"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.

In Extremis

Graffiti similar to the graffito in the photograph above, taken in Bread Street in Daugavpils but reportedly scrawled in other strategic locations (across from the Russian Consulate and the Russian House), was seized upon by the usual propagandists as an indication of a problem with supposedly renascent "Latvian fascism" prior to October's parliamentary elections. (Translation of the writing on the wall: Russians! Latvia -- for Latvians.) So, whilst the muse that ought to have made me write reflections on the elections avoided my invocations last fall (what kind of Latvia blog is this, if there wasn't even an assessment of that insipid poll and its predictable result?), I began some brief musings on extremes and extremists instead.
By the time I first heard about the "fascist graffiti" (not a little of which is within a "bull's spitting distance" from my home, as I interpret that ancient Lettish measure), it had been removed. This second graffito, though, has been around the corner for years -- it says "Stalin" (in Cyrillic script), the "A" circled in the customary symbol for anarchism (how one could try to reconcile Stalinism with anarchism is... beyond my scope). I actually learned about the "fascist" scrawls in the foreign media; I never saw them nor heard about them from locals, so quickly were most of them removed. When I went to take the snapshot of "Stalin" at the request of my friend Dmitry, a Latvian Russian who has long lived in Nottingham, I finally encountered the example on the red brick wall.

Obviously, it only takes one juvenile delinquent (whatever his or her physical age) with a can of spray paint to create this sort of ruckus. "By any standard, extremism in Latvia has been quite weak," Nils Muižnieks (one of the foremost experts on human rights in this country) noted five years ago in his overview of these sinister sports. The idea that there could be a significant movement devoted to Russian-bashing in a rather harmoniously multicultural city where ethnic Latvians make up only about a fifth of the population and Russian is overwhelmingly the lingua franca is quite simply ludicrous to anybody who knows this town.

But this is really about resonance and perception, isn't it? We're quite accustomed to an annual scandal on March 16th, when a few surviving veterans of the Latvian Legion commemorate the sacrifices of Latvians who served in the Waffen-SS during the Second World War (it should be noted that not only ethnic Letts did so, by the way -- for those who read Latvian or Russian, there is an article entitled "Latvia's Russians on Hitler's Side in the Battle Against Bolshevism" available here), most of them forcibly (and illegally) conscripted. The former Legionnaires, who never had any sympathy for Nazism and try to go about their memorial services solemnly, are lately outnumbered by loud Russophone radicals (including even Cossacks) and young Lettish extremists. Last year, in what many saw as a sign of post-Soviet repression, the Freedom Monument was fenced off to prevent clashes -- this year, five groups of radically different persuasions have received permission to gather (others, who didn't apply for permits, might also have a go at it -- that would include the National Bolsheviks who painted "Stalin" on the gray wall above).

March 16th is marked because it was the one occasion when both Latvian divisions fought side by side against the Soviets, in the Ostrov sector of the Eastern Front -- otherwise, the Germans were careful to keep the Latvians apart. Not an official day of rememberance (in fact, the President advised true patriots to stay at home), it is nonetheless the focus not only of ragtag radical groups on both sides of the fence -- it is an annual public relations débâcle diligently amplified by Moscow. The Latvian foreign policy expert Atis Lejiņš wrote:

March 16 is a repeated opportunity for certain circles that cannot reconcile themselves with Latvia’s regained independence and a free Latvia’s and Russia’s political relations. We are too independent. An opportunity like March 16 to avenge Latvia for regaining independence is too good to pass by.

Why are we giving our enemy this opportunity? Is it because we simply aren’t politically wise enough, or is it because something foul remains from the Nazi occupation, which we don’t want to admit to as candidly as we have to the Soviet occupation? Or is it, after all, that an evil root is hidden in 1939 and a year later, when we surrendered without even the smallest display of resistance?

Despite being habituated to the vagaries of a very small and complex country's public image abroad, against a background of ignorance and well-oiled spin (not only with regard to Latvia and the Baltics, but to all of Eastern Europe), I still suffer from bouts of nausea (most recently after reading Konstantin Kosachev's Guardian piece). As Andrew Ezergailis, the primary historian of the Holocaust in Latvia, noted recently in a diffuse debate about these topics at Latvians Online:

For example, why is it that after the smoke of WWII has cleared, or should have cleared, there are numerous well educated and clever people who think that the people who lived between Germany and Russia, those people who were conquered, economically exploited, disarmed (yes! disarmed), deported, and murdered by the million, by either or both of the imperial powers, end up being considered the real murderers and evildoers of the Twentieth Century. My emphases is on them rather than us, although I am fully aware that in this situation there is a risk of confusing object with subject. I have come to suspect this absurdity happened because the rhetoric and sources of historical texts, the Holocaust in particular, have been in the hands of both imperial powers. I have also come to conclude that it was the Nazi who blessed us with the most ingratiating line. It penetrated the minds of the victors and the vanquished, the victims and the torturers, the devils and the angels.

