Dissenting Voices: Women’s Autobiographical Writing in Post-Soviet Latvia of the 1990s

Author(s): Sandra Mešková / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Taking into account the urge to rethink history and reconstruct cultural tradition in East-Central Europe, it should perhaps come as no surprise that, in the 1990s, autobiographical writing in this region has been a prominent factor in the change of the socio-cultural and literary paradigm. This is certainly true of Latvian literature in the 1990s, an era which marked a radical and decisive break with Soviet culture. The personal accounts of World War II - the central event of twentieth century European history that established a clear-cut division between East and West in Europe - produced the new vision of this turning point in Latvian history. Many of these narratives were written by women authors of the World War II generation. These women remembered the time before the war when Latvia was a newly established independent state, as the time of their childhood. They witnessed the beginning of World War II and the Soviet-German-Soviet occupation of Latvia at the beginning of the 1940s, as well as the end of half a century of Soviet occupation at the end of 1980s and the reconstruction of Latvian statehood at the beginning of the 1990s.

SOWJET-Literatur. Ausgabe 1961-01

Author(s): Miervaldis Jāna Birze,Mirdza Ķempe,Kārlis Krauliņš,Vilis Lācis,Edon Rannet,Lembit Remmelgas,Rudolf Sirge,Arvīds Skalbe,Juhan Smuul / Language(s): German

Juhan Smuul: The amazing adventures of the Muhumers at the Singer Festival // Vilis Lacis: Two worlds // Miervaldis Birze: Today's children / How the story came about // Egon Rannet: The prodigal son // POEMS: Ojars Vacietis: On the future power line / March // Mirdza Kempe: happiness // Andris Vejans: Grow, homeland! // Arvids Skalbe: The most beautiful flower // Valdis Lukss: That can't exist! // Karlis Kraulinš: Latvia's popular writer // Rudolf Sirge: Erni Krustens Schaffensweg // Lembit Remmelgas: Juhan Smuul // Friedebert Tuglas: Thoughts and ideas

Prace Bałtystyczne. Tom 8

Author(s): / Language(s): English,Latvian,Polish,Lithuanian

Volume 8 of the series "Works in Baltic Studies. Language – Literature – Culture" features sixteen articles (in Lithuanian, Latvian, English and Polish) devoted to various aspects of the notion of freedom, analysed from the perspectives of Lithuanian and Latvian linguistics, literary studies and cultural studies.

Lietuvos lenkų vaizdinys pirmuoju Lietuvos nepriklausomybės dešimtmečiu

Author(s): Veslava Čižik-Prokaševa / Language(s): Lithuanian Publication Year: 0

The restoration of Lithuanian independence affected Poles of Lithuania, with their lives undergoing significant changes. The attitude towards Poles also transformed. Based on journalistic texts from the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language, the article focuses on the image of Poles of Lithuania painted by selected material, analysing the features which are most frequently mentioned, emphasised, and attributed to them. The structural approach to meaning in the article is combined with a cognitive one, involving the use of appropriate methods of analysis – from the meaning of the word to the meaning of the sentence. The study shows that in the Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language, Poles of Lithuania are portrayed primarily as the national minority fighting for its rights, suffering a lot of hardships, discriminated, as people who fear a free Lithuania, as a national minority whose leaders, seeking power, have harmed their compatriots and good relations between Lithuanians and Poles. The analysis of the material shows that at the early stages of Lithuanian independence, Lithuanians considered Poles not as others, foreigners, but as one of their own.

Pietinis ir vakarinis lietuviškas tradicinis vardynas

Author(s): Kazimieras Garšva / Language(s): Lithuanian Publication Year: 0

The former traditional Lithuanian proper names in the south of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania used to belong to one geographical unit spanning Voronovo, Lida, Grodno, Suwałki–Białystok and Lithuania Minor. However, the history of this area is very diverse. Various Baltic tribes lived there and belonged to different administrative units, not to one state. The aim of the article is to find the differences in stress, formation, pronunciation, motivation and contacts with other languages in the proper names of this area. The former proper names of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Prussian borders are now found in three states. The article examines 3,950 place names and personal names: 1) 900 (500 place names and 400 personal names) in current Belarus between Voronovo and Grodno; 2) 1,880 (1,170 oikonyms, microtoponyms,110 hydronyms, 600 personal names) in present-day Poland; 3) 1,170 place names from Lithuania Minor in the area of Kaliningrad, now belonging to Russia. These proper names are described in more detail in the following sections, the forthcoming scientific monograph and its appendices.

