SPEECH at a seminar of communist and workers

International Communist Seminar ‘Imperialism, Fascisation and Fascism,
Brussels, 2-4 May 2000

Capitalist Restoration and Revival of Fascist Ideas in Latvia at the End of the 20th Century

Alfreds P. Rubiks

Latvia

Chairman of the Socialist Party of Latvia Co-ordinator of the Union of Political Parties
‘For the Rights of Peoples in the Common Latvia’

Latvia became a State only in 1918. It has been recognised as a State, subject to international law, since 1921. In its young existence it was very soon confronted with fascism. The then head of State Karlis Ulmanis enforced a fascist coup d’état in 1934. On the eve of the coup, on the 21^th November 1933, the members of the workers’ and peasants’ faction of the Saeima (parliament) had already been arrested. Fascist organisations emerged like mushrooms after rainfall, the strongest of which was ‘Ukunkrust’ (Fire cross), that later became ‘Perkonkrust’ (Thunder cross).

Differently from Germany and Italy there existed no leading fascist party as a base for the regime. That role was played by the armed mass organisation ‘Aizarki’ (the Defenders) that had units in all rural districts. All the main and determinative features of a fascist dictatorship were ye there: terror and repression, dissolution of the bourgeois parliamentary regime, authoritarian power and incessant nationalist propaganda.

There was a concentration camp in Liepaja and forced labour was applied in the quarry of Kaltsiems. Attempts were made to apply the death penalty to political opponents. Communists were arrested massively. The communist party’s struggle to form a unified antifascist front and to thwart the progress of fascism in Latvia unfortunately bore no fruit. After the fascist coup martial law was proclaimed in Latvia. It was to last for 1371 days. The activities of the Saeima were suspended, the members of its presidium incarcerated. Thirty-one newspapers were banned, the work of twenty-nine trade unions was suspended, and 178 different associations and trade unions were closed down. The activities of sixty town councils were ceased and the district councils liquidated.

The putsch and the founding of the fascist regime by Karlis Ulmanis are black pages in the political history of Latvia. The regime of Karlis Ulmanis continued until July 1940, when it was overthrown by the socialist revolution. But the socialist regime could not stand firm long. In Europe Word War II was raging. Fascist Germany occupied the capital Riga in July 1941 and restored the fascist regime. This regime remained in power until 13^th October 1944, when Riga and the main part of the Latvian territory were liberated from Germany’s fascist troops.

During the occupation of Latvia the Aizarki and Perkonkrusti groups ardently served Hitler and the German fascist regime in Latvia. Many Perkonkrust people had already collaborated with the German Special Forces before the occupation of the country by Hitler’s troops. Perkonkrust-member Gustav Tchelmins wrote in one of his letters on November 1938: "When Germany organises a New Europe, not one Jew will remain in the whole of Europe". So you can imagine that the idea of exterminating the Jews must have occurred to him not later than to Hitler himself. It is also not by accident that the German occupying force had not created a network of penitentiaries in Riga. The bloody executions were carried out by the traitors of the Latvian people - former Aizarki, policemen, Perkonkrusti, part of the officers of the Latvian army, collaborationists and other riffraff. Thousands of people were fusilladed without any form of trial. The militia of the former police agent and collaborationist Victor Arais operated particularly cruelly and inhumanely. Jews and gipsies were assassinated.

A Latvian Waffen-SS legion of more than 150,000 men was created, out of a total of two million of Latvian population. After 1942, when Latvia was ’brought to order’, the Sonderkommando (special detachment) of Arais operated more frequently in Russia, Belarus and Poland. At the end of the war Victor Arais hided himself in Germany under a false name. In 1975 he was arrested all the same and sentenced to life imprisonment as a war criminal. During all the post-war years under the Soviet regime - until 1991, public manifestations of fascism did not occur in Latvia. The organs of the State security, the public prosecutor and the judiciary power dealt with them whenever they appeared.

