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couraged people from making independent decisions and expressing their points
of view publicly. Latvians had become observers. Despite their ideological differ¬
ences, in their rhetoric both occupying powers presented the Latvians as a people
who were to be freed. In the case of the Soviet occupying power Latvians would be
saved from themselves (singling out a class in the search for an enemy). The Nazi
occupation authorities came to rescue the Latvians from the danger approaching
from the East, represented by the Jews and Bolsheviks. The Latvians were the ones
being rescued, or the ones who, by obeying the law and contributing their work,
had helped save themselves.
Changes in the ethnic Latvian perceptions of ethnic groups examined in the
article took place directly as a result of Nazi propaganda efforts. Skilful use of the
context of the situation and symbols, themes and images recognisable to the local
community permitted the propagandists to speak an easily understood language.
‘The intensity of propaganda in the period researched in this study is clearly visible
in the narratives of the respondents, both in their direct stories about its influence
and in the presence of expressions characteristic of Soviet and Nazi propaganda in
their vocabulary.
The black and white perception of the world characteristic of totalitarian re¬
gimes highlighted categories such as ‘us’ and the Other, as well as the symbolic
boundaries between them. Positioning themselves in the same category as the Lat¬
vians (‘we’), the propagandists created a situation in which the enemies of the Nazi
regime—Jews, Bolsheviks and Anglo-American plutocracy—were shown to be
Latvian enemies too, even if this did not always bring results. In order to discredit
the image of the enemy, tools such as irony, caricature and dehumanisation were
used, while such symbols as skeletons, monsters, lice and bears were the most fre¬
quently used for visualising the enemy.
A pronounced focus on the topic of the Year of Horror (still known today by
the name Baigais gads, a name invented by Nazi propaganda) in communication
with local society provided the basis for changing the view of the history of Latvia
and the Latvians, presenting the Germans as liberators, the Jews as aggressors and
the Russians as comic figures, dangerous because of their unpredictability.
By using ironic images and cartoons by Latvian artists, along with photographs
presented in published sources, it has been possible in this article to identify a visu¬
alisation of some of the ethnic images given by respondents in interviews. The
black-and-white worldview and the definition of absolute evil that characterised
the propaganda of the occupying powers, including visual expressions of it, are not
present in the respondents’ narratives.
Acknowledgements
The article was prepared with financial support of Latvian state programme
“Letonika”.
Translated by Valdis Bérzins.