‘Making Forgotten Voices Heard’: Geoffrey Swain’s Contribution to Latvian Historiography

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Notes

¹ See, for example, Plakans (1995, 1999, 2011), Zellis (2006, 2012), and Dribins et al. (2009).

² For a concise summary of the Latvian Riflemen’s portrayal in Latvian historiography, see Zellis (2014).

³ Swain cites the LTSpA statutes stipulating that such methods should be ‘allowed by God, the law and Christian morality’ in order to be used to establish a government ‘guided by God and a Christian conscience’; these clauses were removed in October 1945 (Swain 2007, p. 201).

⁴ The collectivisation of Latvian agriculture leading to mass deportations of the ‘kulaks’ in March 1949 has been widely documented in Latvian historiography since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with an extensive collection of related documents published by the Latvian State Archive in 2000. LVA (2000), available at http://www.itl.rtu.lv/LVA/rll/index.htm, accessed 1 September 2016.

⁵ The USSR Communist Party Central Committee’s Bureau for Latvia was established in December 1944 with a view of closely monitoring all activities of the Latvian Communist Party under the leadership of Jānis Kalnbērziņš, as well as providing necessary ‘guidance’. It was felt in Moscow that the local party was not collectivising agriculture or combating the ‘nationalist bandits’ energetically enough, and that the support for the Soviet system in Latvia could have been overwhelmed. For a detailed account of the tense relationship between the LCP, the Bureau and the NKVD, see Swain (2003a).

⁶ Both the 1945 Potsdam Conference and the Paris Peace Conference of 1946 gave rise to persistent rumours about possible British interventions in the Latvian countryside, strengthening resistance to collectivisation.

⁷ At the time of the Peace Conference, a delegation of the Anglo–Soviet Society visited Riga to investigate the allegations of oppression made by Latvian émigrés in Sweden and Germany.