RIGA – According to a Latvijas Fakti survey published over the weekend, every fifth Latvian longs for the president to suspend the Constitution and rule the country with a strong hand, similar to the way Charles Ulmanis did back in 1934.
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The Splendid Palace
2008
10.09
10.09
RIGA – A location of the cinema Riga on Elizabetes iela has long offered city dwellers bread and circuses.
From the dawn of the 19th century to the present day, visitors and locals alike have stormed to watch films, variety shows, even fighting championships. The first theater, “Olympia”, was located near present-day cinema Riga. It started showing moving pictures in the summer of 1905 in the nearby park located in the place of today’s Riga cinema. In 1918, a famous Latvian architect Eižens Laube rebuilt the wooden theater building. 
In the fall of 1919, the new cinema called “Maska” (Mask, pictured) opened its doors to the public, offering a variety of moving pictures, including “Latvija Top,” whose ad is shown on the right. Certainly it wasn’t the first cinema in the city, but it grew popular with the public.
Two days before the New Year in 1923, a new cinema opens near “Maska.” Russian businessman Vasily Emelyanov opened the cinema “Splendid Palace,” which will much later become Cinema Riga. Born in St. Petersburg, Emelyanov decided not to return to Russia after the Bolshevik coup in 1917. He remained in the Baltics and opened a chain of movie theaters in four Baltic capitals, Helsinki, Tallinn, Riga, and Kaunas. In Latvia, he formed a company named “Ars” which owned also other movie theaters in the city. The theater showed European and American films as the company signed agreements with American movie studios. The first film shown at the Splendid Palace was a drama adventure Under Two Flags about a love triangle in the French Algeria.
On the run from punishment for a crime committed by his brother, Bertie Cecil (alias Lewis Victor) joins the French Foreign Legion. In Algeria, he becomes the hated rival of his commander, Chateauroy, who despises Victor’s breeding and also competes for the same woman. Victor is beloved of Cigarette, an Algerian camp follower, who saves his life, though he love another.
The theater also showed Coney Island, a film with comedy geniuses, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Buster Keaton. The Splendid Cinema became the first theater to show films with sound. It became the motion picture called the Singing Fool, shown here in 1929. Ten years later, the Great Leader Kārlis Ulmanis attended the showing of the Latvian sound film, “A Fisherman’s Son.”
However, the Splendid Palace cinema was so much more than its repertoire. Today, the building is a national monument of architecture, originally designed by the architect Fridrihs Skujiņš, who also designed the present-day Cabinet of Ministers on the opposite side of the street. To this day, the Splendid Cinema remains tucked it behind an architectural eyesore, a casino (pictured below).
“Maska” remained under construction until 1947 when it was opened under a new name “Spartak” (Spartacus), a specialized movie theater that showed non-stop documentaries. In the 1980s, it became the first stereo theater in Riga. And now its screen is used as the second screen of the movie theater Riga.
When the Soviets arrived in Riga in 1940, both theaters transformed into the mouthpiece of the Soviet propaganda, showing Soviet epics like “Lenin in October.” In spite of attempts to appease new authorities, Emelyanov was arrested by the Soviets and on June 14, 1941, deported to Siberia, where he died 8 years later. Under the German occupation, “Maska” became a closed theater for the German military.
After the war, “Maska” remained closed down, while “Splendid Palace” opened with a war epic on November 6, 1945. Interestingly enough, its Western bourgeoisie-like name “Splendid Palace” had remained the theater’s name until the early 1950s when it was renamed into a politically correct “Riga.” When Latvia regained its independence back in 1991, the sweeping wave of returning historical names to streets and parks avoided the movie theater.
Yet another awakening?
2008
08.07
08.07
RIGA – I went to listen to the president speak yesterday at the Saeima and I almost fell asleep. If leaders are supposed to be inspirational, Latvia’s President Valdis Zatlers was not. It is best to listen to his speech before you go to bed.
But the speech was good. Zatlers called on members of parliament to heed to call of the electorate (yeah, right!), following the Saturday’s political circus, or to put it the boringly, the Referendum on the Constitutional Amendments. More than 600,000 allegedly apathetic Latvians for a moment set a keg of beer aside and went to the polls to tell the government what they thought of it.
