“Nothing anti-state was said”: jews and anti-semites in interwar Latvia through the eyes of the local security service, 1924–1940

ABSTRACT

Since its establishment in the mid-1920s, Latvia’s national security service paid close attention to the country’s Jewish community and its haters among local nationalists. Some Jews were considered a security threat after becoming pro-Soviet communists; others boycotted German goods and defied British anti-Zionist policy, thereby de facto damaging Latvia’s foreign relations. Latvian far-right activists were deemed dangerous not only due to their preparations for an uprising but also because of their readiness to harass Jews, destabilizing the fragile ethnopolitical balance in Latvian society. The work of Latvian secret agents against these threats is described in the current article in unprecedented detail. Evidence suggests that it was quite successful and free of expressions of anti-Semitic sentiment. While preventing Jews from joining the communists and publicly protesting the anti-Jewish behaviour of Berlin and London, the Latvian security service also protected the local Jewish community from possible violent actions of homegrown Nazis.

Introduction: the big unknown in the history of Latvian Jews

The end of World War I in November 1918 and the implementation of Woodrow Wilson’s idea of a right to self-determination of nationalities resulted in the emergence of new nation states in Europe, among them the independent Republic of Latvia.¹ From its first days, the young country located on the shores of the Baltic Sea was subject to grave external threats. The remnants of the defeated German army refused to leave its territory and for a while even took control of its capital Rīga, while on its eastern border stood the formidable communist entity under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin. Having become the USSR in 1922, it aspired to “swallow” the entire Baltic region. The struggle against these two enemies included not only fierce combat, supported by the West and neighbouring Estonia, but also the establishment of a national security service.² The latter was expected to expose and thwart any effort of subversion and espionage on the part of the Germans and Russians and, in addition, to suppress any domestic political activity considered anti-state. The combined action in the military and security fields proved effective, and two years later, in 1920, Latvia, free of hostile foreign presence, was able to sign a peace treaty with communist Moscow and turned to dealing with its multiple internal problems.³

In the first peacetime years, the Latvian national security service experienced a series of structural reforms and senior management reshuffles. Subordinated to the Ministry of Interior, it was finally stabilized in 1924 under the new title Politiska Pārvalde (Political Department) or Politpārvalde. Its director, Voldemārs Ozoliņš, remained in this position until April 1934. His successor, Jānis Fridrihsons-Skrauja, an experienced officer who entered service almost a decade and a half earlier, was among the key facilitators of apvērsums, a bloodless coup d’etat that took place on 15 May 1934, and overnight transformed Latvia from a parliamentary democracy into a dictatorship. The newly minted dictator, Kārlis Ulmanis, Latvia’s long-time Prime Minister (and future president) presenting conservative circles and not alien to nationalist views, would remain in power for the next six years, until the Soviet occupation of his country in June 1940. Under him, Fridrihsons-Skrauja would expand the Politpārvalde’s powers. Apart from the usual tasks of protecting the civil order and preventing and investigating the crimes against national security – first of all, the Soviet and German espionage – it would have to monitor the public mood towards the new regime, as well as discourage all types of independent political activities. Among those tightly controlled by Fridrihsons-Skrauja’s men were many members of about 93,000-strong Latvian Jewish community.⁴

So far, the handling of “Jewish affairs” by the Political Department has been very rarely covered by historical research in Latvia and abroad. First, it must be emphasized that during the decades of the country’s occupation by the Soviet Union, until 1991, the history of the independent Latvian state and its security apparatus, as well as the history of Latvian Jews, were considered a strict taboo. Since all major archival decisions were made by Moscow or required its approval, the documentary collection of the Politpārvalde, this “punitive instrument of bourgeois Latvia,” was locked away in a communist-controlled Latvian historical archive.⁵ It was available only to a handful of local scholars, trusted and heavily censored by the authorities. Under such circumstances, even a minor reference to the interest of Ulmanis’s secret agents in the local Jewish community was unthinkable.

Regrettably, the first decade of restored Latvian independence did not break the long academic silence surrounding this historical phenomenon. It was not until 1999 that the first academic publication on the history of the Latvian intelligence and security services before 1940 saw the light in Rīga;⁶ and it took two more years to write and publish a book focusing on the Political Department and mentioning, among other things, this organization’s relations with Latvian Jews.⁷ In its short three-page chapter entitled “About observation and repression of Jews,” the latter work revealed that in the 1930s, the Politpārvalde was closely monitoring local Jewish organizations for two major reasons: these organizations’ active support for the anti-German economic boycott in 1933–1934, which threatened Rīga-Berlin official relations, and the angry reaction of Latvian Zionists to the execution of their comrade in Palestine, in the summer of 1938, by the British Mandate authorities (both topics will be discussed in detail later in this article). A number of valuable examples of such monitoring were given.⁸ Yet, generally speaking, the said source covered the Politpārvalde’s dealing with the “Jewish subject” only very superficially. For example, there was no mention at all of the persecution and observation of the leading Latvian Jewish social-democrats after Ulmanis’s coup in May 1934;⁹ as well as of the department’s relations with “nationally oriented” members of the Latvian Jewish community and its interest in anti-Jewish acts, speeches and publications of Latvian ultranationalists.

The latter topic has been discussed very briefly in a number of other academic publications, both Latvian and Western. As early as 1994, Armands Paeglis, author of the first comprehensive monograph on the Latvian ultranationalist party Pērkonkrusts (Thunder Cross), quoted various archival sources indicating that this organization’s harsh anti-Semitic posture was perfectly known to the Latvian secret police and that the latter carefully examined its most extreme manifestations.¹⁰ Moreover, Paeglis managed to extract from the Politpārvalde’s archival collection reports that clearly indicate the spread of extreme anti-Semitic views among the general Latvian non-Jewish population and even their infiltration into the ranks of the Political Department itself.¹¹

Further evidence of Politpārvalde’s awareness of anti-Semitic ideas, propaganda and activities of Latvian ultranationalists was published in 2013 by Anita Stasulane, in her article dedicated to the neo-pagan Dievturi (“God keepers”) movement ideologically close to Pērkonkrusts;¹² and also in 2022 by Paula Oppermann, in a chapter on Pērkonkrusts’s anti-Semitism and general anti-democratic activities.¹³ These publications’ have contributed to our understanding of the Latvian secret police’s perception of the local militant anti-Semites. However, being focused on broader topics unrelated to Jews, they understandably cited very few of Politpārvalde’s reports on anti-Semitism, drew no conclusions about the organization’s reporting about this social phenomenon, and did not place this reporting in the broader context of the Latvian Political Department’s handling of “Jewish affairs.”

This article aims to close the abovementioned historiographical gaps with the help of the author’s recent findings in the Latvian State Historical Archive. It describes Politpārvalde’s multiyear intelligence-gathering, prevention and thwarting efforts in various fields related to Latvian Jews – from the communist and Zionist activities to the Latvian anti-Semitism – and presents author’s conclusions as to these efforts’ effectiveness. An attempt is also made to understand whether the secret agents themselves were expressing anti-Semitic views, which may have influenced the corresponding practical actions of Politpārvalde. The article concludes with a number of suggestions for possible future paths of historical research related to the relationship between the Latvian national security service and Latvian Jews in the 1920s and 1930s.