Laisvė kalbėti neapykantos kalba

Author(s): Antanas Smetona / Language(s): Lithuanian Publication Year: 0

The State Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights afford every person the right to hold their own convictions and express them freely. Moreover, these beliefs do not necessarily have to be politically correct. In fact, this freedom does not extend to criminal actions provided for in the aforementioned documents: “incitement of national, racial, religious, or social hatred, violence and discrimination, with slander and disinformation” (Constitution of the RL, Article 25). The differences and emphases of these aspects are very clear: the primary norm of the law is to ensure freedom of belief and its expression, whereas criminal actions are related to secondary and derivative exceptions and limitations of these norms. The practical incompatibility of these aspects and their misunderstanding have recently posed a threat of turning into censorship of conviction expression, at least in Lithuania, as any pejorative or more emotionally coloured expression inconsistent with official ideological doctrines has been marked without a second thought as hate speech prohibited by the Constitution (hate speech, язык вражды). However, seeking to forestall censorship of thoughts and convictions, it is necessary to clearly draw the line between hate speech and constitutional freedom of expression, even if the convictions one holds are generally not accepted, politically incorrect, impolite, or coming from the margins of society. Two paths can be applied to establish this division: judicial (primary) and pragmatic (expert). Hate speech is not identified by emotional criteria (it is impossible to ban one of the main human emotions). It has to be incorporated into the list of legally prohibited actions, and this inclusion is substantiated with the use of pragmatic linguistic tools because of the linguistic nature of the very activity. Due to this, everything linked to the exceptions (not the norms) to the aforesaid laws can be easily divided into three types: a) “must be restricted” hate speech, b) “may be restricted” hate speech, c) “must be protected” hate speech as a means of ensuring freedom of the individual’s convictions and thoughts.

Freedom and Exile in Language

Author(s): Sigita Ignatjeva / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The article deals with the Latvian writer and translator Dzintars Sodums’s (1922–2008) opinions about the state and development of the Latvian language, his perception of language as a prerequisite for freedom and development of democracy and political thought. Sodums saw the development of the Latvian language as the mission of his life, but his professional opportunities were restricted by his status as an émigré in Sweden and the USA. Sodums felt like an outsider in the Latvian émigré society, and this feeling influenced his views on the Latvian language and its use in his poetry, novels, and other writings.

Laisvės sampratos antinomijos šiuolaikinėje lietuvių dramaturgijoje

Author(s): Neringa Klišienė / Language(s): Lithuanian Publication Year: 0

As contemporary society puts more emphasis on the individual’s right to live freely, the topic of values and moral responsibility becomes more relevant. This tendency is reflected in contemporary Lithuanian dramatic texts. Playwrights combine opposing messages, quotes, and meanings of dramatic discourse produced by the mass media in order to create multi-layered texts. These, in turn, question or revise the notion of the modern human freedom. The paper focuses on the plays written in the last decade by Herkus Kunčius, Dovilė Zavedskaitė, and Paulina Pukytė. The texts in question often demean the concept of “freedom” using the code of mass culture, thus not only revealing some “moral” dilemmas of the post-Soviet era but also offering a critical evaluation of the new reality created by mediacracy.

Balss atgūšana: triju represētu latviešu dzejnieku likteņi

Author(s): Anda Kuduma / Language(s): Latvian Publication Year: 0

The article aims to describe the fate of three repressed poets in the context of complex historical and socio-political events and evaluate the reception of traumatic personal experiences in two periods of their creative process: 1) the period of losing their voices after the exiles (end of the 1950s – 1980s); 2) the period of regaining their voices in post-Soviet Latvia (after 1990). The poets’ traumatic experience caused by the repressive mechanism of the Soviet totalitarian regime has influenced the development directions of their work and opportunities for it, which, from the point of view of postcolonial criticism, raises the issue of representation. In the 1980s and 1990s, Latvian literature actualises and evaluates the traumatism of historical experience in the autobiographical and biographical genre. An active and productive process of recovering the muted voice begins, overcoming the problems of representation previously established by official censorship. The kinship of the destinies of the three poets reveals the aspirations and difficult paths of individual and national freedom throughout the 20th century, forming an overview of historical memory. The article highlights the importance of memory and remembrance in over coming individual and collective trauma.

Laisvės kaina

Author(s): Greta Paskočiumaitė / Language(s): Lithuanian Publication Year: 0

The article focuses on four stories of partisan children produced in the years 2019–2021. Lying at the heart of the deliberations is the memory of the partisan war in families. It is believed that involvement in the partisan war has directly affected the fate of members of the fighters’ families and their attitudes towards occupation and resistance. The challenges faced by families during the struggles for freedom and the repressive experience that followed were severed or completely broken ties, dilemmas of the formation and maintenance of identity, and difficulties in communicating the lived-through experiences. The conclusions formulated in the article allow us to look in some detail at the difficult situation of partisan families both in the occupied country and after the restoration of independence.

