The dynamics of research: Soviet Latvian academia

had far reaching consequences for the humanities and social sciences. Structural changes were determined by several factors: first of all, the general restructuration and centralisation of academic practices, directly related to the demands of censorship and ideological control; secondly, the implementation of a single correct interpretation, i.e. a defined theoretical framework and dogma imposed from above (Moscow), envisaging the sufficiency of a single discourse and, again, in a different way reflecting the processes of centralisation. The new connection between scholarly and political domains was produced within the complex maze of a governmental academic policy climate, changing the specifics of the discipline and institutions, and the personal behaviour of individual actors over decades.

At first glance, the disciplinary developments that took place in the LSSR might be regarded simply as an implementation of Marxist-Leninist dogmas, accompanied by the bureaucratic process of restructuration and centralisation of academic environment according to the All-Union standards. Despite this, the adaptation of the Soviet Russian academic model with its own complex history and inner contradictions created a problematic relationship with the disciplinary heritage: on the one hand, new knowledge-power connections, intimate as never before, required total, revolutionary changes and the abandoning of so-called

“bourgeois nationalist” scholarship, especially in the politically sensitive humanities⁶². On the other hand, folklore materials were collected, selected, categorised, and published during the previous epochs, bearing the influence of national agenda and pre-Soviet theories; in addition the whole generation of post-war researchers was educated and most of them had started their careers during the interwar-period. Although the relationship between political power structures and academia generally followed the same model and agenda throughout the existence of the LSSR, the first post-war years were cha-racterised by a specific modification of the Soviet regime, namely, Stalinism⁶³. Drawing allusions to Hegel, Lyotard had generalised the latter as follows: “In Stalinism, the sciences only figure as citations from the metanarrative of the march towards socialism, which is the equivalent of the life of the spirit”

(Lyotard 1984: 37). According to Maxim Waldstein, the Soviet academic system, as it existed by the mid-1950s, was a magnificent experiment in coalescing knowledge and power in the massive apparatus of the “empire of knowledge” (Waldstein 2008). Highly centralised and hierarchical, fully founded by the state, this apparatus was an outcome of the compromises between conflicting objectives within the politics of socialist modernisation and

62 Of course, such examples as dogmatised economics and Michurinist biology also clearly demonstrate the Communist Party dictate in the social and natural sciences.

63 For the history and detailed analysis of the terms ‘Stalinism’ and ‘Stalinisation’ as well as the implications they bear see LaPorte, Morgan and Worley 2008.

the interests of the groups that were supposed to implement these politics. Here political legitimacy based on knowledge claims was contested by claims for egalitarian representation. Academics, especially of the highest level, were granted high official prestige and multiple privileges. At the same time, the Communist Party often promoted lower class cadres to academic positions, thus further politicising academia (see p. 159–161 for case of Jānis Niedre in Latvia). On the one hand, there were social distinction, prestige, relative security, and extensive funding independent from the market or public demands; on the other hand,

intellectuals felt highly vulnerable in the atmosphere of unpredictability nourished by the Stalinist policies of the ‘permanent revolution’. Their insti-tutional position, professional competence and personal security were in constant danger. This was particularly true to the situation of educators and specialists in human sciences, where knowledge seemed to be more transparent to the authorities and thus more vulnerable to their interventions

(Waldstein 2008: 17).

However, while basic traits and ideological regime generally remained the same throughout the Soviet era, at least two more periods in the disciplinary history of the Soviet Latvian folkloristics can be defined: the first eight years, i.e. until the death of Stalin in 1953, was followed by thirty years characterised by relative stability; but the decline of Soviet state brought significant changes in research and publishing practices in the second half of the 1980s⁶⁴. However, changes in the knowledge production process did not perfectly coincide with the sub-periods of political history, marked by economic and ideological changes brought by one Soviet leader replacing another. It is more likely that, in the Soviet Republic of Latvia the bibliographically empty period relating to research on mythology (between the late 1950s and mid 1980s) separates two distinct research trajectories within the period. The first one constructed within the Stalinist dispositif, and the second introducing and coinciding with the so-called Perestroika (restructuring) movement within the Soviet political system.

