style="font-style: italic;">lielu</span> <em>bēdu</em>...") to keep the Government from pushing the administrative reform through at three in the morning. The Singing Revolution brought down the Soviet Union here -- but singing won't be enough to bring down the remarkable array of gravediggers running this country today, I'm afraid. They lie to our faces, and <span style="font-style: italic;">nothing</span> matters to them but power and lucre.<br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainis"><br />Rainis</a>, speaking on the tenth anniversary of independence, in 1928: <span style="font-style: italic;">"Latvieši, sargājiet demokrātisko valsts iekārtu, jo līdz ar to bojā ies neatkarīgā nacionālā valsts!"</span> ("Latvians, guard your democratic system, for if you lose it the independent nation-state will also be lost.") Six years later Ulmanis destroyed our democracy -- and six years after that, Rainis' prophecy came true. The Fatherlanders and other "patriotic" scoundrels helping to murder our nation can twist and shout and whine about Russkies all they like -- Latvians are actually experts at killing themselves.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Photo: Kristians Putniņš, </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >Diena.</span></span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-78334873298658209512008-11-23T21:20:00.012+02:002008-11-24T09:03:17.200+02:00Pieveriet savas pākstis!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAOa4IFrexRPERAbySpgY_y08qiwIcOQ_0Qb46hjPu2F6n33rD6701-joZAq-aVJrW1ZRs8ThXGTv-_h94TQhpHC6xvG0535wsDBTtKj42gx1ZiudIfh-jkn7DBlGA-lv0AVi-/s1600-h/barons.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 310px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAOa4IFrexRPERAbySpgY_y08qiwIcOQ_0Qb46hjPu2F6n33rD6701-joZAq-aVJrW1ZRs8ThXGTv-_h94TQhpHC6xvG0535wsDBTtKj42gx1ZiudIfh-jkn7DBlGA-lv0AVi-/s320/barons.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5271936017715858018" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >The image at left -- of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kri%C5%A1j%C4%81nis_Barons">"father of the <span style="font-style: italic;">dainas</span>"</a> as he appears on the LVL 100 banknote, altered -- is from<a href="http://www2.la.lv/lat/latvijas_avize/jaunakaja_numura/latvijas.zinas/?doc=41413"><span style="font-style: italic;"> Latvijas Avīze</span>.</a> Like other media here, the paper is discussing the latest antics of the ruling gang (oops Government) and its security services -- attempts to muzzle an academic and a musician for rumor-mongering with regard to the grave economic situation and its possible effects on our national currency. Today's <span style="font-style: italic;">Diena</span> headline was "A joke or criticism of the Government can land you in jail" -- the Ventspils lecturer actually ended up in the cooler for a couple of days.<br /><br />Juris Kaža has started a new blog -- <a href="http://freespeechlatvia.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Free Speech Emergency in Latvia</span></a>. Aleks at <span style="font-style: italic;">All About Latvia </span>has two posts -- <a href="http://allaboutlatvia.com/article/733/devaluation-pronouncements/">"Devaluation Pronouncements"</a> and <a href="http://allaboutlatvia.com/article/731/d-word-can-cost-yo/">"D-word can cost you."</a> Veiko Spolītis provides <a href="http://spolitis.blogspot.com/2008/11/economic-crisis-in-latvia-official.html">a brief history of the Government's official pronouncements</a>. Edward Hugh's <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://latviaeconomy.blogspot.com/">Latvia Economy Watch</a> continues to offer in-depth articles on the crisis.</span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-87688299726048744722008-11-23T12:14:00.005+02:002008-11-23T16:56:29.144+02:00Prémio Dardos<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv9hYFsUlURV0BeXJ9OoNKSNjQmkX_E6S4LPWSCEg2Olasuo8bFDgtj6UjuYciCKUpAghkahQHmxRGfvOo4Bx3o1qW9HxDZwot7bxcfmI_92TLqw8EOCqZ4NNp5Tx48ca_XAfL/s1600-h/dardos.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 155px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv9hYFsUlURV0BeXJ9OoNKSNjQmkX_E6S4LPWSCEg2Olasuo8bFDgtj6UjuYciCKUpAghkahQHmxRGfvOo4Bx3o1qW9HxDZwot7bxcfmI_92TLqw8EOCqZ4NNp5Tx48ca_XAfL/s320/dardos.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5271797140762383106" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >J. Otto Pohl of <a href="http://jpohl.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Otto's Random Thoughts</span></a> has awarded <span style="font-style: italic;">Marginalia</span> the <span style="font-style: italic;">Prémio Dardos</span> or "Best Blog Darts Thinker Award." Snowed under with work (and actual snow, today) -- I'm late with a condensed history of Latvia because I keep revising it -- I wasn't even able to finish a post on the 90th anniversary of Latvia's proclamation of independence (soon, soon). But the Dardos rules ask for acceptance (I accept -- thanks, Otto) and for passing Darts along to 15 others. Otto is parceling his out slowly, so I will do the same.<br /><br />I now have 42 blogs in my "Blogs of Note" list at right (the list both shrinks and expands, but subtly and almost imperceptibly so) and all are worth checking out for one reason or another, whether they're primarily personal like <a href="http://allergictowhiskey.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">at the end of the world </span>(formerly<span style="font-style: italic;"> Allergic to Whiskey)</span></a> or collective efforts at unseemly provocation like <a href="http://www.drinksoakedtrotsforwar.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Drink-soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for War</span></a>. Speaking of the unseemly, I removed both <span style="font-style: italic;">La Russophobe</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Da Russophile</span> from my list a while back -- I try to link to diverse views, but the level of bile in the blogosphere is such that I will no longer list sites venomously employing supposedly cutesy disinformative devices like the term "eSStonia" or veering into barely concealed <span style="font-style: italic;">nacionālā naida kurināšana</span>.<br /><br />Here are five blogs deserving of Darts:<br /><br /><a href="http://halldor2.wordpress.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">A Step At A Time</span></a> -- David McDuff's site has long been an indispensable compendium of information on "the world’s present troubles as a continuation of the old common struggle with tyranny and oppression." David's take is unique, and the blog not rarely includes original translations of news you would only find elsewhere with great difficulty<a href="http://tap-the-talent.blogspot.com/">.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Ukrainiana</span></a> -- "Political Ukraine laid bare. For those who care." Taras' Moscowcentrism-free explorations of the vortices of Ukrainian politics are... dizzying.<br /><br /><a href="http://camprikken.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Blue, Black and White Alert</span></a> -- An extremely well written blog by an Estonian-American living in Estonia. Comes complete with acerbic wit laced with the Yuleland pragmatism of Fenno-Ogres and crypto-Baltic black humor.<br /><br />Veiko Spolītis'<span style="font-style: italic;"> <a href="http://spolitis.blogspot.com/">Baltic</a></span> -- If Taras' political Ukraine is dizzying, Veiko's political Latvia is... depressing, but not devoid of hope: "The choice is simple - to reform the post-Soviet education, political and economic structures or to become a murky dependency relying on the Russian oil and mineral resources transit commissions."<br /><br /><a href="http://vkhokhl.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Neeka's Backlog</span></a> -- The blogosphere's gold standard for blending the personal and political. With exceptional photographs, too.</span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-65783922691492042582008-10-24T09:47:00.010+03:002008-10-24T12:16:32.272+03:00As Time Goes By<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9ef3pUdEdY_Kt0yQvPYBatAyxzX99ab4ghVcMs2kIUNmdUwaKwTAdU9b0AJD_Xgy9foiFkyzmgOEas0DDMBuJ6VDiPftr3bSdhac6VUg_dH1x6mOq6Raf1FMwWSmQhxSBa6T4/s1600-h/gothenburg+ilmars+znotins.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 255px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9ef3pUdEdY_Kt0yQvPYBatAyxzX99ab4ghVcMs2kIUNmdUwaKwTAdU9b0AJD_Xgy9foiFkyzmgOEas0DDMBuJ6VDiPftr3bSdhac6VUg_dH1x6mOq6Raf1FMwWSmQhxSBa6T4/s400/gothenburg+ilmars+znotins.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5260608938051286194" border="0" /></a><br /><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >Rick: "If it's December 1941 in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_904RjfdhQ">Casablanca</a>, what time is it in New York?" Sam: "What? My watch stopped." Flying to Stockholm from Rīga in 1993 was flying from one world to another, from the Wild East to -- civilization, overfed? Back then, the <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span> had dubbed the Latvian capital "the Casablanca of the North."<br /><br />You arrive in Sweden before you leave, because of the time zone. If it's September '93 in Rīga, it's also '39; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guntis_Ulmanis">an Ulmanis</a> becomes President on the strength of <a href="http://lettonica.blogspot.com/2007/05/fifteenth-of-may.html">his surname</a> in a country where the historical clock had stopped in 1940 (it didn't really stop, of course, except in some country of the mind). The early 1990s were a time of "fundamental things" for me -- of long summers in Semigallia, without plumbing, without electricity, without the Web (I had a huge manual typewriter that had doubtless served various organs of repression; Vonnegut, ever so popular here, wasn't fiction -- the twin lightning bolts of the SS a common character, shift).<br /><br />My mother, visiting from Canada, brought her mother's list of the serial numbers of the typewriters they'd lost in the war (<a href="http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/33476-Harold-Hart-Crane-My-Grandmother--wbr-s-Love-Letters">"That they are brown and soft, /And liable to melt as snow"</a>) -- grandmother ran a secretarial school in a building that by the 'Nineties held a <span style="font-style: italic;">pritons,</span> a den of iniquity. "We lived in the street of parades" -- <a href="http://lettonica.blogspot.com/2006/07/fire-and-night-ii-nature-of-dark.html">Bear Slayer's Street</a>, the cobblestones come as ballast from Sweden, still there, the name restored (what names weren't restored -- <span style="font-style: italic;">Vadoņa, Aizsargu</span> [the Great Leader and his Guard]). My repatriation to a country of the mind. Mother said that <span style="font-style: italic;">Latvijas Radio</span> couldn't replicate the sound of the ice breaking in the Daugava until somebody realized that amplifying the sound of salt being rubbed against a table resembled it. "Alchemical broth." <span style="font-style: italic;">A kiss is just a kiss.</span> For heat, you go to the forest. Fire rites. Fundamental things.<br /><br />When I got here, no one had ever heard of Mark Rothko -- even the few surviving Jews were astounded by the lucrative fame of their son. Today the highest habitable point in town is the Rothko Bar (that tall hotel used to have a radiation readout rather than a clock above the door). I haven't been up there yet. <span style="font-style: italic;">Fama,</span> in of itself (<a href="http://agenbiteofinwit.com/usura.html">"no picture is made to endure nor to live with / but it is made to sell and sell quickly"</a>) -- you <span style="font-style: italic;">will</span> be assimilated, as they say. A "Latvian artist" who never knew Latvia. Is the Pale a country of the mind, too? Desperately seeking some connection to the city of his birth, point to what might be ice floes -- surely his childhood memories meant something, the river's city (which turns its back upon the river, really, the levee hiding the flow). After a winter here ("null winters do sear such and more") the breaking of the ice begins to mean something. Under the lucre, actual riches -- a Matisse for every pot, and then. Nowadays almost no one remembers <a href="http://www.latvijasmaksla.lv/darbi/1970">Vīdzirkste</a>. His crossing paths with the erstwhile Marcus Rothkowitz in New York is as likely as Lenin and Rainis meeting up at the Cabaret Voltaire. Swiss artists all, no?<br /><br />Back in '93, as a short-lived international secretary of the Writers' Union, I was in Sweden for the opening of <a href="http://www.bcwt.org/GetDoc?meta_id=1368">the Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators</a> on Gotland. Fifteen years later, that Centre has a <span style="font-style: italic;">filius philosophorum</span> -- <a href="http://www.ventspilshouse.lv/index_en.php">the House of Language</a> in Ventspils. What time is it in Gothenburg? I have no watch (the last one I had was stolen in a Warsaw train station while I slept), and if you try to call me, my phone is either turned off or I find myself outside of the <span>zone</span> (I'm transferring the number from the Castle to myself). <span style="font-style: italic;">Keeping time, time, time /In a sort of Runic rhyme...</span> Ventspils -- Andra, Ieva, Iveta -- organized the focus on Latvia at the <a href="http://nemonet.swefair.se/upload/massor/Bok%20&%20Bibliotek/2008/Pdf/Sempro/Latvian%20speakers.pdf">Göteborg Book Fair</a>, and look how far we've come!<br /><br />My first worry was -- pop, <span style="font-style: italic;">wir sind modern, aber nicht verwestlicht?</span> I hadn't been out of the country for years. The more "Western" Latvia gets, the harder it is to perceive the difference between a functional society and this gorgeously dysfunctional one. But look how far we've come! I spent two summers in Sweden as a child, at Ladvik, and my little nationalist soul was severely disturbed by the fact that most Swedes had never heard of <span style="font-style: italic;">Lettland</span>. On a clear day you can see across the water, but the Iron Curtain came between.