Trade and Inter-Ethnic Politics in Tsarist Riga

• In Event: Russification and Memory in the Baltics and Finland: Narratives and Memory Policies

Abstract

From the standpoint of nationality politics, the Baltic region was an anomaly in the Russian empire. The tsarist state allowed the Baltic German elite to retain its centuries-old political, social, and economic supremacy for 150 years after the region's annexation, forcing oppressive constraints not only on the native Latvian and Estonian majorities but also (and more unusually) on ethnic Russians. In cities, Germans' exclusive rights to perform certain kinds of commerce, to trade in certain places, in specific commodities, and their exclusive control over economic policies severely limited the opportunities and living standards of non-Germans. By the middle of the 19th century, Russian merchants and townspeople (among others) were demanding not so much the Russification of the region as its de-Germanization, a cause joined by many native Balts as well.

Focusing on the city of Riga, this paper will examine how Russians and Latvians coped with inter-ethnic conflict and injustice over the course of the 19th century, particularly in the realm of trade. It will highlight four figures and their writings: a Russian merchant whose memoir (published posthumously in 1870) described his community's struggle with Riga's merchant guild in the early 1800s; the Slavophile Iurii Samarin, who brought Baltic German tyranny to wide public attention in his Letters from Riga (1848) and Russia's Borderlands (1869); a Russian customs administrator who recounted in his memoir (published only recently) the challenges of his efforts to enlist German merchants in the development of Riga's port; and the Latvian nationalist leader Krišjānis Valdemārs, who published his own Riga Letters (1865) and allied with Russian activists to challenge German dominance using grass-roots commerce and education.

Author

• Robert Geraci, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign