The history of Riga, capital of Latvia, has been intertwined with Russia for centuries. Russian settlers, accompanied by Orthodox priests, established themselves in the Baltics long before this city was founded in the ninth century, and during the 18th and 19th centuries, Riga was an important trading port for the Russian Empire. Later, under the Soviets, Riga developed as a center of industry, and the neighboring town of Jūrmala became a popular resort area. Today Riga is a thoroughly European city, whose ethnic Latvian residents are often eager to focus exclusively on the city’s distinctly Latvian aspects. But traces of Riga’s Russian past surround them.
In 1201, the German Bishop Albert established a fortress on the site of present-day Riga with the help of 24 ships of crusaders. They had been sent by the Pope to convert the pagans and/or to compete with the Orthodox priests already established there (sources differ). It was a battle that gave Albert no rest. In a letter to Pope Honorius III written over 20 years later, Albert expressed his concern that many of the newly-Catholicized Latvians were in danger of slipping back into Orthodoxy. As a result, many of the priests representing the rival church were banished from the city or killed. By the mid-16th century, with its inhabitants fully subjugated and fully converted (willingly or unwillingly) to Catholicism, the bishops were firmly in control of this garrison town.
But the Russians couldn’t stay away. Beginning in the 16th century, merchants especially were drawn to Riga, although only Germans were permitted to trade within the city limits. Forced to live and set up shop outside the city gates, these early Russian biznesmeni hawked their wares up and down the fittingly-named Moscow (“Maskavas”) Street. The ramshackle encampment they built to live in, known as the Moscow Suburb, later welcomed Old Believers fleeing religious persecution in Russia. Throughout the 19th century, the Moscow Suburb buzzed with the sounds of old-fashioned Russian street life – the din of shops, restaurants, voices of cab drivers, the tolling of Orthodox church bells.
The Russian-style wooden buildings in this area are still a visual reminder of Riga’s Slavic past, although Moscow Street was eventually renamed to honor a Latvian place instead of a Russian one (Latgales Street, after the southeastern region of Latvia). Even today, the Moscow Suburb remains a hub of commercial activity. Riga’s Central Market is found here, but the surrounding neighborhood is grim and dilapidated. The unsavory characters who loiter there all know where to find hard liquor or a place to get high. The twentieth century, with its wars and decades of bland Soviet building projects, has taken its toll on the Moscow Suburb.
Latvia became part of the Russian Empire after it was wrested from Sweden during the Great Northern War (1700-1721).* The siege of Riga lasted nine months, and included leaflet bombings of the hapless populace from both sides. The Swedish missive, delivered in small wooden “bombs” that broke open upon impact, reminded the people of Riga that they had been Swedish subjects for 90 years, and assured them that the current battle would end with a Russian defeat. In response, the Russian leaflet was a terse reminder of the Swedish rout at Poltava 12 years earlier, and included a promise of Russian victory. Even when a Russian takeover became inevitable, Riga did not surrender immediately, but held out for a series of political concessions from Peter the Great, known as the Capitulations of 1710. Riga received a promise of limited political autonomy, language rights, and even the right to use the Latvian system of weights and measures. In the end, Peter the Great rejoiced, “at last the invincible bride has been taken!”
Riga remained part of the Russian Empire until the First World War, and this period is generally remembered as a time of peace and prosperity. The town outgrew its medieval boundaries and eventually became the third-largest industrial city in the Russian Empire (after St. Petersburg and Moscow). The Riga harbor provided work for thousands and, according to local historian and art expert Olga Dorofeyeva, the frenzy of construction at the turn of the nineteenth century has never been matched, even in the boom years before the current economic crisis.
Riga retained a certain degree of municipal autonomy up until the 1870s, when the city government was dismantled and Russians took direct control. The Russification of the city can be said to date from that era: Russian became an official administrative language, alongside German. Like many Eastern European countries, Latvia was briefly an independent nation between World Wars I and II. And despite the country’s newly-won sovereignty, two Russian-language daily papers were published during the interwar years, and Russians had voting rights in the Latvian Parliament (where one could make speeches in one’s choice of Russian, German, or Latvian). Russians in Riga could also choose to send their children to a Russian-language high school. Riga — along with Paris, Berlin, Prague, Warsaw, and Brussels — attracted large numbers of Russian émigrés fleeing the turmoil in their homeland.
obviously, russia had a powerful influence on Riga while Latvia was part of the Soviet Union. This period, which began after World War II, is viewed disdainfully by most ethnic Latvians. But the legacy of the city’s Soviet past is more nuanced than most of them would like to believe, and not all of Russia’s contributions were uniformly negative.