Detecting Jews among soviet spies and Latvian communists

Since the early 1920s, following the signing of a peace treaty between Latvia and Soviet Russia, which ended the war between the two countries and fixed their common border, Soviet intelligence and the Comintern – a Moscow-led international organization aimed to promote a global communist revolution – began building on Latvian soil their covert networks. These engaged in espionage, geopolitical influence and political subversion not only locally, but also in neighbouring and distant Western countries.¹⁴ The effort by the Political Department under the management of Voldemārs Ozoliņš to curb the Soviet secret offensive bore only partial fruit. Despite the series of embarrassing exposures and expulsions of Soviet intelligence officers that received extensive media coverage, the Soviet intelligence agencies – the so-called “Foreign Department” (Inostrannyi Otdel) of the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) and the Intelligence Directorate (Razvedupr) of the Red Army – kept operating in Latvia with great vigour. Similarly, the Politpārvalde failed to fully thwart Moscow’s efforts to cultivate the local Communist Party and foment ethnic separatism in Latvia’s eastern borderlands.¹⁵

This was the broad security context in which the Latvian secret police began to take an interest in Jews, locals and refugees from Soviet Russia, factually or supposedly connected to various Soviet official representatives in Rīga, other Latvian cities or even Moscow. As a principle, the Jews were considered by the Latvian authorities a loyal ethnic minority and were not defined as a potential security threat. From the first days of the independent Latvian Republic, they were integrated in its political, economic and cultural life and served in its army, bravely defending their country from the Russians and Germans in 1918-1920.¹⁶ Also, unlike the Latgalian minority in the east of the country, they did not aspire to territorial autonomy.¹⁷ Nor had they fought for their cultural, religious, economic and political rights as energetically as the local Germans (Baltendeutsche), who sometimes expressed hostility to the Latvian state and tried to harness Berlin and even Moscow to their side.¹⁸ Therefore, there was no reason to suspect the entire Latvian Jewish community of possibly becoming a “Trojan horse” of a foreign power and closely monitor it. However, already in the early 1920s, while trying to identify Russian intelligence and Comintern operatives acting in Latvia from various cover positions in official Soviet missions, Latvian counterintelligence realized that some of their most active surveillance targets had Jewish names.

Among the first to attract the Politpārvalde’s attention were Soviet official representatives of Jewish origin Grigorii Kheifets and Isak Rabinovich. They served in the OGPU Rīga station (rezidentura) located in the Soviet embassy and were responsible for the recruitment and handling of local human sources. About Kheifets we learn from the later Russian sources that he himself was a Latvian Jew born in the city of Dvinsk (now Daugavpils) and raised in Rīga, where in 1914 he joined a local branch of Jewish socialist party called Bund.¹⁹ After having fought on the Communist side in the Russian Civil War, he enrolled into the Comintern and in 1924 came back to his native Latvia as its secret representative.²⁰ Local counterintelligence unequivocally identified him as an OGPU officer, who, after arriving in the Latvian capital, served awhile as this organization’s de-facto head of station (rezident). It was claimed that together with Rabinovich and non-Jewish colleagues, Kheifets had spread across Latvia a network of local agents that included a number of Jews – Moisejs (Mihails) Bass, Izraels Bergans, Miķels Vainšteins, and one more person known to the Ozoliņš’s men by his last name Bravermans. According to the Latvians, all the OGPU local Jewish sources were salesmen.²¹ Obviously, this profession allowed them free movement across the country that was exploited for fulfilling the OGPU’s intelligence tasks through visual observation and meeting secondary agents.

In its currently available documentation, the Latvian security service did not discuss the motives that brought the local Jewish citizens into the arms of Soviet intelligence. It can be assumed that, along with the regular ones such as money, ideology and ego, Kheifets and Rabinovich may have taken advantage of the sense of insecurity that spread among the Latvian Jews after a series of severe anti-Semitic incidents (from the looting of Jewish property to physical harm to Jews themselves) occurred throughout the country in 1919-1922.²² Be that as it may, as of 1928, the secretive network of sympathizers built by Kheifets and led by him and the OGPU new permanent rezident sent from Moscow, was already regarded by the Politpārvalde as likvidēta, i.e. liquidated.²³ The exact liquidation date has not been disclosed, but, according to the already mentioned contemporary Russian sources, in 1925 Grigorii Kheifets left Latvia and was sent by the Comintern to Constantinople (now Istanbul).²⁴

Meanwhile, the Latvian secret police became increasingly interested in the underground activities of the Latvian Communist Party (Latvijas Komunistiskā partija, LKP) steered by Kheifets’s superiors in the Moscow-based Comintern’s “International Relations Department.” Very quickly, it was established that the LKP’s most important centre of gravity is located in Latgale, Latvia’s easternmost region, close to the Soviet border and characterized by a high percentage of non-Latvian population, including Jews.²⁵ The results of the arrests carried out by the Politpārvalde among local communists and the members of the Lenin Communist Youth Union (Ļeņina Komunistiskā jaunatnes savienība, LKJS), showed that at times the majority of the arrested in some localities were of Jewish origin. So it was in October 1926, in the city of Krāslava. Among 38 members of the local LKP cell who fell into the Political police’s hands were many Jews, including a young communist activist Villi Nevlers (aka Vladimir Vilin). According to his later testimony, he and his friends were severely beaten by their captors who allegedly tried to extract confessions about illegal communist activities. Finally, some of those arrested were brought to justice, while others, and Nevlers among them, managed to free themselves and flee through the border to the Soviet Union.²⁶

About three years later, in January 1930, a report sent to the Politpārvalde’s Rīga headquarters by the organization’s Latgale leading branch in the city of Daugavpils informed that almost the entire local LKJS circuit was led by people with recognizably Jewish names. In Daugavpils itself, the LKJS leader was Srogovičs Mozus, son of Simeļis; and in Rēzekne, the Latgale’s second largest city – Meters Giršs, son of Dāvīd. By the time the report was compiled, Meters and one of his aides, a Jew named Plineris Leizers, son of Naftalijs, had already been prosecuted by Latvian criminal justice system.²⁷

Other intelligence updates received by Ozoliņš from Latgale revealed that the LKP/LKJS branches in Daugavpils maintained their contacts with comrades in Rīga through a Jewish courier Naftalijs Lipmans, and that the entire communist clandestine communication in Latgale was organized by another Jew Arons Gandlers (alias “Matros”).²⁸ Moreover, during a search conducted in the apartment of Daugavpils LKP female activist Sofija-Šifra Šluper, evidence was found of her and her organization’s contacts with Jewish comrades abroad. Mentioned in this context was Boruch Gitelson, a Polish-Jewish communist who, having been expelled from Latvia for subversive activities, moved to neighbouring Estonia.²⁹

In subsequent years, and especially after the 1934 coup, the repressions against the LKP/LKJS intensified, leading to these organizations’ almost complete destruction and deactivation in the second half of the 1930s.³⁰ It is very likely, though still not confirmed by historical research, that this Politpārvalde’s success was largely enabled by the simultaneous harsh purges of the Moscow-based LKP’s top leadership.³¹ Another possibly helpful development was the extremely negative reaction of some “nationally-oriented” members in the Latvian Jewish community to the activities of local Jewish communists. Some of them were voluntarily contacting the Rīga headquarters of Politpārvalde at 13 Alberta street to complain about other Jews loyal to Moscow, and even about the Marxist-Zionist organization Poale Zion, whose activities on Latvian soil were banned by the Ulmanis regime. One such complainant, who wished to remain anonymous, concluded his written appeal with the following sentence: “I very much hope that Politiska Pārvalde will find appropriate means to stop these Marxist activities harmful to the state and its loyal Jewish citizens.”³² Interestingly, the targets of such complaints knew that there were Jewish provokatory (agents provocateurs) who turned them over to the authorities.³³