<br /><br />I had a terrific time -- I saw people I haven't seen in more than three decades (Gods, I's old), like Juris Rozītis. To place what exile was, read <a href="http://www.elja.org/janis/archives/44">Juris' thesis</a>. The photo above (by <a href="http://www.diena.lv/lat/izklaide/literatura/gramatu_zinas/gaismaspils-geteborga">Ilmārs Znotiņš</a>) is of the Latvian pavilion at the fair, which attracted over a hundred thousand visitors and more than a thousand journalists (it is, by any measure, one of the largest cultural events in Northern Europe). One of the highlights was an exhibition of books in Latvian published in Sweden after the war. I have many of them, from Papa (here an echo of an obscure poem by Uldis -- never mind). How we misunderestimate the exodus?<br /><br />Existentially, we are no better off, Gunilla Forsén said when I asked her how it was to live in what was, comparatively, at least, Paradise -- back then, in the 'Nineties. One doesn't understand what Paradise is until one talks to students. What was the difference between eking out an existence here and the sort of opportunity every Swede has? How much of that comes down to national wealth, quite simply?<br /><br />What of it comes down to rights, rights we were almost always denied? Lars Peter Fredén, the first Western diplomat to be stationed in Latvia, even before the occupation was brought to an end, spoke at Gothenburg of realizing how Swedes are barely acquainted with tragedy. When <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Estonia">the <span style="font-style: italic;">Estonia</span></a> sank, more died a tragic death than had since the 1700s -- can one ever bridge that gap, Latvians losing perhaps a third of the population in the First World War and a similar swathe in the Second?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-09-24-oberg-en.html">Johan Öberg</a>, who moderated one of the panels I was on, brought up a fun fact -- Rīga was once the largest city in Sweden. In Latvian, we still use the phrase "like in the Swedish era" -- when we're doing well, it's <span style="font-style: italic;">kā zviedru laikos.</span> One can parse the hard reality -- it wasn't necessarily as pretty as we paint it -- but one need only look at schooling to realize why the phrase persists; among the concrete attempts to extend peasants' rights, Swedish rule meant bulding schools, and forcing the Baltic barons to provide the means for universal education. When the Russians came, these reforms were rolled back.<br /><br />Here we are, here we are. 2008. How does the Swedish right to cross private property actually work in Latvia? Me live by lake, me build wall -- and fuck you. Swedes still read -- do we?<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">The Latvian pavilion was a cardboard reflection of <a href="http://www.gaisma.lv/enn/">the new National Library</a>, finally being built.</span><br /></span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-66278517209795224732008-10-16T22:37:00.005+03:002008-10-16T22:47:31.634+03:00Pēteris pameta pili<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4Id92gAkRlv-Lu7FeZg3ZUN1gVkVXxjytO80oj9GZwI-vjxKBAPnZiara1bIBaDs8g-QhoNvnXbo-uUqOq0x80U6kdWVY4h903Afz2aoAYzIZ_xFpd9J8GaURL8uiPucQ1Knz/s1600-h/800px-Rigas_pils.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4Id92gAkRlv-Lu7FeZg3ZUN1gVkVXxjytO80oj9GZwI-vjxKBAPnZiara1bIBaDs8g-QhoNvnXbo-uUqOq0x80U6kdWVY4h903Afz2aoAYzIZ_xFpd9J8GaURL8uiPucQ1Knz/s400/800px-Rigas_pils.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5257840298969678162" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">After more than two years of translating, writing, and editing for the President of Latvia (two Presidents: Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga and her successor), I left the Castle today. I will still do work for the Chancery on contract, but I am no longer an employee. Now I can say what I really think! Just kidding...</span></span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-72704211116393667372008-09-06T11:50:00.006+03:002008-09-06T13:05:58.681+03:00The Populist Firing Squad<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRogxP5jPhYDxeVSOn-tkkY9hnipih9Lp5N21w4yHaTx0Ka-Ek8kjB5o2BIyPdn3IcyzdVZO7y_cd2MU2ZKK36t9NUAz9Q9L_PJnlKQ0rjE2buLvCEDVQdY891oM-7park0Vks/s1600-h/firingsquad500.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRogxP5jPhYDxeVSOn-tkkY9hnipih9Lp5N21w4yHaTx0Ka-Ek8kjB5o2BIyPdn3IcyzdVZO7y_cd2MU2ZKK36t9NUAz9Q9L_PJnlKQ0rjE2buLvCEDVQdY891oM-7park0Vks/s320/firingsquad500.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5242828201462450754" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >This week, exploiting public outrage at the brutal murder of a girl by her father, Gaidis Bērziņš and Mareks Segliņš, Latvia's Minister of Justice and Interior Minister, mused publically about restoring the death penalty in Latvia, Segliņš suggesting that we could possibly hold a referendum on the matter.<br /></span><p style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:times new roman;" ><span style="font-size:100%;"> Arguments on whether or not there should be a death penalty are one thing (as you might guess, I am strongly opposed). The core of the sly imbecility here, however, is another matter entirely—capital punishment is outlawed in Europe (except in Belarus, which is <a href="http://lettonica.blogspot.com/2008/01/nearest-oupost-of-tyranny.html">“the last outpost of tyranny,”</a> and Kazakhstan, which is mostly in Central Asia). Abolitionism is not just fundamental to the EU, it is also <a href="http://www.coe.int/t/dc/files/themes/peine_de_mort/default_en.asp">a basic principle and a principal priority of the Council of Europe</a>, to which we’ve belonged for over thirteen years. The CoE is a much larger and broader structure than the EU is, with 47 members. Even Russia, that beacon of brutality, has instituted a moratorium on capital punishment. The European Convention on Human Rights requires its complete abolition, even for crimes committed in wartime. </span></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:times new roman;" ><span style="font-size:100%;"> The idea of reinstating the death penalty is thus <u>completely out of the question</u>. These politicians (one a law professor!), speaking as cabinet ministers and not as private individuals, have deliberately chosen to inflame Latvians’ baser instincts and disregard reality. The world-view of Jānis Šmits, the proudly intolerant human rights guru quoted in the <a href="http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/229970,childs-murder-revives-capital-punishment-debate-in-latvia.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Deutsche Presse-Agentur</span> article</a>—that <a href="http://lettonica.blogspot.com/2007/03/on-exporting-excrement-ii.html">tolerance is “a new secular paradigm” artificially forced upon us by Europe</a>—is part and parcel of this. Trawling the scuzzy bottoms of Latvian Internet fora, what’s striking is how unutterably uneducated in civics Letts are (one study showed that we are about as enlightened as Bulgarians in this regard). The typical reactions often include the mantra “Brussels is telling us what to do.” For most, Europe is still elsewhere… and that is, of course, a self-fulfilling belief. Many people don’t see Latvia as part of this legal system and a contributor to it— which Latvia is, legal scholars like Ziemele, Levits and Ušacka being significant at a European level—but instead think and act like boorish, brain-dead dwarfs in some dispossessed <i>chukhnya</i>. </span></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:times new roman;" ><span style="font-size:100%;"> And the wardens of this <i>chukhnya,</i> our ever so sparkling political elite, continue to lead us off into a politics that recalls the title of Ferlinghetti’s book of verse, <i>Unfair Arguments with Existence</i>. <u>Let’s all indulge in a national debate about something that’s totally impossible!</u> But why not? It works in everything else in our politics—instead of working constructively to integrate Russophones, we get the "nationalist" tirades of the bigots Dobelis and Tabūns. In place of badly needed education reform, we prefer to traipse about mouthing piffle about our imminent “knowledge-based society.” Nary an opportunity goes by in which we don’t tell the world about our “shared democratic values”—our lack thereof nearly fully externalized by now (we’d be Scandinavia if it wasn’t for them Russkies!). </span></p> <p style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: times new roman;"> Messrs. Segliņš and Bērziņš choose to pander to </span><i style="font-family: times new roman;">tumsonība </i><span style="font-family: times new roman;">("obscurantism," benighted ignorance). Since there’s not an election coming up, this desire must run really deep. What’s especially revolting to me is the </span><u style="font-family: times new roman;">waste of time</u><span style="font-family: times new roman;">. We’ll soon have had two decades of independence, but it seems that we’ve become “more European” mainly by replacing our Žiguļi with BMWs—second-hand for the pilchard-eaters, nice and shiny for the elite. We haven’t even learned to drive, what with the fewest cars and most road accidents </span><i style="font-family: times new roman;">per capita </i><span style="font-family: times new roman;">in Europe.</span><br /></span></p><p><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-size:85%;">The photograph of a 1913 execution in Mexico is from the Library of Congress</span>.</span><br /></p>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-8258204869456731062008-08-17T12:09:00.017+03:002008-08-18T00:06:15.461+03:00Latvia and Georgia<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9iOVtRLvpHfoNcueV9j1c5LvuhAPZmaivY0cQduZxgCloDkLCQckmz6WwIyFdVToOahWqIgwQfziBnPl-d1pnE_MH_oPLPwvc68Tp0hTK83kWjS-GU-qzmM46XucKFd_tifqr/s1600-h/straume2.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9iOVtRLvpHfoNcueV9j1c5LvuhAPZmaivY0cQduZxgCloDkLCQckmz6WwIyFdVToOahWqIgwQfziBnPl-d1pnE_MH_oPLPwvc68Tp0hTK83kWjS-GU-qzmM46XucKFd_tifqr/s200/straume2.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5235465482781707906" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >In the deluge of press on the war in the Caucasus and its background, not a few articles refer to Baltic and Central/Eastern European sympathy for Georgia, now and then with understanding (of varying depth, usually shallow) and sometimes with dismissive patter about "American puppets" suffering from "Russophobia." As I've often suggested before, for instance in my review of Edward Lucas' <a href="http://lettonica.blogspot.com/2008/01/edward-lucas-new-cold-war-how-kremlin.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The New Cold War,</span></a> a phobia is a "persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear of a specific thing or situation that compels one to avoid it, despite the awareness and reassurance that it is not dangerous" (<a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/phobia"><span style="font-style: italic;">American Heritage</span></a>); there is nothing irrational or abnormal about the Baltic fear of our huge, imperialistic neighbor. There is no avoiding it -- geographically, historically, culturally, politically and economically, we are on the frontier.<br /><br />In the map that serves as the frontispiece of Samuel P. Huntington's <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clash_of_Civilizations_and_the_Remaking_of_World_Order">Clash of Civilizations,</a> </span>(which I purchased, oddly enough, in Damascus), the line dividing "Western civilization" from "the Orthodox world" runs through Ukraine but to the east of Latvia. In reality, despite our Euro-Atlantic integration -- that line should run through Latvia, too. Latgallia, the comparatively impoverished eastern region in which I live, was the only part of the country to vote against joining the EU. On New Year's Eve, not a few fireworks go off at 11 P.M. -- midnight Moscow time. Cable TV and radio broadcasts are almost entirely in Russian. Euronews is Yevronoose, but most of those watching get their information from Russia's state-controlled TV. Sipping some of what was on offer the other night, as Russia's <a href="http://russiangeorgianwar.blogspot.com/2008/08/gori-russian-allies-triumphant-as-city.html">"triumphant" invasion</a> continued, I had to pull the plug. As Andrei Illarionov writes in his <a href="http://www.robertamsterdam.com/2008/08/illarionov_thirteen_conclusion.htm">"Thirteen Conclusions about the War"</a>: "The degree of manipulation of public opinion, and the speed with which the society was brought to mass hysteria, are clear evidence of the regime’s 'achievements', and pose an undeniable and unprecedented danger to the Russian society."<br /><br />Stretched similes abound, to 1938 and 1968 -- some <a href="http://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/2008/08/14/czechoslovakia-1938-georgia-2008/">worth reading</a> -- but most of the reactions that try to address the Baltic and Polish response lack meat. Even in terms of rather recent history -- how quickly we forget! At <a href="http://www.newkosovareport.com/index.php"><span style="font-style: italic;">New Kosova Report,</span></a> which has published some interesting articles on <a href="http://www.newkosovareport.com/200808111115/Arianit-Dobruna/Kosovo-is-more-like-Georgia-not-S.-Ossetia.html">why Ossetia and Kosovo should <span style="font-style: italic;">not </span>be equated,</a> I came across this article from <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,972214,00.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Time, </span>28 January 1991</a>.<br /><br /><blockquote>Shaking their fists defiantly, protesters last week massed at the government house in Tbilisi, capital of the Georgian republic, chanting, "Lithuania! Lithuania! Lithuania!" For this fiercely independent nation of 5.4 million in the Caucasus, the troubles in the Baltics far to the north seemed alarmingly near. Georgians had already felt the Kremlin's determination to keep the union intact, when Soviet paratroopers armed with sharpened spades brutally dispersed a nationalist demonstration in April 1989, killing 20 people. Just as the Baltic states showed support in that hour of crisis, Georgians embraced the tragedy in Vilnius last week as if it were their own.