Heroes' Remembrance Day

Tomorrow night, 23 June, Latvia's most important holiday begins -- midsummer, which leads to a slight leap in our dreary birthrate nine months later. Līgo, līgo! (Or, here among the Latgallians -- Ļeigū, ļeigū!). Solstice singing is of the essence, so if you cannot be in Latvia or join Latvians abroad for the celebration, I recommend Radio Oira for authentic folk music and Latgolys Radeja for the sounds of this region -- both are excellent and available online. Don't forget the beer!

Tomorrow is also Võidupüha for our northern neighbors, the Estonians -- Victory Day. The very same victory, which took place in 1919 near the Latvian town of Cēsis (Võnnu in Estonian, Wenden in German), is marked in Latvia today as Varoņu piemiņas diena, Heroes' Remembrance Day. It's not an official holiday, in part because today is also the anniversary of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Provoked by Giustino's post on "Latvianization," I decided to read and reread various memoirs and histories about the Battles of Cēsis (they're plural in Latvian because there were actually two) and that turbulent period, from the relevant parts of Edgars Andersons' mammoth history of Latvia 1914-1920 to Uldis Ģērmanis' popular history (or collection of fairy tales, the unkind would say) -- from Balodis, Butulis, Bīlmanis... Klāns, Grimm, von Rauch and Gen. Mārtiņš Peniķis to various letters and documents and reminiscences like those of the great Social Democrat Brūno Kalniņš. Needless to say, I got distracted and dislogotracted (pace George Quasha)... I also ended up meditating upon how different physical books are from a hypertext when it comes to such sensual digging and the weighing of different views. It's not just that their physicality is a spur to the art of memory -- it's a matter of form and depth, lost to most who rely upon Google. Whether in an officer's leatherbound memoirs or that cheaply printed Gedenkbuch published in 1939, Die Baltische Landeswehr, "time picks up the savor of the merely actual" (pace Gerrit Lansing).

I discovered yesterday evening that the copy of Vor den Toren Europas 1918-1920 I inherited from my father still bears the chthonic odor of the basement where he would read into the night, despite his having died more than three decades ago. In Stanley Page's tendentious The Formation of the Baltic States, the errors and ambiguities are lightly underlined in pencil. The Gedenkbuch that collects articles from the Landeswehrverein was printed in Rīga just before the Baltic Germans who authored it were coercively resettled. Old letters that served as bookmarks float to the floor. It isn't just that the Internet when it comes to Latvian history is as poor as a serf of the Fietinghofs (that expression refers to the barons of Alūksne, who treated their animals better than they did the peasantry) -- it's how one dances with books, roving and delving, reshelving, touching the finger to the tongue. Though I adore and am addicted to the Internet -- I would rather my mind resembled a library than looked like cyberspace. "Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season"... but what's drier than the Web? The ink was never even wet. Cyberspace isn't only everywhere -- it's nowhere.

The first photograph, filched from a fine gallery of images that the Estonian Embassy offers online, was taken in the Cēsis Museum of History and Art. It's a telegram published by Līdums, printed in Valka -- Walk in German, the town was once the seat of the Livonian Landtag and became the cradle of Latvian independence during the First World War, when refugees arriving from other parts of Latvia included many of the nationalists' leading intellectuals. The Provisional National Council was formed there on 17 November 1917. Taken by the Germans in February 1918 and by the Bolsheviks in December 1918 (Fabriciuss, a leading Red: "We will not surrender Valka -- we'll build barricades out of bourgeois bodies"), Valka was liberated by the Estonians and Finnish volunteers on Candlemas 1919. In July 1920, the town was divided between Estonia and Latvia by the British Envoy, Col. S.G. Tallents, and so it remains today -- Valga in Estonia, pop. 14 055, and Valka in Latvia, pop. 6547. An interesting article on the peculiarities of the division can be found here.

Confused? Okay, a bit of background. The telegram Līdums published is an announcement of the proclamation of the independence of the Republic of Latvia, which took place on 18 November 1918. Estonia, which had not suffered in the First World War to the degree Latvia had (Latvia had lost 37% of its population, for example), had declared the Republic of Estonia independent on 24 February -- German troops entered Tallinn the next day, however. After Germany's defeat in November, Estonia was invaded by the Bolsheviks, and so the Estonian War of Independence began. As the Wikipedia article says: "By the end of February 1919, the Red Army had been expelled from all of the territory of Estonia. Estonian troops also advanced into northern Latvia."