The involvement of Latvian Jews in the underground communist work was still mentioned by the Political Police in 1937-1940, when the last active LKP/LKJS structures were discovered and dismantled and their leaders arrested and brought to the local courts.³⁴ One of the Politpārvalde’s relevant reports talks about two communists arrested in Rīga in January 1937 – Jēkabs Blumentāls, the head of the Red Aid (Sarkanā Palīdzība) organization, and his aide Zamuels Ferbers.³⁵

In this context, the fact should be emphasized that, despite the apparently high presence of Jews in communist networks throughout Latvia, Politpārvalde’s reports related to the LKP/LKJS activities did not contain any anti-Semitic language, remaining always strictly professional. The ethnic origin of those involved in anti-state political subversion on behalf of Moscow was never mentioned and discussed, at least in writing, neither by Ozoliņš and his successor Fridrihsons-Skrauja, nor by their subordinates. This is especially remarkable considering that nationalism and anti-Semitism took root in various social strata of prewar Latvia; that, since the mid-1920s, Latvian nationalists had waged a constant, loud anti-Semitic campaign in the local press and on other platforms; and, finally, that the Political Department and other units of the Latvian police were staffed almost exclusively by Latvians (throughout the entire period of Latvia’s interwar independence there was only one Jew, a veteran of the War of Independence, hired as a policeman).³⁶

The reason for such Politpārvalde’s “correctness” is unknown. Perhaps the absence of official institutional anti-Semitism in interwar independent Latvia, as well as Ulmanis’s special attention to the Jewish issue and opposition to chauvinism, including anti-Semitism, played a role.³⁷ Anyway, avoiding anti-Semitic rhetoric did not prevent Latvian secret agents from vigorously interfering with the activities of local Jewish political activists, which the Latvian authorities considered potentially harmful to the country’s strategic interests.

Preventing Jewish political activists from damaging the relationship between the republic of Latvia and the great powers

Since the early 1930s, along with monitoring Jewish adherents of communist ideology, the Latvian Political Police was forced to devote its time, energy and resources to preventing possible damage that some of the local Jews could cause to Latvia’s strategic relations with the two European superpowers – Germany and England.

As for the Germans, after the accession of Adolf Hitler to power in January 1933, in the view of the immediate, severe physical and economic damage to German Jews inflicted by his government, Jewish organizations worldwide acted to boycott German products, and so did the Jews of Latvia. Their public organizations, such as the Hasmonaea and Galilaea student fraternities, began advocating for the boycott already in early April 1933, soon after learning of the Nazi call for boycotting Jewish businesses in Germany.³⁸ A few months later, on 4 June 1933, the participants of the nationwide Jewish conference decided, by 35 votes in favour with four abstentions, that the members of their community should avoid any relations with the Third Reich. It was promised that the new authorities in Berlin will be fought not only economically, but also in the cultural and political dimensions “until our brothers in Germany get their rights back.”³⁹ The implementation of the conference’s decision was delegated to the special body titled “The Latvian Jewish Executive Boycott Committee” and its operational wing, the so-called “Control Committee” (Kontrolkomiteja known also by its abbreviation ko-ko). On 12 November 1933, the latter structure published a decree according to which all the boycott’s violators were to be fined large sums and their names were to be published in the local Jewish press.⁴⁰

The boycott measures were fully supported and strictly implemented by the biggest and most powerful Zionist organization in Latvia – the Betar youth movement founded in Rīga just a decade earlier.⁴¹ The leader of its “mother” right-wing Zionist Revisionist Hatzohar Party, Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, claimed and wrote on various occasions that the leadership in Berlin under Hitler and the majority of the German people who supported it had declared “a war of extermination on the Jewry” and, therefore, the Jews should respond with an economic boycott. In his view, it was a “powerful means of war” that would “deeply shake the political regime” in Berlin.⁴²

The first to protest against the Jewish boycott among the Latvian non-Jewish citizens were local Germans, many of whom were now inspired by the “rebirth” of their historic motherland under the new Nazi rulers. Their political leaders and the press expressed fears that the boycott was aimed primarily at them and would include mass dismissal of German workers from Latvian Jewish-owned private firms. Reacting to such claims and, in any case, following the expressions of the Jewish boycott in the various countries, official Berlin learned that in Latvia the boycott idea received wide support from various local non-Jewish circles – strongly anti-Nazi oriented Social-Democrats, the Russian-speaking community, and even many Latvian right-wing politicians and businessmen promoting the slogan “buy from Latvians.”⁴³ It was against this backdrop that Nazi Germany decided to strike back not directly at the Latvian Jewish community, but at the entire Republic of Latvia.

On 12 June 1933, just nine days after the Jewish Rīga congress that enacted the anti-German boycott, the Germans banned the import of Latvian-made butter into the Reich’s territory. This move by Berlin is still known in Latvian historiography as “Butter War of June 1933.” The Latvian farmers and butter exporters, including many local Baltendeutsche, were immediately seriously affected by it, for up until then the Germans consumed more than half of Latvian butter exports (among the leading in Europe);⁴⁴ and since in their agrarian country they enjoyed great political influence, they had the ability to pressure the government in Rīga to restore “economic peace” with Berlin. On 16 June, while various Latvian newspapers – primarily, German-speaking Rigasche Rundschau and right-wing conservative anti-Semitic Latvian Latvis – blaming Jews and the Social-Democrats for harming Latvian-German relations, the Latvian Foreign Minister Voldemārs Salnais sent to his German counterpart Konstantin von Neurath an official letter of apology in which he promised to stop the “anti-German actions” on Latvian soil. The next day, Berlin lifted its sanctions against Latvian butter, thus ending the economic conflict with Rīga. Two weeks later, on 30 June, Salnais’s boss the Prime Minister Ādolfs Bļodnieks officially announced to the Saeima, the Latvian parliament, that the German government had revoked the ban on Latvian butter following the Latvian government’s assurance that it would take all legal steps against the proclamation of the boycott of German goods.⁴⁵

Meanwhile, the Politpārvalde was ordered to deal with the boycott issue with the means at its disposal, and already in the summer of 1933 it gathered detailed information about the boycott’s initiators and ways of implementation. Secret agents learned that among the Jews themselves there were quite a lot – mainly well-to-do merchants cooperating with various German companies, such as the famous Nivea – who refused to obey the instructions of the so-called “Committee of the Jews of Latvia for the Enforcement of the Boycott” and were therefore fined large amounts by this body. At times, these were absurd punishments since many of the German goods imported to Latvia in defiance of the boycott were produced by German Jews. The Politpārvalde thoroughly investigated both the members of the Committee and the Jewish businessmen and others who were punished by it. On 7 April 1934, after proving that the boycott contradicted the official Latvian laws and rules in the field of foreign trade, the Political Police forwarded its findings to further legal treatment by the State Prosecutor’s Office.⁴⁶

Only five weeks later, on 16 May, while the State Prosecutor was still examining the investigation materials, the people of Latvia woke up to a completely new political reality created by the coup d’etat of Ulmanis. Many political and social structures were banned immediately, among them the “Committee of the Jews of Latvia for the Enforcement of the Boycott.” Some of the Committee’s key figures ended up in an improvised concentration camp in the city of Liepāja, where all alleged opponents of the new dictator, from communists to nationalists, were kept.⁴⁷ With this, the anti-Nazi boycott movement in Latvia ceased to exist. It was suppressed by the Politpārvalde under the pretext of “restoring order” in the country, without connection with the earlier investigation conducted under the previous democratic government.

