Tag Archives: Latvia

Annihilation, Reconstruction, War

What Was, What Will Be

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Post-war Valmiera, Latvia today, as seen from above. (Source: LSM.LV)

“This was my home.” This was my  friend . . . my dog . . . my car . . . my job . . . my father . . . my daughter. These were the statements of loss that I heard at the start of the new video that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, released on CNN during an interview with Fareed Zakaria. Each was accompanied by gut-wrenching footage from the unconscionable war that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, was waging against civilians. Just as it was about to become unbearable, the statements and imagery changed. “We will win,” Zelenskyy said with complete conviction. “There will be new cities. There will be new dreams. There will be a new story. There will be, there’s no doubt. And those we’ve lost will be remembered. And we will sing again, and we will celebrate anew.”  Even as Mariupol, his nation’s tenth largest city, seemed set to be wiped off the face of the earth.

I understood that sort of loss. Valmiera, a town in Latvia, was founded in the 13th century and has seen its share of invaders and occupiers. It was devastated during the Livonian War (1558–1583), which was fought for control of Old Livonia (now Estonia and Latvia) by the Tsardom of Russia against a shifting coalition of the Dano-Norwegian Realm, the Kingdom of Sweden, the Union (later Commonwealth) of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. Then  burned to the ground during the Great Northern War (1700–1721), where a coalition led by Russia ended the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in Northern, Central and Eastern Europe. During World War II, Valmiera was captured by the German Army (July 1941) and placed under the administration of Reichskommissariat Ostland, only to be recaptured  (September 1944) by the Russian Army during the Riga Offensive. And again burned to the ground. That occurred less than a month after I was born and my parents and maternal grandmother managed to get me out of there.

I also understood that sort of optimism—up to a point. The residents of Valmiera, one of the longest-inhabited regions of Latvia, must have had it. During the 18th century, it became the district center and saw rapid economic growth during the 19th century. And, during the first quarter of the 20th century, became a cultural and educational center, as well. That trend continues, with Valmiera being one of the four Latvian cities short-listed for the title of the 2027 European Capitals of Culture. But each time that it was rebuilt, some loss remained. Particularly the most recent reconstruction, which occurred during the 46-year period (1944-1990) when Russians occupied, then annexed my independent nation as the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic and left the sad imprint of Stalinist architecture.

Before his death in 2018, Egons Tālivaldis Ziediņš, a teacher who spent his whole life in Valmiera, wrote in “Neapbedīsim Valmieras vēsturi” (“Let’s Not Bury Valmiera’s History,” my clumsy translation):

There are few residents walking along Valmiera’s streets these days who still see what is no longer there. Stopping at the unsightly Culture Center, those who do probably remember that one of the finest buildings in town was located at the corner where Ziloņu Street turns off Rīgas Street and housed the Ustupa and Bundžas ready-made clothing store as well as Eizentāls’ delicatessen.  And that the entrance to the Pūriņa cinema “Splendid” was across the street. As was the Dūņa building, where a bookstore was situated that usually carried one of the pre-war Valmiera publishers—Konrads Vanags, the son of Miķels Amālijs, head of the Šana Society .  And then there was Pūkas Corner, named after one of the shops—the center of Old Valmiera with a police officer standing there since Diakonāta Street intersected with Rīgas Street at that point, and Jurģu Street led down to the Gauja bridge.

Well, the old Valmiera was not rich in ancient architectural masterpieces since most of the structures only dated back to the 19th and 20th centuries. But together they formed a distinctive cityscape that was memorable because it was unique to the area. All this once was and then was not, and now the center of Valmiera is much more open and modern.

It is a genuine pleasure to see that we are taking good care of Valmiera, that it is increasingly well-kept  and beautiful. However, there is one “but.” The architecturally uniform, uninteresting  structures that emerged during the post-war period do not remain long in one’s memory. They could be in any other place in Latvia. I have often had to show foreigners around the town, and it always depressed me when I wondered where to take them. Inevitably, perceptible boredom soon appears on their faces. “Well, you have built a new city here after the war but seem to have given little thought to making it special. Why have you left all your buildings so bare?”

