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Sigma Ankrava. Pçckoloniâlais sindroms un identitâtes krîze Latvijâ
victory and to say that not every detail in this victory was good. And
the major bad thing in the victory of the USSR was the complete disregard
of a human life. 8
To prove his point the author examplifies it with the fact that among all the war
films created by the Russian cinema there is not a single one resembling in its ideology
the American movie “Saving Private Ryan” in its basic assumptions. Russian war
films are based on a completely different ideology which is still ruling in that part of
the world. A. Shabanov touches on the problem of Latvians who were affected by
the Soviet totalitarian regime and retained many features of it. And here he delicately
does not go any further, saying that he is not an ethnic Latvian. As I am an ethnic
Latvian myself, I have tried to pursue this topic.
Contemporary Latvians should be aware of the strong and week weak spots of
their identity. To their “weak spots” I would attribute the fact that their identity got
strongly deformed under the Soviet regime: a degradation of virtues, especially the
virtue of diligence, is undeniable. Latvians are often outwardly reticent about their
ethnicity, or –they are haughty, as if being a Latvian is it their own achievement, or
merit. At the same time they pollute their language with the slang that arrived along
with the Soviet occupation. V. Zariòð, who has gone deeper into this topic, writes:
One of the drawbacks that has formed itself in the character of the
Latvian nation as the result of extended lasting foreign rule is the lack of
refinement so often found among the wealthy and ruling elite of Latvia.
Those layers of Latvian society which might have reached and maintained
high standards of education, professional qualification and culture,
and which were independent enough as to their material well–being as
well as to their spiritual development in order to maintain the sovereignty
of their judgement, simply could not emerge during the long years of
dependency. They were assimilated or destroyed already in their embryonic
stage. That is why Latvians have not produced the spiritual aristocracy
and the social elite that would have acquired the tradition of high
culture. Latvians often have bad manners and unrefined taste. They often
offer little resistance to alcoholism, drug addiction and other social
vices, and there is a lot of inertness and a general lack of initiative. To
their weaknesses one should also attribute the slow emancipation of their
conscience which is a result of being a minority and a subjected nation
and insufficient determination to fight for their own interests.
In some of the people who belong to the ruling elite of Latvia one can
find the thinking of a lackey being developed in the long period of dependency
– it is a desire to gratify hostile foreign powers and get satisfaction
from demonstrating an upstart’s attitude to the world i.e. desire
for luxury cars, pretentious private houses, debauchery, carousal and lavish
trips. Tthough it is not something typical to Latvia and to the Latvian
nation exclusively. Imitation of the lifestyle of the ruling elite of other
nations in the behavior of the Latvian parvenus is as common as in the
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