From his first days as dictator, Ulmanis promoted the policy of “Latvianization of Latvia.” This implied a significant reduction in the rights of all local minorities previously granted by Latvian constitution. Jews, like other non-Latvians, were forced out of the state sector and prestigious professions, all their left-wing political organizations and most newspapers ceased to exist, and those of their national schools, which had escaped closure, became strictly controlled by the state. Some of the Jewish politicians, whose parties were banned, even found themselves behind bars and were later forced to leave the country for good.⁴⁸ Probably the most prominent figure among them was Maksis “Max” Lazersons – a famous lawyer, leader of the centre-left Jewish party Ceire Cion (Youth of Zion), and former member of the Saeima. After his release from custody in October 1934, he left for Palestine.⁴⁹

Interestingly, Lazersons’s arrest after the May 1934 coup was received positively by some members of the Latvian Jewish community, who saw themselves as Latvian patriots and Ulmanis’s supporters. They even voluntarily informed the Politpārvalde about the alleged illegal underground activity of Ceire Cion and other Jewish leftist political groupings.⁵⁰ For its part, the Latvian Ministry of Internal Affairs – through its department of press and public organizations and, most likely, with the help of Jewish employees or agents – closely monitored publications in foreign Jewish newspapers, even in distant South Africa, about Latvia’s new policy towards local Jewish leftist politicians. The Political Police was informed of the relevant findings.⁵¹

The only ones among the Jewish organizations who survived the coup unscathed were religious and Zionist structures not associated by the new authorities with “leftist ideas.” Forced to accept the Politpārvalde’s constant uzraudzība or surveillance, they nonetheless continued to act freely and even expanded their ranks.⁵² The Latvian branch of the conservative-religious Agudas Yisroel (Union of Israel) party, earlier presented in Saeima, rebranded itself as a “national-religious organization” Mahane Israel (Camp of Israel) and received Ulmanis’s blessing for spreading its activities within the local Jewish community; the Organization of the Jewish Veterans of the National War for Independence enjoyed the unchanged regime’s support and even inaugurated, in an official ceremony, a monument in memory of the Jewish soldiers who have sacrificed their lives for Latvia; and even the Rīga office of Keren Hayesod (The Foundation Fund), an international Zionist fundraising organization, functioned without hindrance on the prestigious Elizabetes street, just a few minutes’ walk from the Politpārvalde’s headquarters.⁵³ In November 1935, an inspector sent by Fridrihsons-Skrauja to attend a management meeting of one of these bodies wrote to his boss a positive report, emphasizing that “nothing anti-state was said” at the event.⁵⁴

The new political circumstances turned out to be most favourable for the already mentioned Betar youth movement of right-wing Revisionist Zionism. Its branches, scattered throughout Latvia, kept recruiting local young Jews, training them for future agricultural work and military service in their “historical homeland” and then transferring them to Palestine via Poland and Romania; and its founder and leader Jabotinsky came to Rīga in 1935. According to the Political Police, which closely followed the visit but did not interrupt it, on the evening of 21 May 1935 – a full year after the Ulmanis’s coup – the famous guest gave a speech “The new goals of the Jewish national movement” to a large audience of about 1,500 people. The almost three-hour event took place in the very centre of the Latvian capital, at the famous house of the Rīga Latvian Society, the cultural temple of the local elite.⁵⁵ Obviously, such a location could not be chosen without the approval of the highest city or even state authorities.

About ten months later, in mid-March 1936, on the 16th anniversary of the death of Joseph Trumpeldor, a Zionist activist who fell defending the Tel Hai settlement in Palestine, members of the Latvian Betar held a series of memorial events in his honour in Rīga and many other Latvian cities. And again, in the spirit of the period under review, the representatives of the Latvian ministry of the Interior closely followed these gatherings but did nothing against them.⁵⁶ The Ulmanis regime’s positive relations with the Zionists reached their peak when, in September 1937, Latvia’s official representative in the Commonwealth of Nations Ludvigs Sēja announced his country support to the wish of the Jewish people to return to their historical homeland.⁵⁷

However, this apparent symbiosis between the Latvian and Jewish right-wing political leaderships, which still awaits thorough examination and explanation by historians, had its limits. First, the Politpārvalde tried to prevent the local Jews supporting the Zionist project, and especially those leaving for Palestine, from transferring there their savings in the ways that the Latvian law considered illegal. In the summer of 1935, the organization became alarmed by reports about Keren Hayesod possible involvement in a money-trafficking scheme misusing a fundraising campaign officially approved by Ulmanis.⁵⁸ On 30 October 1936, the Politpārvalde was forced to admit that, despite its preventive efforts, many local wealthy Jews had no problem taking their money illegally to Palestine.⁵⁹

Second, as in the days of the anti-German boycott, Ulmanis’s regime wanted to block any possible attempt of Jabotinsky’s men, either intentional or unintentional, to “invade’” the highly sensitive area of strategic relations between the Latvian Republic and the great powers. Probably the most significant event of this kind occurred in late June 1938, when the British Mandatory authorities in faraway Palestine executed Shlomo Ben-Joseph (Shalom Tabachnik), a Betar member and fighter of the Etzel, a revisionist-Zionist paramilitary organization that fought against the British presence in the Holy Land. The members of Betar’s Latvian branch reacted to this British action angrily, organizing immediately loud protest rallies next to the British embassy in Rīga and its consulate in Liepāja. At their peak, stones were thrown at the windows of both institutions. At least one of the stones that broke the embassy’s window was wrapped in a handwritten leaflet in the English language: “The Jewish people will never forget the blud [sic] of their brother Ben-Joseph!”⁶⁰

In the eyes of official Rīga, the timing of this Jewish political escapade could not be worse. In those very days, the diplomatic crisis around the Sudetenland, which the Third Reich wanted to annex to its territory, reached its peak, and Moscow reacted to it inter alia by actively trying to deploy the Red Army troops beyond Soviet western border, as a kind of military cordon against possible German advance east.⁶¹ For his part, Ulmanis, like his other Baltic colleagues, tried to escape Soviet dangerous hug by declaring Latvia’s strict neutrality. Loud and violent anti-British protest rallies in the centre of the Latvian capital clearly contradicted this policy. Moreover, in the period under scrutiny, Britain was one of Latvia’s key trading partners and a leading supplier of coal, the small Baltic country’s main energy resource; and the Latvian foreign minister Vilhelms Munters even visited London to discuss a possible deal with the British arms industry.⁶²

It is therefore not surprising that Jānis Fridrihsons-Skrauja and his staff were put in charge of investigating Betar’s attacks on British missions. Sadly, investigation papers that have survived to this day are very scarce. It is only known that Politpārvalde’s representatives received from the British embassy in Rīga the handwritten leaflet and the stone that was wrapped in it and broke the embassy window. They also inspected the small Alunana street where the embassy was located, and, finally, questioned residents of nearby houses.⁶³ The results of these steps are unknown. Nonetheless, it can be assumed with high degree of probability that the investigators knew that Betar was behind the anti-British unrests and acted effectively to prevent their recurrence. The Politpārvalde’s documentary collection contains no later evidence of similar or different Jewish anti-British actions on Latvian soil.