</blockquote><br />The photograph in this post is of a work by <a href="http://www.avesol.ge/?lan=ru&p=NC4=">Jūlijs Straume,</a> an artist renowned for his textiles; I thought I would avoid the photos of carnage one can find everywhere these days. Long resident in Georgia and an avid researcher in Georgian traditions, he was also the first Latvian envoy to the short-lived <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_Georgia">Democratic Republic of Georgia</a>, proclaimed in the same year the Baltic states declared their independence. The Baltics, with all our tragedy, had better luck -- like <a href="http://www.radabnr.org/en/index.html?archiuh.html?archium.html?archiui.htm">Belarus,</a> which also declared its independence ninety years ago, Georgia was crushed before it could enjoy the two decades of nation-building we did. Twenty years, sullied by our own descent into authoritarianism and blighted by the shadows of the approaching war, might not seem like much -- but our parents and grandparents remembered being free. The maps I grew up with in America almost always bore the note that the United States and most Western countries did not recognize the annexation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania by the USSR. The fervent hope that we would regain our independence seemed to be an absurd dream to many even at the fall of the Berlin Wall. The maps had no such note for Georgia, Belarus, or Ukraine -- though Georgia did have some success in achieving diplomatic recognition for its doomed Republic, fate and Stalin dictated otherwise.<br /><br />But the emotional intimacy some of us feel isn't merely rooted in our republics having been born at the same time -- as close relatives in that our politics were Western, the black sheep joining the Bolsheviks -- or even in the relations between the popular fronts that brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union that Lt. Col. Putin calls a catastrophe. The intimacy comes not only of the Russian subjugation we suffered -- it springs from the knowledge that subjugation wrought, which can indeed color our views but also gives us insight others lack. Even now, as Georgia is raped, one <a href="http://worldmeets.us/rue89000015.shtml">Jean Matouck</a> can write of a Russia "which is recovering and which obviously has no desire other to develop and enrich itself with dignity [<span style="font-style: italic;">sic</span>]."<br /><br />Another <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,979366,00.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Time</span> article, from 1993,</a> recalls Foreign Minister Kozyrev's rants about the "near abroad," that twilight zone to which the Kremlin -- and not a few European politicians -- would have confined us... and to which M. Matouck would condemn Ukraine and Georgia by denying them Euro-Atlantic integration. That use of the word "dignity" recalls Hitler's rants about the humiliation of Versailles. Bullies are not dignified, as a rule, and Matouck's contention that Russia "had every indication of becoming powerful again without being aggressive" unless provoked exhibits a stunning ignorance of <a href="http://halldor2.wordpress.com/2008/08/14/the-russian-idea/">Russian thinking,</a> not to mention a blithe disregard for the right of free nations to chart a course not hobbled by deference to the wounded pride of the prison house of nations.<br /><br />I am not arguing against prudence -- I'm arguing for it. I don't doubt that Misha poked the bear; Saakashvili is not my idea of an urbane diplomat. Nonetheless, anyone paying any attention to the relations between the Baltic states and Russia must know that Russia can perceive most anything not in line with its incessantly refried falsifications of history and its increasingly fascistic imperial ambitions as a "provocation." Its current Ambassador to NATO talked about invading Estonia in response to the removal of an offensive statue to a cemetery, after all. No need to poke the bear -- let the statues the occupiers erected stay where they are, <a href="http://lettonica.blogspot.com/2007/01/some-musings-on-monuments.html">I say</a>.<br /><br />And yet -- the ground beneath these symbols can recall <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/"><span style="font-style: italic;">The</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Night of the Living Dead</span></a>. It is all well and good to let bygones be bygones -- but not by <a href="http://lettonica.blogspot.com/2006/08/letting-bygones-be-bygones.html">denying our history</a> or betraying our friends. The Western European refrains that paint us as stuck in the mud of the war don't take the zombies into account. "Europe has moved on." Indeed it has -- but Russia has <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span>. Its <a href="http://lettonica.blogspot.com/2007/05/glory-to-imperial-behemoth.html">Stalinist mythology</a> underpins the foundation of the empire it is trying to restore, the pilings sunk in soil soaked with 19th C concepts. One needn't poke the bear -- but one mustn't pretend it is a tame creature.<br /><br />Writing about another victim of Russian aggression, Chechnya, nearly a decade ago, <a href="http://www.pecina.cz/files/www.ce-review.org/99/24/amber24.html">Mel Huang</a> contrasted the views of secondary school graduates from Estonian-language and Russian-language schools, observing that "the comments from the Russian-speaking graduates seem horrific and brutal, but if one watches Russian TV, one sees that this very much represents normal public opinion in the country." One can say the same today -- and one would have to include the local Russian-language media in Latvia, which inspires demonstrations like <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/russian/photo_galleries/newsid_7560000/7560312.stm">this one</a>, by Russophones in Rīga supporting the Kremlin.<br /><br />A few years ago I watched a documentary about the art of Jūlijs Straume. People like Nino Yakubidze, who heads the Georgian Association in Latvia, have worked hard to develop relations between Rīga and Tbilisi, where there is <a href="http://www.avesol.ge/?lan=ru">a Latvian Association</a>. Cooperation between NGOs, scholarships, art, books about the ties between Georgians and Latvians... but these days Nino Yakubidze has to <a href="http://www.fitfm.lv/site/lat/inter/">talk about death and Russian disinformation instead</a>.<br /></span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-21413678626225973962008-08-14T21:46:00.006+03:002008-08-14T22:25:43.876+03:00Latvia Strongly Supports Georgia<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeFsCLeGipBIszJ6IeP4Fyrr80KEUauwxt20T_ORl2xswKd6miowPGWX_cF6yNuu6fwNrpjjgW6LcQHU3VSo-02sIHKrdGEwMs_FMj-SC-TEod1_vZ3FAfzKdWrzwMwzrqy4Pb/s1600-h/apollo.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeFsCLeGipBIszJ6IeP4Fyrr80KEUauwxt20T_ORl2xswKd6miowPGWX_cF6yNuu6fwNrpjjgW6LcQHU3VSo-02sIHKrdGEwMs_FMj-SC-TEod1_vZ3FAfzKdWrzwMwzrqy4Pb/s320/apollo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5234447469744199746" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >The <a href="http://halldor2.wordpress.com/2008/08/09/joint-statement-by-presidents-of-poland-estonia-latvia-and-lithuania/">strong statement</a> on Russia's invasion of Georgia by the heads of state of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland has been followed by a vote in the Saeima, Latvia's Parliament. The Saeima voted this evening for a very harsh resolution condemning Russia for its aggression against Georgia -- a resolution with teeth (thanks primarily to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Kalniete">Sandra Kalniete</a>, one of the leaders of the Popular Front in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singing_Revolution">Singing Revolution</a>, a writer and diplomat with extensive EU experience). Among other things, it calls upon our Government to continue to push for Georgian NATO accession, to ask that the EU reevaluate the EU-Russian partnership (including visa restrictions), and to ask NATO to strengthen security and security guarantees for Russia's neighbors. It also asks for clarity in future EU expansion, so that those countries implementing reforms know the score (and urges visa liberalization for candidate countries).<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony_Centre">SC (Harmony Center)</a>, the ostensibly "moderate" coterie of pro-Moscow MPs, walked out and did not participate in the debates, leaving a handful of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Human_Rights_in_United_Latvia">PCTVL</a> radicals who have vowed to defend Abkhazian and Ossetian interests as the only MPs opposed, making inane arguments ("in the current economy we must think of our own people first" rather than antagonize innocent Moscow) whilst amendments giving the resolution its teeth passed with large majorities.<br /><br />Considering the fact that the parties in power and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Era_Party">New Era</a> rarely agree on anything, the unity in this special session was remarkable (despite some sniping). The vote was 64-4 with 1 abstention. Bravo!<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">The photograph is from the demonstration in support of Georgia that took place in Latvia's capital on Monday -- more photos are available at <a href="http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/73/articles/134238">Apollo</a>, whence I filched this one.</span></span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-79169726165425409782008-08-04T08:35:00.005+03:002008-12-11T01:29:26.478+02:00Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, 1918-2008<span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" ><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqk424at2wXo0E_XtleAXkngFQ2whC9CkWxihFGDnKxo5qyKtS_HU3I7Nv24InoTwEwfV1TjYUVCV8ghVxsnvp-sJfMgX59eliYhMrqtM4Z1XCK7e2keS6QsRkI78PlzZbtkXw/s1600-h/solzhezek.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqk424at2wXo0E_XtleAXkngFQ2whC9CkWxihFGDnKxo5qyKtS_HU3I7Nv24InoTwEwfV1TjYUVCV8ghVxsnvp-sJfMgX59eliYhMrqtM4Z1XCK7e2keS6QsRkI78PlzZbtkXw/s200/solzhezek.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230533366547410994" border="0" /></a><br /><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_Denisovich">One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich</a> was the first translation of Russian literature I ever read. Skipping lunch, I hoarded my allowance to acquire the rest of Solzhenitsyn's oeuvre in English, at a dismal chain bookstore in an aging suburban shopping mall. The bearded, long-haired clerk, a Trot stranded among the Harlequins, tried to disabuse me of my anti-Communist convictions. Aleksandr Isayevich's disdain for materialism was what most attracted me in adolescence. Looking back -- and one can't do that, unfortunately, without choking on the anachronistic vagaries of his Slavophilia, touched upon in the <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/books/04solzhenitsyn.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp">obituary</a> -- I know I'll have to go back and reread him. The older English translation of Bulgakov's <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://cr.middlebury.edu/public/russian/Bulgakov/public_html/">The Master and Margarita</a> captured me back then, too, and again later, in the much finer Latvian translation by the poet Ojārs Vācietis... but rereading it not so long ago, I was struck by how many levels in that novel opened only upon living here, or after catching the merest fading shadow of the collapsed imperium. To be transported to "Matryona's House" from middle class American suburbia by literary magic was wondrous. It must read so very differently in a hovel in the hamlet of <a href="http://eco.celotajs.lv/images/phot/LatgSadza.jpg">Slutišķi</a>, called "Latvia's Siberia" because used as a Siberian backdrop in a soap opera... or in any nearby backwater, filtered through the dark, dense foliage of the stories here, innumerable individual <span style="font-style: italic;">histoires,</span> lives direct or overheard, the tangible sense of tragedy hovering over abandoned farmsteads and unmarked graves, the trenches of the First World War still visible in the forest -- the place colored by the reading, the reading to be colored by place. To listen to those who suffered is often to hear<br /><br /><blockquote>Gradually it became clear to me that the line separating good from evil runs not between states, not between classes, and not between parties -- it runs through the heart of each and every one of us, and through all human hearts. This line is not stationary. It shifts and moves with the passing of the years. Even in hearts enveloped in evil, it maintains a small bridgehead of good. And even the most virtuous heart harbors an uprooted corner of evil.</blockquote><br />R.I.P., Aleksandr Isayevich.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">The photograph of Solzhenitsyn as an inmate is from a biographical sketch at <a href="http://vesture.sauc.lv/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1874&Itemid=1&pop=1&page=0"><span style="font-style: italic;">Vēsture sauc</span></a>.</span><br /><br /></span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-83667698584625363012008-08-03T10:01:00.008+03:002008-12-11T01:29:26.649+02:00The Hottest Day of the Year<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZMYws3bIFCXo8xj8I5YXN7Jvzo_KAGa9eGcQO1ITOqdbcDsO00H5PFoSBZwevMCTWwFFHLQnOnwu48gmu6wv_vuJxFB5nVaDogtgzc-NYtOJA-_X_a-vqzZylvRnDDShsNwBy/s1600-h/starspace.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZMYws3bIFCXo8xj8I5YXN7Jvzo_KAGa9eGcQO1ITOqdbcDsO00H5PFoSBZwevMCTWwFFHLQnOnwu48gmu6wv_vuJxFB5nVaDogtgzc-NYtOJA-_X_a-vqzZylvRnDDShsNwBy/s200/starspace.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230183249554187234" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" ><br />A partial solar eclipse on Lammas was followed by the hottest day of the year on Saturday (not that this part of the world gets to resemble the Sahara -- the mercury reached 28° C in Rīga... but we find that insufferable).<br /><br />Yesterday was also the day our citizens were given the chance to vote to amend the <span style="font-style: italic;">Satversme,</span> Latvia's Constitution, to allow the people to sack the <span style="font-style: italic;">Saeima,</span> our Parliament.<br /><br />The powers that be mostly urged people to stay home rather than vote for or against these changes -- a technique that is not exactly redolent of democratic convictions. Summer in Latvia is short and sweet, not conducive to traipsing to polling stations -- many people head for the countryside on the limited number of balmy weekends. Still, with 995 of 998 precincts reporting, 608 202 persons voted in favor of the amendments, 18 831 against.<br /><br />That means, however, that the "servants of the people," as our Members of Parliament so love to describe themselves, can relax and return to misrule unhindered -- for the referendum to be valid, at least half of Latvia's eligible voters would need to vote in favor of the changes. The 40,14% garnered is insufficient.