The Testimony of Lives: Narrative and memory in post-Soviet Latvia

241 Pages·1997·3.3 MB·English

by  Vieda Skultans

THE TESTIMONY OF LIVES
The break-up of the Soviet Union from 1989 made anthropological work in Latvia possible,
and the attendant euphoria fired Latvian memories. The Testimony of Lives is based on more
than a hundred interviews carried out between 1992 and 1993 in the wake of the declaration
of independence. Narrative accounts focus on a past which could not be talked about under
Soviet rule. Informants were keen to set the record straight and to challenge the version of
history found in Soviet textbooks.
The heart of this book lies in the narratives themselves, in which the narrators provide an
oral history of the past fifty years of Soviet occupation: the appropriation of land and houses,
deportation and imprisonment, the violence and the chaos of the post-war years, the brutal
process of collectivization, the problems of the return from exile. The narratives open a
window on the past, and in the course of so doing they construct a new social reality in which
the past is shaped by the present and by aspirations for the future. Memories of deportation
and exile have come to have central importance for the definition of Latvian identity.
Latvian narratives represent both the personal past and a shared cultural and literary
history, and illustrate the difficulty of prising apart personal and textual memory. In
particular, recollections of violence incorporate cultural symbols and are framed by cultural
plots. Individual accounts of the past, which in most cases have not been shared earlier,
demonstrate the specific ways in which the social permeates the personal. This book draws on
narrative theory which has been a feature of recent anthropological discussion and shows how
oral testimonies may provide both a social and a cultural history of Latvia and at the same
time offer theoretical insights about the nature of memory, identity and narrative.
Vieda Skultans is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of
Bristol.
THE TESTIMONY OF LIVES
narrative and memory in post-Soviet Latvia
VIEDA SKULTANS
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 1998
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of
eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1998 Vieda Skultans
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Skultans, Vieda.
The testimony of lives: narrative and memory in post-Soviet Latvia/
Vieda Skultans.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Latvia—History—1940–1991—Biography. 2. Latvia—Biography.
3. Skultans, Vieda. I. Title.
DK505.78.S57 1998 97–12949
947.96' 085–dc21 CIP
ISBN 0-203-44501-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-75325-9 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-16289-0 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-16290-4 (pbk)
For the three cousins Velta, Jānis and Andrejs and for those whose
stories cannot be heard
Going to war
I locked my heart in a stone
The light comes the sun rises
The stone splits open singing.
(Latvian folk song)
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction ix
1 A FAMILY HISTORY 1
2 A CHRONICLE OF RESEARCH 9
3 ORDER IN NARRATIVE EXPERIENCE 15
4 READING LETTERS 31
5 DESTINY AND THE SHAPING OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY 43
6 THE EXPROPRIATION OF BIOGRAPHY 63
7 THE LIVED AND THE REMEMBERED FOREST 79
8 DAMAGED LIVES, DAMAGED HEALTH 99
9 MEANINGS LOST AND GAINED 121
10 HABITABLE IDENTITIES 139
APPENDIX I: HISTORICAL BEARINGS 155
APPENDIX II: PRINCIPAL NARRATORS 175
Notes 177
Latvian references 197
Bibliography 199
Index 213
ILLUSTRATIONS
Map 1 Latvia 1997 xiv
Plate 1 1952. A formal portrait of Antra with her mother, grandmother and brothers. xv
Her father was imprisoned in Vorkuta during this period
Plate 2 1946. Antra’s father standing in the ruins of his church xv
Plate 3 1960. Antra’s mother. Even after her husband’s return in 1956 life was not xvi
easy
Plate 4 c. 1960. Antra’s father’s congregations were small. Services were frequently xvi
held in side rooms which were easier to heat
Plate 5 1947. Peasant woman handing over her calf. Heavy taxes were imposed upon xvii
peasants, paving the way for collectivization of farms
Plate 6 1947 or 1948. Working out the taxes xvii
Plate 7 1945. In the post-war years there was a deficit of men, and women were left to xvii i
sort out the problems
Plate 8 1946. The state imposed obligatory felling work on all peasants, women xvii i
included
Plate 9 1946. Women were expected to do heavy manual work of a kind they were not xix
accustomed to
Plate 10 1949. Andrejs with his class in Koknese a few years before being forced to xix
resign
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people read parts of or the whole manuscript and helped me to revise this book. I would
like to especially thank Richard Jenkins, Nigel Rapport and Ronnie Frankenberg. Without
their encouragement this book would not have been completed. At Bristol, Rowena Fowler,
Theresa Bridgeman, Tony Antonovics, Cathy Merridale and Steve Fenton were particularly
helpful and generous with their time. Ian Hamnett read and re-read successive versions of
translations and chapters. Roger Bartlett read Chapter 10. The anthropologists at the
University of Sussex and University College Swansea helped me to impose some structure on
material which at the time threatened to overwhelm me. In Riga, Aivita Putniņa gave much
needed help with the footnotes. My long telephone conversations with Roberts Ķīlis enabled
me to share some of my obsessions about memory and Latvia. However, none of these people
would have written this book the way I have done: I could not see a way to implement all
their suggestions and the responsibility for its shape must rest with me. Finally, I would like
to thank the British Academy for financing my fieldwork in 1992 and the ESRC for financing
it in 1993.
INTRODUCTION
I have been asked how I came to write a book about Latvian narrative. My answer, in the
spirit of all true narratives, links necessity with coincidence. I am Latvian by birth. This and
my being an anthropologist made Latvia a natural fieldwork destination.
The unfreezing of the Soviet Union from 1989 made anthropological work there a real
possibility. Although the Baltic states do not form part of the traditional heartland of the
anthropologist, they have about them an air of remoteness and the unknown. (They were the
last in Europe to be Christianized.) The relative inaccessibility of Soviet Latvia for some
fortyfive years imbued its opening up with great feeling and romance. I first visited Latvia in
1990. It was a time when many other exiled Latvians were returning, trying to find a link
between memories and perceived realities. At each of my visits the tiny airport in Riga was full
of people clutching bunches of red carnations or roses and crying. Old people met who had
last seen each other as children or adolescents. Some touched each other’s faces enquiringly
as though sight alone could not give them the evidence they were seeking. The airport
officials had already become inured to such emotional outbursts: loudspeakers announced five
more minutes of crying time.
The nature of my re-encounter with Latvia was no less emotional than theirs but of a
different kind. As an infant in arms I had no personal memories of Latvia. More potent
perhaps were my childhood readings of Latvian folk songs and literature. These evoked for
me a timeless and pantheistic world, far removed from the reality of life in north London. My
image of Latvia was literary, built of books and readings. In so far as I was brought up on
school books published in the 1920s and 1930s I belonged to a textual community who were a
generation older than me. Indeed, many of my closest contacts were with older women.
My research project began as an anthropological study of neurasthenia. The professional
isolation of Latvian psychiatrists had meant that their diagnostic practice was closer to the
nineteenth century than to contemporary western practices. Neurasthenia or nervous
exhaustion was and remains a much used diagnosis in Latvia. I planned my project in terms
of the conventional academic concerns of medical anthropology. I wanted to investigate the
meanings of neurasthenia for doctors and their patients; to look at how the diagnosis might
be used to deflect personal and social disaffection and to explore its symbolism in everyday
speech. In the event I did investigate neurasthenia in this way, but also found myself pulled
ineludibly by people’s memories of the past. The past could not be laid to rest and left people
little motivation to talk about the present. The brutal and chaotic events following the Second
World War did not release their hold on memory. Arbitrary arrests, deportation to Siberian