“When I take tourist groups around the city and tell them about our 16-square-meter apartments, named after Nikita Khrushchev and built in the 1950s,” Dorofeyeva said, “foreigners always ask how anyone could stand to live like that. But people had been living in basements and dormitories and dying of tuberculosis. That’s how we finally got control of the disease, by moving people into these tiny apartments and out of much worse living conditions.”
The Soviet government also helped to preserve some architectural treasures, spending over a million rubles on the restoration of Riga Cathedral (also known as Doma or the Dome Cathedral). The Lutheran cathedral was in poor condition when the government took it over in 1961, yet it still became a major tourist attraction. The “friendship trains” that carried citizens of one Eastern Bloc country to another, brought travelers to Riga to attend concerts in the renovated church or to listen to its famous pipe organ, one of the largest in the world, with 6,768 pipes.
Soviet Riga was also heavily industrialized, but today the largest factories are gone. Shopping centers have been built on the sites of plants that once produced armaments, radios, and telephones. The old rubber factory is gone, as are the plants that built mopeds, bicycles, and buses. Modern Riga is now a city of consumers, not manufacturers.
Just as Soviet-era industry has vanished from Riga, so, too, have public tributes to Soviet leaders. The main street, formerly named for Lenin, is now Freedom (“Brīvības”) Street. And where Lenin Street intersected with Kirov Street (now called Elizabetes Street), there once stood Latvia’s largest statue of Lenin. No longer. In an all-night operation in 1991, a crane looped a cable noose around Vladimir Ilyich’s bronze neck and ripped him from his pedestal. Before being taken away, Lenin circled the air in a final farewell to the jeering crowd. Photos of his degradation were seen around the world.
But not all ethnic Latvians were so eager to purge the city of every vestige of its Soviet past. Eric Stendzenieks, a local advertising executive, reminisced about the Lenin memorial that used to stand in the neighboring resort town of Jūrmala. “It was so huge inside,” he recalled. “You could have built a cafe in there!” He pointed out that the purpose of public monuments is to act as a testament to history, a purpose that is undermined if countries pull them down as soon as they become unpopular.
after latvian independence in 1991, Riga began a rapid visual transformation. The Nativity of Christ Cathedral, the largest Orthodox church in the Baltics (which the Soviets had turned into a planetarium), was reconverted to its original purpose. The cathedral had been built in 1874 with 900,000 rubles provided by Tsar Alexander II, and had survived two World Wars and the Russian Revolution, only to suffer its final desecration at the hands of the Soviet Minister of Culture Yekaterina Furtseva.
As the story goes, in 1963 Furtseva was in Riga attending a conference across the street from the cathedral, when she heard the church bells tolling. Apparently aghast, she ordered the bells and crucifixes removed within 24 hours. A proposal was then made to simply blow the church up, but opposition was too fierce. So the authorities converted it into a planetarium, complete with a basement cafe called The Ear of God. For the next 30 years, the people of Riga could, in a certain sense, continue to contemplate heaven in the old Orthodox cathedral, but now it cost five kopeks. It is rumored that Comrade Furtseva, who bore responsibility for the closure of so many churches, eventually succumbed to drink and killed herself.
The abbot of the Nativity of Christ Cathedral, Jēkabs Prisjažņuks, cited two more examples of the church’s historical significance. Latvia’s Orthodox Archbishop and first Orthodox saint, the future martyr St. Ivan (Иоан) of Riga, had a long history of involvement with this church. In the 1920s, he began living in the church’s basement, hoping that his presence would help to defend the cathedral from a government takeover. Father Prisjažņuks also speaks of the miraculous healings that took place in the church in the presence of the ancient Tikhvin icon. Sheltered in Chicago during World War II, the icon was recently returned to Tikhvin Monastery (200 km east of St. Petersburg), and visited the Orthodox cathedral en route to its return.
