All About Latvia

RIGA – On Tuesday, Latvian State Police moved out of a building with a bloody violent history. The Corner House on the main artery in the Latvian capital was a source of fear and horror among local population. It housed the local office of the KGB. Back in February, All About Latvia teamed up with the Baltic Bulletin to look through the notorious KGB basement. And here’s the replay of the account.

A First-Hand History Lesson
originally published on February 22, 2008.

Russian sign reads “No Smoking” inside the basement of the corner house in Riga.

RIGA – Russian-language signs adorn the walls of the narrow low-ceiling hallways that zigzag through a dirty, dusty basement under dim lights between tight cells in the most notorious building in Riga.

During the 50 years of the Soviet occupation that ended in 1991, the building on the corner of two city arteries housed the regional KGB headquarters, instilling fears into Latvians that no one dared to utter its real name.

Instead, everyone, including a Latvian writer Anita Liepa, called it “the corner house.”

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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.

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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.

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RIGA - Latvians will have a chance to reassume power in their country.

Starting Wednesday, any citizen can sign a petition to amend the Constitution to grant voters a right to dissolve the parliament through a referendum.

Under current legislation, that right is reserved to the president and has never been used in the country’s history since 1918.

Launched by the Latvian trade unions, the petition drive will continue until April 10, aiming to collect a bit more than 149,000 signatures. That’s how many are required to initiate a legislation in the Saeima.

However, Latvia is a long way away from the adoption of the proposed changes.

If the month-long process succeeds, the draft legislation will go to the Saeima. If the parliament rejects it in the untainted form, the legislation will go to a referendum, requiring an approval of the half registered voters in the country of 2.3 million.

In recent months, Latvians have grown weary of their government amidst corruption scandals and political cynicism. They protested twice last fall against the government of Aigars Kalvitis - the self-proclaimed guarantor of stability - who was forced to resign as the prime minister last December.

Politicians demeaned those who gave them a mandate to serve in the first place less than a year after the 2006 October elections. Last summer, MP Janis Lagzdins showed people what he thought of them immediately following the presidential elections in May. He later apologized.

The ruling clique, as local media often described the ruling coalition leaders plus a minigarch, met at a Riga Zoo to select the current president Valdis Zatlers underscoring the cynicism of the political elite toward democratic process.

Answering uncomfortable and direct questions, Kalvitis had resorted to a single phrase, “That is your interpritation.”

The prime minister had changed, but the ruling coalition basically remained the same.

As some people pointed out, the signature drive will put additional pressure on Latvian President trying to walking the tight rope between the parliament and the people.

Some also expressed fear that giving people the right to dissolve parliament will stall the political process in the country. However they probably know that the most efficient form of government in any country is the dictatorship. Democracies tend to be slow as it takes time to muster up a compromise among all parties. We’ve already had a dictatorship six years before the war and 50 years after the World War II. We don’t want to go back to that.

In the last 17 years, politicians stole public funds with impunity for their own benefit, or at least appear to do so in the public eye. It’s time to take back the power to the people. Which is why I’m going to sign the petition.

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