<br /><br />Veiko Spolītis looks at some politicians' views on the referendum <a href="http://spolitis.blogspot.com/2008/07/referendum-pro-et-contra.html">here</a>. </span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-16457848706859651422008-07-29T12:11:00.006+03:002008-12-11T01:29:26.924+02:00"I rode into the hamlet on a white horse..."<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDuSg8qvbKpJPt_UKvrJU9gNKNr1NcYkNp16rZBY_ATozepvKSEhkyH7P0g-irPRlXyLX316IaQVp1_F8rHersE_GLb4bAPNWBH0X_8slOVJtpyLb8nZ9kKBf_I0ESt-07V7Ju/s1600-h/200px-V-kononov.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDuSg8qvbKpJPt_UKvrJU9gNKNr1NcYkNp16rZBY_ATozepvKSEhkyH7P0g-irPRlXyLX316IaQVp1_F8rHersE_GLb4bAPNWBH0X_8slOVJtpyLb8nZ9kKBf_I0ESt-07V7Ju/s320/200px-V-kononov.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5228361376568976850" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >So bragged <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasiliy_Kononov">Vasiliy Kononov</a>, the convicted war criminal whose appeal to the European Court of Human Rights was successful. Vilhelm Konnander has written about the recent decision at <a href="http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/07/27/latvia-european-court-goes-against-riga/">Global Voices</a>, where I've responded (primarily with extracts from the dissents; the judgment [4:3] and the dissents are available as a .doc file <a href="http://cmiskp.echr.coe.int////tkp197/viewhbkm.asp?action=open&table=F69A27FD8FB86142BF01C1166DEA398649&key=72153&sessionId=4507150&skin=hudoc-en&attachment=true">here</a> and are very much worth reading).<br /><br />The Kononov case has dragged on for years. <span style="font-style: italic;">Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze</span> has <a href="http://www.nra.lv/zinas/5119-iejaju-sadza-uz-balta-zirga-lielijies-vasilijs-kononovs.htm">a retrospective</a> that includes fresh commentary from judges and prosecutors (in Latvian).<br /><br />From what I wrote at <a href="http://groups.google.lv/group/soc.culture.baltics/msg/1a5ed1016119b3b8?hl=lv">soc.culture.baltics</a> some years ago:<br /><br />First, a brief précis of Kononov's crimes. He was the commander and organizer of a group of eighteen Red Partisans in a brigade called the "Little Boat" in the territory of occupied Latvia and Belarus. He organized and planned a mission of revenge at Mazo Batu <span style="font-style: italic;">sādža</span> (the hamlet of Mazie Bati) near Ludza in May 1944, in response to a German military unit's destruction of a Red Partisan group commanded by Chugunov in February. Dressed in German uniforms, Kononov's group entered the hamlet on 27 May, when its inhabitants were preparing to celebrate the Pentecost. They divided into smaller groups and broke into the houses. One Modest Krupnikov begged them not to shoot him in front of his young son. They ordered Krupnikov to run into the woods and shot him there, gravely wounding him and leaving him to bleed to death. His cries for help were heard into the night, but the inhabitants were too afraid to give him aid. Another group broke into the home of Meikul Krupnik. Krupnik was in the sauna. They dragged him and another man from the sauna to the house, stole weapons, shot the men and Krupnik's mother, then torched the house. Krupnik's pregnant wife attempted to flee. They threw her into the burning house, where she was burned to death together with the two men and Krupnik's mother. They visited two other houses, robbing and killing. In total, they murdered nine civilians, burning six of them (including three women, one of whom was pregnant).<br /><br />[The information in the above summary is from the rejection of Kononov's appeal by the Senate of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Latvia, 28 September 2004.]<br /><br />I hope Latvia will appeal the flawed ECHR decision to the Grand Chamber, as <a href="http://www.am.gov.lv/en/news/press-releases/2008/July/25-1/">the Ministry of Foreign Affairs</a> has recommended. </span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-57676623033138011582008-06-22T10:28:00.003+03:002008-12-11T01:29:27.332+02:00Wolf One-Eye<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigqxdXY4yxs9-azLGOcK0lKwXm_qVhuaAP0woihSq4XXiGjdAIMDzXmoBbjF3OHEDrMqHAJoqWdCLRUkF1TQLmvQUyVnD1I1IhncPxPwBy4jmQMIndHT1IvNocyxnqq9q_Nm6a/s1600-h/15_min_Latvija.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigqxdXY4yxs9-azLGOcK0lKwXm_qVhuaAP0woihSq4XXiGjdAIMDzXmoBbjF3OHEDrMqHAJoqWdCLRUkF1TQLmvQUyVnD1I1IhncPxPwBy4jmQMIndHT1IvNocyxnqq9q_Nm6a/s400/15_min_Latvija.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5214604928536680002" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">As this blog has a number of Lithuanian readers of late, I thought I'd post a poster for a Latvian literary event that will be taking place in Vilnius on Wednesday the 25th. I won't be able to make it -- but I highly recommend <span style="font-style: italic;">Wolf One-Eye</span> by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juris_Kronbergs">Juris Kronbergs</a>. I saw a performance of the piece in Rīga a few years ago. If you're in Vilnius -- don't miss it!</span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-27821388513148105072008-05-18T15:01:00.022+03:002008-12-11T01:29:27.521+02:00W(h)ither the Nation? (IV)<span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" ><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioOH6EKJV6vv2Jh7EejByxNn_pAl9gIf4DVE56TfviUdSz141gASuz0EJwZENBHiSjtEk7Q8Pq91-STyNnkwS7EFWf77rLeGzgWg3zVUoGuA6tnNHOz9pNZAelBJ11wnSlXsY7/s1600-h/valters1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioOH6EKJV6vv2Jh7EejByxNn_pAl9gIf4DVE56TfviUdSz141gASuz0EJwZENBHiSjtEk7Q8Pq91-STyNnkwS7EFWf77rLeGzgWg3zVUoGuA6tnNHOz9pNZAelBJ11wnSlXsY7/s400/valters1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201688464256149138" border="0" /></a></span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >I can't call an end to my hiatus yet, but I thought I'd post a slightly altered version of something I wrote for a "political demolition derby" <a href="http://latviansonline.com/index.php/forum/viewthread/33125/">elsewhere</a>. Ambersun said, with regard to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mi%C4%B7elis_Valters">Dr. Miķelis Valters</a> (pictured at left):<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">You also fail to state here, as you do elsewhere, that Mikelis Valters was a “Socialist Revolutionary.” This would add to an understanding of the language chosen and thinking behind.</span><br /><br />[The language in question is that of the <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Latvia">Satversme</a><span style="font-style: italic;">,</span> Latvia's Constitution -- it states that the "sovereign power of the State of Latvia is vested in <span style="font-style: italic;">the people of Latvia,</span>" not <span style="font-style: italic;">the Latvian people</span>. This isn't trivial -- it's the basis for the political nation, as opposed to the ethnic nation. My response to Ambersun follows.]<br /><br />Would it? Perhaps so. But what would it add, exactly? I have written about Valters' politics here [at that forum] in the past (and the stubs on Valters and the Latvian <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist-Revolutionary_Party"><span style="font-style: italic;">эсеры</span></a> at Wiki were begun by me -- see, for example, "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_Social_Democratic_Union">Latvian Social Democratic Union</a>").<br /><br />Valters, of Liepāja, was exiled to Dvinsk (!) in 1897 as a member of the New Current, whence he fled to Switzerland and studied law (and wrote poetry). Active in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_Social_Democratic_Union">SDS</a> in exile (whence the first demands for a democratic Latvian nation-state, published in the West), he penned lengthy, eloquent polemics about the Latvia he envisioned and argued against both the denationalized, pro-Russian Left <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> the reactionary, pro-Russian Latvian bourgeoisie.<br /><br />There are a few strains of thought in Valters' national socialism (and yes, that's what it was, though the term is obviously now sullied by later associations...). In his own words, however: <span style="font-style: italic;">Mūsu politiskā programma ir pirmā kārtā personas stiprināšanas programma. Valdības nomācošam virzienam viņa stāda pretim citu: atsvabināšanu. Kādam tam jābūt, zīmējoties uz atsevišķu cilvēku, par to nav domu starpības, bet neskaidrāki ir uzskati, zīmējoties uz tautas personu.</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">"Patvaldību nost, Krieviju nost!"</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Proletārietis,</span> 1903). [Roughly: "Our political programme is first of all that of strengthening the person. In opposition to oppression by government, it offers another direction: liberation. What that must be like, with regard to the individual, isn't in dispute -- but views with regard to the national entity are less clear."]<br /><br />Arnis (Runcis') book on the Latvian political awakening (first published on the eve of Ulmanis' coup [1934] and reprinted in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1971) summarizes Valters' thoughts quite well, with extracts from his writings. There's a lengthy polemic against <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrievs_Niedra">Andrievs Niedra</a>, for example, also printed in <span style="font-style: italic;">Proletārietis</span> in 1904. In response to Niedra calling the national socialists traitors to the fatherland, Valters explains that a fatherland is a state, consisting of land, people, and government. This last component must reflect the will of the people. Valters writes that we can see what the fatherland of Niedra and those who side with oppressors is -- <span style="font-style: italic;">tie ir svešinieki, svešais kaŗa pulks, kas nāk laupīdams mūsu zemē, svešie ierēdņi, pātaga un kulaks. </span><span>Mūsu</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> tēvu zeme ir cilvēki, mūsu tauta.</span> (Valters' emphasis on <span style="font-style: italic;">"[m]ūsu."</span>) [Roughly: "they are strangers, a foreign military that comes to raid our land, alien functionaries, the whip and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak"><span style="font-style: italic;">kulak</span></a>. <span style="font-style: italic;">Our</span> fatherland is the people, our people /or 'nation'/"].<br /><br />Throughout these writings, Valters consistently emphasizes citizenship, especially active participation by the citizens in government. <span style="font-style: italic;">"Tauta"</span> can have a variety of meanings, from </span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">народ</span></span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" > <span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >to nation. Ethnicity,</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">tautība,</span> is inferior already in the 1905 resolution of the SDS -- the right of self-determination belongs to the citizens of the state, regardless of their gender, religion, or ethnicity [or "nationality"] (<span style="font-style: italic;">6. punkts</span>).<br /><br />I would like to point out that the reactionary period -- the First Falling Asleep that followed the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_National_Awakening">First Awakening</a>, from the late 1880s -- is often referred to as the <span style="font-style: italic;">"tautiskais laikmets,"</span> [very roughly -- "the ethnic period"] and the bourgeois Latvians Valters opposed inherit the name <span style="font-style: italic;">"tautībnieki"</span> [ethnicists] from the Lettophiles of the Awakening, but in a <span style="font-style: italic;">derogatory</span> sense. Even with regard to the song festivals -- Valters looks back upon Festivals I, II and III (held in 1873, 1880, and 1888) as involving the masses (<span style="font-style: italic;">tautas masas</span>); by IV (1895), the angle of emphasis on Latvian culture had become mere <span style="font-style: italic;">butaforija</span> [a mere prop]. The middle classes were for the most part content in the Russian Empire, for material reasons.<br /><br />Essentially, what Valters and Rolavs did was transform the <span style="font-style: italic;">cultural</span> awakening that began in the 1850s but had petered out by the 1880s, into a <span style="font-style: italic;">political</span> awakening, which is the subject of Arnis' book. This took place in a narrow circle of people, in exile -- one couldn't publish such things in the Baltic provinces, and as far as I know, not many issues were smuggled in or disseminated.<br /><br />Valters did not look upon the Russian Empire as a state in his sense of what a state must be, and he didn't see the Tsar's subjects as citizens. He was well-educated, and I think the <span style="font-style: italic;">"Latvijas"</span> ["of Latvia"] is more a reflection of his legal training and his study of Western Europe than it is of his socialism. You can say that he was an SR, true -- but he and Rolavs were clearly nationalists from the very beginning (their views also diverged after a time, btw), and <span style="font-style: italic;">time</span> is important here; Valters was in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_Farmers%27_Union">Farmers' Union</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81rlis_Ulmanis">Ulmanis'</a> party, when he was a member of the provisional government (Rolavs was dead -- murdered by the powers that be).<br /><br />This is not at all surprising -- it's a direct consequence of their understanding of Latvia and democracy. Both looked carefully at Switzerland (which, as you know, consists of ethnically German, French, and Italian people, and others, who are politically Swiss). Rolavs even tried to envision an overhauled Russia as a giant Switzerland, and he contrasted France to the Confederation as undemocratic, because of its centralization.<br /><br />Both men were highly critical of the mainstream Left -- the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Current">New Current</a> and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_Social_Democratic_Workers%27_Party">Social Democrats</a>. They both write of Latvia's intellectual poverty -- Rolavs observes that our culture is only half a century old [<span style="font-style: italic;">sic!