Defining Latvia is a collection of essays by an international group of experts on Latvia that grew out of a 2018 conference at Uppsala University in Sweden to mark the 100th anniversary of Latvian independence. It serves as a representative sample of the main topics of inquiry that are of concern to contemporary historians and political scientists who focus on Latvia. The strength of the book is the spotlight it places on the overlooked or underappreciated episodes in the modern era of Latvian history. Indeed, the collection is full of fresh insights and interpretations regarding the development of Latvian identity and statehood.
The first chapter by Catherine Gibson is the only one that deals directly with the formation of Latvian national identity in late nineteenth century Russia. In “Mapping Latwija,” Gibson shows how an administratively divided Latvian region came to imagine itself as constituting a coherent geographic territory. She focuses on the life and work of Matīss Siliņš, a publisher of maps that were intended to instill a sense of Latvian national consciousness by including the place names in Latvian and by clearly demarcating the boundaries of the area inhabited by Latvian speakers. Notably, Siliņš included the region of Latgale as part of Latvian territory. Moreover, these maps were affordable and accessible to a wide audience.
The next two chapters deal with minority issues in the first independent Latvian nation-state (1918–40). In “The Sokolowski Affair,” Christina Douglas and Per Bolin explore the effort by Baltic Germans to establish their own German language university in Riga. While the new Latvian nation-state offered cultural autonomy to minorities and the right to receive a basic education in their own languages, Latvia was reluctant to see the same level of cultural pluralism at the level of higher education. This led to attempts to block the elevation of the German Herder-Institut to the status of a university. Paul Sokolowski was the chairman of the institute and he was accused of expressing views that promoted the hegemony of Baltic German culture. This caused tensions between German and Latvian academics, but in the end, “the Herder-Institut received the right to be a privately funded establishment of higher education—an augstskola” (81).
Continuing the section on the interwar republic, Paula Opperman examines the threat to democracy posed by the fascist party Pērkonkrusts (Thundercross). This radical party espoused an ethnic definition of the Latvian nation and was openly opposed to the Latvian constitutional order that had established a civic model of nationhood. It was eventually banned by the government, but nonetheless, Opperman shows that antisemitic activities were a regular feature of civic life in Latvia during the 1930s.
Chapter 4 by Harry C. Merritt explores the national perspectives of Latvian citizens who served in both the Nazi organized Latvian Legion and the Soviet Latvian Rifle Division during World War II. As the Nazis and the Red Army waged war back and forth across eastern Europe, the smaller nations in between were unavoidably swept up in the maelstrom. Merritt relies on the personal memoirs of those who served to show that Latvians in both units “. . . spoke Latvian among one another, celebrated Latvian holidays, sang traditional Latvian songs, and often thought of themselves and their comrades-in-arms as serving the Latvian national cause” (106).
The next three chapters deal with expressions of Latvian nationhood during the “thaw” that occurred under Khrushchev in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Diana Bleiere examines the efforts of the “national communists” led by Eduards Berklavs to adopt an economic program that was more responsive to local needs. Bleiere wonders how cohesive the national communists were as a group and concludes that there was little organization among people who shared similar views. However, the claim that there was such a group served to justify reprisals during the eventual crackdown on the national communists. Michael Loader then focuses on the question of language politics in the context of the Soviet education reforms of 1958. Latvia became “the most prominent and rebellious republic in its hostility to the reform” because it opposed incentives allowing Russian-speakers in Latvia to avoid classes in Latvian (153). Although the thaw permitted a surprising level of genuine debate, the Latvian proposals were eventually rejected. “The limits of acceptable autonomous action by the republics had been reached” (169). In the last chapter on the Soviet period, Ekaterina Vikulina explores the burst of creativity and experimentation that Latvian photographers were able to express during the thaw.
The final two chapters deal with political developments in post-Soviet Latvia. Daunis Auers, a leading expert on Latvia's party system, traces the development of Nacionālā Apvienība (the National Alliance), a radical right populist party that has played a role in successive coalition governments since 2013 and has thereby had a strong nativist impact on recent cultural policy. The National Alliance currently has thirteen seats in the Saeima that was elected in 2018, making it the fourth largest party in the legislature. Auers points out that a change has taken place since the first decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, when nationalists focused on the demographic threat posed by Latvia's large Russian-speaking population. Today, such parties are more likely to “. . . concentrate their ire on visible minorities and refugees . . . as well as focus on conservative versus liberal values” (223), putting them more in line with similar parties across Europe.
Auers and Mathew Kott both show how radical right parties have merged into the mainstream of Latvia's party system. For Auers, pro-Russophone parties pose a greater threat to democracy in the eyes of most Latvians, while Kott examines the same topic in the context of “entryism,” whereby a marginal group gains control over mainstream actors. While all of the chapters are informative and thoroughly researched, a more comprehensive view of Latvian national identity would require additional chapters on topics such as the Soviet takeover and communist oppression, the liberal dimension of Latvia's struggle for independence, and the emergence of pro-EU parties in the post-Soviet period.