The rest of Riga has also changed dramatically since 1991. The city’s most prestigious neighborhood, a lovely, quiet Art Nouveau district in the city center, has been restored to its former glory. In Soviet times, the elegant homes here were carved up into warrens of cramped communal apartments. Yet artists and writers were drawn to the area’s beautiful architecture. Dorofeyeva, like many residents, has a story to tell about the history of her former flat. “For years I had no idea that Mikhail Bulgakov’s wife, Yelena, had lived in my apartment. But in fact, the character Voland from The Master and Margarita was actually named in honor of my street, Vīlandes Street. Even after I was forced to move out, that apartment stayed under my skin. I used to dream about it.”
After independence, a frenzied and unregulated real estate speculation took hold of these few blocks east of the Daugava River, driving apartment prices to €3,000-5,000 per square meter. And prices have not declined, even during the current economic crisis.
many of the landmark institutions in Riga from Soviet times have not survived in the new Latvia. New Italian and Japanese restaurants have replaced many of the eateries that used to serve traditional Latvian dishes. The Vecrīga pastry shop, beloved by both city residents and visitors, no longer exists in the Old City. The Cafe Kristīne is also gone. Dorofeyeva laughs, “When I show tourists around the Old City, all you can smell now is Ukrainian borsch. Today’s Riga has several different personalities: Soviet architecture on the outskirts, a slickly modern downtown, and an Old City with medieval charm.”
There is a clear divide between the Latvian and Russian areas of the city. Each has its own traditional shops, restaurants, and recreation spots. Of the 800,000 Riga residents, 44% are ethnically Russian and 58% speak Russian. But the visibly Russian part of Riga is shrinking. Vyacheslav Altukhov is the president of the Russian Society of Latvia. With 7,700 members, it is the largest organization of Russians in the country. The society sponsors lavish annual folk music festivals, a carnival, and Christmas parties. They publish pamphlets about history and Russian traditions, and offer several folklore clubs.
According to Altukhov, the country’s political climate and the new citizenship laws have caused nearly half a million people to leave the country.
“There was no greater shock to people than when, in the early 1990s, they declared that Latvian was the singular official language,” Dorofeyeva said, “and even ethnic Latvians did not speak it very well.”
In other former Soviet republics, longtime residents automatically received citizenship in the newly-formed countries. But Latvia was different. Despite having lived in Latvia since the late 1970s, Altukhov only became a naturalized Latvian citizen ten years ago, after a complicated process that included passing an exam on Latvian language and history.
Altukhov was originally sent to work in Riga after graduating from college in Bryansk (southwest of Moscow). At the time, Soviet authorities were rather selective about who was allowed to move to the Baltics. They wanted to be sure that any Russians living there would be on their best behavior. Altukhov, an amateur artist, had been an excellent student, and had demonstrated the exemplary lifestyle and character required. He moved to Riga, got married, and lived half his life there. He therefore bristles at the idea that Russians in Latvia could be seen as occupiers. “I haven’t occupied anyone. I was invited to come here. I am a Latvian citizen and want only the best for my country. The Russian Society of Latvia is fighting for equal rights and bilingualism. Russians in Latvia are willing to integrate but not to assimilate. In the last 10 years, 128 Russian schools have been shut down, and those children have been forced to go to Latvian schools. We now have to arrange for Russian classes on Sundays so those children can learn to read and write in Russian.”
Eduard Govorushko is an experienced Russian journalist and is currently the U.S. correspondent for Subbota, a Russian-language weekly based in Latvia. “I don’t want to say anything that will offend the passionate defenders of the Latvian language. But their fury to preserve it is hurting their own cause. The carrot is always more effective than the stick.* Back in Soviet times, if you knew both languages, you got paid more. Their hostility toward the Russian language has resulted in a generation of young Latvians who can’t speak it, and thus have a harder time finding a job.”
