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The research aims to analyse oral history interviews of heterosexual people about their experience with homosexuals during the Soviet times. Eight interviews were selected for the analysis based on two criteria - the research participant belongs to the Soviet generation, and he/she has personally known homosexuals during the Soviet times. The paper presents interviews as a primary source, illuminating several challenges with obtaining the interviews and their interpretation. In addition, common narratives of communicative memories' evidence and their influence on current views of homosexuals in Latvian society, including its historical metanarrative and historical record, which relies on the nation's victimisation during the Soviet times, are analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the different approaches used to understand the concept of generation. It seeks to identify various age cohorts as cultural entities. Our approach follows Karl Mannheim's sociological analysis of "The Problem of Generations" (1928), this being one of the first theoretical works on the sociological concept of generation. According to Mannheim generation refers to an age-defined subgroup in which individuals are exposed to and shaped by similar historical events and experiences. For us, the question of generations is neither about lineage nor descent within a family, nor the perception of generation merely as a group in society that shares the same birth date within a certain time period. Drawing on relevant theories in the field, we argue that generations exist as specific collective identities with substantial historical significance. While the concept of generation has a long history in Western popular and academic realms, its use in Latvia is still underdeveloped. Recent studies have shown how commemoration and remembrance processes in Latvian society shape collective memories and promote their transmission across generations. Historic shifts, wars and changes in political regimes as well as in value systems have left a deep impact on people's biographies especially in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States. What kinds of historical generations can scholars identify studying biographies and narratives? Historical turning points have driven the dynamics of generation formation and opened up questions about the subtle generational consciousness among age cohorts in Latvia. We use biographical interviews from the National Oral history archive in Riga to delineate a sense of generational belonging. The emphasis is on how traumatic events shape cultural identity during the formative years of life in story tellers. This has allowed us to refine the generational model and to identify six distinct generations in Latvia during the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The centenary of World War I in 2014 drew attention to the significance of this war in the history of Latvia. The aim of this article is to examine how one of the most vivid “sites of memory” of the war - the Latvian Riflemen - evolved and is still being used. The article reveals not only the preconditions and causes for the construction and development of the image of Latvian Riflemen, but also provides a framework which can be applied to analyse the genealogy of the public understanding of historicity and how our and foreign political elites have manipulated this historicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During World War II half of the Romanies' community in Latvia was annihilated. Research of the Romanies' genocide has been fragmentary and its remembrance weakly expressed. The objective of the article is to ascertain the place of this genocide in the collective memory of Latvia and to analyse its representation in the communicative memory of the Romanies' community members through life stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the image of the men on active service in the Latvian Riflemen's battalions organized during World War I, and the reflection on this image in Latvian collective memory. It analyses the making of this image during the years of Latvia's independence in the 1920s and 1930s, during the years of Soviet occupation and after the restoration of independence. After World War I and the following War of Independence (1918-1920), the political memory of the Republic of Latvia was shaped. The new political and military elite had to create a particular representation of the past that would not only substantiate and strengthen the legitimacy of the regime and its elite but also would consolidate society. Concerning the Latvian riflemen, the attitude of the new state at first was quite reserved because of the degree of Bolshevization among them. Many riflemen had decided to serve further in the Red Army and many had taken part in the campaign against the Republic of Latvia in the ranks of Peter Stuchka's Soviet Latvian army. The attempts to actualize and to strengthen the role of the Latvian riflemen in the social memory of the new state and to include this factor also in the political memory can be explained with the following arguments. First, the task of memory, as is generally known, is to secure the continuity of history and the connection of society with its past and future. Therefore, the new elites experienced the need to integrate into the collective memory also the events of World War I in Latvia and in particular a certain image of the Latvian riflemen. Second, the elites did not want to allow the division of Latvian society into separate antagonistic groups in terms of memory. Since according to the established political memory the principal enemies were Germans, this image was therefore ascribed to the Baltische Landeswehr and the other imperial