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Lessons from the 20th century book war

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By Joseph Bodnar

 

Throughout the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed for international influence through coercion and persuasion with the world’s most capable and committed spy agencies on the front lines.

Among other things, these covert operatives wrote books. They gathered intelligence, drafted manuscripts, stood up publishing firms, and passed on information about each other to media organisations, government officials, and the public. These hardcover campaigns were effective and escalatory. They also led the United States to exploit the reach and legitimacy of the free press in an attempt to defend it.

The United States’ reactive and undemocratic tactics throughout the book war of the 20th century underscore the importance of developing a proactive and values-based approach for the information contest of the 21st century.

Hardcover campaigns – Escalation and Deception

In May 1963, Oleg Penkovsky, a senior Soviet intelligence agent, was convicted of high treason, sentenced to death, and shot at a prison on KGB headquarters. For the previous sixteen months, Penkovsky had worked with the CIA and Britain’s MI6, passing along photographs of nearly 5,000 highly sensitive documents, including Soviet military manuals, missile sites, and war plans.

The CIA logged 10,000 pages of reports based on Penkovsky’s information before he was caught and executed. They then used the material to write a memoir. Twenty-nine newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic ran excerpts of the Penkovsky Papers ahead of its release, and the memoir eventually became a bestseller.

Despite the book’s success, neither journalists nor the Soviets bought the idea that Penkovsky had written it. The Washington Post later asked whether the CIA’s deception of the American public was a “by-product or part of the intent”. The Soviets decided to escalate.

In the following years, Czechoslovakian and East German intelligence services worked together to research, write, and release the book Who’s Who in the CIA in both German and English. In 1968, the book cost 10.50 East German Marks, but the subtitle gave away the ending. It read “a biographic encyclopedia of 3,000 members of staff of civilian and military intelligence agencies in the USA in 120 states”.

Who’s Who listed details on thousands of agents from across the U.S. intelligence community, mixing facts, subtle forgery, and blatant falsehoods. The book also included six charts that “exposed” open-source information on things like the intelligence structure of the Pentagon.

The CIA responded in kind, feeding intelligence to an investigative reporter for Reader’s Digest who published KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents in 1974, after it was proofread and fact checked by the US intelligence agency. The book contained a 35-page appendix listing information on 1,557 KGB and GRU officers – 942 of which were “identified by classified sources only”, according to a CIA memo.

The Soviets were rocked by the book, writing as many as 370 internal reports assessing its impact on ongoing and future operations.

However, public opinion and the credibility of the media also took a hit. Victor Zorza, a Polish-British journalist, noted at the time that democracies “suffer from the grave disadvantage that in attempting to damage the adversary they must also deceive their own public”.

This Century Can’t Be Like the Last

The book war did not start in 1963 with the Penkovsky Papers or end in 1974 with The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents. The CIA financed the publication of at least 250 books during the Cold War and employed journalists around the world.

But this incomplete chapter of history details the United States’ embrace of authoritarian methods to advance democratic ideals. It tracks a race to the bottom that the United States cannot afford to run in the 21st century, with democracy on its back foot and authoritarians increasingly adept at exploiting emerging technologies to distort information realities to their advantage.

The United States and its democratic allies must address the relentless information offensives being launched by Russia, China, Iran, and others. But that doesn’t require democracies to enter a competition of values on terms set by autocrats.

A successful strategy will leverage the appeal of open, transparent, and responsive systems. Rather than adopting the book war model of state-directed journalism, the United States should increase support for independent media and investigative reporting. This asymmetric approach will help expose the weaknesses, corruption, and brutality of authoritarian regimes around the world.

Defensive tactics should also be rooted in democratic principles, rather than in attempts to control and surveil. This will require the United States to set clear content moderation and data protection standards for the private tech companies that now dominate the information landscape. Identifying, exposing, and building resilience against authoritarian information operations also demands increased coordination between the government, private sector, and civil society groups.

The right answers to the information challenges faced today cannot be found in the history of the book war. But there are plenty of mistakes to recognise and avoid repeating. Democracies cannot protect or advance open information ecosystems by embracing the tools, tactics, and doctrines of authoritarian adversaries.

Joseph Bodnar is a graduate student at American University. His writings have been published by the National Interest, the Dallas Morning News, the Atlantic Council, and Charged Affairs.

