At our Mershon Monday gathering on April 15th, Christopher Leger, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History, examined Latvia’s rapidly evolving memory politics in the shadow of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. His talk addressed the central question: What happens when monuments erected to glorify Soviet heroism are re-imagined as sentinels of Latvian independence? Drawing on archival film, on-the-ground observation, and fieldwork, Leger shows how Latvia is turning Soviet monuments into ammunition for a twenty-first-century information war.
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania gained independence after the First World War, only to endure three occupations in a single lifetime (Soviet in 1940, Nazi in 1941, Soviet again from 1944 to 1991). That history fuels today’s anxiety about Kremlin aggression against Ukraine and what it means for the Baltic states. Latvians remember themselves as an independent republic forcibly absorbed into larger empires, and that memory now shapes Riga’s policy toward Kyiv.
Repurposing Soviet Symbols
Leger explored how Latvians have been repurposing Soviet symbols. For example, in Riga, a monument first commissioned under Soviet rule to honor 1905 revolutionaries now stands for Latvian sovereignty. In his summer fieldwork, Leger found similar reversals throughout Latvia’s capital city. The once-celebrated statue of Red Riflemen is now hailed as a depiction of Latvian Riflemen. Rainis, the socialist poet Moscow once claimed as its own, has been recast as the Latvian Pushkin, credited with enriching the Latvian language with new vocabulary and penning foundational nationalist literature and plays. The Latvian Red Riflemen Memorial Museum, a Soviet-era showpiece, now houses the Museum of the Occupation; its galleries feature photographs from the Ukrainian front. Each makeover, Leger argues, erodes the Soviet empire’s soft-power residue over Latvia and lets Latvian nationals reclaim their own narrative.
Film and Collective Memory
Film has long been a central weapon in the struggle over history in Latvia. During the Khrushchev thaw (mid 1950s through mid 1960s), directors at Riga Film Studio slipped allegories of resistance past Soviet censors (at least, this is how the Latvians remember it in retrospect). For example, in the 1961 feature The White Bells, a steamroller flattening a young girl’s flowers has been reinterpreted by national curators as a stand-in for Soviet tanks rolling over the Latvian nation. Today, a dozen such canonical films anchor the national curriculum. Latvians express pride that these films’ nationalist subtext once eluded Soviet Party censors.
Strategic Narratives for a New Cold War
Leger discussed how Latvian officials have folded these memory projects into the national security strategy. By reframing socialist icons as warnings against occupation, they cast Latvia as NATO’s moral front line and rally European support for Ukraine. Blocking Russian-language broadcasts and rewriting museum placards in Latvian, English, and Ukrainian are part of a larger contestation over historical memory. By exploring the role of narrative and memory politics in Latvia, Leger offered new insights on how Latvian leaders see themselves and seek to project strength in the geopolitical moment.
By Julia Marino in collaboration with Helen Murphey and Nick Nyachega.