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of the 1990s Latgalian Renaissance took place and local intellectuals tried to imagine Latgale as their lieux de
memoir. But they were not alone: Latgale figurated in historical concepts of neighboring nations. Russian, Polish
and Belarus intellectuals preferred to see in history of Latgale part of their national histories.
For Russian nationalists Baltic lands in general were Russian lands 1 and Latgale, in particular, was part of
Vitebskaia guberniia populated by Latvians, which were understandable as only tribe from numerous inorodtsy
ethnical groups. In such context Latgalian medieval history was understandable as history of Russian periphery.
For national orientated Belarus intellectuals Latgale is also not Latvian land, but part of Belarus Vitsebshchina
only. Among Polish intellectuals were politicians who preferred to see in Latgale only inflanty Polskie - one of
Polish regions, integrated to Polish Medieval history in general. So, different concepts of Latgale as lieux de memoir
appeared in national historiographies.
These narratives can be analyzed in categories of history writing, imagined communities and nationalism studies.
I understand that contemporary history writing develop under influence of post-modernism paradigm 2 . That
is why my concepts can be far from real events how they were in the past. But I think that different perceptions of
Latgale can be studied and they can be also useful for understanding of those processes which created for us Latvia
as we know it. As for perception of Latgale in Belarus and Latvian-Latgalian historical memories, this aspect
is not so well studied. That is why my paper will be devoted to development of Latgalian images in these three
traditions. Analysis of Latgale as lieux de memoir in these national historiographical narratives will be useful for
understanding of Baltic Europe as part of Central Europe and part of the Greater Europe. It will be also especially
useful for studies of European identities in Baltic Region.
Russian historiography traditionally developed as Imperial narrative. Vasilii Tatischev and nikolai Karamzin
were the first Russian nationalists who did a lot for formation and development of this official narrative. Later
other Russian historians also, mainly Sergei Solov’iov and Vasilii Kliuchevskii, but also natal’ia ishimova in her
popular books in Russian history, developed the same ideas. They preferred to write history of Russia as history
of Russia. Some of them also declared thesis that it would be useful and interesting analyze how life of Russian
people changed in historical perspective.
That is why Russian historians and Russian intellectuals, engaged in history studies, positioned themselves
not only as Russian historians, as historians of Russian tsars an Empire, but also as historians of Russians. In such
situation they widely used words like russkii narod or velikorusskaia narodnost’. In fact we’ll be able too find a
little about ordinary Russians, but a lot – about Russian tsars, kings, boyars. So, Russians were not main heroes
of official historical concepts which dominated in Russian historiography. In the same time Russian intellectual
spoke and wrote in Russian and they tried to underline the fact that they also belonged to Russian nation. On another
hand it was obvious for them that in Russian Empire lived not only Russians.
As for nations of Slavic origin Russian intellectual were nationalistic orientated and they preferred to ignore
existence of separate Ukrainian and Belarus nations – Russian nationalists wrote about malorossy and belorussy
as about ethnographical Russian groups only. In Poland it was more difficult for them ignore numerous fact of
Polish identity which was radically opposite and different to Russian one. In this region Russian administration
experimented with different forms and methods of Rusification of local Polish-speaking peasants who were
Catholics also.
But among European non-Russian regions Baltic one was the most interesting. It belonged to the number of
territories which were occupied by Russia when it had become Empire already. And, being Empire, Russia tried
to use in the same time local pre-Russian, mainly German and Polish, political institutions and traditional Russian
methods of political oppression. Russian officials were very rare in Baltic territories which were under German
control. Russian politicians in Saint-Petersburg presumed that their German friends would be able to control Estonian
and Latvian peasants. In the same time they did not used these names for local peasants, but otherness of
local population was obvious fact 3 . For them they were just peasants – sometimes Russian nationalistic orientated
intellectuals called Estonians сontemptuously chukhontsy and Latvians were for them lifliandskie or kurliandskie
krest’iane only.
1 PSHENICHNIKOV, 1910.
2 PIDHAETS’KYI, 2000.
3 SHKANDRIJ, 2001, 2004.
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