In Defence of the Latvian Language Against Russification. Documents from 1944-1989

the Jānis Riekstiņš of Language Defence In Latvian Against Russification Jānis Riekstiņš In Defence of the Latvian Language Against Russification Jānis Riekstiņš In Defence of the Latvian Language Against Russification The Latvian Language Agency Jānis Riekstiņš In Defence of the Latvian Language Against Russification Riga Latviešu valodas aģentūra / The Latvian Language Agency 2012 UDK 811.174’ 272(474.3)(093) De 167 Jānis Riekstiņš In Defence of the Latvian Language Against Russification 1944–1989 Documents In Defence of the Latvian Language Against Russification. 1944–1989. Documents. Compiled and translated from the Russian by J. Riekstiņš. Introduction by Prof. Uldis Ozoliņš, foreword by J. Riekstiņš. Managing editor D. Liepa. Riga: LVA, 2012. 160 pages. Managing editor Dr. Dite Liepa Literary editor P. Cedriņš Reviewer Dr. Dzintra Hirša Documents utilized are from the Latvian State Archive collection of LCP CC records (PA-101. fonds), LCP Central Control and Auditing Committee (PA-2160), the LSSR Council of Ministers (270. fonds), LSSR Supreme Council (290. fonds), the Riga City Executive Committee (1400. fonds), as well as documents from collections of other institutions, that verify the Soviet policies in Latvian SSR. Many of these documents are published for the first time. Cover design and layout: Vanda Voiciša © LVA, 2012 © Jānis Riekstiņš, compiler, translator from the Russian language, foreword author © Uldis Ozoliņš, foreword author © Vanda Voiciša, “Idea lex”, cover design and layout ISBN 978-9984-815-77-0 Table of Contents Introduction: the struggle for the status of the Latvian language during the Soviet occupation 1944 to 1989 ............ 6 Foreword by J. Riekstiņš ........................................18 Section 1 Decisions and materials on the acquisition of the Latvian language .........................21 Section 2 Decisions on learning Russian. Imposing the Russian language ................................61 Section 3 Protest Reports to Moscow about Colonialization and Russification in the Latvian SSR .............91 Section 4 Decisions and materials about proper Latvian orthography ...................................125 Section 5 Letters and decisions on the status of the Latvian language .......................................135 List of Documents .....................................155 Introduction: the struggle for the status of the Latvian language during the Soviet occupation 1944 to 1989 Dr Uldis Ozoliņš is Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at the University of Western Sydney in Australia. He has taught in the fields of Political Science, Sociology, Education, and Translating & Interpreting at a number of Australian universities, as well as having given guest lectures in these fields at several Latvian universities. He has numerous international publications on language policy, both on Australian language policy which was the subject of his doctorate work, and more recently on the politics of language in the Baltic States. The politics of language in the Baltic States has attracted considerable interest over the past two decades, both from those concerned with the details of language policy and language planning, and from those concerned with wider issue of nationality and ethnopolitics in this post-Soviet space. The set of documents in this volume, collected by Jānis Riekstiņš, will play a valuable role in securing our historical understanding of the preconditions to present Baltic language policy, specifically in Latvia. The collection presents a graphic chronology of the struggle to defend the use of the Latvian language while Latvia was an unwilling constituent of the USSR. The documents cover the period from 1944 – when Soviet forces re-occupied Latvia after the retreat of German forces in the closing stages of World War II – to 1989, when as a result of the resurgent national sentiments in the glasnost/perestroika period, Latvia was able – along with all other non-Russian republics in the USSR – to reassert the official status of their language. The documents have been gathered from the now open archives of the Latvian Communist Party (henceforth CP) and its Central Committee (henceforth CC), and deposits of various journals and newspapers in the Latvian National Archives. The documents are organised in five sections, with somewhat overlapping materials and in thematic rather than strict chronological order: Section I deals with documents on decisions on the importance of learning Latvian, containing documents from the 1940s and early 1950s; Section II contains documents on the importance of learning Russian and the imposition of Russian from the 1950s, detailing the Russification purge of Latvian national communists in 1959 and the growth of russification pressures in the 1970s and 1980s; 6 Section III deals with the protests expressed to Moscow over the level of immigration and Russification in Latvia in the late 1950s and 1960; Section IV, the shortest section, documents concerns over Latvian orthography in the 1940s to 1950s; Section V deals with the battles over reasserting the status of Latvian in the 1980s, concluding with the passage of the Language Law by the Supreme Soviet in 1989, which re-established Latvian as the official state language of the territory. This collection of documents may present some surprises both for readers in the West as well as for readers in Latvia (or the former Soviet Union). Two problems will immediately be apparent to any Western readers. First, the clearly ideological struggles over language being waged and so accurately reflected in these documents comes through a heavy overlay of debate over Leninist (and at times Stalinist) attitudes to language and nation – an obscure discourse to contemporary sensibilities, but absolutely essential to understand where contending forces could argue their point within the ruling ideology of the day. Many of the documents reflect conflicts within the CP and CC over language, and it was at this often secret but highly ideological level that decisions were made or revoked. Second, while the documents expose the shifts in language policy, they cannot hope to capture all of the intense politicisation of the issue of nation and nationalism that was a constant if often suppressed and misrepresented source of discord and power struggles throughout the existence of the USSR. In particular, the huge influx of Soviet period settlers to Latvia, which dramatically altered the demography of the republic, is reflected in these documents but not systematically analysed except for a brief mention in Riekstiņš’ editor’s notes. In this introduction we will place the documentation within these wider contexts of the forces – demographic as much as political – that promoted or constrained the use of Latvian throughout the period of survey. For readers in Latvia, the documents reveal often completely suppressed instances of people fighting for the status of Latvian in overwhelmingly difficult circumstances. The fact that individuals, even at the height of Stalinism or in the face of Brezhnevian Russification policies, doggedly refused to accept the imposition of Russian and of Russian monolingualism is striking. And this opposition comes in many forms – in the CP and CC, in workplaces, from ordinary citizens writing letters to various institutions and newspapers never previously published but available from now opened archives. While some notable instances (such as the purge of national communists in 1959 and its background) are widely known, other instances of initiative or resistance come to light here for the first time. 7 The reimposition of Soviet occupation from 1944: the battle over nationality and language policy In 1944, Latvia had been heavily scarred by successive Soviet, then Nazi, then renewed Soviet occupation. The Baltic States had been initially incorporated into the Soviet Union as part of the grand alliance between Hitler and Stalin, embodied in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of August 1939 which divided Eastern Europe, from Finland to the Black Sea, between Germany and the USSR. This paved the way for Hitler to begin his invasion of Poland. This incorporation was imposed upon the Baltic States following sham elections, and led also to a wave of deportations in June 1941, shortly before Hitler turned on Stalin and opened his second front in the East. Two issues then confronted the USSR and its renewed occupation of Latvia from 1944. First, massive human losses – deportation losses, war losses, and a large loss of civilians who went into exile in the West – posed problems for the USSR in terms of meeting the needs of defending this now frontline state, as well as rebuilding the considerable industrial and economic infrastructure that Latvia had developed between the two World Wars. Secondly, however, the Baltic States presented particular political issues as they had joined the Soviet Union unwillingly. From these documents the fragility and constant nervousness over re-establishing the Soviet Union in the territory of Latvia comes across remarkably strongly. Many Latvians (like many others from the Baltic or Eastern Europe more widely) fought on the German side against the Soviet Union in World War II, leaving an abiding suspicion of these populations on the part of the Soviet Union, and extreme determination to quarantine these populations from their political supporters now in the West. But there were strongly divided views of how this should be handled and how integration

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