</span>], and notes that we had only 16 students in 1856. They see the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Current"><span style="font-style: italic;">jaunstrāvnieki</span> </a>as providing bad translations of alien and inapplicable German (and, later, Russian) Marxist thought, copying what the half-educated only superficially understood until they became blind to how ludicrous they were. Valters also attacks the deracinated Jewish cosmopolitan, btw, as a supporter of empire (one sees this throughout Eastern Europe), and criticizes the New Current as composed of the deluded sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie.<br /><br />So, if you are suggesting that being an SR made him less of a nationalist, you couldn't be more wrong -- nationalism suffuses his work. He rails against the Latvian bourgeoisie both <span style="font-style: italic;">grande</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">petite,</span> for example, observing that building a border between Russia and Latvia even in thought was a threat to their material interests; that not teaching Russian in the schools would have led to material losses for them, and that the mass movement (Social Democracy) that they bred made them more Russian than the Russians.<br /><br />He placed his faith in the Latvian farmer, seen as the next recipient of the democracy that had broken down feudalism in the cities. Valters came from the working class, but in his notes on his intellectual development -- which primarily concern philosophy and poetry, not politics -- he writes of how the excitement of youth brought different Latvians together... how learning took him from the "alcoholic proletariat" of the lower class suburbs of Liepāja ("[t]e sabiedrības vai tautības jēdziens neeksistēja" [roughly: "neither the notion of community nor nationality existed here"]) to the Ancient Greeks and Kant, overcoming seemingly insurmountable differences in background with the sons of vain Semigallian landowners. (In <span style="font-style: italic;">Trimdas rakstnieki, 1. sēj.,</span> ed. Pēteris Ērmanis. Kempten [Allgäu]: Viļa Štāla Apgāds, 1947).<br /><br />You [Ambersun] are incessantly raving about Russians, your "overwhelming, crushing, and nation-destroying” "problem" (and you do so in a slippery way -- I would note that 50 000 is far fewer than 14%, that not a few of the people who go to the Victory Monument are not Russians, and that many people go there without anti-Latvian sentiments in mind, which sentiments anyway come in different colors and degrees). The most overwhelming, crushing, and nation-destroying problem the Republic faces is posed by <span style="font-style: italic;">Latvians,</span> Ambersun. As has been pointed out to you time and again, the "Russian parties" aren't in government and have had almost no influence at all upon Latvia for the last seventeen years. Further, re the percentage [of minorities in Latvia as part of the population], as I already suggested -- non-citizens <span style="font-style: italic;">don't count</span>; the percentage of minorities as a portion of the electorate is <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> as dramatically different as raw demographics would make it seem. Hanging out a few <span style="font-style: italic;">auseklīši</span> [eight-pointed stars that have come to symbolize "Latvianism"] and playing ethnopolitical games to get the vote doesn't obscure the mercenary instincts of the Latvian (<span style="font-style: italic;">latviešu!</span> -- ethnic Latvian!) elite.<br /><br />Yes, Valters changed -- he was always changing, actually, though not illogically so. As [the historian Aivars] Stranga writes in the <a href="http://www.jumava.lv/product/257">Jumava history</a>, many notable figures who had stood at the cradle of Latvia's democracy surrendered to the wave of anti-democratic sentiment and themselves helped to strengthen it, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81rlis_Skalbe">Kārlis Skalbe</a> and Miķelis Valters among them. Later, Valters changed yet again, demanding the restoration of democracy -- he called his friend Ulmanis and the Ulmanist cabal the "gravediggers" of the Latvian state.<br /><br />Though at least a couple of our esteemed forum participants apparently live in a dream world shot through with nightmare rather than in Europe, whatever wisdom can be gleaned from the study of Latvia's coming into being must be tempered with today's realities, in which the great questions that concerned Valters and our other founding fathers -- land reform and class struggle, for instance -- are quite simply irrelevant. The establishment of the nation-state is a <span style="font-style: italic;">fait accompli,</span> too, and that was doubtless the most difficult task they accomplished.<br /><br />A sense of "nationness" [Ambersun's word] in a Europe that just concluded the Lisbon Treaty, giving the EU a president (heh -- two, even) and, supposedly, a common foreign policy, is obviously different, too. Some things from that earlier era remain valid -- the emphasis on governance, for example, and on the need for our representatives to be responsible to the people. One can stew in national romanticism all one likes, and become roadkill, but most Europeans snigger at the Kennedy formulation -- people ask what the country can do for them, not the other way around. Government is seen as a service provider, primarily.<br /></span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-79389790815973775352008-05-13T16:09:00.003+03:002008-12-11T01:29:27.798+02:00Hiatus<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjesvvv4OiDFFEYW0EI7mWtmGZIXK7iOYbZNKed4gKaVKj-cjV0OtCojpoYXKaNRwzLzk91hKyErpGBND0Uhh3_9p346GwmSyddK4ChmAcpg-1SfJ7YC_sqfAzhaJQKQfZlQ0Hp/s1600-h/sp03.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjesvvv4OiDFFEYW0EI7mWtmGZIXK7iOYbZNKed4gKaVKj-cjV0OtCojpoYXKaNRwzLzk91hKyErpGBND0Uhh3_9p346GwmSyddK4ChmAcpg-1SfJ7YC_sqfAzhaJQKQfZlQ0Hp/s400/sp03.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5199849157396539010" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:100%;" >Sorry for not posting lately. I am submerged in a bunch of unwieldy translation projects, and in the evenings I enjoy the spring (Castalian, of course, as at left).<br /><br />About 17 pages of <a href="http://thepenetralium.blogspot.com/">the </a><span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://thepenetralium.blogspot.com/">Penetralium</a> </span>are being published in England this week. They won't be available virtually, at least for a while, but you can send your checks to <a href="http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/index.asp?id=70"><span style="font-style: italic;">10th Muse</span></a> and get them physically if you so desire (shameless plug).<br /><br />For free political demolition derby, you can visit <a href="http://allaboutlatvia.com/article/629/thoughts-on-victory-day/">my comrade Aleks</a>.</span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-18639467902934216092008-04-18T14:16:00.015+03:002008-12-11T01:29:28.257+02:00The Sad Saga of the Strawberry Cake<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEHmfFpoDpTX2r64t-2I2DDX7g5xg76wC1UYVuYadW3c6pS7P-Y4i8J5PwyjND3vpf2WW7uM0ASrkfpZVYy-4Ri5SJj7mzZAfZgKUQ43_uZI2ayt1GXIQ6FRdvlL0wmW01iVHx/s1600-h/strawberry+cake.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEHmfFpoDpTX2r64t-2I2DDX7g5xg76wC1UYVuYadW3c6pS7P-Y4i8J5PwyjND3vpf2WW7uM0ASrkfpZVYy-4Ri5SJj7mzZAfZgKUQ43_uZI2ayt1GXIQ6FRdvlL0wmW01iVHx/s200/strawberry+cake.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190542919652090162" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Last fall's </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://latvianabroad.blogspot.com/2007/10/latvian-political-scandals-getting.html">Case of the Mysterious Briefcase</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">, which led to the resignation of the man who'd once been the world's first Green Prime Minister, Indulis Emsis, couldn't exhaust the </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://lettonica.blogspot.com/2007/10/vair-realism.html">Green Peasants'</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> flair for black comedy, it seems. One of yesterday's headlines was </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >MINISTER TO REIMBURSE STATE FOR STRAWBERRY CAKE.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The Minister in question is the Special Assignments Minister for Electronic Government Affairs, </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://www.eps.gov.lv/index.php?&203">Ina Gudele</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">. She didn't use the taxpayers' money to pay for her birthday gift, a hammock (a fact she's apparently proud of). She <span style="font-style: italic;">did</span> use the taxpayers' money to rent the space in which her birthday party was held, buy the wine with which it was celebrated, and obtain the by now notorious strawberry cake.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The Green Peasants' leaders quickly gathered to insist that she retain her Cabinet post -- she's "responsible only morally," according to them. The cake, of course, is the symbolic tip of the iceberg our ship of state long ago struck -- as Laila Pakalniņa points out in her </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://www.diena.lv/lat/politics/dienas_komentari/laila_pakalninja_bet_torte_sejaa">editorial</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">, the PM was probably not thinking about the Green Peasants when he didn't ask for Ina Gudele's resignation... or at least not as much as he thought about his fellow party member </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://lettonica.blogspot.com/2007/02/on-exporting-excrement.html">Ainārs Šlesers of Latvia's First Party</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">, who has mishandled far more funds than a cake costs but remains the Minister of Transport, presiding over some of the world's most expensive bad roads and a post office that is all but bankrupt. How can one take action on a cake when we are building what might end up being </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://spolitis.blogspot.com/2008/04/even-bridges-are-most-expensive-in.html">the world's most expensive bridge</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Meanwhile, people have started signing up for yet another referendum, a ballot initiative to raise the minimum pension to subsistence level. This type of populism is unworkable -- there isn't any money for such an increase (what with the cake budget...). The sentiments, however, are perfectly understandable, like those of one Anatols on the front page of </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >Diena</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> yesterday. His 107 LVL monthly pension is now 118 LVL (ca. 167 EUR). He says it's possible to survive as it was during the war, when everyone was starving and lice-ridden. Or as they did after the war, when his father promised him a kilogram of candy if he didn't join the </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Pioneer_organization_of_the_Soviet_Union">Young Pioneers</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> -- he never got the candy because there was no candy available. Or like in his childhood, when he got two hot potatoes and felt so very happy. </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >But not now, and not here.</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> Anatols went to every demonstration for Latvia's freedom, from the very first protests called by </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki-86">Helsinki-86</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">. Anatols is tired of waiting.<br /><br />Anatols no doubt knows that the salary of a Cabinet Minister in 2009 is to be 4512 LVL (ca. 6420 EUR) a month -- and still it is difficult for Ina Gudele to get her own strawberry cake.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Update: </span>Gudele is resigning after all.<br /></span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-53805039996252652272008-04-14T13:24:00.008+03:002008-12-11T01:29:28.429+02:00"The Genocide Loophole"<span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" ><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYXhWfueroJsAq_HQgUwrO8CA0I5RIXNEYS9TuoqnA77yRhFmkhqh6cEEvo3uGEyVAqR-O7iezTqAArmTehljebcitiDu0TnPYFyLgScTjxscMO5ycqLU6opw4G-mmhTjGNxRr/s1600-h/mask_19.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYXhWfueroJsAq_HQgUwrO8CA0I5RIXNEYS9TuoqnA77yRhFmkhqh6cEEvo3uGEyVAqR-O7iezTqAArmTehljebcitiDu0TnPYFyLgScTjxscMO5ycqLU6opw4G-mmhTjGNxRr/s200/mask_19.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5189045870146363682" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:times new roman;" >Henry Alminas at the</span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://groups.google.lv/group/soc.culture.baltics/browse_thread/thread/cc5c552744d231c1/b24bebe77515879e?hl=lv#b24bebe77515879e"> soc.culture.baltics</a><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:times new roman;" > newsgroup drew my attention to Jonah Goldberg's recent article in the </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MjUwYmU0MDBhMGQxODAzZDkyNmExYWY0NmI1ZmIyNjU="><span style="font-style: italic;">National Review</span></a><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:times new roman;" >. It begins: "Last week, Russia’s lower house of parliament passed a resolution insisting that Josef Stalin’s man-made 1932-33 famine — called the Holodomor in Ukrainian — wasn’t genocide." In view of some of the debates in the comments at this blog, like those that followed </span><a style="font-style: italic; font-family: times new roman;" href="http://lettonica.blogspot.com/2008/03/blog-post.html">"Прибой,"</a><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:times new roman;" > I thought I would highlight Goldberg's piece.</span><br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: times new roman;font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" ></span><blockquote style="font-family: times new roman;font-family:times new roman;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >Today, Mao and Stalin aren’t in Hitler’s class of evil because Hitler wasn’t a “modernizer,” he was a racist. Note how the Russians have no problem copping to the charge of mass murder but recoil at suggestions it was racially motivated.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >It’s a wrongheaded distinction. Murder is murder, whether the motive is bigotry or the pursuit of allegedly enlightened social planning.