During the Soviet period, in new Soviet republics as well as later in other Socialist block states, Marxism-Leninism was adopted as the leading phi-losophy and historical materialism was supposed to dictate methodology (cf.

Brinkel 2009; Kiliánová 2005). Drawing parallels with the changes in fine arts, differences from country to country could be characterised with the imperative

‘Soviet content in national form’, where content means knowledge produced, and form, national differences; in the case of folkloristics the form would be language, historical situation, and sources explored. If there are parallels between traditions and the research into traditions, the Soviet Latvian

64 Concerning intellectuals’ agenda and changes in academic approaches the latter might be rather called a transitional period between two research traditions. As such it is analysed below, p. 99–101.

folkloristics might be associated with the term ‘invented tradition’ in the Hobsbawmian sense: claiming historical continuity in totally changed knowledge production settings. If, previously, the research on mythology had been conducted within several disciplines, in the LSSR the texts written on myths were related only to the discipline of folkloristics. Soviet Latvian folkloristics generally conducted historical research into folklore genres, paying much of attention to the representation of class-struggle; a new sub-discipline was even created: the research of Soviet folklore, namely the revolutionary songs and kolkhoz ‘folksongs’ that were created as evidence of folk traditions’

continuity. However, this straightforward invention of cultural heritage was still practiced only within particular genres, mainly folksongs and proverbs.

Questions related to mythology or any form of cult practice were mainly left outside the official discourse as belonging to the reactionary past (cf. Ambainis 1989). Within the context of on-going campaigns of scientific atheism⁶⁵ as the Soviet world-view (Kääriäinen 1993), one of the obvious reasons for the absence of mythology-related materials was their dangerous closeness to religion, compromising the official definition of folklore as a narrative of the working class and class struggle (p. 153–159). Notwithstanding this, references to folklore materials containing mythological motifs were unavoidable in large-scale research projects. In a few texts touching the subject matter, mythology was explained in passing as a creation of fantasy, the remains of totems, the product of opposition to the ruling class, or as an instrument of oppression. To legitimate such a research object Soviet folklorists exploited a specific rhetori-cal strategy, based on the paraphrasing and citing of unquestionable authorities such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Maxim Gorky, etc. Returning to Antto-nen’s distinction of pro- and anti-modern attitudes in the history of the research of tradition-related subject matters (Anttonen 2005), it can be said that while the Western European approach to mythology from the times of Herder is well known for its nostalgia and grief for lost innocence, Soviet ideology offers a radically pro-modern attitude by juxtaposing the ‘traditional’ and the Soviet worldviews. The former were characterised as backward and dangerous, the latter as progressive, valuable, and to be achieved at all costs. Related to specific academic climate during the rule of Josef Stalin, until the mid 1950s and the development of Soviet semiotics about a decade later, mythology was mentioned in scholarly writing, but not researched. The essence of the attitude towards this subject matter was clearly dictated by Stalin himself:

65 Here: state-governed anti-religious propaganda, developing from Lenin’s Militant Materialism programme.

Old customs and habits, traditions and prejudices that are inherited from the old society, are the most dangerous enemy of socialism (…) Therefore, the struggle against these traditions and customs, their mandatory overcoming in all fields of our work, and ultimately the education of new generations according to the spirit of socialism – these are the current tasks of our party; without realising them the victory of socialism is impossible

(Staļins 1952: 229, 230).

In summary, the research into mythology in the LSSR or, more precisely, its relative absence, cannot be explained outside the context of the highly integrated, centralised and hierarchical structure of knowledge production in the Soviet Union. Despite this, it had ‘national particularities’ related to insti-tutional and personal histories. Therefore this general overview is followed by closer analysis of Soviet Latvian folkloristics in chapter four, which explores the discursive practices of the construction of new disciplinary identity and the positioning of mythology within it (p. 155–159).