As can be seen from some of the comments on Kosachev's piece, ideology also helps to blind many to the truth about our history. George Galloway still has a following, after all. Asked if his position was that of the "Stalinist left," Galloway said: "I wouldn't define it that way because of the pejoratives loaded around it; that would be making a rod for your own back. If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life."

Alina Lebedeva, who brought Daugavpils fifteen minutes of fame by whacking Prince Charles with a carnation, found adulation from that end of the spectrum in "Old Europe." When I spoke to her, she professed strong admiration for Stalin ("he made Russia great") and for Eduard Limonov's spree with Radovan Karadžić, when the National Bolshevik leader fired a sniper rifle into Sarajevo (quoth Alina: "he was defending the Slavs"). I'm used to the broad definition of "fascist" many homines sovietici brandish (my friend Dmitry, for instance, was called a "fascist" for resisting the Soviet draft), but we're now in a world where part of the left defines itself only by its anti-Americanism. Not only is the unknown or misunderstood modern history of Latvia cause for the demonization of our country in certain quarters -- so are Rīga's intimate relations with Washington.

Not that we don't have severe problems -- there is indeed intolerance of various types in Latvia, society is definitely sharply divided, and the political scene often makes one wish one didn't have a nose. That said, back to the rôle of that kid with the spray paint -- this is a nation that is rapidly recovering from over half a century of totalitarian rule, Soviet and Nazi. The legacy of the occupation(s) is an almost unimaginably difficult one -- unlike the satellites, the Baltic States were forcibly incorporated into the USSR. Thinking about the frequent confusion between "the Baltics" and "the Balkans" one actually still encounters at times among those who know nothing about the "New Europe," one might consider how remarkable the recovery here has been -- except for those killed by OMON at the time of the Barricades, the intense tensions of restoring our lost statehood have not resulted in any bloodshed. In only fifteen years, the foundation for democracy and a civil society, wholly absent under the Soviets, has been laid -- Latvia ranks above Britain, Denmark, Canada, and the United States in press freedom, for example, according to Reporters Without Borders. Latvia is a better example of how difficulties can be overcome than it is an example of strife, which is practically non-existent. Compare, for instance, Northern Ireland, in that cradle of liberal democracy, the UK. When the ultra-rightist NSS marches in Rīga on the 16th -- bear in mind the fact that it garnered a mere 1172 votes in the last elections, or 0,13% of the total.


The reality is that many of Latvia's current problems are not so different from the problems many European countries face -- confusion and apathy in the face of globalization, consumerism, kleptocracy, pauperization and a distant eurocracy... a resurgent far right, an intellectually bankrupt left, and a greasy polittekhnologiya, all crowned with a neoliberal political center that is out of touch with the people. The kid with the paint is always trying to draw attention to himself, like the woman above -- the wife of a prominent (and anti-American, and euroskeptical) folk singer who converted to Orthodoxy, she's blocking a car containing gay activists (the photograph is by Nikolai Alekseev -- that's holy water she's holding, by the way, not vodka). Parties like the NSS, affiliated with the European National Front, and Raivis Dzintars' more moderate rightist party (which got only 13 469 votes) are far from the mainstream, but they are increasingly adept at protest techniques (such as standing about shirtless in subzero cold).

What's really worrisome with regard to intolerance is its creeping aspect, for want of a better description -- the legitimization of odious ideas by the mainstream: the willingness of serious politicians to pander to them, their inclusion in major public debates without a caveat, and... lately, their international connections (for example...). In a united Europe, we are experiencing the paradox of anti-European groups working together (an excellent example was the instant contribution of the far right in Romania and Bulgaria to the creation of a bloc in the EP). On the other hand, I am quite convinced that muzzling extremists is the wrong thing to do. Open debate is what we need. The other side can and does cooperate, too, whether that is the European Movement, LGBT rights activists, or the spawn of the generous George Soros. Abrogating freedom of assembly and freedom of speech is as ugly when it's done by the politically correct as it is when it's done by dictatorships, and I briefly joined the right emotionally when the Freedom Monument was surrounded by a fence last March -- we must cross our fingers and hope that the police do their duty better than they did during the gay pride events last summer, but I would rather see a mêlée than muzzles.

In Latvia, we use the term sarkanbrūnie -- "the red-brown." Some people, especially those from the Western pseudo-left, don't seem to realize that groups like the Vanguard of Red Youth, also planning to take to the streets on Friday, are closer to brownshirts than they are to whatever decent left we have left (their Russian acronym, AKM, also stands for a type of Kalashnikov). My recommendation to those observing Friday's events from afar, or through a filter, is to try to read some real history, like Ezergailis' latest book, and to take care to separate polemics and propaganda from fact.

The first two photographs are mine (like all others on this site, unless otherwise noted). The third photograph is by Nikolai Alekseev. The English translation of the extract from Lejiņš is by Elizabete Rūtens. For much more pleasant Latvian graffiti than the two examples I shot, see this site.