Before Zelenskyy’s video, I felt disconnected from Valmiera. When I reflected on my past, the capital city Rīga usually came to mind. That was where my mother and her ancestors lived.  Where my father, although born near Cēsis, attended university and started his literary career. And Vecāķi,  a resort town on the Baltic Sea where my maternal grandmother had a large summer house.  We were only living in Valmiera because my father was sent there to perform administrative duties during the German occupation in between the first and second Russian occupations. And I was less than a month old when we were forced to flee. But after I cried for what Ukraine once was and, as Zelenskyy bravely predicted, will be again even as its cities were being shelled by the invading Russians, I cried—the first time in my long life—for Valmiera. And for what Latvians like me lost there.

“This was my birthplace,” I said through my tears. Built amid a forest of fir trees on both banks of the Gauja river. This was my father’s car, which he kept the Germans from stealing by bringing the tires inside to his bedroom when it was not in use. This was my father’s office, where he pinned a new piece of doggerel satirizing his Nazi superiors to his lampshade each night before leaving. This was my mother’s office, where she worked as his assistant and did her best to keep him from getting killed. This was the site where they were wed, possibly the town hall. I was well on the way and it was wartime, so she wore a plain dark dress. But carried a sheaf of yellow daffodils.

 

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Politics, Revolution, Violence

The Face of Extremism

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The Red Guard at the Vulkan factory in Petrograd. (Photo: Viktor Bulla)

I have trouble making small talk. I set out to offer some trite remark about the weather but end up blurting something about my grandfather being executed by firing squad in Ukraine. A reliable conversation-killer in many American circles, which is one reason why I set up this site. Now, when I want to share socially awkward ancestral stuff, there is some chance that someone might actually want to respond. Which is what Emma Hardy did after reading my previous post. And, remarkably, revealed similarities that reached beyond Ukraine to an obscure town in the Austrian Alps. But let me start with Ukraine since our president, Donald Trump, has recently put it on the map.

One meaning of “Ukraine” is “borderland,” and boundaries were shifting at the beginning of the 20th Century. When my grandfather, Teodors Johansons, arrived in Kharkiv, it was the administrative center of a Russian district established by Empress Catherine the Great and a major industrial and cultural presence. It was also where the idea of an independent Ukraine was first proclaimed. Teodors had started out in Sweden and traveled the world as an engineer building bridges. He had married Elizabete Zeltiņs in Rīga, then also part of the Russian Empire and making nationalistic rumblings. Elizabete had given birth to my mother Elza in 1915, so he had come to Kharkiv with them, part of the wave of Latvian migration around the turn of the century. His job was running a chemical factory. At home, from the little that I know, there was love and laughter. Teodors and Elizabete had a penchant for pranks, tossing pickled herring from their flat into hoods of passersby below bundled up for the winter.

Revolt against the Russian Empire started in 1917 with the February Revolution in the capital city of Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) and the formation of the Russian Provisional Government, dominated by wealthy capitalists and the aristocracy. Community assemblies called “Soviets,” dominated by soldiers and the industrial working class, permitted the provisional government to rule but insisted on the right to influence the government and control the various militias. This was not a stable situation and collapsed with the October Revolution, a Bolshevik-led armed insurrection by workers and soldiers in Petrograd that overthrew the provisional government and transferred all authority to the Soviets. In December, Kharkiv was invaded by Red Guard forces and a Soviet Ukraine was established. This was around the time when Teodors—as I had always envisioned it—was led out to the courtyard of his factory and, despite repeated attempts at reasoning with the militia unit leader—the revolution desperately needed factories and educated people like him to run them and so on—was executed by a formal firing squad while Elizabete, then pregnant with her son Gvido, and two-year-old Elza were allowed to return to Rīga with suitcases full of worthless rubles.

It was only after receiving Emma’s response that I did some reading on Teodors’ executioners, most likely the Red Guard. I learned that enlistment was voluntary and only required recommendations from Soviets, Bolshevik party units or the like. Unit composition and organization varied greatly, and military training was often conducted while workers were still employed at their plants. And the units, while successful in local conflicts, could not prevail against more formidable adversaries like the White Army. But I did not consider the possibility that my grandfather had, more likely, been brutally murdered by a lawless mob until I came across a photograph of a Red Guard unit and shared it with Emma. The horror that I felt was confirmed by her response: “Lots of words came to me as I looked at red guard pic, all words profane. Omg, what a photo. Such intense anger in those faces. And the weapons! How oddly juxtaposed against his angry face is the jaunty straw hat worn by one of the men, 2nd row center. Renoir could have painted such a hat but certainly without the diabolical face below it (painting is my hobby hence this random thought on straw hats). The whole picture BEGS caution against extremes, ideological and political. I mean, it really blew me away.”