The government told them they were wrong and it knew better.
The zoo-elected president, Zatlers now has another chance to earn some political capital that may even carry him into the second term. The silver-haired doctor has a chance to heal the nation. To fix political crisis in our little kingdom, Zatlers can dissolve the parliament and, I believe, he would keep his job in a national referendum. The question is how long it will take him to make that decision.
The president appeared to give the parliament until Christmas to decide on constitutional amendments drafted by a group of legal experts that do indeed give voters a right to call snap elections but with harsher restrictions so not to destabilize the country.
Stability has been a token of dictatorship though and I find it very interesting that we find ourselves in a similar situation as back in May 1934, on the eve of the Murder of Democracy when Latvia’s Prime Minister Karlis Ulmanis dissolved the parliament and became a de facto dictator. A day before his coup d’etat, the parliament voted in second reading on amendments to allow voters a right to dissolve the assembly. The bill never went to the third reading as the parliament was dissolved under the pretext of re-writing the constitution.
Chances of a benevelent dictator stepping out of the shadows in the modern-day Latvia is unlikely. What is likely, however, is the continual denial of those in power that people just don’t know any better until it is too late. Add a good dose of the economic crisis and you’ve got a good political and economic climate for a revolution.
The Soviet Story
2008
06.18
06.18
RIGA – To paraphrase the forefather of the first workers country in the world, Vladimir Lenin, the most important art form for the proletariat is film. The Bolsheviks were among the first ones in the world to develop a fresh, new film industry as way to impact public opinion, rather than a source of making money as it has been in the West.
In 1924, just seven years after the October Revolution, the Soviet filmmakers released a silent film “Unusual Adventures of Mr. West in the Bolshevik Country.” In the film, frightened by the foreign press regarding the Bolsheviks crimes, a U.S. Senator Mr. West decides to visit the Soviet Union to “learn of the savages that invaded that distant land.” The Internet Movie Database says, “Through various mishaps, Mr. West discovers that the Soviets are actually quite remarkable people, and, by the end of the film, his opinion of them has changed to one of glowing admiration.”
Mr. West was a work of fiction. The Soviet Story is not. Written and directed by the Latvian filmmaker Edvīns Šnore, the 90-minute film tells a tale of the Soviet atrocities, all too familiar to eastern Europeans. The Holodomor. Katyn.
The film made the international headlines after Russian nationalists burned Šnore’s effigy near the embassy of Latvia in Moscow. The Latvian national TV showed it last night on the day commemorating the Soviet occupation of Latvia back in 1940. Then, with an agreement of the Latvian government, the Soviet tanks rolled into the small Baltic nation and launched the year of terror. While the film received a lot of positive reviews, I found it an excellent work of modern propaganda. It’s no better than any other Soviet propaganda films. In some way, it is even worse than a propaganda film as it presents itself as a documentary. It is not. With a deep voice of the narrator on the background, images of mauled bodies, shot men, dead children flashed the screen at the Occupation Museum to an audience of mostly young people this afternoon. The director chose to repeat the grueling images again and again, with a clear purpose to disturb a viewer. The images are intertwined with commentaries from Western historians and former Soviet dissidents.
Not a single time, the narrator contradicts the so-called experts during the 90-minute film. For a good measure, the infamous Putin quote about the fall of the Soviet Union being the greatest calamity of the last century is played twice. It creates an impression that the script was written ahead of time – and experts were there to provide weight to the already conceived view of history. The visual effects, the replayed images are there to manipulate the audience, not to educate them. It is on the same par as Soviet propagandists who twisted facts, interviewed a certain group of people to get a certain point of view across.
In a way, I agree with a historian Gustavs Strenga. Perhaps, Latvians – as Russians – aren’t ready yet to study history for history’s sake. Twenty years after gaining independence from the Soviet Union, Latvians would rather use history as a political tool, which differs very little from Russian “documentary” masterpieces we’ve seen in the last several years.
And Lenin was right after all – films still matter.
Horses build self-esteem, don’t they?
2008
05.27
05.27
RIGA – For 18 years since independence, Latvia has tried to prove to the rest of the world that it’s a real country. It’s not one of the former Soviet republics. Nor is it one of the new EU member states. It’s Latvia.