Capturing the humanity of the Cold War

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By James Brown

A picture taken by renowned Czech photographer Viktor Kolar; his work captured the everyday experience in Ostrava, an important industrial town in communist Czechoslovakia. (Image: Viktor Kolar/Monovisions)

The history of the Cold War has a rich scholarship. The field encompasses International Relations studies, economic history, and, increasingly, cultural approaches, exploring the imprint of the conflict on art, film, and everyday life. Interest in books on the Cold War will likely increase this year as we approach the thirtieth anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. And while narrative histories of high politics and culture no doubt assist in improving our understanding of the Cold War, the works which will be most important as we reflect on the conflict’s legacy are those dealing explicitly with the psychology and human impact of the Cold War. With the rise of China and continuing instability following the COVID-19 pandemic leading to repeated suggestions of the potential for a Second Cold War, most important in our engagement with the Cold War is appreciating the human mindsets which created that conflict, and those which it created amongst people in turn. We need to ask ourselves what led the world to be so divided for nearly half a century, and then how to avoid the same happening again.

Interrogating this aspect of Cold War history is indeed difficult and few authors truly succeed in illustrating the psychology of the era without resorting to cliche. The Cold War was a conflict defined by high politics and domineering ideologies of capitalism versus communism. Writers, especially academics, have found it hard to move beyond these abstractions to capture the human experience of the Cold War.

In this regard, it has been authors of fiction who have often been more successful. The works of the late great John le Carré endure in the popular imagination as among the most defining portraits of the moral compromises forced on individuals by the ideological restraints of the Cold War. Meanwhile, Francis Spufford’s fact-based novel, Red Plenty, gives insight into how Soviet citizens genuinely began to believe that communism’s material promises would be realised under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev (1956-64). In writing Red Plenty, Spufford, himself acknowledged the difficulties non-fiction authors face in trying to capture the essence of the Cold War’s ideas and their impact on people. He explains how his initial attempts to tell the tale of Red Plenty as a piece of non-fiction fell short and demanded he shift the book to the ‘border between fiction and non-fiction.’

Other Cold War authors, meanwhile, have successfully managed to bridge this gap between storytelling and fact while remaining truer to the latter. Among the most significant are Anna Funder, principally for her renowned book Stasiland, and the 2015 Nobel Literature Laureate, Svetlana Alexievich. These two authors are already widely acclaimed but it feels necessary to revisit their work as we approach the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the USSR, as they capture better than most the human impact of the Cold War, especially east of the Iron Curtain.

Funder’s brilliant Stasiland has been described variously as a personal history and a ‘journalist’s first-person narrative’ that can ‘read like a novel’. The book, through a series interviews intertwined with Funder’s own narrative, captures how the state ideology of the German Democratic Republic created an alternate, corrupt moral reality for its subjects and those who defended it: the notorious Ministry for State Security or Stasi. Funder, however, is not exclusively condemnatory of the former watchmen of state socialism. Her interviews are occasionally sympathetic with former Stasi employees, though without ever failing to address the violations they committed. On the other hand, Funder gives voice to those who resisted the regime and put themselves in extreme danger in desperate attempts to escape to the West. Funder’s main achievement is to shine a light on a society where ideology reigned supreme in a way it rarely does now, while still keeping the human experience firmly at the forefront of her prose.

Alexievich’s works, meanwhile, are less about how people were driven to extremes by ideology, and more about the everyday lives continuing in spite of or in accommodation with ideology. Alexievich’s method sees her conduct interviews with hundreds of witnesses to life in the USSR, focusing on formative events like the Great Patriotic War (1941-45), the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979-89), the Chernobyl Disaster (1986), and the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991). Her excellent Secondhand Time tells the story of the end of communism in the USSR and the responses of its citizens. Alexievich lets her subjects speak for themselves, sympathising with them. What emerges is a portrait of how the Soviet people inhabited a distinct culture of their own in the USSR and that while the political reality of the Soviet Union may have ended in 1991, left behind were millions of Homo-Sovieticus traumatised by the sudden collapse of their generations-old everyday reality.

If history is about authentically recreating the unique conditions of an era or culture, both Funder’s and Alexievich’s books stand as among the most accomplished studies of the Cold War, even though neither author may be exclusively considered a historian; two other worthy examples are Donald J. Raleigh’s Soviet Baby Boomers and Bridgett Kendall’s The Cold War. Furthermore, both women’s books hold relevance in understanding pertinent contemporary issues in international politics, especially Putin’s Russia and the historical factors which drive Russian foreign policy.

Modern Russia cannot be understood without an appreciation of the impact on Russian leaders of the loss of superpower status conferred by the USSR’s collapse. Nor can the contemporary rise of the far-right in the east of Germany be understood without knowledge of East German history. Throughout the 2010s, and now in the first years of the 2020s, observers have continued to speculate whether we have entered a new Cold War-style period of international relations. Understanding the human experience of the original Cold War seems a more important exercise than ever as we prepare ourselves for the new era, whatever it brings, and Funder and Alexievich offer the best place to start.

 

James Brown is a PhD candidate in history at Northumbria University. His focus is on Soviet dissidents and their use in the politics and international relations of the Cold War. He previously studied at Glasgow University, doing a Master’s in East European, Russian, and Eurasian studies. During this time he studied Russian and wrote his thesis, ‘Returning to Machiavelli: Giving Belarus-Russia relations the Original Realist Treatment’, which received the prize for best dissertation from the Centre for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at Glasgow.

At Northumbria, he is a member of several research groups, including the Conflict & Society and Histories of Activism groups. James also has a keen interest in literature, especially Czech writers, and had a poem on Jan Palach published in Edge Magazine. Additionally, he remains interested in the Chernobyl disaster, on which he wrote his undergraduate thesis, ‘A Long Half-Life: Responses to Chernobyl in Soviet and Post-Soviet Society’.

Art Review: “Red Star Over Russia: A Revolution in Visual Culture 1905-55” (Tate Modern, 8 November – 18 February)

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By Natalia de Orellana

 

 

Images are repositories of meaning. They are messengers of political ideals, social hopes and human values. Past images come to be read as documents embedded with historical significance, inexorably attesting to the rift between ideology and reality. When graphic designer David King (1943-2016) began to work on the book Red Star Over Russia, he was in fact enterprising a history of the Soviet Union that fused reality and ideology together. He assembled Russian and Soviet material worldwide, reuniting propaganda material, satirical representations and photographic documentation. Seen together, this material offers a complex, turbulent, persistently ambiguous vision of the Soviet Union.

Tate Modern’s Red Star Over Russia: A Revolution in Visual Culture 1905-55 draws on works from King’s archive to explore the tempestuous years between the October Revolution and Stalin’s death through small-scale objects and ephemera.

Photographs of Agitprop trains[1] from shortly after the Revolution mark the starting point of the journey. Multilingual posters cover the walls, furiously yelling at the viewer the slogans that once called the inhabitants of the vastest of territories to action: “Woman! Take Part in the Election of the Soviets”, ”Send Your Son to the Red Army, the Best and Foremost”. Slogans fused with images of the masses, spliced with the overarching red tones that dominate the majority unveil the politically oriented aesthetics of the Soviet avant-garde.

This was a militant aesthetic enterprise. Over the fifty-year period, visual production kept pace with socio-political changes, adopting a myriad of visual strategies allowing information to be mass-reproduced, easily dispatched, and ideally transmitting a message that would remain engrained in people’s minds. Among the most well know examples El Lissitzky’s Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (1920) unveils Suprematist principles where the directness of geometrical forms and slogan are united into an organic unity, resulting in a work of art made for the masses at the service of the Soviets. By contrast Stepan Karpov’s Friendship of the People (Soviet Republic) (1923-4) offers a more academic approach depicting the hopes to unite the different ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups under the same Soviet flag.

Leaflets, magazines, books -to name but a few- projected Russia’s achievements. Varvara Stepanova and Aleksandr Rodchenko’s LEF, no.2 (1923) illustrate the use of productivist rigour advertising a new era of industrialisation that rejected bourgeois aesthetics. Lissitzky went a step further by composing a photobook, Industry of Socialism (1935), illustrating the progresses of Stalin’s industry program.

