Soviet Latvian mythology: The establishment of a new

The establishment of a new discipline

While within the exile community the research into mythology continued to develop according to the different disciplinary trajectories of folkloristics and the history of religion, as represented by the authors analysed in the first section of this chapter, research into the subject matter in the Soviet Socialistic Republic of Latvia was consolidated under the umbrella of folkloristics – a branch of linguistics and literature studies in local academia. The discipline, with a one-hundred-year-old history and sources shaped by this history, could not be restarted from a zero point, also keeping in mind the matter of human recourses: scholars who continued their careers, or at least had been educated within the previous regime, like Anna Bērzkalne, Alma Medne and Jānis Alberts Jansons, used discursive and rhetorical strategies to continue pursuing, in modified form, the research they had begun previously. Thus, one of the cornerstones of new disciplinary identity was uncompromising critique of previous developments (e.g. Niedre 1948, Ambainis 1958, Ozols 1968), especially regarding the works of Baltic exile scholars, prohibited or limited to only a narrow circle of readers in the LSSR.

The necessity of active identity construction and legitimation of research is also illustrated by often repeated self-definitions of folkloristics, its research object and purposes. These definitions show the heterogeneity within the seemingly uniform period of Soviet rule, again related to ideological changes in the USSR. Therefore the two definitions below – from the beginning and from the end of Soviet period – are juxtaposed to demonstrate the ideology implicit in the construction of disciplinary identity. The first of these definitions was written during the period of Stalinism (see p. 87–90) and correspondingly reflects the hegemonic ideological trends:

Folklore is the oral art of the vast masses of working people¹¹², their ideological formation. Folklore expresses the views, thoughts, seeking, endeavours, and thirst of the working people; folklore reflects their worldview, shows their life and struggle. Folklore is the oral poetry of working people’s far and recent past, present, and future as well. Folklore is various songs of the folk, rich narratives, various compositions of small genres (...). Vast masses of people composed and repeated it in remote past, when they yet had no written literature, working people composed and repeated it while struggling against noblemen and capitalists, they compose and repeat it while building the socialism

(Niedre 1948: 5).

The following adjustment is also noteworthy: “Soviet science, as already said, labels the oral poetry of working people, excluding various beliefs, such as

112 The Latvian term tauta in different contexts means ‘nation’, ‘folk’, or ‘people’. Trans-lation of this term in this thesis is kept as close as possible to given context, as in the compound terms ‘working people’, ‘folk art’, and ‘Soviet nations’.

witchcraft, customs etc., with the term ‘folklore’. Those catch folklorists’

attention as poetical creations or ornamentation of people’s poetry” (Niedre 1948: 6).

Three important rhetorical moves are made here, basically connecting folklore and class-struggle: first, the de-nationalisation of folklore, locating its creative sources in the lower classes according to international Soviet paradigm;

second, the narrowing of the definition of folklore genre-wise, excluding materials that could compromise the idea of the linear development of class-struggle with clear division lines between the cultures of oppressors and oppressed, including an exclusively positive evaluation of the latter. The third move leads towards the particular understanding of contemporary folklore, shifting the emphasis from the cultural heritage of pre-modern society to on-going process of modern society, of course also narrowing it by class and relating it to the narrative of struggle. As Latviešu folklora (Latvian Folklore, Niedre 1948), with the above quoted definition, characterises the beginning of Soviet Latvian folkloristics, Latviešu folkloristikas vēsture (History of Latvian Folkloristics, Ambainis 1989) characterises the decline of these trends in the last year of LSSR existence. Here too the opening paragraph defines the field:

In the culture and history of any people, in any period of social development, a significant role is played by folklore – one of the oldest forms of social consciousness. The origins of folklore as ideology are simultaneous to the most ancient manifestations of human spiritual activities. The later modes and forms of folklore take shape together with the development of human language and practical activity. The first man’s efforts of seeing, summarising, and gene-ralising the most important observations in the individual’s life, as well as understanding the regularities of the society, environment, and world from which the existence and further development of particular human and collectives are dependant, are found in it. From the ancient, syncretic forms of spiritual culture, folklore later outgrew as a particular mode of folk art, in which people’s conceptual, artistic, scientific, and merely practical views are collected over the course of many centuries. The world-view and aesthetic basic principles of folklore become a base of national literature; evaluation of the moral, ethical, and social principles stored in folklore, secures the preservation of social and national continuity

(Ambainis: 1989: 5).