<br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" >It’s also a false distinction. Racial genocide is often rationalized as a form of progress by those responsible. Under the <em>Holodomor</em>, Ukrainian culture was systematically erased by the Russian Soviets, who saw it as expendable. No doubt the Sudanese janjaweed in Darfur and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in Tibet believe they are “modernizers,” too.</span></blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" ><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">Read the entire article </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MjUwYmU0MDBhMGQxODAzZDkyNmExYWY0NmI1ZmIyNjU=">here</a><span style="font-family: times new roman;">.</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />The mask is from the <a href="http://www.occupationmuseum.lv/">Occupation Museum</a>. "Such masks were tied on to protect the face from frostbite when working outdoors in temperatures as low as -40°C (-40°F). The mask was made for the political prisoner Kārlis Ārgalis in the Amur region in the 1950s."</span><br /></span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-20919301132383529622008-04-12T12:36:00.010+03:002008-04-14T18:57:28.110+03:00W(h)ither the Nation? (III)<object style="font-family: times new roman;" height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/aY_BIrE15rg&hl=en"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/aY_BIrE15rg&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">As the diabolus and </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >fouteur de merde</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> in me expected, I've received a lot of responses to the last installment in this series of musings, some privately. Not surprisingly, parts of the last post rubbed some of my more rightist friends the wrong way.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Snork, Vidas, and Giustino, among others, also provided ample reason for further ruminations in their comments, so here are some scattered thoughts.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Vidas wrote: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >The Baltics are not healthy thriving democracies. We are not success stories yet. That work needs to be done before the Baltic experience is applied to places on other continents. The Baltic experience isn't finished - and its not really a success story yet.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">I certainly agree that we're a work in progress (and as the first epistle suggested -- there are days when the Castle of Light seems out of sight, not only a few decades' climb ahead, and nights when it seems we're stumbling in the opposite direction [</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >Denk' ich an Lettland in der Nacht...</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">]) -- but the Baltic experience won't </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >ever</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> be finished, at least not till we're extinct. </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >Pace</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> Fukuyama, but I don't see history ending anytime soon.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">In the meantime -- we can't exist in a no-man's-land, jiving to provisional measures as though we weren't in the here and now; that was part of my point in asking </span> <span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >how long can one be in transition </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">in the post. Later, in the comments, I said that </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >we are part of the world, and part of the global economy, and part of the European Union... and it's time we realized it. </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The Baltic experience </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >is </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">applied to places on other continents. We were strong supporters of the American invasion of Iraq, which is not in Europe. We have troops in Afghanistan, which is not in Europe. We have voices in the UN, where we vote on measures that affect people in East Timor and the ice packs at the poles.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">We are, no matter how you slice it, playing in the big leagues -- and we play on a team, the one led by liberal democracies. We're not great players, to be sure -- but we can't and don't sit on the sidelines. We're full members of the EU and NATO -- according to their standards, we </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >are </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">democracies that are at least healthy enough to have met the entrance requirements. Are we thriving? Nope.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">When I wrote </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >it's time we realized it, </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">I was thinking of something somewhat tangential -- of the moment of silence for the victims of the massive terrorist attack in Madrid. LTV showed how it was observed in various European capitals -- cars coming to a halt... okay, I'm sure a lot of cars just kept going even in civilized Europe. But -- in Rīga? </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >Nobody </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">noticed, except perhaps LTV. We don't </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >feel</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> like we're part of Europe. That lack of feeling (or is it lack of communion?) exists elsewhere, to some extent -- I remember signs at Victoria Station saying "Trains to Europe," for example. But we aren't islands, and we're definitely not islands with strong parliamentary traditions that cradled liberalism. Tallinn feels closer to "Europe" than Latvia does -- 'cause it is... always was, whether one looks at the watching of Finnish TV during the occupation or the behavior of Estonians at the time of our liberation ninety years ago. Lithuania has its vaunted ties to Central Europe -- how real those are, I sometimes wonder. (</span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://andriusblo.blogspot.com/">Andrius</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> makes me wonder even more.) In Latvia, one often still hears phrases like "he's in Europe." The bus companies advertise "buses to Europe." Europe is elsewhere.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">In my post, I included this parenthetical remark on our (current) independence and should have underscored it: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >(And I am not trying to detract from what we </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">do</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" > have to show for it -- I just wouldn't paint the overall picture in bright colors.) </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">I really mean that. Really, </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >really. </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Because we</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" > do</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> have a lot to show for our independence. Latvia slipped slightly in the </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=24025">RSF Press Freedom Index</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">, for instance -- to 12th place -- but all three Baltic states are very highly ranked. We rank higher than beacons and bastions of democracy like the USA and the UK. Does that matter? You'd better believe it does! I spend a lot of time being critical -- because I think that's crucial -- but if we are talking about human rights... with all of our problems, Russia (ranked 144th, below Yemen) and China, which occupies Tibet (ranked 163rd, just above Burma/Myanmar) are night to our day.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">I feel compelled to retell one of my favorite stories -- true story, told by someone close to me, A. A is asked by an Australian about her hard labor in the colder climes of Soviet Russia, and because it's an in-depth question gets a rather detached, clinical earful about how A ended up in the Gulag, how this house was confiscated, what the camps were like, in detail. Australian pauses. "Why didn't you call a lawyer [solicitor]?"</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">I find, talking to people from countries that haven't suffered what this one has, that many people just can't grok what totalitarianism was and is. If you talk about the abrogation of personal freedom in the occupied Baltics, you're liable to hear comparisons to the Patriot Act. And then there are the willfully blind, like your compatriot Andrius, who </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >refuse</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> to recognize the differences between flawed democracy and wholesale oppression. There's little you can do for them. One of the most popular throwaways here, even among some friends I otherwise respect, is that "democracy is bogus." This is where the critique comes in -- I am quite willing to acknowledge that the experience has not been happy so far... it was even unhappier in Russia in the 1990s. One cannot expect people who've seen their social fabric torn apart to be gung-ho about this here and now -- I intended to hint at that with those potatoes and salt. The solution, though, is better democracy -- not a return to hell. Even the great democracies, the ones we vote with, often without question, are entering a period of intense self-doubt. I have no truck with the doubters on basic principles. Certainly, it's easier for me than it is for people who are having trouble surviving to be so arrogant, and I fully recognize that. But I think it insane to abandon our democratic values for some quasi-Belarusian or Cuban comfort. I think it perverse to try to go back to our cages. We're free, and the element that prefers the prison to figuring out how to act at this time is the same element that served as dead weight for decades.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">A week ago I read the </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >IHT</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> on the bus. Had </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/03/europe/poland.php">a great article</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">. Closing line: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >"They tend to be very individualistic," she said. "They think they survived communist efforts to collectivize them, so they will survive this. They don't realize the European Union and the global market are even harder." </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Yeah, they are. Acting out under the monkey bars of a sick nostalgia won't make them easier or softer. The Luddites lost.</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The video is of the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY_BIrE15rg&feature=related">Prayer at the Sea, 1989.</a></span></span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-11476557549245928842008-04-11T09:42:00.010+03:002008-12-11T01:29:28.586+02:00Referendum, ra, ra!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwvZ_6oImY-DmE6807MGH3T5_UMPx3iG0D5Cb6Oc3RZO14CAWg8-uBNznMMbiYw9VZjp7q9tBH-8jfyk1kQuhz58qgXV-M0HiMGMU0b_zHGikOuO7Nmp3kpJhHTT47ZkhB1Tbp/s1600-h/satversme+olins.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwvZ_6oImY-DmE6807MGH3T5_UMPx3iG0D5Cb6Oc3RZO14CAWg8-uBNznMMbiYw9VZjp7q9tBH-8jfyk1kQuhz58qgXV-M0HiMGMU0b_zHGikOuO7Nmp3kpJhHTT47ZkhB1Tbp/s200/satversme+olins.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5187909187618854994" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The head of the <a href="http://web.cvk.lv/pub/public/28333.html">Central Election Commission (CVK)</a> reports that ca. 213 000 persons signed in favor of amendments to the </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >Satversme,</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> Latvia's Constitution, that would make it possible for the people to initiate the dissolution of Parliament. That's </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >far</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> more than the number needed -- 149 064, a tenth of those eligible to vote in the last parliamentary elections. There may be some duplicates from those who provided notarized signatures prior to the month-long collection by CVK, but signatures collected abroad haven't been tallied yet.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">In short -- we ("the people"), and the trade unions sponsoring this signature drive, have won... or, it proves that at least 213 000 people haven't yet surrendered to nihilistic apathy, our national beast. The process ahead is tortuous, as <a href="http://spolitis.blogspot.com/">Veiko</a> says, and I won't describe it here -- but the success of this first stage should inject some more well-deserved fear into the marrow of our darkling political elite. What many care about most is their seats, of course, and they'll continue to shudder a little.</span> <span style="font-family:times new roman;"><br /><br />I must say, though, that the proposed changes are risky. As experts in the law and politics have pointed out, rallying the people to "throw the bums out" will probably always be pretty easy. The next time we choose from our 60-odd parties in a flurry of </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >kompromat, </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">slick advertising and shady financing, assuming that the people are given this power, it's possible that someone can fund a "throw the bums out" campaign the next day. In this country, smaller than many a city, "political technologies" can be employed like shots in the dark, from guns without serial numbers.</span> </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br />Still, I signed... because I trust our people -- our nation -- a lot more than I trust our so-called elite. When the Government threatens us with "chaos" -- the only response can be that the Government has long been dragging us into a half-light oozing lies and sinister lucre. As Laila Pakalniņa suggested, we -- the people -- could at least have an instrument with which to respond in extremity.