Some images matter for their absence. If the exhibition exposes the use of image as vitrine of the hopes of the rising Nation, it also makes an active effort to unveil the appalling truths of the political paranoia governing over Stalin’s regime and nowhere is this more evident than in the room dedicated to “deleting” fallen political figures. The room dedicated to the Soviet Pavilion at the 1937 International Exhibition (Paris) showcases images of the gold-medal pavilion celebrating the achievements brought by the Revolution. This was a bright and optimistic vision, one diametrically opposed to the brutality of the Great Purge, which is spatially translated in the exhibition by the placement of a series of mugshots of presupposed counter-revolutionaries (targets of the Stalin’s purges that culminated in 1937 Moscow trials) in the adjacent room.

This is a show that rejects polite conclusions on the complexity and humanly devastating facets of the subject, offering instead the possibility of looking at a constructed reality as much as at individual narratives. A must-see exhibition for its historical and aesthetic value.

 

PLATES:

 

El Lissitzky

Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge

1920

Lithograph

 

 

 

Stepan Karpov

Friendship of the Peoples

1923-24

Oil on Canvas

 

Curator and art historian, Tally de Orellana holds a dual Master’s degree in Arts Administration & Modern Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2016) and an MA in Art History from The University of Edinburgh (2012). She was the 2016-2017 Hilla Rebay International Curatorial Fellow at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, working in New York, Bilbao, and Venice. Her research interests target the role of institutions and curatorial practices in the systems of formation of cultural hierarchies and artistic identity. You can follow her @Tallydeorellana

Notes:

[1] Propaganda multi-functional trains equipped with exhibition carriages, classrooms and even cinemas.

 

Image Credits

Banner: http://www.mysticforms.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Banner_1000x750_Tate2.jpg

Image 1: http://www.theartstory.org/images20/works/lissitzky_el_2.jpg

Image 2: http://www.wikigallery.org/paintings/198001-198500/198498/painting1.jpg

The new Cold War: The birth of a resurgent conflict

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By: Kyle R. Brady

berlin-346977_960_720
The Berlin Wall may be gone and the Cold War over, but the old and familiar patterns are quickly returning.

Twenty-five years after the end of the Cold War and the associated collapse of the Soviet Union, an exceedingly probable conclusion may be drawn from the interactions of the United States and the Soviet successor state of Russia: a New Cold War has begun.[1]

Roughly since the turn of the 21st Century, the United States and Russia – a superpower state and a state seeking both superpower and empire status, respectively – have increasingly opposed each other’s efforts and interests. Notably, the Obama-Putin period has been more fraught and hostile than ever before, despite the so-called reset.[2] As of October 2016, a number of seemingly interconnected events have occurred that indicate an increasingly hostile disconnect, with Russia consistently opposing the increasing alignment of diplomatic and military relationships between the United States and Europe.[3]

Since the turn of the millennium, Russia has invaded a number of neighboring states – including Georgia and Ukraine – occupying several unrecognized foreign territories as a result.[4] Their military power has been projected abroad in foreign conflicts and is currently most visible in Syria.[5] Additionally, the Russians have also directly and intentionally engaged in nuclear destabilization efforts.[6] One of the unfortunate results of these developments has been the damaging of relationships between Russia and several member states of the European Union with close energy-security and resource dependencies with the federation.[7]

Recently, China has become increasingly aligned with Russia, visible through the publicly acknowledged military, security, and cyber joint-initiatives.[8] Russian intelligence services have frequently engaged in cyber-espionage and cyberwarfare in attempts to covertly influence domestic politics and the internal functions of targeted states, including the United States.[9] Moreover, Russia regularly undertakes every opportunity to denigrate, degrade, and destabilize the reputation, interests, and abilities of both the United States and the rest of the Western world.[10] Shockingly, Russia may have even poisoned American diplomats, a clear precursor to the resurrection of the KGB, a Soviet-era intelligence agency.[11] When considered both in total and in context, these do not seem to be the behaviors of a non-aligned or internationally participatory state – much less a friendly one. Rather, these are the behaviors of a state with little respect for its own pacts and agreements, a disdain for international institutions, a contradictory approach to foreign affairs, and a great desire to force itself onto the international stage.[12]

Throughout the original Cold War, the Soviet Union employed military and sociopolitical efforts – also known as hard power and soft power – in an effort to spread communism, expand Soviet territory, create a buffer-zone along its borders, and counter-balance Western efforts. Modern Russia has since resurrected strategies and practices of its Soviet past through the use of propaganda, aggressive, escalatory rhetoric, and dangerous flirtations with its Western enemies – strategies easily traced from the post-war period of the 1940s through the USSR’s collapse in 1991.[13] If there was a way in which to extend influence or oppose the West, the Soviet Union was more than willing to make an attempt.