In 2006, the tiny Latvia hosted the Ice Hockey World Championship. It was seen as a sensei stamp of approval of this little kingdom of ours by the rest of the hockey world. In 2003, Latvia hosted the Eurovision Song Contest, signifying Latvia’s arrival into the glitzy and glamorous European world of pop songs. Joining the EU and NATO, in 2004, definitely signified that Latvia indeed was somewhere on the map – you just need to look closely.
Latvia, you’ve finally arrived.
Hosting the ice hockey world championship drew crowds of foreign hockey fans to this small country of ours. The tourism industry saw a boom which now dwindles down under stories about drunken nude British people roaming around town and Latvians’ displeasure at behavior of foreign visitors.
After hosting Eurovision, Latvia became one of those boring European countries that sends parodies of songs, like the Pirates of the Sea, to vie for the European approval we no longer seek.
Joining NATO and the EU meant that reforms that brought us into these two exclusive organizations can be shelved.
But that low self-worth persists in our lives. Even the defense minister Vinets Veldre had to place restoring national traditions (presumably the honor guard) at the bottom of its top 15 priorities. That’s below equipping our military and, perhaps, learning to fly jets to patrol our own skies. And below sports.
Because horses will make us feel like a real country – like that Great Britain where the change of the Honor (or Honour) Guard is watched by millions of tourists every year. Or like Denmark where the change of the guard takes place while a beautiful military orchestra plays contagious marches.
Never mind that economically we’re still near the bottom of the EU food chain. Never mind that our economy appears to be heading toward some kind of crisis. Never mind that unlike Estonians, we cannot even utter the phrase economic crisis – much else to take blame for it.
We need horses. That’s right – horses. The defense ministry plans to pay Ls 2,000 per horse for its 28-horse and, presumably, 28-men honor guard that would restore our nation as it as before. So that we would finally feel like a people, like a real country, like we matter. Perhaps not to our big partners like Germany or Russia, but certainly to ourselves.
But if joining NATO and EU, hosting events of international magnitude didn’t put us on the map, why should the honor guard bring honor to this country?
Latvian Miserabilism Marches On
2008
05.24
05.24
RIGA – Latvian miserabilism wants company.
It’s not enough that Latvians dwell on the past, dipping into an abysmal well of self-loathing and victimization that is an integral part of the Latvian ethnic identity as folk songs and dances. Eighteen years after they own their own house, Latvians want former invaders to feel as miserable as they are. The government is calculating a bill of the Soviet occupation to send to the Kremlin. At the same time, bills aren’t being sent to Germans, Poles, and Swedes who occupied what was to become Latvia. I guess there are occupiers and then there are occupiers.
A notorious victim complex needs a scape-goat. Up until late 1930s, the blame was with the Germans, the long-time oppressor of ethnic Latvians that became a subject of many Latvian folk songs. Following the Soviet occupation, the victim complexed Latvians turned from hating Germans to hating Russians.
On one hand, Latvian intelligentsia takes an immense pleasure in self-loathing. On the other hand, this eternal, “nobody loves me,” “no one has a pity on us” motif is evident in today’s Latvia. It’s other people’s fault for their miserabilism. Always. It is a constantly resurfacing theme in the pubic discourse on government matters. “Look, they steal, they hate us, they are corrupt, but we are poor, we suffer and bear it.” The nation of Latvia strives on appeasement and misery. Facing up to the fact that some Latvians participated in the killing of the Jews during the war is tough because if you accept it, you can no longer claim you’re a victim of the circumstance, but a willing participant.
Compare their mentality with Russians.
Ridden by centuries of dictatorship rule, Russians learned to adjust for survival. When you’re fighting for survival, pragmatism takes precedence over principles. Russians who may not have bought into ideals of a bright, glorious, communistic paradise, still uttered allegiances to the Party in exchange for a better job or some kind of benefits. In the West, they’d be called “sellouts.” In Russia, it was a matter of survival. Principled people were shipped to Siberia, killed, or were forced to flee to the West. It’s similar for ethnic Russians in Latvia. Most of those who naturalized since independence sold out. They gave the expected answered on familiar questions without much faith in what they were saying.
