The Cost of Grandeur: Material Aspects of Propaganda Production in Ulmanis' Latvia (1934-1940)

• In Event: Latvian Society, Economy, and Security during the Interwar Period

Abstract

On May 15, 1936, a giant floating platform was docked in the Daugava in front of the Presidential Palace in Rīga. The platform was called Gaismas pils [the palace of light], and it served as the stage for a mass performance titled Tev mūžam dzīvot Latvija! [may you live forever, Latvia]. The performance was orchestrated for one man – the authoritarian leader Kārlis Ulmanis – and it celebrated his ability to bring a nationalist utopia to Latvia. Accordingly, the mystical Gaismas pils had finally arisen. A major precondition for achieving this utopia was the integration of the working class into the nation, and a key message in the performance was that peasants and workers had finally reached harmonious unity. Ostensibly fostering this unity was the institutionalization of the Chamber of Labour – the law for which had been passed just days prior. The Chamber of Labour would open with an equally grandiose celebration on 26.07.1936. However, what stayed hidden behind the spectacle was that these mass performances had bankrupted the chamber even before it had opened its doors. Furthermore, this was just the most recent of the failures plaguing the production of the regime’s propaganda.

The paper proposes to examine the material aspects of propaganda production in Ulmanis' authoritarian regime in the years between 1934-1936. This will serve as a lens through which to reassess arguments on the regime’s ideology in the current literature and to propose an alternative framework of interpretation. The presentation will be based on chapters from my doctoral thesis.

Short Bio

I am a PhD researcher at the European University Institute. My thesis focuses on the policies and ideology behind the much-repeated propaganda slogan "vienotā tauta" [the unified people] during the years of Ulmanis' authoritarian rule (1934-1940). At this moment, I am in the final stages of completing my thesis, and the presentation at the conference will cover some of the findings from my research.

Author

• Kārlis Sils, European University Institute