Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

structures Latvian domestic political space, discourses and identities
– the context within which historical narratives are shaped and
transmitted. Rogers Brubaker’s (1996) famous triangle (nationstate,
minority and homeland) was employed by the nation-state
(Latvia) and the minority in domestic politics long before the homeland
(Russia) became aware of its instrumental value. Bracketing
out the Russia factor is something both sides have been unable to
do so far. Ethnic Latvians have had difficulty taking a healthy distance
from Russia as the “significant other”, while many Russianspeaking
Latvians have immersed themselves in Russian media,
information and cultural spaces, shutting themselves off from the
respective Latvian spaces – a process helped a good deal by the
exclusionist policies of the Latvian state. Legal restrictions on
broadcasting in minority languages, just one example of such policies,
were abolished all too late, when Latvian electronic media in
Russian were already outcompeted by the media stream direct from
Russia. As a result, today’s internal Latvian debate over history is
entangled with the birth throes of Russia’s own nation-building.
Latvia and Russia are mutually entangled in each others’ domestic
politics of identity – a boggy area which is easier to get into than
to get out of and in which rationality and political responsibility are
usually not the strongest of considerations.
To sum up, ethnic Latvians and Russian-speaking Latvians do see
history quite differently; their typical historical narratives do at times
compete with or contradict each other. Yet the difference is one of
perspective rather than a fundamental one. It is bridgeable rather
than irreconcilable. That it is often constructed as fundamental and
irreconcilable is another matter.
What, then, are Latvians’ options with regards to history? One
option is that of collective remembrance: to force one particular notion
of historical narrative upon a reluctant citizenry. In any open society,
historical identities are not easily manipulated; in a society
that is open and diverse, even divided, hostile attempts at tweaking
identities and narratives would be not just impracticable, but
also destructive.
The second option is collective oblivion, forgetting the divisive
pages of history as Renan would have it. Although sociologists and
education professionals may be right in pointing to the decline of
151 Viktor Makarov