We cannot avoid to remind ourselves of all this, so as not to remain indifferent to the phenomenon of fascism, as it exists in Latvia today, since capitalism has been restored as a result of the counterrevolutionary putsch in 1991. With the restoration of the capitalist society the entirety of fascist ideas resurrected in Latvia.

To mention only a few examples. Hitler’s book ‘Mein Kampf’ has been published; the celebration of the foundation of the Latvian Waffen-SS was introduced. (At the instigation of the Saeima deputies of the socialist parties and of our colleagues of the leftist faction 'For human rights in a unified Latvia' that particular celebration day has now been cancelled); former legionnaires of the Waffen-SS march under their banners through the streets of Riga, with right wing Saeima deputies and state officials walking in front of them.

In the Latvian parliament, consisting of 201 deputies, the communists’ fraction of ‘Ravnopravie’ (Equal Rights) was eliminated; sixteen parliamentary deputies, all communists, were deprived of their mandates, and their leader Alfred Rubiks was arrested and imprisoned. Without legal proceedings the Communist Party of Latvia has been banned, as well as a whole range of social organisations, among which an organisation of retired war veterans who fought within the ranks of the anti-fascists.

The Communist Party of Latvia is still forbidden up to this very day. In Riga three attempts were made to blow up a monument in commemoration of the combatants who liberated the city from the German fascist occupying power. At the last explosion, three years ago, two men died. The terrorist-bombers turned out to be adherents of the non-registered organisation ‘Perkonkrust’. Their lawsuit is still continuing.

In Latvia the public prosecutor 'does not find evidence' to sue the former accomplices of the fascist regime, among them people who are suspected to have participated in the Holocaust and in war crimes. He did not find evidence to prosecute eleven persons, the list of which had been presented by the Wiesenthal-centre. Neither did he find evidence to institute legal proceedings against Konrad Kaleis, a member of the above-mentioned Arais-group. On the contrary, in Latvia ‘arguments’ are found to prosecute the Soviet partisan Wasili Kononow, who fought against fascist Germany and who personally let derail fourteen trains loaded with German armaments and military troops.

According to data at the disposal of our deputies, files are prepared to institute proceedings against a whole range of other people: participants in the struggle against Hitler’s fascist armies, among them the former commander of the Latvian partisan group, the historian, university graduate and hero of the Soviet Union Wilis Samson. This is the truth about contemporary Latvia. Don’t trust the smooth-sounding speeches of politicians at several European rostra about ‘democracy and equal rights’ for the people, and about the ‘absence of violations of human rights’ in Latvia.

The pressure of the public opinion in Letland, of Russia and Europe, of war veterans of the anti-Hitler resistance forced the Supreme Court to declare the conviction of Wasili Kononow as groundless, to nullify the judgement of the district court, to set free Wasili Kononow and to submit the case to further inquiry. Kononow had been sentenced to six years of deprivation of freedom for allegedly having committed a war crime. The release of Kononow is a victory. Although a small one, it is a victory in defence of the antifascist struggle. We appreciate very much the efforts of all those who contributed to it.

In Latvia 680.000 people (28% of the population) are still deprived of the citizenship¹ and therefore of civil rights such as the right to vote and of being eligible for election. The majority of them have been living in Latvia for decades. Efforts to change the electoral system and so grant non-citizens the voting right and the right of being eligible for election, if only in the municipal elections, have been turned down by the rightist majority in the Saeima. Non-citizens are discriminated against as regards 55 rights in the political, economic, social and humanitarian field.

This brief analysis lets me conclude that the history of Latvia confirms that the restoration of capitalism leads to fascisation and fascism and proves once more that fascism always has been a product of capitalism.

There cannot exist ‘a good deal of’ fascism or ‘a bit of’ fascism. Fascism, like a deadly disease, is dangerous in any dose and in any form. Every expressions of it have to be nipped in the bud.

Precisely to strive for that is what the Socialist Party of Latvia intends to do and in that task, it is prepared to cooperate on an international scale.

I thank you for your attention.

International Communist Seminar ‘Imperialism, Fascisation and Fascism’,
Brussels, 2-4 May 2000