The situation in Latvia was far more complex (isn't it always?). The Estonians, with the support of the British, were able to repel the Bolsheviks at the gates of Tallinn. Latvia in 1919, however, had three governments. By May, Kārlis Ulmanis' provisional government was confined to a ship, the steamer Saratov, anchored off Liepāja under British protection. The poet, fabulist and polemicist Kārlis Skalbe called it "the Republic on the Water." Most of Latvia was in the hands of Pēteris Stučka's Bolsheviks. The Baltic German Landeswehr and the Iron Division installed a puppet government under the pastor and writer Andrievs Niedra. General Rüdiger von der Goltz had a grand dream -- destroying the Reds, restoring the old feudal order, and starting World War One all over again, with the help of a monarchist Russia and its loyal Germans. His "last battle against England," attended by bizarre castles in the darkling clouds like the United Baltic Duchy, ended in a rout.

Tossing open books upon the tables, bed, and window-sills, it strikes me again how little we have that's written sine ira et studio. But then that's juicy -- Wikipedia's fabled NPOV will give you no sense of those camps in that time. Books do, from the Fraktur to the futurism of the early Bolsheviks. The thin paper during the wars, the nods of approval from the authorities overseeing the displaced persons camps (DPs were called dieva putniņi by Letts -- "the little birds of god"). My parents sailed to America with only four crates of belongings -- three contained my father's books. These and the volumes he collected in exile until his death in 1976 sailed back to the fatherland he never saw free again (after my mother's death four and a half years ago). Most were printed abroad, when historiography in Latvia was the drone of Stalin's helpers. Balodis' history, originally written in Swedish, was published by a theater during the Awakening here. Spekke's Outline, still the most elegant overview of Latvian history in English, has just been reissued by Jumava. Habent sua fata libelli, it was written in Italian in Rome 1940-43, after the Russians seized our Embassy; the English edition first appeared in Stockholm in 1951, all of this work done by desperate men and women relying upon the offices of such friends as Alfred C. Bossom, MP, Chairman of the Anglo-Baltic Society in London, for funds. The pages of my edition are brittle, dark yellow. Paper little better than newsprint. People without a country, attempting to rescue its history.

The wheel could not be turned back, so many writing of the barons and the reactionaries say -- no, it couldn't be and wasn't, but do we still think of this wheel as rolling towards progress, leaving a line? To General von der Goltz, most every Latvian was a Bolshevik (just as every Balt is a "Fascist" to many a Russian today) -- the center-right American-educated Ulmanis, who would later be dictator, was a "half-Bolshevik." The Reverend Niedra would end up the pastor of a German congregation in East Prussia, now Kaliningrad oblast', writing his Memoirs of a Traitor to the Nation -- a painful position for a man who was essentially a Latvian patriot (he did return to Rīga to die, during the Nazi phase of the occupation). Stučka would end up giving birth to that fabulous animal called Soviet law (Vishinsky: "I do not believe in abstract justice").

Spekke includes reviews of his Outline in his memoirs (memoirs that studiously avoid a discussion of Ulmanis' dictatorship, when he was the Ambassador to Fascist Italy) -- a Swedish reviewer (praising his book vs. Bīlmanis', published at about the same time) observed that it wasn't the Latvians who defeated the Bolsheviks. If we look at the victory that we celebrate today, that would seem to be quite true. Major General Ernst Põdder defeated the Germans, local and imperial, with 5990 infantrymen, 1430 of them Latvians (N.B., there are other figures, but I'm the furthest thing from a military historian there is, and such detail is outside my purview), 22 cannon and 2 armored trains. Many of the Latvians were lightly armed barefoot schoolboys. General Balodis stood aside -- he was in the precarious position of remaining loyal to Ulmanis whilst under the command of the Landeswehr. Ulmanis' primary co-conspirator in the 1934 Putsch, he had Colonel Jansons' ultimatum (threatening to consider his troops, the core of the infant Latvian National Army, allies of the Germans) excised from history books and cancelled Heroes' Remembrance Day.

The second photograph in this post is of the Victory Monument in Cēsis. To some of the Latvians who mark this day (our flag seems solitary here in Dvinsk), this is the day when the bad dreams of the Baltic German nobility were finally defeated. Seven hundred years of slavery came to a bloody end. Such oversimplifications! The Latvian Institute: "This victory is traditionally regarded as the triumph of the idea of an independent Latvian state over the principles of power embodied by the Germans in the Baltic." In reality, von der Goltz and his minions did not give up -- they would regroup, and the worst elements of the Russian Empire and the Baltic German nobility would beseige Rīga. They would be defeated on Bear Slayer's Day, 11 November 1919 -- and by then it really was the Latvian people doing the fighting, left and right. The nation was finally born.

