Between improvisation and inevitability: former Latvian officials’ memoirs of the Soviet era

ABSTRACT

This article deals with the autobiographies of former Soviet officials that have been published in Latvia since the 1990s. In particular, it focuses on three interrelated layers of biographical narrative: construction of social identity, strategies for avoiding the stigmatization of collaboration, and comparisons between the Soviet and post-Soviet experience. The article contends that former officials in their memoirs use a pragmatic representation of the Soviet past as the major locus of their positive identity. Through this genuine representation of the past, autobiographers emphasize virtues that might be accepted by a post-Soviet neoliberal society.

KEYWORDS:

• Post-Soviet biographical discourse
• stigmatization
• social representation
• utilitarianism
• identity

Acknowledgements

The research was supported by the European Union through the European Social Fund (Mobilitas grant No. GSHRG409MJD) and by Latvia’s Government Commission for KGB Research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For the conceptual differences between social and political memory consult Assmann (2004).

2. Around 60,000 Latvians were exiled to Siberia during the two largest Stalinist deportations, which occurred in 1941 and 1949. Exile as a traumatic episode appears in practically all the autobiographical narratives as a direct or mediated experience.

3. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with five owners of publishing houses in September 2011.

4. Eduards Berklavs (1914–2004) was the leader of the so-called Latvian national communists who in the late 1950s fought against the Soviet nationality policy. Berklavs was dismissed from the post of the vice chairman of the Council of the Ministers of LSSR in 1959 and was administratively exiled to the Soviet Russia. Berklavs became one the leaders of the dissident movement in Soviet Latvia and played an active role during the period of national revival.

5. The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia (1940–1959).

6. The Latvian intelligentsia is more open to speaking about this issue in their memoirs (cf. Purs 2006; Vulfsons 1997).

7. Scholars interested in Estonian biographical discourse have pointed to double consciousness as a pivotal strategy for postwar generations of various professional groups (see Wulf and Petri 2010; Aarelaid-Tart 2003).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Union through the European Social Fund: [Grant Number GSHRG409MJD]; Latvia’s Government Commission for KGB Research [grant Contract Number VDKKOM-D/11].

Notes on contributors

Mārtiņš Kaprāns

Mārtiņš Kaprāns is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Latvia. He holds a PhD in communication science from the University of Latvia. From 2013 to 2015, Kaprāns was a research fellow at the Institute of Government and Politics, University of Tartu. His current research interests are focused on transnational remembering, historical politics in postcommunist countries, and representation of the past in social networking sites.