The Gender Contract after the Fall of the USSR

Author(s): Katarzyna Pasternak / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The article is devoted to the cinematic depiction of the Soviet gender contract and its implementation exemplified by the heroine of the film "Stebuklas". The aim of the article is to analyse the female character in the times of the fall of communism and her adherence to the rules that were set by the communist authorities.

"Dvēseļu putenis" (Burza dusz) w reżyserii Dzintarsa Dreibergsa jako filmowa narracja tożsamościowa

Author(s): Ilya Tsibets / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

In this article, the author attempts to conduct a film analysis through the prism of the original concept of film identity narratives. The concept is based on the hermeneutic reasoning of narrative identity by Paul Ricoeur combined with metahistoric and historiophotic reflection by Hayden White and the amplification of Mieke Bal’s focalisation theory accomplished by Robert Birkholc. The analysis pertains to Dzintars Dreibergs’ full-length feature film "Blizzard of Souls" (Dvēseļu putenis, 2019), which is based on Aleksandrs Grīns’ novel and commemorates the 100th anniversary of Latvian independence. Dreibergs’ film is a war drama which concentrates on the fate of young Artūrs Vanags, who joins the ranks of Latvian Riflemen and fights for his own and, consequently, his homeland’s freedom. The film shows the time of the First World War and the period of the Latvian struggle for independence. The article consists of two significant parts – a methodological and an analytic one.

Uwalnianie się od choroby w zamówieniach litewskich

Author(s): Tatjana Vologdina / Language(s): Polish Publication Year: 0

In folk worldview, disease is presented as a phenomenon that disturbs the balance in the body, mind, consciousness, or subconsciousness of a person, as well as a hostile being. Since the disease interferes with the correct order of life and disturbs the human functioning system, the only solution is to combat it and effectively free oneself from its presence. There are many treatments and ways to get rid of disease, among which zagovory constitute a separate group. In Lithuanian zagovory, as well as in all others, we can indicate a system of disease control strategies, which presents ways of influencing the disease in order to combat it (M. Marczewska). These models of behaviour are perfectly reflected in the texts of Lithuanian zagovory. Disease is expelled by the use of correct strategies. In this case, the issue of determining the location of the expulsion becomes an important element of the zagovor. The main principle here is to refer the disease to a place from which there is no return or to the place of its origin. That is why it is supposed to be a distant, foreign, untamed, closed, or dead space which belongs to a dimension other than that of a human being. In Lithuanian zagovory, we can indicate several “directions” of disease referral, which are related to the basic spaces of the world – earth, water, and air spheres. – EARTH – a binary space combining the world of life and fertility as well as the chthonic world, the sphere of dying and death. The disease is assigned to this dimension and sent to it during treatment. – WATER – mythological and media space; the surface of water is a natural border between the human world and another dimension – the underworld or a parallel world which is inaccessible to humans. This means that it is a suitable place for an expelled disease. What is more, water acts as a substance that cleanses the body physically and mentally, soaks up the disease, and overcomes it (immersion, melting the disease). – DRY TREES – they belong to the air space because the disease is directed “up”, “high” on dry trees which are no longer alive, to a zone that is already closed and belongs to a different chthonic dimension.

Kampaņa pret abstrakcionismu un formālismu 1963. gadā. Latvijas Padomju rakstnieku savienības valdes nostāja

Author(s): Madara Eversone / Language(s): Latvian Issue: 35/2017

Between 1962 and 1963 the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev launched several campaigns against abstractionists and formalists in Moscow, thus marking the end of the so-called Thaw throughout the Soviet Union. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia also started a campaign against national abstractionists and formalists. On the 22nd and 28th of March 1963 the works of the new poets Vizma Belševica, Monta Kroma, Ojārs Vācietis as well as writer Ēvalds Vilks came under the criticism cross-fire at the Intelligentsia Meeting of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. After the criticism from the Communist Party the above mentioned authors also had to be discussed at the Board meetings of the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union and the local organization meetings of the Party. The article examines the attitude of the Board of Soviet Writers’ Union towards the campaign initiated by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia in March 1963 by looking at the documents of the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union and the Union’s local organization of the Communist Party that are available at the State Archives of Latvia. Crucial and artistic aspects of the works of the above-mentioned authors have not been included in the analysis. Examining the debates that evolved in the Writers’ Union within the ideological campaign, it is possible to state that the Board, which was loyal to the Communist Party, kept its official stance in line with the Party principles, hereafter paying special attention to the ideologically artistic achievements of particular authors. Generally, the position of the Board of the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union in respect to the criticized authors can be evaluated as passive, because no repressions were carried out against the new authors and no creative activities were completely suspended by the Board. The campaign of 1963 strongly demonstrates the differences between the generations and the views of the writers. It also reveals the older generation’s struggle for keeping their position and prestige in the field of literature while the younger generation took an increasing opposition.