Following this event, very unpleasant for the Latvian official authorities, the Political Police became highly sensitive to the visits to Latvia of various foreign Jews, who were now a priori considered potential troublemakers. So, for example, in December 1938, Latvian secret agents thoroughly examined the moves and deeds in Latvia of the German Jew named Walter Becker, who presented himself as a former foreign correspondent for the famous “Die Welt” newspaper;⁶⁴ and in January 1939, a comprehensive investigation was carried out into suspicious travels around Latvia by two men, presumably Lithuanian Jews, who, according to various sources, were trying to collect donations for a yeshiva – a Jewish religious educational institution – in their homeland.⁶⁵ It is very likely that the Latvian counterespionage aces suspected these people of secretly assisting local Zionist circles in their anti-British work.

Still, in the period under review, a much more serious challenge to Latvia’s national security, and therefore also to the Politpārvalde, was posed by the enemy from within – local radical nationalism.

Countering the society-splitting activities of violent Latvian antisemites

Since the early 1920s, Latvian homegrown far-right scene gradually matured attracting wide swathes of the local Latvian community who dreamed of a political and economic monopoly in their young state after hundreds of years of foreign rule and the sacrifices of the national War of Independence. According to their worldview, the minorities living in Latvia – Baltic Germans, Russians, Poles and Jews – had to leave or else be deprived of their rights and positions in the local politics, economy, science, culture and other spheres of life. Jews, in particular, were singled out as an archenemy, allegedly not only fundamentally alien and hostile to the Latvian culture, but also serving as a channel for the spread of Soviet Marxist-Leninist ideology. Calls were constantly published to reduce the representation of Jews in politics, commerce and academic life of the Latvian state, and, worse still, sporadic acts of vandalism and even terrorism, such as the throwing of hand grenades, were committed against Jewish institutions and individual Jews.⁶⁶

In 1932-1933, against the backdrop of the deepening socio-economic and political crisis in the country and growing Soviet covert ideological subversion, Latvian far-right circles gave birth to various political structures. The strongest one was Latviešu tautas apvienība “Ugunskrusts” (Latvian People’s Union “Fire Cross”), which, after being banned by the Latvian authorities for its outright radicalism in April 1933, was soon revived under the name Pērkonkrusts already mentioned above. Its leader Gustavs Celmiņš – a veteran of the Latvian War of Independence and later a diplomat – became in the late1920s a rising star of Latvian national conservatism and “intellectual” anti-Semitism, but, dissatisfied with their “insufficient radicalism,” went to build a more activist ultranationalist movement. Despite its obvious similarity to the already banned Ugunskrusts, Pērkonkrusts was officially registered in May 1933, swiftly spread its branches across the country penetrating even security forces, and saw proscription, as a body “hostile to the Latvian democratic republic,” only seven months later, on 30 January 1934. Still, the organization’s leadership behaved as if nothing extraordinary had happened, and only in June the same year, about a month after the Ulmanis’s coup, Celmiņš and about 100 of his comrades found themselves in the Liepāja concentration camp. The Führer of the Latvian Nazis would remain in custody for the next three years and then go into exile abroad, but hundreds of his organization’s members, known as Pērkonkrustieši, would be released or not caught at all. Throughout the 1930s, they would keep acting clandestinely to bring their leader’s vision of future “Latvian Latvia” to life.⁶⁷

The Politpārvalde knew already in the late 1920s that the predecessors of the Pērkonkrusts were openly calling for violence against Latvian minorities. This was the case with an ephemeral far-right group from the central-Latvian Jelgava district, which in 1928 distributed its leaflets under the name Aktivie Zemnieki (“Active Farmers”). “Shoot one or two Jews and Germans,” it taught its potential supporters, “and we’ll be free from their presence.”⁶⁸ In the early 1930s, the men of Voldemārs Ozoliņš constantly investigated physical attacks on Jews by nationalists, among them the famous riot that followed a match between Latvian and Jewish football teams in Rīga, in September 1933.⁶⁹ They also monitored Celmiņš’s public speeches, as well as the nationalist press, such as the newspapers Latvis and Pērkonkrusts, whose publications reflected and analyzed ideas, plans and certain moves of leading nationalists and their groupings.⁷⁰ The conclusion made by the Politpārvalde was unequivocal: “Ugunskrusts’s aim is the division of the Latvian people through hatred, and this manifests itself openly in the pursuit of agitation and action against the Jews, without excluding even the organization of pogroms.”⁷¹ In July 1933, the security service advised the state authorities to ban Celmiņš’s movement because of its outward anti-state stance, including aggressive antisemitic propaganda. “Cultivates hatred towards Jewish citizens of Latvia” – this is how the Politpārvalde report characterized the anti-Jewish rhetoric of publications in the Pērkonkrusts newspaper. The fact was highlighted that this was a recurring phenomenon and selected quotes were added to give readers a first-hand perspective on the nationalists’ hate-inflaming language.⁷²

After the official banning of the Pērkonkrusts movement and the imprisonment of Celmiņš in June 1934, the Political Police, now under its new boss Fridrihsons-Skrauja, kept closely monitoring the local far-right scene, trying to unveil and prevent any possible threat to the stability of the state and its regime. Naturally, the top priority was given to the intentions and practical steps of the nationalist underground to physically eliminate Ulmanis and seize power. Certain intelligence data in this field were received by Politpārvalde as early as January 1935, when it became known that Pērkonkrustieši were deploying armed “storm troops” throughout Rīga;⁷³ and later, in March 1936, when alarming news arrived about an allegedly prepared but postponed attempt on the lives of Ulmanis and his powerful advisor and a Deputy Minister of Interior Alfrēds Bērziņš.⁷⁴

The nationalist poisonous propaganda was not overlooked as well, including its anti-Semitic tunes. For example, in January 1935, Fridrihsons-Skrauja learned from his subordinates that Pērkonkrusts’ underground printing house was constantly producing leaflets accusing key Latvian ministers of being “Freemasons serving Jewish interests.”⁷⁵ In April 1935, an agent close to the leadership of the Dievturi – a neo-pagan Latvian movement which, in Politpārvalde’s view, served as a front for the banned Pērkonkrusts – reported one of its leader’s statement, according to which the all-out struggle against the Jews should be postponed in the meantime, but “it will probably happen in the future by itself.”⁷⁶ In the early 1937, other anti-Jewish statements were recorded, attributed to the prominent figures in the Dievturi, who allegedly spoke openly against “curly-haired Jews dominating Latvian cities”;⁷⁷ and secretly circulated Pērkonkrusts’ proclamation was seized stating that “Ulmanis sold our Latvia to the Jews.”⁷⁸ Two years later, the Politpārvalde’s Rīga headquarters still mentioned in its reports the secret correspondence between the Pērkonkrustieši, in which they expressed their hatred of “international Jewry,” as well as the attempts by the organization’s activists to smuggle from Nazi Germany issues of the locally banned Der Stürmer newspaper containing anti-Semitic propaganda.⁷⁹ Summarizing these and other currently available similar reports, we can conclude that the Politpārvalde’s reporting on the anti-Semitic element of the local far-right propaganda and activity was persistent, full of citations exemplifying the hate language of the Latvian Nazis and delivering clear message about this phenomenon’s destructiveness for the state security.