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Photo: Reinis Oliņš, <a href="http://diena.lv/lat/home"><span style="font-style: italic;">Diena</span></a>.</span><br /></span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-72818963578318633632008-04-10T16:20:00.011+03:002008-12-11T01:29:28.815+02:00Rain, referendum, can sit on the ground now...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmpH79kNZYt_7ghxbZPWPYuSDj7kkpDLMZAPZr5VB-0qH-Shhq7DqiTrq0QICLG9kDM1nQn1UcCxslxiwcwXMvdyIWZ5VnPa6gSEx-Iug0wENFai0hywqcTkcE_-YscnecAA9q/s1600-h/balso-10.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmpH79kNZYt_7ghxbZPWPYuSDj7kkpDLMZAPZr5VB-0qH-Shhq7DqiTrq0QICLG9kDM1nQn1UcCxslxiwcwXMvdyIWZ5VnPa6gSEx-Iug0wENFai0hywqcTkcE_-YscnecAA9q/s200/balso-10.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5187644716417669186" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Returned through the driving rain from the dreadfully Soviet </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >Palace of Culture</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> in the </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://thepenetralium.blogspot.com/2006/07/last-night-past-what-used-to-be.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Химпосёлок,</span></a><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> where we went to sign for a referendum on changing the </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://www.li.lv/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=84&Itemid=433"><span style="font-style: italic;">Satversme,</span> Latvia's Constitution</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">, to permit the people to initiate a vote on dismissing the </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://www.saeima.lv/index_eng.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Saeima,</span></a><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> our Parliament. Veiko has details and updates </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://spolitis.blogspot.com/2008/04/still-some-way-to-go-to-referendum.html">here.</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> The last day to sign. People are standing in long lines in the rain. It's also Anitas, my mother-in-law's name's-day. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riga_Black_Balsam"><span style="font-style: italic;">Balzams.</span></a><br /><br />Thunderstorm. Can sit on the ground now. Couldn't make it to the pro-Tibet demo in Rīga. Lithuania's PM has announced that he won't attend the opening of the Olympics. Latvia's Parliament refused to consider a resolution supporting Tibet today -- 28 in favor of putting this on the agenda, 24 against, 31 abstaining. Those against led by the usual culprits, but joined by right-wingers who are in the parliamentary support group </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >and</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> the China group. Šmits and Ozoliņš, for example -- two of Latvia's most prominent homophobes, of the zoological strain. Šmits was human rights guru -- human rights don't apply to gays or Tibetans though, I guess. And Tabūns, of course -- Russophobe of the loudest mouth. </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >Всё нормально.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Photo: AFI. They stamp your passport when you sign. That's not such a nice thing if your employer thinks signing is an invocation of chaos.</span></span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-73324169233530631512008-04-07T11:33:00.008+03:002008-12-11T01:29:28.934+02:00A Couple of Epistles (W[h]ither the Nation? II)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-0MzmsZrncj1my_bSk5bMKlh7OeUo2e9cXb0vwCRUqg30BT1MvGUkIKUsl4XNClzR24CWIF_IQ7vW7avDMyJUT9jgzJEtAJXSrtqRFDFp0aq-ipHEOBn_7XS23to9UrV4iHZb/s1600-h/jaunbuve.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-0MzmsZrncj1my_bSk5bMKlh7OeUo2e9cXb0vwCRUqg30BT1MvGUkIKUsl4XNClzR24CWIF_IQ7vW7avDMyJUT9jgzJEtAJXSrtqRFDFp0aq-ipHEOBn_7XS23to9UrV4iHZb/s200/jaunbuve.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5186426858252002754" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >Extracts from two obliquely related missives I wrote today, slightly altered, posted here as part of what I hope will be a response to <a href="http://palun.blogspot.com/">Giustino's</a> question about the national malaise.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:times new roman;" >I</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">According to the Lettish Europhobes at </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://nato.lv/">nato.lv</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">, a study showed that ca. 37% of Lithuanians think independence since 1991 has been the worst period </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >in the entire history of Lithuania</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">. Whatever one thinks of surveys, lies, damned lies, etc. -- I don't think Andrius [a Lithuanian in Ireland devoted to singing the praises of the USSR] is a ghostie, primarily because I've met innumerable people who think like him, more or less. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">In Latvia, too, there are people who simply detest the direction we've taken (or is it the lack of direction). Most of these people wouldn't take the radical tack Andrius takes -- it'd usually be more like "yes the deportations were awful and so was __ and __... but now we have nothing." And one can easily step into their shoes -- health care is catastrophic, education is in the pits, the scientific base was destroyed, manufacturing is dead, prices are astronomical, corruption is rampant, etc., etc.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Direct experience </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >does</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> affect the view in a very deep way; I have only a very slight familiarity with not being able to make ends meet, but it only takes a few months for psychological devastation to set in. A little more time, and you learn to live with it. A teacher here said "in 1992 we ate potatoes and cream, in 1993, potatoes and oil, in 1994, potatoes and salt..." Meanwhile, you'd see the odd Maserati streaking down the street. You know who sat in it. I will never forget being on the beach at Majori, a purple topless jeep roaring down the water line for sheer pleasure -- make them sunbathers jump. Meanwhile, PM Birkavs was dissing the pilchard-eaters (his term). If anyone will decide anything, it'll be the elite. Who loves the elite? Does this elite deserve love? And "time, time, time, in a sort of Runic rhyme" -- how long can one be in transition? To what? The noble ideals of the Singing Revolution included an understanding of "we don't do this for ourselves as much as we do it for our children" -- but some of the people forced by this economy (and even more so -- by this society) to seek sustenance in the Emerald Isle or elsewhere have grown up in independent Latvia. We already passed the mark of how long democracy lasted (1920-1934)... soon we'll pass the mark of our entire period of independence between the wars. What do we have to show for it? (And I am not trying to detract from what we</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" > do</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> have to show for it -- I just wouldn't paint the overall picture in bright colors.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">When I was in Rīga on Friday, I had a meeting with a millionaire. He's a hardworking guy who produces real value and does a lot of things because of what they are -- substance, not easy money. His impression of where we are, the state of the nation? That people who work hard and have capabilities and talents, like himself, are totally screwed, pushed to the edges of the stage. Screwed by people with no conception of real value. We live in a credit bubble blown by thieving abstractionists who could care less about this country. And this is not a ne'er-do-well or a whiner -- he's a successful workaholic with assets galore. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:times new roman;" >II<br /></span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><br />(<span style="font-style: italic;">In response to remarks on how the Baltics and Tibet are apples and bathtubs.</span>)</span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:times new roman;" ><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">What we need is a principled foreign policy -- not only because of what we can do for Tibet, but because of what the lack of decent policies does to us. In Rīga some years ago, the Dalai Lama remarked that independence without a spiritual component is hollow. In my view, to turn around and ignore the strivings of others after basing our own strivings on principles we supposedly hold calls our grasp of these principles into question. It's crying "let me go, let me go" to a captor and the world, all the while appealing to moral right... and then, as soon as we are let go, pretending that the girl down the street isn't being gripped by a rapist -- her situation is different, we don't have the strength or resources to stand up for what's right, etc., etc. ...those are excuses, and bad ones. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Part of the </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >reason </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">we lack strength is that we don't adhere to the principles we espouse. That's what makes the "oh you are just American lackeys" litany one hears so often so painful -- it's close to the mark. What we </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >really </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">don't have the strength for is </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >Realpolitik. </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">There are also real benefits to taking a moral stand -- Denmark's determination re the caricatures, for example, resulted in a boycott by the Arab world... but admiration for Denmark in the West actually caused a rise in Danish exports. We seem never to pursue many of our actual strengths -- ecology, devotion to liberty, the sympathies that exist between small nations. C (whatever happened to him?) had the right idea with his stork branding, basically -- besides our environment (Latvia is </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >mostly</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> forest) we could become known for our decency. That would mean taking a risk and taking the lead, though -- something we can't seem to do in </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >anything. </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Oh my, Edward Lucas wrote an article, so PM Godmanis has suddenly discovered that Latvia has things in common with Tibet... or is it that Angela Merkel spoke? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The main effect is on </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >us. </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">One of the roots of apathy and nihilism here is that most people realize that we're dissembling about everything. High-minded speeches about freedom ring hollow if they're so selectively conditional -- Adamkus and VVF could wax eloquent about liberating Iraq, but couldn't muster clear condemnations of other criminal regimes. We suck up to lovely democracies like those in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Lithuania bends over for lucre with regard to Kosovo, too -- see Ruslanas at <a href="http://irzikevicius.wordpress.com/2008/04/03/lithuania-postponed-the-kosovo-independence-recognition-its-dangerous-to-work-on-april-1/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Lituanica</span></a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">I took the photograph of the neighbors' house a few years ago.</span><br /></span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-437955919957602392008-04-01T12:39:00.007+03:002008-04-01T14:31:43.429+03:00W(h)ither the Nation?<object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/WDhbvfvMd34&hl=en"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WDhbvfvMd34&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Returning to this question -- keeps coming up, even from left field. "Think about Tibet as Latvia, with very tall mountains," Professor Donald S. Lopez writes at </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/china_democracy_power/how_to_think_about_tibet">openDemocracy</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The song above was an anthem of the national revival in the 19th C. The concept of the Castle of Light -- of an enlightened people. To prove to the Baltic Germans and the Russian Empire -- and to ourselves -- that we, too, are a nation (and a <span style="font-style: italic;">Kulturvolk</span>), with a right to a seat at the table of nations.