The Thaw in Soviet Latvia

: National Politics 1953-1959

Abstract

My dissertation offers the definitive account of the history of national communism in Soviet
Latvia. I define national communism within the context of the concepts of Russification and
Sovietisation. I provide an assessment of the contention of the school of Latvian historiography
that Russian migration to Latvia was due to an official policy of Russification.
I found that in the wake of Joseph Stalin’s death, leadership rivals Nikita Khrushchev
and Lavrentii Beria cooperated to formulate a new nationality policy in the Soviet Republics in
1953, demonstrating the manipulation of nationality policy as a feature in the power struggle. I
argue that it was in this context that Latvian national communism originated rather than its
previously assumed emergence in 1956. In contrast to previous scholarship, I insist that the
national communists operated as an identifiable faction within the Latvian Communist Party. I
investigate the political rise of the national communists between 1953 and 1958, examining and
evaluating each national communist policy including their controversial language and residency
laws, and I uncovered new evidence of autarkic national communist economic plans. I identify
their policies as nationalist and, ultimately, incompatible with Soviet socialism despite the
partial liberalisation of the Soviet Union under Khrushchev.
My dissertation uses complementary new evidence from Latvian and Russian archives
to support and radically expand upon the theory of recent Western scholarship that an alliance
of Stalinist hardliners in Moscow and Latvia, rather than Khrushchev, conspired to purge the
Latvian national communists in 1959. This throws into question the causes of the other purges
in nine republics between 1959 and 1961. Finally, my project augments our understanding of
how the Soviet Communist Party functioned, particularly by showing precisely how the
relationship between Moscow and the Soviet periphery relaxed before the Latvian purge but
became strained again afterwards.
My dissertation offers the only comprehensive history of national communism in Soviet
Latvia. In their attempt to wrench more autonomy from the centre, the Latvian national
communists presented the greatest challenge to Moscow from the Soviet Republics in the
Khrushchev era.

Date of Award	2015
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	King's College London
Supervisor	Stephen Lovell (Supervisor)