XX. gadu simtenis latviešu rakstniecībā

Author(s): Voldemārs Dambergs / Language(s): Latvian Publication Year: 0

Antīkās pasaules iespaids latviešu literātūrā

Author(s): Kārlis Straubergs / Language(s): Latvian Publication Year: 0

Rīgas Kungi. Stāsti

Author(s): Adolfs Erss / Language(s): Latvian

published in Riga, 1939 by J. Rozes Apgādība

Writing the History of Latvian Literature in the Soviet Period: Problems and Perspective

Author(s): Benedikts Kalnačs,Māra Grudule / Language(s): English Issue: 51/2023

The article focuses on the political and ideological conditions that shaped the dominant trends in writing the history of Latvian literature in the second half of the 20th century. The main focus is on the situation in Soviet Latvia in comparison to that in exile. The limited possibilities that existed in the interpretation of literary history under Soviet rule as well as the researchers’ compromises with the official requirements are considered. The article also scrutinizes the literary research in exile, paying special attention to archival studies in the Western world. Two thematic aspects are discussed here in greater detail. Firstly, we analyze the Soviet-time reception of the novel Mērnieku laiki (The Surveyors’ Times, 1879) by Reinis and Matīss Kaudzīte – its evaluation in official publications on literary history and in an anthology of literary criticism, as well as in studies by literary scholars Ingrīda Kiršentāle, Elza Knope and Oto Čakars. Secondly, we discuss the reception and interpretation of Latvian texts of the early modern period, concentrating on the discoveries of new facts of literary history that have significantly expanded the awareness of the links between Latvian culture and that of other European literatures. In the Soviet context, these discoveries are particularly related to the publications of Aleksejs Apīnis. This article also follows the process whereby the interests of researchers in exile and of those in Soviet Latvia gradually converged, as they reflected on two important sources of Latvian literature – folklore tradition and translation of the Bible – as they shaped both the national and European identity.

The Discourse of the Past and the Role of Memory in the Lithuanian and Latvian Cultural Press during the Transition Period (1988–1992)

Author(s): Viktorija Jonkutė / Language(s): English Issue: 52/2023

The aim of the article is to analyze the discourse of the past that developed in the Lithuanian and Latvian cultural press in the late 1980s and early 1990s, discussing the dominant conceptions of history and perception of time. It is generally argued that with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union an era of presentism began. However, the post-Soviet transition materialized in the Lithuanian and Latvian cultural press as a reconstructive, retrospective transformation, dominated by narratives about the past. This research is based on theoretical assumptions about collective memory (Halbwachs 1951; Assmann 2020), the regime of historicity (Hartog 2015; Koselleck 2004), and the inventory of temporal perspective (Zimbardo, Boyd 1999; 2008). Most of the analyzed material is cultural periodicals: weekly Literatūra ir menas (Literature and Art) and Šiaurės Atėnai (Athens of the North) and monthly Pergalė (Victory; in 1991 renamed Metai (Year)) and Kultūros barai (Domains of Culture), Sietynas (The Pleiades), Nemunas (The [River] Nemunas); Latvian monthly periodicals Avots (Source) and Karogs (Flag) and weekly Literatūra un Māksla (Literature and Art). These are occasionally supplemented by other periodicals and publications, as well as by the general context. Researching them, ten discursive functions of the interacting (re)constructed forms of memory were identified: communicative/informational, functional/pragmatic, testimonial/justice-driven, emotional/therapeutic, ontological/metalinguistic, reproductive/mimetic, identity-based, social/ mobilizing, ethical/moral, political/ideological.

Ēdiena nozīme identitātes veidošanā: mūsdienu latviešu un lietuviešu literatūras piemēri

Author(s): Laura Laurušaitė / Language(s): Latvian Issue: 53/2023

The article aims to explore how the identity of an eating person is expressed and constructed in literary works through certain food choices and various culinary practices. It is assumed that studying food is a handy tool for researching the Soviet era as the historical episode that has most affected the 20th-century Lithuanian and Latvian identity and the epoch of perestroika as an attempt to get rid of the foreign power. Three representative novels are chosen for the study: Mātes piens (Soviet Milk, 2015) by Nora Ikstena, Istaba (Room, 2016) by Laima Kota, and Lizos butas (Lisa’s Apartment, 2020) by Lithuanian author Vaiva Rykštaitė. These are not gastrotexts in the literal sense of the word but are all directly related to the transmission of political, ideological or cultural identity through situations of food acquisition, cooking and consumption (the role of the kitchen as a place of communication, food-related metaphors, etc.). The approach of literary imagology helps to research food by highlighting manifestations of ethnic loyalty as a contrast to the behavioral models imposed by foreign ideology.