It’s just bizness.
Russians well aware of the Stalin crimes. Even one of the most anti-Latvian newspapers in town, Chas, published several accounts of ethnic Russians being deported along with the Latvians during the Soviet occupation. I’ve yet to talk to any Russian who does not know about “the great resettlement of the people.” Or about the Stalin’s oppressions. It’s no wonder that in 1989, the Soviet government called the Soviet-German pact invalid from the moment of its signing. While some political forces in Russia would like to see that 1989 declaration repealed, it is unlikely to erase what Russians know about that period of history.
In this, Latvian miserabilism isn’t compatible with Russian mentality. Russians don’t dwell on the past. They hardly learn from it. They don’t intend to put on sackcloth and ashes, roaming around the world in a state of perpetual mourning – unless it’s for bizness purposes. Nor should they. The Victory Day celebration is now part of the new Russian national identity – it’s got little to do with the figure of Joseph Stalin himself. It’s accentuated in the Baltics because Russians here feel as if the government or the ethnocentrism of Latvians threatens their own ethnic identity in their attempt to remake local Russians into ethnic Latvians. While some Russians would hold Stalin’s portrait dear and near to their hearts, they are dying out. When new generations of Russians came to the monument that Friday, Stalin was replaced with the Russian tricolor. For the younger generation, it’s a rebirth of the new Russia and May 9 is an integral part of the new Russia’s national identity as much as the Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon’s France was part of the national identity until the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.
Russians aren’t Germans. Their mentality isn’t European, no matter how much you try to make them to be. Baltic Russians have a chance to become European, but it will takes years if not centuries. Regardless, though, they will not develop a perpetual guilt complex similar to the one espoused by modern Germans, who feel guilty for the crimes of their fathers and grandfathers, nor will they subscribe the perpetual guilt complex of the ethnic Latvians. Russians appear to be pragmatic people after centuries of oppression and fighting for survival under czars, Bolsheviks, communists. Russians want to move on instead of living in the past as Latvians appear to.As any pragmatics, Russians want to make money, have good jobs, raise their children, live in peace, rather than bickering over how many Latvians were actually in the Arajs commando, or how many Russians acknowledge the occupation. Now is the time to shred miserabilism, roll up our sleeves, and press on to a future without forgetting the past.
Figuring out the past
2008
05.13
05.13
RIGA – History plays an important part in the inter-ethnic relations in Latvia as well as in the relationship between Latvia and Russia. It has a direct impact on people here.
Russians who live here in the Kremlin-saturated media sphere know about the Soviet occupation. It’s hard not to. The Occupation Museum is next-door. Some have naturalized and answered the question about what happened on June 17, 1940. Latvia has many, many days of mourning, commemorating those who had been sent to Gulags.
Elderly people – the ones waving red flags at the Victory monument last weekend – get their news from Moscow. Young people like to watch comedy shows, music shows, films available on Russian TV.
Of course, some of those shows are turned into propaganda. In a Russian film “We’re from the Future” (trailer) four young hip heroes – you know they’re hip because they drive hip cars and one of them even has a hip tattoo of a swastika, another has a hip nickname like Borman – anyway, four young hip heroes make a living selling World War II medals they find in graves outside St. Petersburg. They uncover a mud-hut with skeletons inside. Anyway, they go skinny dipping in a nearby lake. They dive in. And when they come back out they end up in 1942 on the Soviet side of the front, learning an obligatory lesson that connects their modern lifestyle with those soldiers who perished during the Second World War.
But the film is not about Stalin, or his crimes. It is part of the great search for the national identity.
When it comes to the Stalin crimes, much wood has been turned into paper for publications about that topic. The Soviet Union Congress of Deputies, a fully elected parliament, in 1989 even adopted a resolution (the link’s in Russian) condemning the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939 and its secret protocols declaring them void from the moment of their signing.
At the same time, the press took a whiff of freedom and became high on publishing anything about the Stalin years – from a documentary research on the crimes to an absurd accounts of private lives of Stalin and his comrades.