German units, but not to those Latvian riflemen who fought on the side of the Bolsheviks. Whereas military service in the Landeswehr was regarded as high treason, service in the Red army was looked upon as a kind of irony of fate. Third, the new elites needed to substantiate their own merits in the fight "for Latvia's freedom". The introduction of the tradition to commemorate the Latvian riflemen on a special day as well as the activities of the various Riflemen societies helped to convince the political elite that it is necessary to transfer the social memory of the riflemen to the political memory. The battle places of World War I on the so-called Death Island (Nāves sala) and in the Tīreļa marshes were turned into unique places of commemoration of national heroes already in the 1920s and 1930s. The Brethren Cemetery in Riga, initially a place of burial for Latvian riflemen who were killed on the Riga front, later became a burial ground also for those killed in the War of Independence (1918-1920), thus spatially creating a socio-political myth according to which the Latvian riflemen in the tsarist army and the soldiers of the Latvian army had fought for the same goal, i.e. independent Latvia. This policy regarding the unification of the memory of the riflemen with that of the soldiers who fought in the War of Independence was also demonstrated in the construction of local monuments and can be observed in patriotic rituals during national holidays. The highest military award of the Republic of Latvia, the War Order of Lāčplēsis, was also conferred on riflemen who had been in active service during World War I. Thus, in the years after 1920, the memory of a rather small social group, the Latvian riflemen, became an important part of the collective memory of the republic, strengthening also its political and cultural memory. The Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940 interrupted this development in Latvian memory culture, and the topic of the riflemen initially became a taboo until the mid-1950s. From 1959 onwards, when Latvian so-called national communists were defeated, the image of the veterans of the Latvian division of the Red Army from the World War II became politically ambiguous because of the relation of those "national communists" with this division. Therefore, those in power strengthened the myth about the Latvian Red Riflemen from the First World War, and in the course of time this group became the central object in terms of political memory of Soviet Latvia. Starting in the second half of the 1980s, re-writing and understanding of the past touched also upon the collective memory concerning the Latvian riflemen. Already at this time, a validation of the elements of cultural memory and their use marked a kind of department of collective memory from communicative memory. After the restoration of Latvian independence, however, the principal conflicts between communicative memory and the representation of the past are focused almost exclusively on the events of World War II, thus overshadowing other elements of memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the image of the men on active service in the Latvian Riflemen's battalions organized during World War I, and the reflection on this image in the collective memory of Latvia. It analyses the making of this image in the 1920-30s (during the years of Latvia's independence), during the Soviet occupation and after restoration of independence. In the analysis of the role of Latvian riflemen in the collective memory of Latvia the theory on the formations of memory worked out by the German researcher Aleida Assmann has been used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the importance of the battles at Cēsis in the historical consciousness of Latvians. These battles between German units, the Baltische Landeswehr supporting the government of Andrievs Niedra, and the Northern Latvian units as part of the Estonian army that recognized the government of Karlis Ulmanis took place in June 1919. The analysis is based on the assumption that historical consciousness can be perpetuated through research of history, writing of school textbooks, commemorations, monuments and the creation of new toponyms. The article describes how the events at Cēsis were perceived and how this perception was transformed in the 1920s and 1930s. Particular attention is paid to the representation of the role of Estonians in the historical memory of Latvians, which became a source of disagreement between both sides in the 1920s. Although the Latvians sometimes tended to exaggerate their own military merits during the particular battles, the assistance of the Estonians during the Liberation war was never denied and their role was honoured. During the 1920s the battles at Cēsis were incorporated into the national interpretation of history. This interpretation has changed in the past 90 years. Initially it was portrayed as the apogee of the long fight of Latvians against the Baltic Germans which finally gave the people "real freedom". In recent scholarship these battles mean simply an episode during the Liberation war 1919-1920. Thus, it can be stated that the consequences of World War II and the Soviet regime definitively transformed the composition of the national myth about "700 years of slavery" under the Germans. As a consequence, the perception that prevailed in the 1920s, being focused on the defeat of the Germans, has no place in the current understanding of the notion "historical enemy of the nation." Nowadays Latvian historical consciousness is focused on events related to the loss of independence in 1940, the Soviet terror, the deportations, life under the Soviet regime and the process of regaining statehood since the late 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]