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The Salaspils camp near Riga, which was operated during the Nazi occupation of Latvia, has long been the subject ofcontrovery. Around 23,000 people were imprisoned there: half were political prisoners, labor resisters and convicted soldiers, the rest prisoners from special operations against civilians in Belarus, Russia and the Latgale region of Latvia. The death toll in the camp, including the number of Jews who died during construction, is well over 3,000 people.

Despite the relatively small size of this camp, it became a model for Russian remembrance policy. Soviet propaganda claimed that up to 100,000 prisoners were killed there, charged that children were used to extract blood, and greatly exaggerated the extent of the persecution of imprisoned lawbreakers and political dissidents . Salaspils became a myth in Russian-speaking society in Latvia that served to reinforce Soviet narratives of the “Great Patriotic War.”

The three authors drew on sources from the archives of Latvia, Germany and Russia and critically analyzed oral testimonies and earlier research to create a comprehensive account of the Salaspils camp in Nazi-occupied Latvia. Their book furthers the understanding of processes of deformation of collective memory and the techniques of memory politics from the Cold War to the present. 

In just over a century, Latvia has transitioned from imperial periphery to nation-state, then Soviet republic, and finally following the collapse of the Soviet Union to an independent republic. Defining Latvia brings together the latest research on the multiple social, political, and cultural contexts of Latvia throughout this turbulent period. Its ten chapters are written by leading political scientists, historians, and area studies specialists from across Europe and North America.

The volume moves beyond an exclusively political context to incorporate a variety of social and cultural perspectives, ranging from the experiences of Latvian mapmakers in the Russian Empire, to the participation of Latvians in the Wehrmacht and Red Army during World War II, Latvian national communism, and the development of extremist politics following Latvia’s accession to the European Union. Other chapters address developing trends in the fields of history and political science, including the history of antisemitism, memory, language politics, photography, and political extremism.

Based on the book’s temporal span from the nineteenth century to the present, the authors and editors of Defining Latvia understand the construction of Latvian identity as a continuous and interconnected process across significant political and ideological ruptures.

After a short period of independence, Estonia was occupied in World War II by the Red Army, then Nazi Germany, and again, for a lasting occupation, by the Soviets. No wonder that a greater part of the roughly one million Estonians had harshly eventful lives.

This anthology contains 25 selected life stories collected from Estonians who lived through the tribulations of the 20th century, and describe the travails of ordinary people under numerous regimes. The autobiographical accounts provide authentic perspectives on events of this period, where time is placed in the context of life-spans, and subjects grounded in personal experience. Most of the life stories reveal sufferings under foreign (Russian) oppression.

The volume is the product of a large-scale national project to record history by collecting autobiographical accounts, and a process of engaged selection for publication which followed. The variety of life-experiences recorded offers comparison across cultures, as well as an overview of the powerful neighbors as they relinquish and strengthen their hold on Estonia.

This book of thirteen conversations introduces us to the life of an exceptional person—theatre critic, Germanist, and long-time chair of the Open Lithuania Fund board—Irena Veisaitė. The dialogue between Lithuanian historian Aurimas Švedas and a woman who reflects deeply on her experiences reveals both one individual’s historically dramatic life and the fate of Europe and Lithuania in the twentieth century.

Through the complementary lenses of history and memory, we confront with Veisaitė the horrific events of the Holocaust, which brought about the end of the Lithuanian Jewish world. We also meet an array of world-class cultural figures, see fragments of legendary theatre performances, and hear meaningful words that were spoken or heard decades ago.

This book’s interlocutors do not so much seek to answer the question “What was it like?” but instead repeatedly ask each other: “What, how, and why do we remember? What is the meaning of our experiences? How can history help us to live in the present and create the future? How do we learn to understand and forgive?”

A series of Veisaitė’s texts, statements, and letters, presented at the end of the book suggest further ways of answering these questions.