A documentary was released here in Rīga trying to piece together communist crimes to persuade the West to place an equal sign between the communist crimes and the crimes of Nazi Germany. Surprisingly, the film caused little interest – some 900 people saw the film called The Soviet Story since it opened last week. But, the film would actually be a waste of time for educated Russians in the Baltics even if it’s subtitled in Russian. Nothing the film shows people don’t already know.
Most sane people without any political agenda don’t question whether Stalin’s crimes had taken place. In fact, the Russian-language press here went into great length to show that Baltic Russians (some did live here before 1940), too, suffered under Stalin. Russians generally question the necessity of those atrocities. They attempt to explain away deportations of Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Russians, Jews from this part of the world into Siberia. They say they deserved it for being too rich, or too intelligent, too political, too influential, or too nationalistic.
The disagreement is not whether crimes have taken place. The disagreement is about the interpretation of those crimes.
More thoughts on Victory Day
2008
05.11
05.11
RIGA – Here’s what the previous post is not about. It’s not about whether Russians have a right to celebrate the end of World War II the way they chose. It’s not about whether Russians were liberators or occupiers. It’s not about political consequences of the Second World War. It’s not about how good integrated Russians should celebrate this day. In a way, the previous post isn’t about March 16.
But here’s what this post is about. It’s about memory of people who died in the most awful war the European continent has ever seen. Every country has a day to remember its men and women who died serving their country. Americans celebrate Memorial Day. The British celebrate the Remembrance Day on November 11.
Each of these days are tied to a particular war, of course. Americans started commemorating the Memorial Day after the Civil War. It began first as a way to commemorate those Americans who gave their lives in the Civil War and after the First World War it included all men and women who had given their lives serving their country.
The Remembrance Day commemorates the end of the World War One. But now it involves veterans from WW1, WW2, the Falklands, Kosovo, Bosnia, Northern Ireland and the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq – some of which may or may not have been just and liberating.
Back in 1998, Latvian officials failed to explain the significance of March 16 to the international community. At that time, it’d been suggested to commemorate deaths of all fallen soldiers on November 11, the day of the Bear-slayer. However, it didn’t take place. November 11 is still largely about Latvia in 1919. And now March 16 is no longer an official day of commemoration and hardly any of the government officials attend its ceremonies.
My previous post was misinterpreted to mean that Latvians should join Russians in celebrating the Victory day. It wasn’t so. I was my dream it were so, but I realize that it’s my sick idealistic fantasy. The post was also misinterpreted to mean that any criticism of the Latvian government concerning the Second World War ultimately means the glorification of the Russian government and role of the Soviet Union in that war. This kind of black and white thinking is not what the previous post was about.
Nor was the post about politics. It was not about whether the war – any war – was just any more or any less so than wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Vietnam. Would we remember the two soldiers who died in the war in Iraq recently by pointing a finger at the government who sent them there contrary to what majority of Latvians thought? Or would we say that those soldiers who died there searching for the weapon of mass destruction were simply wasting the time and resources? How would we tell that to children and then grandchildren of those people who died in wars like that? I, for one, couldn’t do it.
But it seems that’s what we’re doing with those who died in the Second World War. For Latvia, those men and women regardless of their uniform or allegiance, or even deaths of civilians mean absolutely nothing. And I find it repugnant.
And that’s what the previous post was about.
Thoughts on Victory Day
2008
05.10
05.10
Take a look at the updated photo gallery from May 9 celebrations at the Victory Monument in Riga
RIGA – In the last few days, I’ve been wrestling with the question of appropriateness of the Victory Day celebration. On one hand, the cruel regime of Hitler was replaced by the lesser evil Stalin when the Allies achieved the victory in distant 1945. On the other hand, for many Russians here in the Baltics and even for some Latvians whose family died in the war, it’s a very important, and a very personal holiday.
The official dictum uttered by the former president Vaira Viķe-Freiberga says that Latvians have nothing to celebrate on May 9 as their country ended up occupied for the following 50 years. But the war, in fact, was over in May 1945. Germany surrendered and the European continent saw no large-scale military conflict again for many years. That’s a historical fact.
While it was almost impossible to spot an ethnic Latvian at the Victory monument yesterday, I saw some. Ethnic Latvians also fought the Germans on the Soviet side. Numbers are insignificantly low, but I’m not sure how many people have to die for a cause to make a holiday appropriate.
