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

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel will focus on the role of cultural actors in the Baltic states in mobilizing national identity during the Soviet occupation. The panel provides a multidirectional approach to nationalism as a political resource. The various manifestations of nationalism will be discussed in three conceptually and thematically distinct papers.
The first paper by Ričards Umbraško will examine the Latvian intelligentsia response to the events surrounding the 1958 Latgale Culture Week in Riga. By situating the event in a colonial setting Umbraško argues 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.
The second paper by Mārtiņš Kaprāns will explore how the cultural elite of late Soviet Latvia managed to problematize national identity in the 1982 discussion “A man and the Nature” organized by the influential cultural newspaper “Literatūra un Māksla”. Kaprāns will demonstrate how the social placement of various discussants helped to transform the conversation about ecology into a conversation about national identity.
The third paper by Matthew Reichert insists that writers, artists, and professors radically reshaped how Soviet citizens thought about nationality. Reichert will test this argument in the case pair of Soviet Lithuania and Latvia. This comparison cleaves Lithuania and Latvia by showing how those cultural professionals that led the Lithuanian national movement wielded nationalist credentials, enjoyed public celebrity, and possessed a history of issue advocacy that was less pronounced amongst their Latvian counterparts.

Short Bio

Ričards Umbraško is an undergraduate student at the Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures and the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University.

Mārtiņš Kaprāns is a senior researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Latvia. Over the previous decade, he has been involved in several large-scale research projects on Baltic labor migrants, Russian-speaking communities in the Baltic states and ideological polarization in Baltic societies.

Matthew Reichert is a Preceptor in Social Studies at Harvard University, where he teaches research design. He works on national identity formation in the Soviet Union, and on racial disparities in health and healthcare in the United States.

Sub Unit

• History, Memory, and Identity

Chair

• Harry Merritt, University of Vermont

Individual Presentations

• Performing Subalternity: Center-Periphery Interactions during the 1958 Latgale Culture Week in Riga - Ricards Umbrasko, Harvard University

• Contesting developed socialism: Eco-nationalism and the Latvian cultural elite in the late Soviet era - Mārtiņš Kaprāns, University of Latvia

• Cleaving the Baltic National Movements: The Role of Cultural Professionals as Leaders - Matthew Reichert, Harvard University