Research on the history of the Latvian Communist Party (LCP) has advanced very slowly ever since Latvia regained statehood in 1991. The reader therefore must be grateful to William Prigge for shedding some light on the years between 1945 and 1960. During this period, some members of the Party in Latvia were beginning to comprehend the long-term consequences of Latvia's annexation to the USSR-an event they themselves had helped to bring about. They were unhappy with the fact that ultimate power over their country now lay in Moscow and that centralized socio-economic planning was being done in terms of the perceived needs of the USSR, rather than those of the Latvian Party and Republic. By the mid-1950s, there was a term for Party members who held this view: 'national communists', who ostensibly remained loyal to Party principles but had begun to believe that centralized planning from Moscow was changing the distinctive character of the Republic. Their numbers remain uncertain, but as a result of their purge from the Party in 1959 and the early 1960s, some 2,000 persons lost influential positions and moved to much less important posts (112). Whether all these persons were indeed guilty of 'bourgeois nationalism' it is now impossible to say, as Party purges were a time to settle all manner of scores. Nevertheless, Latvian 'national communism' was clearly a relatively short-lived episode, although some of its most prominent figures - such as the cantankerous Eduards Berklavs - lived on well into the 1990s.

This work is not a collective biography of all national communists. Instead, Prigge develops central themes, doing an excellent job of contextualizing and clarifying the struggles for Party control in both Moscow and Riga and how these intertwined. The post-WWII context was multifaceted: Moscow planners were intent of saturating the Latvian Republic with heavy industry, Party cadres in Latvia were expanding but the proportion of ethnic Latvians was not, an immigrant labour force from the Slavic-language republics was threatening the use of the Latvian language, and the looming presence of high-ranking Soviet military personnel in Latvia necessitated their privileged treatment. The brief ascendancy of Lavrentij Berija in the post-Stalinist power struggle in Moscow seemed to promise the republics' parties much more freedom. In Latvia, outspoken and influential personalities in crucial Party positions-Eduards Berklavs, Pauls Dzērve, Voldemārs Kalpiņš, Vilis Krūmiņš, Aleksandr Nikonov, Indriķis Pinksis and others - detected opportunities for redirecting current trends and central decisions, and began to do so locally from about 1958. Opposition to them emerged quickly, spearheaded by another senior Party member, Arvīds Pelše, an ethnic Latvian who had joined the Bolsheviks in 1917 and, surviving the purges of 1937-38, had returned to Latvia in 1945 to help sovietize the country. Pelše's animosity toward all things Latvian expressed itself in a hard-line ideological opposition to 'bourgeois nationalism'. He was supported in this by another conservative hard-liner, his brother-in-law Michail Suslov, in Moscow, and by the military commanders stationed in Riga. In 1959, Nikita Chruščev, who had consolidated his position as First Secretary of the CPSU, visited Riga to meet with the German leader Walter Ulbricht, and also with local Party cadres. Prigge argues that Chrushchev's shift from conciliation to antagonism toward the Latvian national communists, particularly Berklavs, emerged after he heard the Riga military leaders' complaints (116-117).

In contextualizing the story of Latvian national communists, Prigge makes a number of well-reasoned revisionist arguments. Using their leaders' biographies, for example, he makes the case that during the period in question there was no deliberate effort to remove 'national cadres' - ethnic Latvians - from the LCP. Similarly, he questions whether the post World War II industrialization effort in Latvia was initially intended to overwhelm ethic Latvians with a Slavic-speaking labour force. He also argues that Michail Suslov in Moscow, working hand-in-glove and behind the scenes with Arvids Pelše in Riga and with the Riga Soviet military leaders, were the real architects of the national communists' demise. We are far from having definitive answers to all these interesting questions and Prigge's carefully reasoned reconsideration of the issues is a valuable contribution to the debate.

A few details need mentioning. The diacritical system of the Latvian language (especially with respect to surnames) has been a challenge to many non-Latvian authors and it is for Prigge as well. Also, he does not take advantage of the biographical and documentary collection on one of the most interesting national communists, Voldemārs Kalpiņš. [1] These matters are minor in relation to the fact Prigge's volume offers valuable insight into the history of the Latvian Communist Party.

Note:

[1]: Andrejs Grāpis (ed.): Stāja: Voldemāra Kalpiņa laiks. Stance: The Era of Voldemars Kalpiņš, Rīga 2011.

Andrejs Plakans