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The project of building a National Library </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://www.citypaper.ee/index.php?page_catalog=the_castle_of_light/">takes that name</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The video below is of Ieva Akurātere singing what became one of the anthems of the </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_National_Awakening">Third Awakening</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">. </span><br /><br /><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BnjZVVgqqEU&hl=en"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/BnjZVVgqqEU&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-32456600174610826332008-03-25T08:48:00.006+02:002008-12-11T01:29:29.221+02:00Прибой<a style="font-family: times new roman;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsZ8Ng0hz3BYg0EGfsfLIHsXPeMLCjSjJMvNJfX0VhSNyXA7na4gg2Gk4IOhO9ZtQlCTPdqi4QQiUabqQ1FOdCSEsTgWNkSWDPqztt4T75_GngEWeYZrqviNK0Y42aseXjwXTE/s1600-h/5_lielais.4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsZ8Ng0hz3BYg0EGfsfLIHsXPeMLCjSjJMvNJfX0VhSNyXA7na4gg2Gk4IOhO9ZtQlCTPdqi4QQiUabqQ1FOdCSEsTgWNkSWDPqztt4T75_GngEWeYZrqviNK0Y42aseXjwXTE/s320/5_lielais.4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5181568850808268194" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Flags with black tassels hang in heavy snow today, fifty-nine years after Operation </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >Прибой</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> -- "the Surf." The document at left is a report by Major General Spasenko, dated 31 March 1949, on the success of the operation: from 25 March to 30 March 1949, 30 629 families were deported from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania -- a total of 90 844 persons, comprising 24 630 men, 40 688 women, and 25 526 children. </span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://www.itl.rtu.lv/LVA/25marts/Lapa_11/Kartes%20palielinajums.JPG">This map</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> shows the approximate percentages of the population deported from Latvia by locality -- the darkest areas are civil parishes that lost more than 10% of their inhabitants, the red areas 6-10%. The yellow areas lost less than 2%. Roughly, the areas that lost a higher share were the most Latvian areas, ethnically -- it's not possible to determine the proportions of deportees in relation to the total population by ethnicity in 1949 (as can be done with regard to <a href="http://lettonica.blogspot.com/2007/06/fourteenth-of-june.html">the 1941 deportations</a>) because there was no census during the period of drastic Russification (there is no data between the census taken during the German occupation, in 1943, and the census of 1959). </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">In sheer numbers, however, 41 084 ethnic Latvians, 772 Russians, 4 Germans, and 1114 others were deported in 1949. By the census of 1959, </span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">ethnic Latvians made up only 62% of the population</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">. The percentage of ethnic Russians had meanwhile risen to 26,6% (556 400 ethnic Russians in 1959; there were 207 003 ethnic Russians in Latvia in 1943, about eight out of ten of them in the eastern region of Latgallia -- mostly yellow on the map).</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The 1949 deportations ostensibly targeted "</span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak">kulaks</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> and nationalist families." One was a member of a "nationalist family" if a relative had resisted the occupation, for example. Kulaks -- "the rural bourgeoisie" -- were defined using prewar statistics, despite the fact that many people had lost their land or livestock in the intervening decade. Some supposed kulaks possessed no land at all. Complaints from the Gulag were met with a standard NKVD response: "you (your mother or your father) possessed a kulak farm in 1939."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">In hundreds of cases, children were deported alone, without their families. When they reached sixteen years of age, they were assigned the status of deportees. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The status of those not defined as kulaks was shifted retroactively with no charges being brought -- in the summer of 1949, special sessions simply declared their permanent resettlement and the confiscation of their property, without trial.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">From 1955, people were allowed to return to Latvia, but incrementally -- </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://vip.latnet.lv/lpra/spr_sagadish.htm">Jānis Riekstiņš</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">, Senior Researcher at Latvia's National Archives, compares the process to chopping off the tail of a dog, piece by piece. About 12% of the deportees had perished. Those who returned were required to sign documents agreeing not to return to their place of residence.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Latvia's relative birthrate, which had been ca. 75% prior to the occupation, had fallen to 40-45% in 1946 and never recovered.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The map is from <a href="http://www.itl.rtu.lv/LVA/25marts/8.htm">this site</a>, which includes facsimiles of other documents and information on ongoing research (in Latvian).</span></span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23583020.post-74124530399531269072008-03-21T12:16:00.017+02:002008-12-11T01:29:29.450+02:00The Rite of Spring<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgukNyBYsdTjXLEeNWndSffjYyOfLmo6Q1JHYZVEG8qtNLDJ-8Xur5o6IG6p9cZrag6MjhJX8OrbToaNOSCUH9wCfJVeoSeShyoPNteBEPhfbzojKRgYEh0HeQazdDkAVIttzWU/s1600-h/roerich.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgukNyBYsdTjXLEeNWndSffjYyOfLmo6Q1JHYZVEG8qtNLDJ-8Xur5o6IG6p9cZrag6MjhJX8OrbToaNOSCUH9wCfJVeoSeShyoPNteBEPhfbzojKRgYEh0HeQazdDkAVIttzWU/s200/roerich.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5180137814949881234" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">I did not grok Stravinsky’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Le Sacre du printemps</span> (performed <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXVuVQuMvgA">here</a> by Pina Bausch’s Wuppertal Dance Theater) until I experienced Latvia’s spring in primitive austerity, in the early 1990s. Our dachas have no plumbing and no electricity. Before becoming a slave to cyberspace, subject to the elements more directly than I was ever before or since, I understood more of what the season means here – after stewing in boreal darkness all winter (something I still can’t deal with very well – it’s <span style="font-style: italic;">very</span> dark here for a <span style="font-style: italic;">very</span> long time), the augurs of spring take on an explicitly magical quality, whether that is the feeble sun gaining enough strength to warm the cheek again or returning to an angle where it strikes the wall with a shaft of light for the first time in months, longer each day, palpably so, birdsong again as snows alternate with thaws, the blades of the tulips, the crocus, and then the erotic fury of flowering trees and lilacs and blossoming roses as we climb toward what is still the main holiday here, summer solstice (even <span style="font-style: italic;">Līgo</span> night already tinged with the knowledge that the days are getting shorter). </span> <span style="font-family:times new roman;"><br /><br />These coming months are so lovely that they can even seem illusory (<a href="http://www.gramata21.lv/users/bels_alberts/">Alberts Bels’</a> story in which the trees haul up their green sails in summer, whilst humans raise their illusions?), like the mystical twilight of woodlands in June, something I first saw in Sweden – the pale woods of puberty making sense of childhood dances in which the girls joined hands and the boys passed beneath the arches of their arms: <span style="font-style: italic;">Caur sidraba birzi gāju, ne zariņu nenolauzu</span> – "Through a silver bosk I went, without breaking off a single twig."<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">I’ve begun translating a book about Latvia’s woodlands by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imants_Ziedonis">Imants Ziedonis</a>, one of our finest poets, and his son Rimants Ziedonis, a remarkable writer in his own right – the book is a guide to our forests, suffused with history and mythology (nearly half of Latvia is forested).<br /><br /></span> <span style="font-family:times new roman;">Over coffee, I skimmed the news and read <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/20/tibet.china">Timothy Garton Ash’s commentary</a> about Tibet in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Guardian</span>. Many of the comments to Ash’s sober piece could act as emetics, but the one that struck me this morning included this tidbit: "Do not limit Tibetans to Tibet. Minorities in reality have been all over China. <span style="font-style: italic;">Stop talking about Tibet needing its own place.</span> Migration is a natural process for every single ethnicity in the world. I personally enjoy being a Mongolian out in the U.S. We are nomads. So are Tibetans. Even the Tibetans and Mongols out here in the West need our identities. <span style="font-style: italic;">So the world is our home</span>, but we will never ever lose the feeling of our own ethnicity, no matter what language we speak, what food we eat, what religion we decide to follow." (Italics mine.)<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">That is a sublime condensation of a take on ethnos – or is it really nationality? – that not a few people actually hold to, or have found. Perhaps we'll all be metrosexuals in the next life?<br /><br />Identity is indeed complex, and few places on earth are ethnically homogeneous. But the idiotic pretense that there are not basic bonds between peoples and their languages, lands, beliefs, cultures and even cuisines is especially illuminating when taken to the extreme this commentator takes it to. A gutted identity would then act as a marker – why and how? </span> <span style="font-family:times new roman;">Wherefore?<br /><br />As I mentioned in <a href="http://lettonica.blogspot.com/2007/10/vair-realism.html">an earlier post</a>, ecology and nationalism in Latvia long ago joined hands. Politically and culturally, <a href="http://lettonica.blogspot.com/2007/02/borderlands-ii.html">land was the major mover</a> – the tens of thousands of landless Latvians, casualties of Tsarist policies, were the Bolshevik base -- whilst the agrarian reform brought about by Social Democrats and the Farmers’ Union was the basis for Latvia’s stability between the wars. After centuries of dispossession, a large swathe of the population got something to call its own. Whether this was economically brilliant or not is actually secondary; the redistributed lands were returned to those who owned them prior to 1940 in the early 1990s. </span> <span style="font-family:times new roman;"><br /><br />Rimants Ziedonis wrote re <span style="font-style: italic;">SIA </span>Latviya<span style="font-style: italic;"> & Co.</span> long ago – he railed against the Russian-dominated consumerist nightmare that is dragging us into a tawdry globalist Europe, in essence. When Alvis Hermanis, our foremost genius of the theater,<a href="http://www.vdiena.lv/lat/politics/hot/hermanis_uz_triju_zvaigzhnju_ordenja_pasniegshanas_ceremoniju_nav_gaajis_principiaalu_apsveerumu_deelj"> refuses to accept this country’s highest decoration</a>, the Order of Three Stars, we should take heed: "Everything has been turned upside down at an ethical level. I do not doubt that Latvia will reach the standard of living of 'old' Europe sooner or later – but does that mean we have to lose all of those spiritual goods along the way? I think that this is very, very dangerous."<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Alvis Hermanis declared the Republic of Latvia to be morally bankrupt. I’ll try to be more kind and say that we’re on the verge of bankrupcy. This is mostly because the political elite lives in a world of its own.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The Tibet Support Group (founded by MP Juris Sinka, who died in Lhasa -- a rightist with moral stature that dwarfs that of most of the MPs in this Parliament) is still collecting signatures for its letter to China... does it really take so long to get those of your own caucus among "the hundred wise ones" in that spiffy room to sign?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Where is our land now? Who owns it? How does one make the leap from a command economy into the ravages of an insane globalization -- one that is obviously amok in the West? Why should one apply what is a failure in the West to our country? How can one possibly preserve moral values if neoliberalism has been essentially murderous? Why does "reentering Europe" seem to entail dropping most everything that is ours? </span> <span style="font-family:times new roman;"><br /><br />Another take is to pretend that one cannot discuss these things because Latvians were so downtrodden and deprived that one can’t (morally) object to so-called "Western civilization," as in consumerism, filthy lucre, and vacuum cleaners for all.<br /><br />And so again to the spring – this just isn’t so. There is no objective reason for Latvia’s repetition of the mistakes made in the "free world." The real core of the Third Awakening was not about getting plasma TVs and Humvees. It was about freedom in its deepest sense, which is what Latvian nationalism in a deeper sense has <span style="font-style: italic;">always</span> looked to – <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mi%C4%B7elis_Valters">Miķelis Valters</a> mostly gets into Kant and Hegel, not kickshaws. </span> <span style="font-family:times new roman;">The fundament of the Republic was rural. It remains so – and this applies even to the city.<br /><br />Gary Peach for AP: "Maija Krumina [<span style="font-style: italic;">sic</span>], who lives in a village near Valmiera in northern Latvia, said rural residents have switched to survival mode. Many have stopped going to stores and instead are relying on their own livestock for milk, eggs and pork. What they don't consume, they sell to one another.</span> "<br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Back in the early 1990s, a few students would supply the entire dormitory with food – the students would take up a collection, getting bus tickets for those with relatives who actually produced food. Real food from real people – unimaginable these days, isn’t it?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Words always covered everything, lovingly, precisely, poetically – which words have we lost? How do you diddle the clitoris of spring?</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">The pic is by </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Roerich">Nikolai Roerich,</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> a set design for Stravinsky's </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;" >Весна священная</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;">; Roerich is </span><a style="font-family: times new roman;" href="http://www.gorod.lv/news/22418/riga_roerich_s_city">intimately tied to Riga</a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">, and one of the most beautiful places in Latvia is the Roerich room at the National Museum of Art. For information on the ties between Tibet and Latvia, see <span style="font-style: italic;">"</span></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman;font-size:85%;" ><a href="http://zagarins.net/sveiks/2001/062801tibet.htm">Tibeta – tās problēmas vēsturiskā izcelšanās, rezonanse starptautiskajā sabiedrībā un Latvijas – Tibetas saikne.</a>”</span>Pēteris Cedriņšhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14427626605836088551noreply@blogger.com2