Emma’s mother was born and raised in Nikolayev, a village some 50 miles north of Odessa, currently Ukraine’s third most populous city. In 1928 or so, Emma’s maternal grandfather was taken from their home without warning. Not long thereafter, his wife was summoned to an official place to collect her husband’s shoes. “Being given his shoes meant he had been executed,” Emma explained. “That was how the Soviets communicated such things.” Which is why Emma understood about my maternal grandfather the way that others cannot. And why we are worried about what is happening today. After decades of oppression, both Latvians and Ukrainians threw off the Soviet yoke. But post-Soviet Russia is threatening those nations again. And many Americans, perhaps because they share a far more benign history, have not yet learned to recognize—much less fear—the face of extremism increasingly evident at home and abroad.

But, hey, what wonderful weather we’re having! Here I am in Maryland at the start of March, and we’ve barely had any snow all winter.

Celebrations, Migration, Religion

Season’s Greetings

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A crèche in Michigan, where I lived as a child. (Source: Medusa’s Kitchen) 

My father was born on 17 December 1907 at his family’s farm in Veselava, which is in the Cēsis district of Latvia. There, no doubt, was a stable and the requisite assortment of domesticated animals, but he, unlike Jesus, whose birthday supposedly occurs a week later, came into the world in a well-appointed house, complete with servants. Which is just as well since it’s freezing cold—not to mention snowy—at that time of year and my father might not have made it. So, as an immigrant growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the weather is similar, I cringed each time that I saw a nativity scene with a nearly naked babe asleep on a bed of straw. My father, who’d studied theology at the University of Latvia in Rīga, cautioned me not to take things in the New Testament too literally since it had been written nearly 20 centuries ago. Still, I felt far better once, decades later, I later learned that even scholars who limit themselves to what’s found in the Bible doubt that the blessed event occurred anytime close to Christmas. Particularly since I learned that neonatal hypothermia can set in anywhere below 77.0 to 82.4° F. As in Bethlehem, where December averages range between 57 and 47.

Separating “Christ” from “Christmas” came easily to me. After all, the Latvian word for “Christmas” is simply “Ziemassvētki,” which merely means “winter celebrations.” As such, it is as much about the winter solstice, the day with the longest night, as it is about a miraculous birth, which was a relatively late add-on. As my mother, a city girl, told me and I later fictionalized in my novel Anna Noon:

Christmas Eve in Rīga started in Dom Square. First with a Lutheran service at the Dom Cathedral, then with a stroll home in softly falling snow, amid carolers lifting their voices in equal measure to Christian and pagan songs and merrymakers cavorting as gypsies, storks and dancing bears. In my fifth-floor flat on Elizabeth Street the tree was bright with white wax candles, not the garish incandescent bulbs used here. My presents opened by starlight, not the glare of the morning sun as is done here.

Moreover, the separation was seen from the start. While solstice celebrations go back at least to neolithic times—10,200 to 8800 BC—the first recorded Christmas celebration occurred in Rome in 336 AD. In fact, some say that Saturnalia, which initially coincided with my father’s birthday and honored Saturn, the Roman god whose reign was seen as a time of peace and prosperity, served as a model for the first Christmas. There are certainly similarities. Saturbalia was celebrated by “a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying and a carnival atmosphere that overturned social norms: gambling was permitted, and masters provided table service for their slaves.” It, like most winter solstice celebrations, was a festival of lights, with candles symbolizing the quest for knowledge and truth. No wonder the poet Catullus called it “the best of days.” Nevertheless, Christmas turned out to be an off-and-on affair. The Puritans, for instance, banned it in the 17th century, citing drunk and disorderly conduct. Revived in the 19th century with the Oxford Movement in the Anglican Church, it remained disreputable. The family oriented occasion that we have come to know, according to some, is mainly the invention of Charles Dickens and other writers.

