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This postperestroika historical narrative should contribute significantly to assessing the likelihood of Latvia's survival as an independent republic."--BOOK JACKET.
The past one hundred years have been a very trying time for Latvia, complete with success, tragedy, and still unrealized promise. Within the course of a generation, the country experienced revolutions, wars and independent statehood, and then the slide into authoritarianism. World War II brought new occupations. The tragedies were staggering: holocaust, executions, and an exodus of refugees. Soviet consolidation bred deportations, forced collectivization and partisan warfare. Almost fifty years later, Latvia regained its independence and emerged from decades of disastrous Soviet rule. This book comprehensively surveys Latvia's recent past and prospects for the new millennium, placing contemporary events in historical perspective. The authors address the evolution of the country from the movement against Soviet rule to the dilemmas of contemporary politics: party formation, the problem of corruption, the quest for the future and a regional and international role, the struggle to develop a civil society, the issue of ethnic relations and the recurring tendency towards statist solutions. Proper attention is also given to economic developments.
Myths are central to the way we live and how we define ourselves. In this pioneering book, a group of specialists--among them Anthony Smith, Norman Davies, Geoffrey Hosking and George Schopflin--look at the general and theoretical nature of myth on a universal basis and examine the specific myths of various nations. With nationhood and ethnicity at the centre of political attention, the book is timely in illuminating the deeper, underlying issues of nationalism that cause so much conflict throughout the world.
In the second half of the eighteenth century, an intellectual discourse developed in Livonia which shed light on the disastrous social conditions of the indigenous population. This book examines the premise that the resulting "nationalization" of the Latvians occurred in the 1780s and 1790s as a result of a German Enlightenment in Livonia. It investigates the role that eighteenth-century anthropological, ethnographical, historical, and cultural ideas played in this process of "nationalizing" the Latvians, and focuses on the development of the arguments for agrarian and social change by proponents of reform in Livonia at this time. The work investigates the historical structures and processes that shaped the agrarian constitution of Livonia's society up to and including the eighteenth century. This involves a comparative historical analysis of critical aspects relevant to the transformation of the agrarian and social reform discourse in Livonia in the second half of the eighteenth century and its ramifications on how the Latvians were perceived by Germans within Livonia and beyond. The introduction and dissemination of Enlightenment thought in Livonia, with particular reference to the Livonian agrarian and social reform discourse, is also explored. Utilizing primary sources, some relatively unknown such as the Briefe of Andreas Meyer, this study provides first-hand historical perspectives on Livonian society and German attitudes towards the indigenous population. The main writers and works of the Livonian agrarian and social reform discourse in the 1780s and 1790s are also studied. The works of Johann von Jannau (1753-1821), Heinrich Wilhelm Christian Friebe (1761-1811), Karl Philip Michael Snell (1753-1806), and Garlieb Helwig Merkel (1769-1850) are considered central to the Livonian agrarian and social reform discourse of the late 1780s and 1790s. Some monographs, essays, and articles in Hupel's publications, particularly the Nordische Miscellaneen, are also considered. It is purported that the first steps towards the "nationalization" of Latvian identity occurred as the result of new historical, anthropological, cultural, and ethnographical approaches to the agrarian and social issues of Livonia during this time. Culture, history, and language are central to the nationalization of identity and are key components in the theoretical considerations investigated. The literary discourse had implications that were significant in shaping and reshaping historical and cultural identity in the national awakenings of the Latvians at various stages in their history since the late eighteenth century. The way social, political, cultural, and ethnic relationships were understood and articulated was transformed by this late eighteenth-century discourse, in effect, "nationalized," as predominantly German theologians and writers sought to elevate and see dignity and authentic cultural value in the language and national character of the Latvians. This is an important and comprehensive volume for those in history and European studies.
Latvia is located on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. After a brief period of independence between the two World Wars, Latvia was annexed by the USSR in 1940. It reestablished its independence in 1991 following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Although the last Russian troops left in 1994. Latvia continues to revamp its economy for eventual integration into various Western European political and economic institutions. Since May 2004 Latvia is a member of the European Union. This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Latvia contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Latvia.
The history of the Latvian people begins some four and a half millennia ago with the arrival of the proto-Baltic Indo-Europeans to northern Europe. One branch of these migrants coalesced into a community which evolved a distinctive and remarkably robust culture and language, and which eventually developed into a loose federation of tribal kingdoms that stretched from the shores of the Baltic sea to the upper Dniepr river. But these small independent kingdoms were unable to resist the later invasion of the Teutonic Knights in 1201, an invasion that initiated nearly eight hundred years of helotry for the Latvians in their own domains. In the centuries of domination by successive European powers that followed, the inhabitants nonetheless preserved a powerful sense of identity, fostered by their ancient language, oral literature, songs and customs. These in turn informed and gave impetus to the rise of national consciousness in the nineteenth century and the political activities of the twentieth which brought the modern nation-state of Latvia into being. This book traces the genesis and growth of that nation, its endurance over centuries of conquest and oppression, the process by which it achieved its independence, and its status as a member of the European community in the twenty-first century.
With original research and interviews with survivors, a journalist reveals the brutal yet forgotten battles in Latvia during the final months of WWII. While the eyes of the world were on Hitler’s bunker, more than half a million men fought six cataclysmic battles in the fields and forests of Western Latvia known as the Courland Pocket. Just an hour from the capital Riga, German forces bolstered by Latvian Legionnaires were trapped with their backs to the Baltic. Forced into uniform by Nazi and Soviet occupiers, Latvian fought Latvian – sometimes brother against brother. Hundreds of thousands of men died for little territorial gain in unimaginable slaughter. When the Germans capitulated, thousands of Latvians continued a war against Soviet rule from the forests for years afterwards. An award-winning documentary journalist, Vincent Hunt travels through the modern landscape gathering eye-witness accounts, piecing together the stories of those who survived. He meets veterans who fought in the Latvian Legion, former partisans and a refugee who fled the Soviet advance to later become President, Vaira Vike-Freiberga. A survivor of the little-known concentration camp at Popervale details his escape from a death march and subsequent survival in the forests with a Soviet partisan group - and a German deserter. With detailed maps and expert contributions alongside rare newspaper archives, photographs from private collections and extracts from diaries translated from Latvian, German and Russian, Hunt assembles a ghastly picture of death and desperation in a nation both gripped by war and at war with itself.
"Offers a singularly courageous, personal account of learning how to pour the poetics of space into the art of life." -- Geografishe Annales B: Human Geography