Dear Readers,
I barely finished my piece on the Latvian Riflemen, in which Latgalians were mentioned in connection with Bolshevik ethnic policy, when, by sheer coincidence, I happened to see this piece in Lenta, it’s about the Latgalian ethnic minority within Latvia. And the writer is — guess who?! — the same Vladimir Veretennikov, who penned the Riflemen piece. If you recall my intro to that one, Veretennikov is a journalist/historian, an ethnic Russian born in Latvia, who is fascinated by Latvian history and culture.
And it turns out that Latgalians are a very interesting people, about whom I knew very little; and I am guessing many people never even heard of them. So here we go, I’ll translate/summarize this piece, and we’ll learn more together as we go:
Who The Heck Are Latgalians?
One hundred and ten years ago, on August 17, 1907, the Russian capital of St. Petersburg hosted a conference of Latgalian religious leaders and intelligentsia.
Latgalia is the green section of Latvia, on the right.
The plan was to try to implement a new literary language out of the Latgalian dialect. According to Veretennikov, Latgalian is a Baltic language which differs from Latvian in roughly the same degree to which Ukrainian or Belorussian differs from Great Russian. (In other words, not very much.)
Going back one step further: The two Baltic languages (Latvian and Lithuanian) were, back in the mists of time, along with all the contemporary Slavic languages, members of a broader language group known as Balto-Slavic. Going back even further in time, Balto-Slavic languages were part of a larger group known as the “satem” branch of Indo-European, which also included Indo-Aryan and Persian. Isn’t it awesome to think that, if one had a time machine and could go back far enough, one could encounter the ancestors of these various peoples all speaking pretty much the same language? And, even more awesome: Thanks to the efforts of the great Historical Linguists of the 19th century who figured out the rules of reconstructing languages, we even kind of have an idea what that “satem” proto-language would look and sound like!
Returning from time travel fantasies to our little Baltic enclave: The region of Latgale (which Latgalians themselves call Latgola) is one of 4 historical/cultural regions recognized in the Latvian constitution. A second linguistic sidebar: Any human dialect can become a full-fledged literary language; but it takes a bit of work — standardization of grammar, spelling, etc. Which is normally done by a committee of very smart people with doctoral degrees in various disciplines. And then one also needs some talented poets and writers actually using the new literary language to write stuff that’s good. This is the typical process.
Unfortunately, the attempt to turn the Latgalian dialect into a literary language never really took off. Latvian itself, one of the official languages of the European Union, is actually a dying tongue, with just over a million speakers on the entire planet. It is highly recommended that any native Latvian speakers learn a second language as soon as possible, preferably one or more of {English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, or even Chinese}. Otherwise they might some day find themselves in an awkward situation, with people staring at them like they have three heads, while they try desperately to communicate their winged expressions.
The Polish Factor
Bottom line: today’s Latgalian minority are officially considered to be Latvians who speak with a funny accent. Historically their dialect of Baltic acquired literary form in 1730, just a bit later than Latvian. Whether attempting to just get their dialect written down on paper as is, or to go one step further and turn it into a major literary language, the Latgalians faced several obstacles, main one being the disapproval of the Russian government. See, Latgalians are/were majority Catholics (as opposed to regular Latvians, who are majority Lutheran). Their Catholicism trended them in the direction of Poland, a fellow Catholic people. This made them “persons of interest” to the Russian government, which was suspicious of any attempts to develop the usual nationalist accoutrements, such as a literary language, ’cause, see, a literary language can be used to write down heretical and treasonous words.
In the geo-political arena, Russia and Poland have long been mortal enemies. Both in Tsarist times, as well as today. Thus proving that, just because two peoples have similar DNA and speak similar languages, doesn’t mean they are going to be friends. A major factor in cultural differences and the development of mutual hatred, is religion. Poland stands on the Western side of the Great Civilizational Schism within the two branches of Christianity; and Russia on the Eastern. During the Polish uprising against Russia, 1863-1864, the Russian government suspected the Latgalians of supporting their fellow-Catholic Poles against Mother Russia. Hence, they forbid the Latgalians to write stuff down in their own language. Even more: they forbid them to use the Latin alphabet in general. But there were rumors of fanatical Latgalian dissidents — this would be the early days of samizdat, who labored by candlelight, supposedly transcribing ancient books letter by letter, in the Latin alphabet, until they went blind. Remember that this was the time before xerox copiers, although people had certainly invented printing presses by this time, one would think.
1863: Poles rebel, Latgalians pay the price.
The point being that during the decades from 1864 through 1904, the Tsarist government did not trust Latgalians further than they could throw them. Hence, the latter were officially “repressed”, they were not allowed to create their own literary language, nor even write stuff down in Latin letters.
As a sidebar, alluding back to the previous “Riflemen” piece: Being victims of Tsarist repression made the Latgalians an object of sympathy for the Bolshevik Party. Which is why the Bolsheviks initially promised to create a Latgalian autonomy within the new Soviet Union. Like Will Rogers, Lenin never met an ethnic minority he didn’t like. And the more anti-Russian the better! Although later, the Bolsheviks were to learn the bitter lesson that just because somebody is anti-Russian, doesn’t mean they will become a socialist supporter. Poles being the poster child of that thought.
Meanwhile, the Tsarist government finally cooled down on its anger against the Latgalians. Starting in 1904 there was a period of liberalism, a loosening of the reins, a sort of perestroika, one could say. And thus there came to pass a brief renaissance of Latgalian writing and literature. Books appeared. Newspapers and textbooks as well. And in 1907 the Latgalian priests and intellectuals were invited to St. Petersburg, as we mentioned at the beginning, to start some major planning in regards to the hopeful future of the Latgalian literary language.
[to be continued]
Awful Avalanche 