But both winter solstice celebrations and Christmas are not only about “the best of days” but also about the worst of days, and therein lies their true meaning. As sung in “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” “The hopes and fears of all the years / Are met in thee tonight.” The reason that December celebrations tend to be glutenous and raucous is that the period from January to April was once known as “the famine months.” Animals were slaughtered so they wouldn’t have to be fed, therefore a plentiful supply of fresh meat was available. Moreover, wine and beer had been fermenting since the harvest and were ready for drinking. For those with meager resources, however, the struggle for survival could be brutal. The middle-aged black man who I saw daily after moving to Boston in the Seventies who had set up a tent made of rags in a space on the street by a curb cleared of snow to provide access to a fire hydrant. And the other 554,000 people reported to be homeless in the United States alone on a given night. The mothers and fathers with one-month old infants, the same age that I was when we were forced to flee our native land. And the other 68.5 million people worldwide today who, according to the latest report, have been forcibly displaced in the worst refugee crisis since the one we experienced after World War II. All cold and hungry and far from home. Like my family and I were once. And—if only symbolically—like Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus.

‘Tis the season for all those sorts of things.

Note: Each year around this time I give a gift of winter supplies for refugees through the International Rescue Committee, a global humanitarian aid, relief and development organization founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein. Would be wonderful if you could do so, as well.

 

A family friendly winter solstice celebration hosted by The Ethnographic Open-Air Museum of Latvia, located just outside of the capital city Rīga.

“Jingle Bells,” played in 2017 by some children living at the Aida Palestinian refugee camp near Bethlehem and Beit Jala in the central West Bank.

American Civil War, Nationalism, Public Art, Racism, World War II

Monuments and Museums

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One portion of a polarizing Soviet-Era war memorial in Riga, Latvia.

Like many people in the United States, I was appalled by the violence that erupted this weekend at the white supremacist rally ostensibly organized to protest the removal of a Confederate monument from Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. And, like some of them, I could not believe that it was happening again. You see, my native land, Latvia, was invaded by Nazi Germany during World War II. And support for this and other atrocious acts was spread by similar torch-lit, flag-waving, slogan-chanting rallies—first small, then massive—that Adolf Hitler used to fan the flames of racism and nationalism.  Only then, it was the United States and its Allies that fought to restore sanity at considerable cost. Which few, I fear, tend to recall.

Which is why we do need concrete reminders such as monuments in public places. For me, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is the best example. While the war and, initially, the memorial itself were divisive, the main section was designed in a way that provided a place for people of all persuasions to contemplate the past while considering the future. Composed of two walls etched with service member names, it was configured to represent a “wound that is closed and healing.” It was also given smooth surfaces that reflect people standing nearby, symbolically bringing the past and the present together.

In contrast, the Charlottesville monument was never meant to have a unifying effect. Situated on a tall pedestal astride a spirited steed, a larger-than-life Robert E. Lee, the military leader of the Confederate states that seceded from the Union after Abraham Lincoln was elected president on a platform opposing the expansion of slavery, stares straight ahead with unseeing eyes. Rather, it serves as a constant reminder to African Americans, among others, that defenders of slavery are still revered, over 150 years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant. Ironically, such a statue might have dismayed even Lee, who had presciently argued against erecting such monuments, writing:

I think it wiser moreover not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered,

Worse yet, data dug up by the Southern Poverty Law Center show that most of Confederate monuments did not exist until decades after the end of the Civil War. Installation peaked in the 1910s and 20s, when Jim Crow laws were being enacted, and the 1950s and 60s, when the Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum. The Charlottesville statue, finished in 1924, might have been more a tribute to nationalism and racism than to a Southern soldier. The statue’s defenders underscored this by chanting “Blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us” while on their way to Emancipation Park.

The question now is what to do next. For what it is worth, I offer my peculiar perspective. While I spent the first 35 years of my life in the United States north of the Mason-Dixon Line, I have also lived three years in Alabama, a former Confederate state, and the past 20 some in Maryland, a slave-holding state that stayed with the Union but played a complicated role. Moreover, I was born in Latvia, which has its own divisive history and, not surprisingly, a similar monuments problem. Putting all this together, I would like to make three points.

No monument tells the entire story

Consider the Victory Memorial to the Soviet Army. Situated in Riga, Latvia’s capital city, it celebrates a win by Communist Russia over Nazi Germany. While Latvians were expected to love it, it did not have the desired effect. You see, this victory was accompanied by the Russians re-occupying the Latvian homeland, which, alas, lasted from 1944 to 1991. (The original name was “Monument to the Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from the German Fascist.”) Moreover, the monument was completed in 1985—some 40 years after the fact—during Perestroika, a reform movement that loosened the Soviet stranglehold on Latvia and strengthened the push for independence. So certain parallels with Confederate monuments can be drawn.