How was it possible for the Germans and Russian Whites to regroup? Well, the third photograph is of the Estonian School in Jugla, a Rīga suburb, where the Strazdumuiža Truce was signed. The Estonians, with British and Latvian help, routed the Germans today, eighty-eight years ago. This wasn't in the interests of the Entente, however. Essentially, the Allies (and especially the Americans) were not interested in the Wilsonian self-determination of peoples -- they were interested in using the Baltics and the Baltic Germans to defeat the Bolsheviks and restore stability, i.e., the Tsarist Empire. Though the Estonians could have captured Rīga, they were prevented from doing so by the British, French, and Americans.

The Latvian schoolboys, some of them still barefoot, entered Rīga, led by the principal officers riding their pale horses. The Saratov soon sailed for the capital. The Landeswehr was placed under the command of the man who would become Alexander of Tunis. The barefoot boys initiated no terror in a city that had suffered both the Red and the White horrors, bodies left to rot in the streets for a sign. When the church-bells rang in November, the sweet dreams of the idealists came true, and even if they soon soured -- what we remember today was glorious then.

Suhkrutükk commented chez Justin: "Baltic solidarity is a very new thing. It's mainly with the roots going to [the 1980s]." But that is pure bullshit. The cradle of Latvian nationalism, what we call Māmuļa, was born of the organization, let's call it an early NGO, that provided Estonian famine victims with relief, in 1868 -- Palīdzības biedrība priekš trūkumu ciezdamiem igauņiem: "The Society to Aid Estonians Suffering from Destitution." The contract between the Estonians and the Latvians in our wars of liberation was the enduring one.

With the Lithuanians, we have a Baltic Unity Day -- the anniversary of the Battle of Saule. Today and tomorrow are, or ought to be, the time we mark the historic intimacy of Letts and Esths, not a few of whom were in the same country for a very long time -- Livonia. Here you can watch a video of a demonstration in support of Estonia, 8 May 2007. It would be sad and shabby to leave our ties to the far right, methinks. It didn't start out that way, and it isn't that way. But sometimes, clearing the books off the bed, I think we leave our entire history to the right. Maybe even our entire being. 'Tis tragic.

The old photograph of the Victory Monument is from the collection of Jānis Bahmanis. Like most monuments in Latvia and Estonia, the column was destroyed by the Russians -- who now complain about the supposed desecration of their monuments, which doesn't take place. The Cēsis monument has since been re-erected.

"Glory to the Imperial Behemoth!"

Darkness at Noon ran some photographs and descriptions of an anti-Estonian demonstration in Moscow, whence the slogan I am taking for the title of this post. Like most of Europe, Latvia marks the defeat of Nazism on 8 May. Russia celebrates the Soviet victory over fascism a day later, on 9 May (a day that is marked as Europe Day in Latvia, celebrating the Schuman Declaration of 1950 and not Stalin's victory five years before). The difference in dates is not trivial -- rather, the difference is part of what Oleg Ken of the European University in Saint Petersburg, Russia, describes as "un lourd héritage":

Stalin's strategy of political technology was that of designing the historical memory of this and next generations by a preventive purge of the history itself. [...] By cutting corners and patching up some lapses, he established control over the memory of future generations. Of course, this could not be attained without the collaboration of Russian society, a willing hostage of its own superiority complex.

Following the events in neighboring Estonia in the media and the blogosphere, one cannot help but be struck by the accuracy of Dr. Hist. Ken's analysis if we're to apply it to the flood of propaganda being poured upon Tallinn. Ken writes of "the theocratic dimension of the Soviet system." In Russia, the language never changed. Vladimir Socor, writing at Eurasia Daily Monitor:

Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov denounces Estonia for “spitting on these values” [evidently Soviet ones] and behaving “disgustingly.” The Duma’s International Affairs Committee chairman, Konstantin Kosachev, accuses Estonia of “barbarism” and “lying.” These and other Russian officials mix the bullying language with the familiar neo-Soviet mysticism that defends “sacred” objects [the Bronze Soldier as a substitute icon] against “blasphemy” [by Estonian unbelievers in this case]. Those two key words are recurrent in Russian officials’ statements during this crisis.

Though the dependably insightful Socor and some others (especially Shawn Macomber at The American Spectator) sympathize with the Estonian position, it's not only the homines sovietici and their offspring, primarily Russophones (whether extremists, nationalists, or even liberals like Yevgenia Albats [link in Russian]) who perpetuate a false view of history -- a falsified view, to be exact. The attempt to "balance" Stalinist distortions with historical fact, for instance in the style of Deutsche Welle, doesn't lead to balance at all, and the typical Western European (please forgive me for still using that term -- unfortunately, for Latvia [but less so for Estonia], "Eastern European" still fits) reaction to recent events tends to include a nod to "respect" for "the Russians' view," despite the fact that said view is very often infected with said lamentable, perverse, and intentional distortions.