This aggressively anti-West, self-interested, and consolidated approach has seen a remarkable resurgence in Putin’s Russia.[14] While frustrating to diplomats and those who seek the normalization or improvement of relations, the rise of Putin’s Soviet-esque state is not entirely unexpected. Putin was a former KGB agent who rose to political power only to praise the fallen Soviet Union and instill his former coworkers in positions of power. [15] As such, his consistent efforts to retool, rebirth, or wholesale replicate Soviet attitudes, behaviors, methods, and institutions seem only appropriate. Moreover, this New Cold War has not suddenly appeared but has rather been part of a slow but predictable process that began years ago.[16]

It seems unlikely that Putin will voluntarily relinquish power in the future, regardless of his formal title or relevant Russian law. Therefore, it should be assumed that Russia will proceed down the authoritarian, confrontational, and domineering path that was established long ago. In order to address several realities – military, social, political and economic – of the New Cold War and avoid repeating mistakes of the past, Western states need to acknowledge and formalize their devolving relationship with Russia. The lack of an open or nuclear conflict in the twentieth century’s Cold War does not preclude the outbreak of one in the New Cold War: this an important difference to understand when comparing between the two periods. The New Cold War need not be a zero-sum conflict across all realms and theatres. Both history and modern experience can provide substantial insight on how to redress differences and grievances, without threatening the safety of the entire world.

 

Note: Any opinions expressed are directly and expressly the author’s own; they do not represent — unless stated — his employers (past, present, or future) or associated/affiliated institutions.

 

 

Kyle R. Brady is a postgraduate student at King’s College London in the Department of War Studies, holds a Masters in Homeland Security from Pennsylvania State University, and has primary interests in terrorism, law enforcement, and contextualizing security concerns. Previously, he graduated with Departmental Honors from San Jose State University’s undergraduate Political Science program, where he focused on both international relations and political theory. All of Kyle’s work can be found online through http://docs.kyle-brady.com; he can be reached by email at [email protected] or [email protected], on Twitter as @KyleBradyOnline, or on Facebook as /KyleBradyOnline; and he occasionally blogs at http://blog.kyle-brady.com.

 

 

Notes:

[1] Jones, Sam. “Dmitry Medvedev Warns of ‘New Cold War.’” Financial Times, February 13, 2016. https://www.ft.com/content/a14e8900-d259-11e5-829b-8564e7528e54.

[2] Kelly, Mary Louise. “Amid Deteriorating U.S.-Russia Relations, Questions Grow About Cyberwar.” NPR, October 4, 2016. http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/10/04/496543317/amid-deteriorating-u-s-russia-relations-questions-grow-about-cyberwar;

Mankoff, Jeffrey. “The Tricky U.S.-Russia ‘Reset’ Button.” Council on Foreign Relations: Grand Strategy, February 18, 2009. http://www.cfr.org/grand-strategy/tricky-us-russia-reset-button/p18551.

[3] Kramer, Andrew E. “Russia Calls New U.S. Missile Defense System a ‘Direct Threat.’” New York Times, May 12, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/world/europe/russia-nato-us-romania-missile-defense.html.

[4] Kofman, Michael. “The Crimean Crisis and Russia’s Military Posture in the Black Sea.” War on the Rocks, August 19, 2016. http://warontherocks.com/2016/08/the-crimean-crisis-and-russias-military-posture-in-the-black-sea/

[5] Roth, Andrew. “Syria Shows That Russia Built an Effective Military. Now How Will Putin Use It?” Washington Post, March 18, 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/syria-shows-that-russia-built-an-effective-military-now-how-will-putin-use-it/2016/03/17/aeaca59e-eae8-11e5-a9ce-681055c7a05f_story.html?tid=a_inl

[6] “Russia Deploys Nuclear-Capable Missiles in Kaliningrad.” BBC News, October 8, 2016. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37597075;

“Russia Suspends Weapons-Grade Plutonium Deal with US.” BBC News, October 3, 2016. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37539616.

[7] Henderson, Niall. “A Literal Cold War: The EU-Russian Struggle Over Energy Security.” Council on Foreign Relations: Politics, Power, and Preventive Action, October 6, 2016. http://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/2016/10/06/a-literal-cold-war-the-eu-russian-struggle-over-energy-security/.