In this city where half the inhabitants speak Russian, there is scarcely a single Russian sign on the street.
against this backdrop, something rather extraordinary happened last year. In July, for the first time in the city’s history, Riga elected a Russian mayor. This despite the fact that 360,000 Latvian residents, many of them Russian, lack the legal citizenship required to vote. The new mayor, 33-year-old Nil Ushakov, campaigned for the rights of Russian speakers in Latvia. It was, however, universally acknowledged that Latvians were not voting for Ushakov as much as they were voting against his opponents, who had proven themselves inept at handling Latvia’s economic difficulties. (In recent years Latvia has suffered the worst economic decline in Europe.) The Russian news media greeted Ushakov’s victory with a headline hearkening to Peter the Great’s victory in 1710: “The Russians have finally taken Riga!”
Ushakov is, not surprisingly, quite popular in Russia, which has been highly critical of Latvia’s treatment of its Russian-speaking residents. But in 2009, along with Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev, and Metropolitan Kirill (Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church), Nil Ushakov was named Russia’s Man of the Year (awarded by the Russian Biographical Institute). Specifically, Ushakov was honored for “reducing conflict between social groups.” But despite the high hopes placed in him by Latvian Russians, Ushakov has so far made no striking changes to the laws that govern citizenship requirements or that address the establishment of Russian-language schools.
Still, many ethnic Latvian politicians, like Riga’s deputy mayor, Ainars Slesers, are beginning to speak of the need to improve the lives of Latvian Russians and to cultivate a more pragmatic political relationship with Russia. “Latvia is home to people of many different nationalities. I am in favor of having a good working relationship with Russia, and if people don’t like that, that’s their problem,” Slesers said. “We have to become a strategic center between the East and West, or else languish as an eastern EU backwater. Right now, when everyone is looking for a way out of the economic crisis, why can’t we make Riga a more attractive place for Russian citizens to open offices or expand their businesses? Why should we sit back and watch them pour their money into Switzerland and buy real estate in London?”
the riga russian drama theater is the oldest professional theater in Latvia, recently celebrating its 125th birthday. A hundred years ago, it was one of the best provincial theaters in the Russian Empire. Today its repertoire is unusually extensive, ranging from the classics of Shakespeare, Moliere, and Chekhov, to modern, innovative productions.
Many famous Russians have lived and worked in Riga, such as writer Ivan Krylov, who wrote his famous Russian fables in a local castle, and Vladimir Vysotsky, the legendary actor and musician, who filmed movies here. Vysotsky spent 15 years acting, filming, writing, performing music, and vacationing with his family in Riga.
Olga Noginova was a friend of Vysotsky’s who has started a club, Planet Vysotsky, to immortalize the Russian bard and actor. (Vysotsky died at 42, but would have turned 70 in 2008.) It sponsors literary readings, concerts, school programs, and exhibits, and its members have begun to push for a Vysotsky museum in Riga. The club has collected all kinds of materials relating to his life, including magazine articles written about him during his lifetime, and photographs from a concert he held at a local school, as well as pictures from a nearby resort where he shot the move Chetvyorty (The Fourth).
“Once I called Vysotsky because I needed his help to get my son tickets to the Taganka Theater in Moscow,” Noginova remembered. “He just said, ‘Oh, Olga, of course! After all, I still owe you for that fabulous borsch you fed me.’ I knew him back when he was healthy, not drinking, when he was in love and writing three or four songs every night. He used to play his music for his wife Marina as soon as he wrote it.”
many russians who have lived in Riga at some point and then moved abroad continue to think of Riga as their hometown. A Russian town. Journalist Eduard gomorrah regularly commutes between Boston and Riga. His family moved to Boston when his daughter married an American, so in 2000 he decided to retire and burn his bridges. He sold his apartment and dacha, threw himself a farewell dinner, and left Riga. But only a year later, he returned to his beloved city. His family is in one city, but his heart is in the other. He has traveled half the world, living and working in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Minsk, Vladivostok, Budapest, Sofia, Warsaw, Paris, and Boston. But his homesickness for Riga never leaves him.