In this definition, published half a century later, the most obvious feature, of course, is the (re)introduction of the term ‘national’. The previously dominant narrative of class struggle is also absent, although it heavily influences periodi-sation and interpretation in further pages of Ambainis’ book. Importantly, this definition leads towards the more comprehensive understanding of folklore as a particular form of the human (not class) consciousness. Published in the last

years of the LSSR, it proves the sensitivity of the humanities towards the political developments going on all over the Soviet Union¹¹³.

One of the rare articles on Latvian mythology published during the early years of Soviet Latvia was written by Arturs Ozols (1912–1964); it is a chapter in introduction to a new edition of folksongs. Ozols was one of the most influential folklorists of his time, head of the Department of Latvian Language and Folklore at the University of Latvia, vice-chairman in scientific work of the director of the LSSR Academy of Sciences Institute of Folklore and Ethnography (cf. Biezais 1970, Jērāns 1986). While, in Sweden, Biezais described the ancient Latvian pantheon, Ozols in Soviet Latvia argued that Soviet folklorists, who were armed with Marxist-Leninist theory, objectively research, care for, and bring to light treasures of the people’s art (Ozols 1955:

48). ‘Objectively’ here means the discovering of a class struggle beyond the creation of folklore. Ideological constraints and angle of interpretation dominating in the earliest Soviet Latvian folkloristics are well illustrated by the course on methodology of Soviet folkloristics within the programme of Latvian folkloristics at the State University of Latvia in the 1949/50 academic year (Ozols 1968: 194–195; for English translations see Appendix II – p. 197). Here the above-mentioned uncertainty of disciplinary identity, manifested in the on-going critique of bourgeois folkloristics, is reflected in four points out of five.

The programme also clearly shows the invention of a new identity along with the invention of new a research object – the contemporary, i.e. Soviet, folklore of working people. Thus, the continuity of discipline was constructed on a meta-level: referring to its research object, but not to the scholarly endeavours of past generations, which were practically continued by the heirs of the Archives of Latvian Folklore and the University of Latvia. Folklore was not only invented, but also instrumentalised as a tool of propaganda and education, and as such its purpose was “to mobilise the working people in the struggle of collective construction, the struggle for new cultural achievements, raising the might of the Soviet Union” (Niedre 1948: 225). While many researchers have paid attention to the contradictory nature of Soviet folklore as the discursive construction of an artificial subject (cf. Miller 1990, Panchenko 2005), an example of one such new folksong speaks for itself, illustrating the subject matter:

Worker extends hand to worker, Struggle will banish the spectre of crisis.

The worker will build himself a new state, On work and reason it will be founded

(Ozols 1968: 219).

113 For changes of the meaning of term ‘folklore’ during Soviet period in Estonia see Jaago 1999.

This is defined as a folksong probably due to its ‘classical’ four-line form and origins from the lowest level of society, in this case, prisoners¹¹⁴. However, it has no metric features characteristic to Latvian folksongs, and it was excerpted from an originally written source. During field expeditions, Soviet folklore was also often composed by local activities specially to match the collectors agenda.

