Performing Subalternity: Center-Periphery Interactions during the 1958 Latgale Culture Week in Riga

• In Event: Mobilizing National Identity During the Soviet Era: Cultural Actors and the Field of Power in the Baltic Republics

Abstract

This paper examines the Latvian intelligentsia response to the events surrounding the 1958 Latgale Culture Week in Riga. By situating the event in a colonial setting and critically examining the historical entanglement of Latgale in multiple structures of power – Soviet and Latvian – I argue that ideal-typified Latvian and Soviet representations of Latgalian culture reproduced similar hierarchies of power that originally relegated it to the position of cultural subalternity. Against the backdrop of latent anti-Latgalian socio-cultural prejudices persistent in Soviet Latvian social life at the time, I show that performances of Latgalian identity during the Culture Week became a tool for both nationally-minded Latvians and Soviet state-builders to navigate internal narratives and project an image of national unity.

Author

• Ricards Umbrasko, Harvard University