Unfortunately, the same reporting does not shed any light on the Political Department’s practical reaction to the anti-Semitic rhetoric emanating from local ultranationalist circles. On the other hand, the fact must be emphasized that to the best of our knowledge, until the occupation of Latvia by the Soviets in mid-1940, this rhetoric did not actually lead to any major anti-Jewish action comparable to the pogroms in neighbouring Poland.⁸⁰ Most likely, this fact can be explained by the effectiveness of the Latvian security service, given its total and intensive intelligence coverage of the Latvian far-right scene during the period under review.⁸¹

Conclusion

This article, based on the author’s findings in the Latvian State Historical Archive, scrutinized a hitherto understudied historical phenomenon – the multiyear intelligence-gathering, prevention and thwarting efforts of the interwar Latvian Political Police, the Politpārvalde, in various fields related to Latvian Jews – from the communist and Zionist activities to the Latvian militant anti-Semitism.

As the quoted documents testified, the Politpārvalde – a defensive shield of the Ulmanis’s authoritarian and nationalist regime, acting in very complex ethno-social, political and geopolitical contexts – was driven by the desire to save this regime and the small Latvian state in general from destructive foreign influence, diplomatically and economically dangerous homegrown actions against the great powers, as well as the emerging threat of the local variation of the national-socialism. It was through this “stability guarding” prism that the communist Jews, Jewish anti-German and anti-British protests in Latvian cities, and also the Latvian far-right anti-Semites were seen by the Political Police. As the article demonstrated, the latter’s efforts to cope with all these challenges turned out to be quite successful: the communist and ultra-nationalist networks in prewar Latvia were effectively suppressed, and the undesirable Jewish initiatives against Berlin and London fully thwarted. The only Politpārvalde’s major operational failure in the discussed field, admitted by this organization itself, was its inability to prevent Latvian wealthy Jews from transferring their money to Palestine in the ways prohibited by Latvian law.

In this context, one of the most interesting article’s findings should be stressed – the absence of anti-Semitic language in the Politpārvalde’s reports and their authors’ positive attitude to the Zionist activities in Latvia. Anti-Semitism was not alien to various layers of society in prewar Latvia, and local ultranationalists worked hard to amplify it even further. And yet, the personnel of the Political Police consisting almost exclusively of ethnic Latvians, avoided anti-Semitic remarks in the reports dealing with Jews serving Soviet intelligence and spreading communist propaganda, as well as Jews smuggling money beyond the Latvian borders; and the same personnel approved Zionist events throughout the country and, while tightly controlling them, described their contents as unharmful in terms of state security.

This discovery probably does not completely contradict earlier claims by some Latvian and Western historians that the pre-war Latvian secret police was not free of anti-Jewish sentiment, but it makes the historical picture of the relationship between Latvian Jews and the Politpārvalde more complex and thus, hopefully, more consistent with the real situation in the period under scrutiny.⁸² As for the possible reason for the Politpārvalde’s “correctness” in reporting various political and economic activities of Latvian Jews, it could well have been influenced by the facts already recognized by historians and mentioned in the article: the absence of official institutional anti-Semitism in interwar independent Latvia, and Ulmanis’s special attention to the Jewish issue and opposition to chauvinism, including anti-Semitism. This assumption deserves further detailed academic study.

By reconstructing the complex picture of Politpārvalde’s relationship with the Latvian Jewish community, the article contributes to different relevant bodies of academic research. The most obvious beneficiaries are the historiographies of the Latvian security service and Latvian Jews. While the former briefly touched upon the topic of monitoring ethnic minorities, including Jews, about two decades ago, the latter was fully ignorant of the Politpārvalde’s influence on the Jewish life in interwar Latvia. Besides, the article’s findings may be of certain value for emerging scholarship on domestic intelligence organizations in non-democratic regimes.⁸³ The discussed Latvian case presents an interesting example of a security service in a totalitarian state, which, in the name of national security, constrains the political/social activity of a certain social/ethnic group, but also protects that same group from the domestic and foreign actors trying to hurt it.

In addition to the aforementioned issue of the Politpārvalde’s internal language free of anti-Semitic expressions, there are at least three other, equally important and interesting paths of research arising from this article. First, the phenomenon of collaboration between some Latvian Jews and the Latvian Political Police – as paid agents, volunteers reporting about other, allegedly “anti-state” Jews, and translators handling Yiddish and Hebrew texts that caught the Politpārvalde’s attention. Second, the investigation of the 1938 Betar protests in Rīga and Liepāja, of which we know today only a few details. Third, possible connection between the suppression of the 1938 Betar protests by the Latvian authorities and the latter’s decision – just a few months later and for the first time since 1933 – to ban Jewish refugees from the Third Reich from entering the country, which included sending back to Germany of the refugee ship “Regina” with 77 Jews on board.⁸⁴

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the anonymous reviewers of this article for their most helpful comments, as well as Ms. Rita Bogdanova from the Latvian State Historical Archives and Mr. Ilya Lenski, Director of the Museum “Jews in Latvia,” for their kind assistance in obtaining relevant materials.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yaacov Falkov

Yaacov Falkov is an Israeli-Latvian historian and former Visiting Scholar at Oxford University, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), and The World Holocaust Remembrance Center Yad Vashem. He teaches at Tel-Aviv University, consults for Holocaust museums in Israel and Latvia and writes extensively about World War II history.

Notes

1 Dreifelds, “Latvia,” 96–98; Kershaw, To Hell, 58–59.

2 On the military dimension of establishing Latvia as an independent state, see: Balkelis, “War,” 1–9; Corum, “The Empire,” 71–95.

3 On the first years of the Latvian security service, see: “History”; Niedre, “Latvijas Republikas,” 12–13; Kudors, “Transformation,” 105.

4 “History”; Niedre, ibid., 13–16; Ābola, Bergmanis and Niedre, “Minoritašu,” 235–38. In 1939, the Political Department was resubordinated to the Security Police Department under the new name Political Police Department. See: Jēkabsons, “Iekšlietu,” 238, 240. To simplify it for the readers, the article uses the title Political Department also for the 1939–1940 period. Regarding the number of Jews in Latvia in the mid-1930s, the article uses data from the Fourth Population Census (1935), according to which by 1935 there were 93,479 Jews in the Republic of Latvia. See: Salnītis, Ceturtā, 286.

5 On Moscow’s control over Latvian and other republican archives during Soviet times, see: Berzins, “Archives,” 352–59; Bridges, “The Soviet,” 486–500; Grimsted, Archives.

6 Niedre, Slepenais karš.

7 Kaņepe, Latvijas izlūkdienesti.

8 Bergmanis and Niedre, “Par žīdu,” 235–39.

9 About Ulmanis’s coup d’etat, see: Jēkabsons, “Apvērsuma,” 82–90.

10 Paeglis, Pērkonkrusts, 11, 18, 22–23, 53–54, 60–61, 71, 111–12, 168.

11 Ibid., 148–49.

12 Stasulane, “The Dievturi,” 31–46. According to Stasulane, the Dievturi movement was a revived Paganism formed in Latvia in the early twentieth century with the goal of renewing the pre-Christian “Aryan Latvian Religion.”