Research into mythology in this framework of Soviet folkloristics had a special status because of the twofold necessity to legitimise a research subject close to religion. Such legitimation was obtained by two strategies: pre-defined interpretation, analysed in detail below (p. 159–161), and the practice of using canonical references, characteristic to the discipline, and to the humanities in general, in this period¹¹⁵. First of all, it is Karl Marx who unfortunately had not written anything on mythology in particular but has a short note on Greek art;

therefore, this very note was cited in almost all material regarding mythological subject matters:

We know that Greek mythology is not only the arsenal of Greek art, but also its basis. (...) All mythology subdues, controls and fashions the forces of nature in the imagination and through imagination; it therefore disappears when real control over these forces is established. (...) Greek art presupposes Greek mythology, in other words that natural and social phenomena are already assimilated in an unintentionally artistic manner by the imagination of the people

(Marx 1999 [1857]).

Careful reading of other canonical authors (e.g. Lenin and Stalin) also provided similar, rather de-contextualised material. In this regard, the writings of Friedrich Engels and Maxim Gorky were applied as a kind of cornerstones of Soviet (Latvian) approach to mythology. Engels had defined mythology as

“fantastic reflection of reality in humans’ minds” (Niedre 1948: 34) and the origins of supernatural beliefs as a coping strategy with external forces¹¹⁶. Engels’ thesis of ‘fantastic reflection’ and its foundation in economic relations discovered by Marx were synthesised by Maxim Gorky and retold to Latvian readers by Jānis Niedre:

114 Originally LFK collection no. 908, item no. 1379. Collection no. 908 mainly consists of the excerpts from (presumably political) prisoner’s notes and diaries, stored in the Latvian State Archives.

115 See p. 87–90 for Stalinism and Soviet science.

116 “All religion, however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men’s minds of those external forces which control their daily life, a reflection in which the terrestrial forces assume the form of supernatural forces. In the beginnings of history it was the forces of nature which were first so reflected, and which in the course of further evolution underwent the most manifold and varied personifications among the various peoples” (Ozols 1955: 46, quoted from Engels’ Anti-Dühring).

An image was consolidation of the sum of particular experience and was accepted as an idea which aroused the creative power, increased the lacking real, provided by the people’s own desires. Therefore, myths are not infertile fantasy, but the very reality in their fundaments, which are supplemented with fiction and called to lead the activity of collective

(Niedre 1955: 35).

From collective activity, line of thought leads to the role of work and the working class. Ozols’ reference to Gorky, paraphrasing the same fragment of Engels which was chosen by Niedre, is quoted here at length to illustrate the scholastic nature of this period’s rhetorics:

In addition to many other questions of folklore, the basic meaning of the mythological substance of folklore is also illuminated by the great writer of the world and thinker M. Gorky: “I do not doubt that you know ancient folktales, myths, and legends, but I would very much like that their basic meaning would be understood more deeply. This meaning is reducible to the efforts of the ancient working people to ease their work, to increase its productivity, likewise, to arm themselves against four-legged and two-legged enemies as well as with the means of the power of the word – ‘witchcraft’, ‘charming’ – to influence elemental, hostile natural forces.

By idealising Man’s abilities and somewhat anticipating his potent development, myth creation in its foundations was realistic. In every blink of the ancient imagination it is easy to find its stimulus, and this stimulus is always Man’s desire to ease his work. Certainly, this stimulus was created by the workers of physical labour. And indeed, certainly, god had not came into existence and existed for such a long time in the daily life of working people, if it would not be particularly useful for the rulers of the land, exploiters of the work...”

(Ozols 1955: 6–7, cf. Gorkijs 1946).

The most distinct characteristic of these definitions is the absence of religious terminology that is a constitutive element of other approaches to mythology, both in the fields of folkloristics and the studies of religion. Here, instead of sacrality, the struggle of the working people appears as a central term, corresponding to the Marxist understanding of class struggle as a vehicle of history. Such understanding also implies the stretching of religious experience and related narratives in Procrustes’ bed of historical materialism, interpreting them either as a metaphor for social and natural phenomena or as an instru-mental ideology of the oppressors.

2.3. Soviet Latvian mythology: Revisions and prohibitions