Which is why I can dismiss a suggestion that the  Friends of C’Ville Monuments made, stating Confederate statues could be improved simply “by adding more informative, better detailed explanations of the history of the statues and what they can teach us.” Apart from the fact it is unlikely that the real reasons monuments were erected would ever be included, attempts to summarize the complete story of the people and events being commemorated is way too much to ask of, say, a poor plaque. Historical context is best left to museums. Fortunately, there are two large ones that fill this need: the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, which opened its doors just last year, and the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, which has been around in Riga since 1993.

Removing monuments is about making, not destroying, history

For all the earnest talk about preserving the past, toppling statues that commemorate oppression is a time-honored tradition. In the United States, civilians and soldiers pulled down a statue of King George III in Manhattan a mere five days after the ratification of the Declaration of independence, an act depicted in a Johannes Adam Simon Oertel painting. Which is more or less what happened to a statue of Vladimir Lenin in Riga in 1991 once Latvian independence was restored. Except that engineers were involved and a video is  available. In fact, historians such as Sergei Kruk document both the rise and fall of monuments in scholarly works such as “Wars of Statues in Latvia: The History Told and Made by Public Sculpture.”

Knowing that the past is replete with missing monuments, those wishing to preserve particular ones put restrictions in place. This is often an imperfect deterrent. Officials in Riga reference a 1994 treaty with Russia as reason the Victory monument must remain, leaving it to radical nationalists to try—unsuccessfully—to burn it down, then blow it up. Much like officials in Durham, North Carolina, who cite a 2015 state law, then leave it to protestors to successfully— albeit with some arrests—pull down a Confederate statue and stomp on it. Officials also bring up cost and logistics considerations. According to one report, there are still over 700 Confederate monuments in public places. And monuments can be massive. The Victory memorial includes two statues and a 260-foot obelisk that some say resembles the Citadel complex from the video game Half-Life 2.

Of course, there is nothing quite like a crisis to grease the wheels of government. Unless, in the United States. it is being put to shame by a black woman. Citing public safety concerns in the wake of the domestic terrorism act that capped the Charlottesville rally, Baltimore mayor Catherine E. Pugh—with no public notice, no fund-raising, no re-loction plan—”quickly and quietly” had construction crews remove all four Confederate statues. Which led University of North Carolina history professor David Goldfield to say that this could be part of a “rolling cascade” of cities and states ridding themselves of or relocating such statues. Which seems to be what is happening.

Unless countered, missing monuments continue to exert influence

Just because a monument is gone does not mean it is forgotten. According to Kruk, communists still flock to the spot in front of the government building where the Lenin statue once stood, celebrating his birthday and the anniversary of his death as well as Revolution Day by laying flowers on an empty walkway and foiling plans for a new monument to fill the space. So even if the Lee statue is removed from Emancipation Park, I would not be at all surprised to see some strange combination of white supremacists and Lee devotees congregating there. And installing, say, a more acceptable version of the current Emancipation Memorial or something showing the release of Latvians from the Soviet yoke might only make matters worse.

You see, both the United States and Latvia are deeply divided nations for reasons that date at least as far back as the Civil War and World War II, respectively. According to some, the 2016 election revealed “two large coalitions, roughly equal in size but radically different in demographics and desires,” with “race and identity as the main political dividing line.” Similarly, there is a serious split in my native land between ethnic Latvians and ethnic Russians, with the former constituting about 62 percent of the population and latter representing the largest minority at about 27 percent. Moreover, there was a drop in ethnic Latvians from 77 percent in 1835 to 52 percent in 1989, and this is attributed to the Russian occupation. As a result, Russian residents have been subjected to a range of discriminatory practices, including those regarding the granting of citizenship.

It seems to me that new types of monuments must be built that allow both sides to acknowledge past losses and heal old wounds that prevent them from moving forward. That would require honest national conversations from which a shared vision of the future could emerge. But even if that cannot occur anytime soon, there could  be some agreement to construct a few monuments, large and small, along the lines—but not in imitation of—the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, providing both nations with places of temporary respite.

Note: Optimist that I am, I can see a day when people with different perspectives can, at least, smile at some of the inherent ironies. The Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville, for example, was created by the combined efforts of Henry Shrady, a New York sculptor better known for his memorial of Ulysses S. Grant, and Leo Lentelli, an Italian immigrant. And the Victory monument in Riga commemorating Nazi defeat was designed by Lev Bukovsky, who had once served in the Latvian Waffen SS Legion.