‘We Lay Claim to Him!’ Berlin, Rothko, Eisenstein, and the Reorientation of Latvian National Identity

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, Latvia has increasingly made claim on the intellectual and cultural heritage of Sir Isaiah Berlin, Mark Rothko, and Sergei Eisenstein. This article adopts a social constructivist approach in comparing and contrasting the role of intellectuals in framing nineteenth-century national identities and their contemporary instrumentalization as tools in the construction of national identity. The article then considers the “seizure” of Berlin, Rothko, and Eisenstein as “Latvians,” arguing that this process has been undertaken for both international and domestic purposes—to socialize and integrate Latvia with the West, and to promote domestic value change.

Keywords:

• Latvia
• Social Constructivism
• National Identity
• Intellectuals
• Isaiah Berlin
• Mark Rothko
• Sergei Eisenstein

Notes

¹See www.isaiahberlin.org . Last accessed March 29, 2012.

1. An intellectual is here understood as an individual engaged ‘in academic study or critical evaluation of ideas and issues’ (New dictionary of cultural literacy, 2005).

2. The Czech scholar Miroslav Hroch (1985, p. 23), conceptualized three development phases: “Phase A (the period of scholarly interest), Phase B (the period of patriotic agitation) and Phase C (the rise of a mass national movement).” Although Latvia was the only Baltic State that did not merit a separate chapter in Hroch's volume, Toivo Raun and Andrejs Plakans (1990) find the Hroch model to be broadly applicable to the development of national movements in all three Baltic States.

3. The latter encompassing Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as Eastern Europe.

4. This is particularly relevant in the case of Latvia, which is one of the three numerically smallest nations in the world to have developed its own indigenous “high culture” (Taagepera, 2011, p. 126).

5. Peter Howard (2004) provides a detailed case study of the Estonian military learning and mastering the use of a new military language in the run-up to joining NATO.

6. Several contemporary classical musicians—for example the conductors Maris Jansons and Andris Nelsons—are noted in their respective fields, although are largely unknown to wider audiences. Moreover, both have achieved recognition abroad and are no longer resident in Latvia.

7. Although passport applicants can now decline to have their nationality listed in the passport.

8. Daugavpils is located in the eastern and most economically depressed region in Latvia. It is not served by an airport or a rapid rail link, instead relying on a notoriously narrow pothole-ridden road to link it with Riga.