Again, look at the language that's once again au courant. Not only did Estonia "desecrate" a tomb (by moving unmarked graves from a well-trodden bus stop to a cemetery following identification of the bodies and a church service?) -- Estonia is "rehabilitating fascism." Just for fun, I perused my collection of old Soviet history books this morning. I'm afraid that many of those who lacked the sacred privilege of indoctrination don't realize that "fascist" in the Soviet lexicon, and in the Russian lexicon today, is practically a synonym for "Balt." It might be difficult for the uninitiated Western European to distinguish between the broad terms that make Soviet historiography unreadable in their density -- "bourgeois," "anti-Soviet," "enemy of the people," "fascist." Maybe that's because the definitions are indeed indistinct. Let's move to verbs -- "rewriting" history. "Revising" the outcome of the War. Excuse me, but should we, in some perverse allegiance to the "theocratic dimension of the Soviet system," stick to Stalin's scriptures? The outcome of the War has been revised, Gott sei dank. The outcome of the War was the enslavement of half of Europe by forces directed from the Kremlin, where Lt. Col. Putin, a proud KGBeshnik who thinks the collapse of the USSR was "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th C" rules today -- perhaps we should also pretend to see the fall of the Soviet Union as a catastrophe, here in the Baltics?

On 8 May, I always read Pēteris Ērmanis' poem about the rejoicing when the War ended -- driven into exile (like my parents -- my mother studied under him in a displaced persons camp), he wept; he saw and felt how happy everyone in Prague and The Hague and Paris was that the horrors brought about by Hitler and Stalin had ended, but he knew all too well that the horrors had only begun for his nation.

Many of the Russian propaganda sites, e.g., Komsomolskaya Pravda, stick to the scriptures -- indeed, scripture says that "the Great Patriotic War" started in 1941. Most of the monuments foisted upon us, like one of the memorials here in Daugavpils, bear that date as a beginning, graven in granite -- after all, according to that view, we were "bourgeois" and/or "fascists" until we "voluntarily" joined the Soviet Union. In reality (yes, reality) the Baltic states went to hell when Stalin colluded with his friend Hitler, 22 months before. The gruesome photographs I chose to illustrate this post are from Masļenki -- details here.

Unlike Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia was never defeated. It fell apart due to rot, and so Russia has never faced its history -- unlike Germany, it wasn't forced to. Most of the ethnic Russians in Latvia, like Russia the state, deny the occupation. The idea that we could "let bygones be bygones" doesn't hold water -- Giustino, when he wrote "How do they not know that their former prime minister Jaan Tõnisson was most likely executed by NKVD in 1941?" was sadly prophetic -- rioting Russophones in Estonia tried to torch a Tõnisson statue last week. The feeble crucifix erected at Masļenki was also set afire some time ago -- the location is now in Russia, and Latvia is about to legitimize that theft.

The illustrious analyst Atis Lejiņš called the day when the Latvian Parliament failed to produce a resolution supporting Estonia the darkest day in the history of our restored independence. It didn't stop there -- even the Writers' Union, once a cradle of the Awakening, failed to adopt such a declaration -- the poetess submitting the resolution, Margita Gūtmane (who heavily influenced me by her writing from adolescence), was derided as "a foreigner" (though she repatriated long ago), and Estonians were called, derisively, "Scandinavians" (this is, I suppose, what Ilves gets back for the nasty comments he made anent Baltic unity some time ago). I guess we're too busy selling out to care about our northern neighbor. Or -- not we but our Government. The film director Laila Pakalniņa read our Prime Minister's words over and over again -- we would like to be as sovereign as, asking whether this was a complex Fenno-Ugric grammatical form or recognition of the fact that we really aren't sovereign... her conclusion was that we could at least support Estonia's sovereignty, though we lack it and though Russia is displeased with its breadth and depth.

So here we are. Some are predicting a televized rebellion on "Victory Day." I think it deeply regrettable that there's so much blasphemy around -- do please forgive me for blaspheming the blasphemers! Russians, and the many others (many Balts included) whose loved ones died in the fight against Nazism, have every right -- and indeed the obligation -- to mourn and respect the sacrifices of their soldiers. The same rights and obligations that Balts (some Russians included) have to mourn the sacrifices of those who served in the Latvian and Estonian Legions in their fight against Bolshevism. What nobody has a right to do is to glorify the murderous imperial behemoth, be it Hitlerite or Stalinist. There is nothing sacred about the falsification of history.