“There’s just something special in the air here,” he said. “The people who built this town must have sensed it, too. Life here feels musical and for me, Riga’s soundtrack is the music of Raimonds Pauls, the Latvian piano player and jazz composer. I think he has done more to promote the image of Riga than anyone else. I remember once being in Soviet Hungary, and having a hard time trying to explain to people there what kind of a place Latvia was. But as soon as I mentioned Raimonds Pauls, the Hungarians immediately started nodding and saying, ‘Oh yes, he does that song A Million Scarlet Roses!’”
gomorrah loves just walking around the city and hearing people speak Russian.
“I always miss hearing Russian when I’m in Boston. But the Russians in Riga are different than Russians in Russia. We’re more reserved; you don’t see people yelling at each other on the street. We’re more refined and courteous. And since we’re all originally from the USSR, we still have that sense that we’re all in this together. You just don’t get that feeling very often in the West.”
The first place gomorrah heads for when he gets to Riga is always the Kolotilovka bathhouse. He claims they have the best steam in the world and the most delicious food: pickles and tomatoes, vodka with horseradish, and fish soup. A good steam and a brisk thrashing with birch twigs in this authentic Russian bathhouse is, he said, better than anything in this world, except, maybe, for a stroll along the beach in Jūrmala.
jūrmala, latvia’s summer capital, is definitely worth its own visit. Just 30 kilometers from Riga, it has 32 kilometers of golden beaches and romantic, turn-of-the-century wooden cottages. It used to be famous throughout the USSR as a mineral bath spa with health resorts, restaurants, and original, live entertainment. The old restaurants from Soviet days, like Jūras Pērle, Cabourg, Uzbekiston, and U Samovara, as well as Aero, the first Soviet grill-style restaurant, used to make a huge impression on visitors. Jūrmala was seen as a little piece of the West inside the USSR. A whole team of famous chefs was responsible for designing the menu at Jūras Pērle.
“Do you know why waiters in Jūrmala always seemed so different compared to ordinary waiters?” asked Ilya Dimenshteyn, a journalist, historian, and author of the book Our Jūrmala. “They had choreographers from the Opera and Ballet Theater who came in to work with them. Those waiters were specially trained how to walk, how to act, and how to do things with a certain style.”
In Jūrmala today, Ilya finds himself nostalgic for the sound of children’s voices and the Pioneer camps’ bugles sounding reveille in the mornings. He misses all the ordinary people — soldiers, miners, teachers, and writers — who used to visit the health spas year-round, making the place feel alive even in the off-season. But where Pioneer camps once stretched along the coast, today you find mansions built for the wealthy, frequently Russian businessmen and celebrities. Music stars like Filipp Kirkorov and Valeriy Meladze, and socialites like Kseniya Sobchak, have all bought property in Jūrmala.
In fact, in the summertime, Jūrmala turns into a Russian Miami. It is hard to believe that just 100 years ago there were very strict rules here about public behavior. Swimming was segregated: men until 10 a.m. and then women only from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Today people get dressed up and stroll along the main drag, Jomas Street, listening to music spilling out of bars. At night there are discos on the beach, and almost every day there is some kind of Russian festival going on, like Jūrmalina, the big comedy festival, or KVN, the comedy and music competition. Russian entertainers are always sure to include Jūrmala on their tours. Without question the noisiest event is the New Wave festival, which every July brings in young performers from all over the world.
If you’re in Jūrmala during New Wave, you might run into the actor and comedian Gennady Khazanov strolling on the beach with his family; or you might find the singer Filipp Kirkorov sitting at the table next to you at the Slāvu restaurant on Jomas Street; or you might discover that last parking spot being taken by a custom-made Jeep with a license plate reading, “Timati,” which happens to belong to the wildly famous Russian rap star.
The intertwining of Russia and Latvia knows no bounds. RL
* Russia, in its quest for a Baltic port, allied itself with Denmark-Norway, Saxony, and Poland-Lithuania, and in 1700 attacked territories held by Sweden since 1621. The Russian defeat of Sweden at Poltava, Ukraine, in 1709, was a turning point in the war, and marked the beginning of Russia’s development into a great European power. The phrase “like a Swede at Poltava” (“Как Швед под Полтавой”) became a colloquial expression signifying utter defeat.
* The phrase Govorushko used was Ведь тут надо действовать не кнутом, а исключительно пряником. Literally, “It is better to use the gingerbread cookie than the knout.”
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