13 Oppermann, “More than a Means,” 95–96.

14 Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Imperiia, 99, 136–38.

15 Bergmanis and Zālīte, “PSRS,” 37–115; Niedre, “Pretdarbība,” 116–38; Niedre, “Pasākumi,” 139–55; Primakov, Ocherki, 238.

16 Stranga, Latvijas ebreji; Feldmanis, Jēkabsons and Stranga, “Latviskošanas,” 137.

17 Ābola, Bergmanis and Niedre, “Minoritašu,” 239; Zunda, “Opozīcija,” 123.

18 Cerūzis, “Vācu,” 124–26, 143–44, 155–62, 176–84, 212–15; Ijabs, “Strange,” 495–515; Feldmanis, “Latvijas interesēm,” 169–70; Zunda, ibid., 122.

19 Established in 1897 in Vilna as The General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, the Bund was active worldwide until the mid-1980s. See: Jacobs, Jewish Politics. According to Žvinklis, during the Latvian parliamentary elections of 1928 and 1931, about 5,000 local Jewish voters (about 12 percent of the Jews who participated in those elections) supported the Bund. See: Žvinklis, “Ebreji,” 26–29.

20 “Kheifets”; Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Vse o vneshnei, 470–77; Sudoplatov, Raznye dni, 312–20.

21 “Pārskats par Izlūkošanas Pārvaldes (GRU) un OGPU nelegālo tīklu darbību Latvijā (likvidētās organizācijas),” undated document from 1928, Latvian State Historical Archive (LVVA), 2570. f., 1. apr., 215. l., 35.-47. lpp. Quoted from: Zālīte, “PSRS,” 112–14.

22 On these incidents, see: Horts, “‘Svešie elementi’,” 34–68; Oppermann, “Everyday,” 54–55; Stranga, Ebreji Baltijā, 402, 414–15, 17.

23 “Pārskats par Izlūkošanas Pārvaldes.”

24 Kolpakidi and Prokhorov, Vse o vneshnei, 470–77.

25 According to Žvinklis, during the Latvian parliamentary elections of 1928, 6,000–7,000 local Jewish voters (about 16 percent of the Jews who participated in these elections) supported the communists. See: Žvinklis, “Ebreji,” 28. By that time, the LKP had about 700 active members. In 1933–1934, this number grew to about 1,100. The majority were Latvians, but in Latgale, in 1930, Jews made up about half of the local communists. See: ibid., 49–51.

26 Niedre, “Pasākumi,” 139–43; R. Mariash, Byl’, 114.

27 “Politiskās Pārvaldes Priekšniekam,” No. 108/29/II, January 2, 1930, LVVA, 3235. f., 1/22. apr., 663. l., 1. lpp.

28 “Politiskās Pārvaldes Priekšniekam,” No. 13/II, January 30, 1930, ibid., 11. lpp.; “Politiskās Pārvaldes Priekšniekam,” No. 13/II, April 10, 1930, ibid., 29. lpp.

29 “Politiskās Pārvaldes aģenturas nodaļas vaditājam,” No. 144476, May 21, 1930, ibid., 39. lpp.

30 Niedre, “Pasākumi,” 149–55; Zunda, “Opozīcija,” 120–21.

31 Riekstiņš, “Lielā,” 23–27; Trapāns, “The Latvian,” 25–38.

32 “Politiskai Pārvaldei,” undated letter, June 1934, LVVA, 3235. f., 3. apr., 278. l., 9. lpp.

33 See the testimony of Musia Kaplan, a former LKP activist: “Avtobiografiia,” undated document from around the late 1960s-early 1970s, The State Archives of Personnel Documents (PDVA) of Latvia, 3556. f., 2. apr., 430. l., 8. lpp.

34 On the repressive measures against the LKP during this period, see: Jēkabsons, “Iekšlietu,” 241.

35 Niedre, “Pasākumi,” 151. Sarkanā Palīdzība or Latvijas Sarkanā Palīdzība was an illegal revolutionary organization controlled from Moscow and subordinate to the International Red Aid (known by its Russian acronym MOPR), a structure designed to provide material and moral assistance to “prisoners of the class war” throughout the world. See: Dz. Blumberga. “Priekšvārds.” In Latvijas sekcija Sarkanā Palīdzība, October 4, 1972, LVVA, 1054. f., 1. apr.

36 Feldmanis, Jēkabsons and Stranga, “Latviskošanas,” 139; Krēsliņš, Aktīvais, 204–6; Oppermann, “Everyday,” 55–56.

37 See: Germane, The History, 336; Oppermann, ibid., p. 63; Roņis, “Kārlis Ulmanis,” 84.

38 Cerūzis, “Vācu,” 200; Wiślicki, “The Jewish Boycott,” 282–89.

39 Braatz, “German,” 481–513; “Dienesta atzīme,” undated report from 1934, LVVA, 3235. f., 3. apr., 278. l., 87.-92. lpp.; Ābola, Bergmanis and Niedre, “Minoritašu,” 235; Stranga, Ebreji un diktatūras, 55.

40 Ābola, Bergmanis and Niedre, ibid., p. 236.

41 On the establishment of Betar in Latvia, see: Tseitlin, Dokumental’naia, 49; “April 1930.”

42 For the examples, see: An excerpt from the newspaper “Doar Hayom,” May 19, 1933, Jabotinsky Institute archives (JIA), A1 – 244/7 (Hebrew); “The announcement to the press by Mr. V. Jabotinsky,” November 15, 1933, JIA, A 1 – 36/9 (English).

43 Cerūzis, “Vācu,” 200.

44 About Latvia’s leading positions in the butter trade in Europa, in the 1930s, see: Latvija citu valstu, 58–59. About the exports of Latvian butter to Germany in the 1920–30s, see: Karnups, The Little, 198.

45 Cerūzis, “Vācu,” 202–5; Karnups, ibid., 199; Rogainis, “The Emergence,” 61–85; Sprūde, “1933”; Stranga, Ebreji Baltijā, 55.

46 “Polītiskai Pārvaldes Rīgas rajona priekšniekam. Ziņojums,” October 20, 1933, LVVA, 3235. f., 3. apr., 278. l., 109. lpp.; “Lēmums,” undated document from early 1934, ibid., 68–86. lpp. See the examples of the Politpārvalde’s debriefings regarding the Jewish anti-German boycott in Latvia: “Noklaušināšanas protokols. Izraels Davida d. Haitins,” January 11, 1934, ibid., 93. lpp.; “Noklaušināšanas protokols. Bidrovskis Mozus Davīda d.,” January 8, 1934, ibid., 94. lpp.

47 In total, up to 800 persons were arrested after the coup, among them 503 Social Democrats and Bundists, 128 ultra-nationalists, and 126 Communists. See: Bogojavlenska, “Antisemitism,” 121; Kott, “Latvia’s Pērkonkrusts,” 181; Ščerbinskis, “1934,” 45–46.

48 Ābola, Bergmanis and Niedre, “Minoritašu,” 233, 238, 240; Feldmanis, “Latvijas,” 173; Šteinmanis, History, 66–69; Stranga, LSDSP, 221–24; Zunda, “Opozīcija,” 123.

49 “Bein chabaim”; Jēkabsons, “Maksis Lazersons.”

50 A. Krons, “Politiskās Pārvaldes priekšniekam. Ziņojums,” undated document from June 1934, ibid., 8.lpp.; Žīdu tautības Latv. Atbrīv. cīņu dalībnieks, “Politiskāi Pārvaldei,” undated document from June 1934, ibid., 9. lpp. See also the anonymous complaint signed “Tru … dor” [“Trumpeldor”] about the illegal activity of the left-wing Hashomer Hatzair organization in Latvia: October 12, 1937, ibid., 211. lpp.

51 For example, see: “Žīdu preses parskats,” February 23, 1937, ibid., 208. lpp.

52 For examples of Politpārvalde’s surveillance of Latvian right Zionists, see: “Polītiskai parvaldei Rīga,” June 12, 1934, ibid., 4. lpp.; “Politiskās Pārvaldes Rīgas rajona priekšniekam. Ziņojums,” August 8, 1935, ibid., 153. lpp.

53 Dribins, Gūtmanis and Vestermanis, “Latvijas”; Feldmanis, Jēkabsons and Stranga, “Latviskošanas,” 138. On the Keren Hayesod activity in Latvia after May 15, 1934, see: “Ziņojums,” July 10, 1935, LVVA, 3235. f., 3. apr., 278. l., 180. lpp.; “Dienestā atzimē,” September 19, 1937, ibid., 213. lpp.

54 “Politiskās Pārvaldes Rīgas rajona priekšnieka kungam. Ziņojums,” November 6, 1935, ibid., 163. lpp.

55 “Dienesta atzīme,” May 21, 1935, ibid., 142. lpp.; “Politiskās Pārvaldes Rīgas rajona priekšniekam. Ziņojums,” May 22, 1935, ibid., 143. lpp.

56 Iekšlietu Ministrija, Administrātivajs Departaments, Preses un biedrību nodaļa, no. 148010, “Politiskāis Pārvaldei zināšanai,” February 28, 1936, ibid., 186. lpp.

57 Dribins, Gūtmanis and Vestermanis, “Latvijas.”

58 “Ziņojums,” July 10, 1935, LVVA, 3235. f., 3. apr., 278. l., 180. lpp.

59 “Aģentūras 379 lapiņa,” October 30, 1936, ibid., 207. lpp.

60 See the leaflet in the collection of Politpārvald e’s documents: June 29, 1938, ibid., 224.lpp.

61 Bleiere et al., Latvija, 74–75; Ragsdale, The Soviets, 184.

62 Karnups, The Little, 129, 133, 182, 185; Zunda, “Pēctecība,” 193–94, 213–14.

63 “Notikuma vietas apskates protokols,” June 30, 1938, LVVA, 3235. f., 3. apr., 278. l., 223. lpp.; “Dienesta atzīme,” June 30, 1938, ibid.

64 St. Dilāns, Rajona priekšnieks, “Politiskās Pārvaldes Rīgas rajona priekšnieka kungam,” December 15, 1938, ibid., 233.lpp.; “Dienesta atzīme,” December 13, 1938, ibid., 234. lpp.

65 “Politiskās Pārvaldes Rīgas rajona priekšniekam,” February 4, 1939, ibid., 235. lpp.; “Dienesta atzīme,” February 1, 1939, ibid., 236. lpp.; Untitled document, January 19, 1939, ibid., 237.lpp.

66 Kott, “Latvia’s Pērkonkrusts,” 176–79, 186–87, 192; Krēsliņš, Aktīvais, 204–9; Paeglis, Visu par Latviju!, 20–21, 34–35, 127, 141–42, 223.

67 Krēsliņš, ibid., 205–6; Oppermann, “More than a Means,” 85–86, 88–91; Paeglis, Pērkonkrusts, 33, 75–85; Zunda, “Opozīcija,” 123.

68 Politiskās Pārvaldes Valmieras rajona darbnieks, “Aizrādijums,” undated document from 1928, LVVA, 3235. f., 1/22. apr., 701. l., 135. lpp.

69 Oppermann, “More than a Means,” 95–96.

70 For examples of anti-Semitic publications collected by Politpārvalde, see: “Židu teroristu organizaciajs Rigā,” Latvis, January 4, 1934, p. 1, LVVA, 3235. f., 3. apr., 278. l., 121. lpp.; “Lieli kari pašu žīdu aprindās filmu dēļ,” Latvis, January 23, 1934, p. 1, ibid., 110–11. lpp.

71 “Dienesta atzīme,” LVVA, 3235. f., 3. apr., 109. l., 13. lpp. Quoted in: Oppermann, “More than a Means,” 91

72 “Rīgas apgabaltiesas adminstrātīvajai nodaļai. Iekšlietu ministra ierosinājums par polītiskas partijas ‘Latviešu tautas apvienība Pērkonkrusts’ slēgšanu,” Nr. 135584, July 31, 1933, ibid., 1/22. apr., 708. l., 1–3. lpp. For a detailed analysis of the anti-Semitic discourse in the Latvian nationalist press in the 1920s, see: Kirša, “Antisemītisma diskurss,” 45–61.

73 “Lēmums,” undated document from March 1935, ibid., 84–85. lpp. About the “storm troops” built by Pērkonkrusts, see also: Paeglis, Pērkonkrusts, 115–16.

74 “Aģenturas 157 lapiņa,” March 31, 1936, LVVA, 3235. f., 3. apr., 305. l., 51. lpp; See about other anti-state actions planned and partly performed by the banned Pērkonkrusts: Zunda, “Opozīcija,” 125.

75 “Politiskās Pārvaldes Rīgas rajona priekšniekam. Ziņojums,” undated document, January 1935, LVVA, 3235. f., 1/22. apr., 708. l., 87–88. lpp.

76 “Aģenturas 1888 lapiņa,” April 3, 1935, LVVA, 3235. f., 3. apr., 305. l., 28. lpp. On the ideological similarity and practical cooperation between Dievturi and Pērkonkrusts, see: Stasulane, “The Dievturi,” 31–46.

77 “Aģenturas 649 lapiņa,” February 15, 1937, LVVA, 3235. f., 3. apr., 305. l., 115. lpp.

78 Paeglis, Pērkonkrusts, 124.

79 Ibid., 140; “Aģenturas 3/29 lapiņa,” January 31, 1939, LVVA, 3235. f., 1/22. apr., 708. l., 221. lpp.

80 Until September 1939, Latvia and Poland were neighbors, sharing a common border of 105 kilometers. See: Jēkabsons, “Latvijas un Polijas,” 69–79. On the 1935–37 pogroms in Poland, see: Dynner and Cichopek-Gajraj, “Pogroms.”

81 On the effective weakening of the Pērkonkrusts by the Political Department, see: Zunda, “Opozīcija,” 125–26.

82 On the allegedly anti-Semitic stance of the Latvian Political Police, see: “Ilga pauze”; Oppermann, Everyday, 55–56.

83 On this area of academic research, see: Matei and Rogg, “Domestic.”

84 About the “Regina” affair, see: “Polītiskai Pārvaldes Rīgas rajona priekšniekam. Ziņojums,” October 15, 1938, LVVA, LVVA, 3235. f., 3. apr., 278. l., 225. lpp.