[8] Ide, William. “China-Russia Drills Highlight Converging Interests; Undercurrents Remain.” Voice of America, September 19, 2016. http://www.voanews.com/a/china-russia-drills-highlight-converging-interests/3515350.html.

[9] Limnéll, Jarno. “The Use of Cyber Power in the War Between Russia and Ukraine.” Council on Foreign Relations: Net Politics, January 11, 2016. http://blogs.cfr.org/cyber/2016/01/11/the-use-of-cyber-power-in-the-war-between-russia-and-ukraine/.

Gonzales, Richard. “U.S. Accuses Russia Of Election Year Cyber-Meddling.” NPR, October 7, 2016. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/07/497093001/u-s-accuses-russia-of-election-year-cyber-meddling.

[10] Burns, Robert. “Ash Carter Blasts Russian Aggression.” U.S. News, September 7, 2016. http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2016-09-07/ash-carter-clear-ambition-by-russia-to-erode-world-order.

[11] Eckel, Mike. “Two U.S. Diplomats Drugged In St. Petersburg Last Year, Deepening Washington’s Concern.” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, October 3, 2016. http://www.rferl.org/a/russia-u-s-diplomats-drugged-st-petersburg/28028782.html. Soldatov, Andrei. “Putin Has Finally Reincarnated the KGB.” Foreign Policy, September 21, 2016. http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/09/21/putin-has-finally-reincarnated-the-kgb-mgb-fsb-russia/.

[12] Lucas, Edward. The New Cold War: Putin’s Russia and the Threat to the West. 2nd ed. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2009.

[13] Courtney, William, and Christopher Paul. “Firehose of Falsehoods:” U.S. News, September 9, 2016. http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-09-09/putins-propaganda-network-is-vast-and-us-needs-new-tools-to-counter-it.

Roth, Andrew, and Dana Priest. “Putin Wants Revenge and Respect, and Hacking the U.S. Is His Way of Getting It.” Washington Post, September 16, 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russian-hacking-a-question-of-revenge-and-respect/2016/09/15/8bcc8d7e-7511-11e6-9781-49e591781754_story.html.

Gibbons-Neff, Thomas. “Russian Fighter Makes ‘Unsafe Close Range Intercept’ with U.S. Anti-Submarine Aircraft.” Washington Post, September 7, 2016. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/09/07/russian-fighter-makes-unsafe-close-range-intercept-with-u-s-anti-submarine-aircraft/.

[14] Sanger, David. “What Is Russia Up To, and Is It Time to Draw the Line?” New York Times, September 29, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/world/europe/for-veterans-of-the-cold-war-a-hostile-russia-feels-familiar.html.

[15] Applebaum, Anne. “How He and His Cronies Stole Russia.” New York Times Review of Books, December 18, 2014. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/12/18/how-he-and-his-cronies-stole-russia/.

[16] Tisdall, Simon. “The New Cold War: Are We Going back to the Bad Old Days?” The Guardian, November 19, 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/19/new-cold-war-back-to-bad-old-days-russia-west-putin-ukraine;

Trenin, Dmitri. “Welcome to Cold War II.” Foreign Policy, March 4, 2014. http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/03/04/welcome-to-cold-war-ii/;

Legvold, Robert. “Managing the New Cold War.” Foreign Affairs 93, no. 4 (July–August 2014). https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2014-06-16/managing-new-cold-war.

Image Credit: https://pixabay.com/en/berlin-city-wall-graffiti-346977/

Latvia: what the Russians left behind

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By Leyla Aliyeva:

A sign in Latvia
A street sign in both the Latvian and Russian languages. Photo by Arseny Samsonov.

Latvia’s history is marked by occupation. Since the 15th century the territory has been controlled by Sweden, Poland, Germany and Russia. It declared independence from Russia in 1918, but was reincorporated into what was then the Soviet Union as a bulwark against Nazi Germany in the early days of the Second World War. The Nazis invaded the fledgling country in 1941, only to be pushed out by the Soviets three years later. It wasn’t until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 that Latvia could once again proclaim itself an independent state.

