Latvian Folklorists under the Soviet Thumb

• In Event: The Role of Ethnographic Studies in the Soviet Baltic Republics, Part 2

Abstract

With the strengthening of Soviet occupation regime in Latvia in late 1940s, professional lives of many interwar period folklorists were exposed to ideologically motivated discretization. Jānis Niedre (1909–1987), the Deputy Director of the Institute of Folklore (later Institute of Ethnography and Folklore) of the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian SSR, denounced the “bourgeois” scholarship and the methods applied in the folklore studies in the interwar period.
At the Department of Folklore, Faculty of Philology, the Soviet negations grew avalanche-like. Being the main propagator of the Soviet folklore and its studies in the Latvian SSR, Jānis Niedre focused particularly on assessment of docent Anna Bērzkalne’s (1891–1956) scholarly and political views and sharply criticized her in several publications. Under the Soviet thumb, she tried to introduce her “bourgeois” scholarly principles, namely the historic-geographical method, indirectly to the Soviet folkloristics. There were four studies carried out by her between 1947 and 1950 which at least thematically (but not methodologically) tried to be in tune with the ruling regime. Their topics were the Russian rhymes (chastushki) as well as Comrade Stalin and V. I. Lenin, as they appeared in the songs of Soviet peoples. However, her efforts to adapt to the framework of Soviet folkloristics was not successful—her studies received criticism and were never published. Since Bērzkalne belonged to the interwar period’s intellectual community, during the Soviet era, her name and merits were silenced. She was rehabilitated only during the Third Latvian National Awakening.

Author

• Rita Treija, University of Latvia