And here, in Latvia, almost every Russian family has lost at least one relative in the war. My great-grandmother’s brothers died fighting the Germans. Natalia Antonova writes:
My grandmother started crying on the phone:
“I don’t want you to ever know what it’s like to hear the shelling and know that it’s coming for you.”
War is banal and blind and savage and ultimately meaningless. But there is still something to smile about today, at least for me. If only because its survivors had children, and those children had children, and one of them was me, and another one was my beautiful baby brother. And there’s a reason why we’re here, and we’ll spend the rest of our lives finding out what that reason may be.
And it appears to me by making May 8 or 9 just another day, we void the sacrifices made by those who gave their lives in that banal, blind, savage, and ultimately meaningless war.
I spent most of yesterday at the Victory monument, roaming around, watching people, snapping photos. For a while, it seemed that Riga had turned into Daugavpils, a Russian-dominated Latvian town. It seemed Riga turned into little Russia. A red SUV drove around with a large Russian tricolor (Russians, like Texans, like things big). Russian embassy emissaries were everywhere organizing the 10-hour long concert for the public. The percentage of people wearing sports track suits was the highest at the Victory park than in another other part of Latvia.
In the morning, it reeked of the Soviet nostalgia with a lone portrait of Stalin and red banners. In the evening, youth came out with Russian tricolor and appear to be more patriotic about Russia than Russians across Latvia’s eastern borders. I saw only one man wearing a Latvian hockey jersey and a ribbon of St. George.
I couldn’t understand the ubiquitousness of the Russian flags. At any time, you’d expect the Russian national anthem blast through the speakers. The organizers should have thought to promote a healthy patriotism toward the country they find their homes, Latvia, but I suspect any Latvian national anthem would have been greeted with boos from the large crowd and give more work to the police.
After a short interview in the afternoon, I couldn’t refuse getting a drink with two men twice my age. It’s impolite. One man, Viktor, now teaches computer science at a local school, having worked as an engineer most of his life. His trade is no longer needed in Latvia and he couldn’t adapt to the new way of life after Gorbachev’s reforms. A non-citizen, he moved to Latvia from Russia, just like many others. He likes to compare Russians and Latvians.
“See this monument. This ain’t Milda,” he told me, referring to the nickname for the Freedom Monument a revered site for many Latvians.
The anger at this country, at the apathy of the government, at prevalent corruption and theft, and – frighteningly of all – hatred toward everything Latvian is enormous. For them, the anger trumps over any other emotion. Perhaps, this anger at callous, flippant attitude of the authorities toward those who fought on the “wrong side” – politically speaking – during the war drives many, many people to remember this Victory Day by laying tulips at the feet of the monument.
And throughout the day, even as late as 10 p.m., people kept pouring in to lay flowers.
Loudspeakers blared Soviet-era war music and thousands, young and old, trooped to the war monument honoring Red Army soldiers who fell in World War II. Parents with children, teenagers, many veterans – carrying a bouquet of flowers – flooded the square near the monument under a watchful eye of police.
The VE-Day of May 8 went barely noticed in Latvia. The president and other high-ranking officials attended a ceremony at a military cemetery. For the country with many days of mourning (June 14, March 25, December 4) – no flags signified a day of commemoration. In fact, the whole day was very subdued.
The end of the war signifies the beginning of peace. Tens of millions of people died in that war. Those who returned found their cities, towns and villages in crumbles. One gentleman told me he had spent three years at a concentration camp in Germany. If it hadn’t been for the Russians, who knows what would have happened, he said.
My family own family was lucky, I guess. Only two of my distant granduncles died in the war. My great-grandfather along with my grandmother nearly became victims if it hadn’t been for a technicality. The Nazis killed 200-300 men, women, and children of the village of Audrini in January 1942. My family lived next-door in another village. Audrini was burned to the ground. About 30 of the Audrini villagers were publicly shot in the Rezekne market square, and the remaining villagers were transported to the nearby Anchupani Hills where they too were shot.
These stories are many. The war impacted almost every family in Latvia – whether they ended up packing their suitcases and boarding for Germany, or decided to remain in the occupied Latvia.
The end of this awful war is hard not to commemorate.