Yesterday was Latvian Legion Day, celebrating the day when the Latvian Legion, serving as part of the Nazi Waffen SS, repelled the Soviets in 1944. The commemoration saw Latvian Waffen SS veterans parade through the streets of Riga. This event faces a lot of criticism from Russia and from the international community for honouring Nazism and insulting the victims of its regime. But the Latvian Legion veterans say that they were fighting for Latvia’s freedom from the occupying Soviet power.

In a couple of months, on 9 May, Victory Day in Russia we will also see processions. Russians everywhere, including the substantial ethnic Russian minority living in Latvia, celebrate the end of the WWII on this particular day. Yet for ethnic Latvians, 9 May signifies the start of Soviet rule. These examples show the conflicted relationship that Latvia has with its powerful neighbour Russia. Recent events in Crimea and Ukraine have caused panic in the Latvian media and in political circles, with the government attempting to cut Latvia’s heavy economic dependence on the Russian market by imposing sanctions. This has led to widespread criticism from the Russian side.

Latvia is important because over a quarter of the 2.1 million people living in the country consider Russian to be their mother tongue and have an identity linked to Russia. The events in Ukraine have provoked emotional reactions within Latvian society. Some ethnic Russian representatives feel that minority issues have become more difficult to discuss in this climate.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, 25 million Russians[1] remained in the former USSR territories, such as Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, the Baltic States and more. Other Russian-speaking or ‘russophone’ nationalities also remained. As a result, the Russian-speaking population in Latvia today is its largest linguistic minority. However, the historical background of the Russian-speaking minority in Latvia has its origins beyond the period of the USSR.

Russia ruled Latvia in two different periods: with the Russian Empire from the 17th century until 1919; then during the Soviet Union from the end of WWII until 1991. The different regimes facilitated a lot of development and growth in the country: Latvia was one of the top manufacturing and transit countries in both the USSR and the Russian Empire. However, both periods were characterised by ‘russification’ (sometimes known as obrusenie) which focused on enforcing Russian culture in controlled territories and did not allow for a high level of multiculturalism. The proclamation of independence in 1918 had a dramatic impact on Latvian national identity formation, even though the independence lasted for only 22 years.

But Russia was not the only ruling power in Latvia. The control of Latvian territory has shifted from one power to another since the 15th century. Germany, Sweden and the Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth competed with each other to acquire the best chunk of Latvian land. These events led to the development of Latvian culture and the creation of the Latvian language. However, it came with a price. The ruling foreign-backed minority became the ruling elite in Latvia, and they put the ethnic Latvian majority into serfdom. These historical events served as a major factor in Latvian identity formation.

In 1991 Latvia restored its independence for the second time after almost 50 years of Soviet rule. Demonstrations by both Latvians and ethnic Russians to exit the Soviet Union had great significance. The 3 March advisory referendum showed that 75% of the total Latvian population strongly supported Latvian independence, which included a large part of the Russian-speaking population. But, unfortunately, the exit from the Soviet Union resulted in a cultural divide between ethnic Latvians and the post-USSR Russian-speaking residents.

This was partly due to Latvia restoring its pre-war citizenship legislation, a policy also followed in the neighbouring country of Estonia. According to the legislation, citizenship for the newly independent state of Latvia was granted to those people and their descendants who held Latvian citizenship in the pre-war period. Citizens of the former Soviet Union and their children rarely qualified for the automatic new citizenship, and thus had to undergo a process of naturalisation in order to get Latvian or Estonian citizenship. This procedure required individuals to demonstrate knowledge of the state constitution, history, national anthem, and pass exams, which tested their proficiency of the official language.

These measures resulted in a large part of the population becoming ‘stateless individuals’ or ‘aliens’, because they did not meet the high level of knowledge of the language, culture and history required for citizenship. Latvian and Estonian naturalisation requirements were repeatedly criticised by the international community as being too demanding and prejudicial. Several times authorities stated that there should be an emphasis placed on analysing the transparency and effectiveness of the work of the language inspectors.

The pattern is more visible in numbers: only 289,000 ethnic Russians have been able to acquire Latvian citizenship, leaving more than 500,000 without citizenship. Over time more former Soviet citizens have gained Latvian citizenship, although the official data in 2006 showed that Russian-speakers accounted for more than 66.5% of Latvia’s non-citizens.[2]

This ‘alien’ status excludes individuals from voting and participating, not only in local and national elections, but also in European elections (Latvia and Estonia became EU Member States in 2004). Such measures exclude Russian-speaking individuals from political affairs. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, former Soviet citizens also had to qualify to undergo the naturalisation procedure.[3] This created an issue, as an estimated 200,000 retired Soviet army officers, former KGB, Soviet Communist Party officials and their families (who were predominantly Russian or Russian-speaking) were excluded from acquiring Latvian citizenship.

The Latvian model of gaining citizenship should be contrasted with the third Baltic state: Lithuania. There a different path was followed. After the collapse of the Soviet Union Lithuania implemented the zero-option model of citizenship, which automatically granted Lithuanian citizenship to all permanent residents in the country, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, or knowledge of state language. But Lithuania’s different approach was understandable, the result of its larger indigenous population: the 1989 Soviet census demonstrates that Estonia and Latvia had a much lower share of titular population – 62% and 52% respectively - compared to Lithuania, of which 80% of the population were ethnic Lithuanians. Lithuania’s strategy did not put Lithuanian culture and language at risk because it had significantly lower number of Russian-speaking people in the country.

Language education laws in Latvia demonstrate the struggle to reinstate the Latvian language in its diverse population. In 2004 minority schools in Latvia were subject to new legislation, which proposed that minority schools should conduct 40% of its teaching for years 10 to 12 in Latvian; the other 60% could be in a minority language (i.e. Russian). The legislation initially required that only Latvian could be used to teach years 10 to 12, but was amended after protests and demonstrations by Russian-speaking minorities.

To this day Russian is not an official state language in Latvia, despite the significant number of Russian-speakers. In 2012 a Constitutional referendum took place in Latvia on whether to amend the constitution and add Russian as the second official language. Around 75% of voters said “no”. This result was expected, but it is interesting that the voter participation for this referendum was at an all-time high. This shows that cultural and linguistic concerns are amongst the most important issues in Latvia.

In terms of politics, in the 2011 Latvian elections the social-democratic party ‘Harmony Centre’ won the largest support from the voters, thereby gaining the majority of the seats in Saeima (Latvian Parliament). Harmony Centre is the only party with a focus on improving the conditions of the Russian-speaking minority. But despite its large support, the party has been excluded from the coalition government because of the suspicion that it is funded by the Russian authorities and represents pro-Russian interests.

Regardless of the fact that the Russian-speaking minority in Latvia have had a long history in the region[4], the recognition and integration of the Russian minority culture into Latvian social and political life has been inadequate. One could argue that this attitude is some sort of a ‘payback’ for all of Russia’s historic “wrongdoings”, or that it is motivated by the fear in Latvia of cultural and linguistic extinction of the titular nation. Whatever the case, these attitudes have led to prejudicial measures against ethnic Russians. Recent events in Crimea and Ukraine have only served to exacerbate the fears of ethnic Latvians. But continuing its prejudicial policies may encourage the Russian minority population in Latvia to turn towards Putin and his policy of ‘protecting’ Russians, wherever they might be.

Now it is essential to recognise the conflicted history between the ethnic Latvian and Russian populations in Latvia, but not be beholden to that history. Instead, we should focus on a careful implementation of the concept of national unity and the recognition of inter-ethnic relations, which may guide the Latvian population to a more integrated and interconnected society.

Leyla Aliyeva studied International Politics at Middlesex University and is currently an LLM student at the same university. Her particular focus is on post-USSR and Eastern European countries with a specific focus on human rights and minority rights. She also worked at the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre as an intern and worked on serious human rights violations in former Soviet states.

NOTES

[1] In this article I define Russians as those who either have ethnic, linguistic and cultural ties with Russia, because of the difficulty in identifying ethnic Russians after decades of mixed marriages and integration. The reasons for why someone is Russian-speaking is not important - be it due to the Rusification program or though cultural ties; what matters is that they identify themselves as Russian.

[2] Minority Rights Group, ‘World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous People : Latvia’ (minorityrightsgroup.org ) <http://www.minorityrights.org/4968/latvia/russians.html> accessed 13 January 2015

[3] Bridget Anderson, World Directory of Minorities (1st ed,Minority Rights Group International,1997) 226

[4] Minority Rights Group, ‘World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous People : Latvia’ (minorityrightsgroup.org ) <http://www.minorityrights.org/4968/latvia/russians.html> accessed 13 January 2015