Propaganda “History of Latvia” published in Moscow as Latvia lacks its own research

A book on the history of Latvia, financed by the Kremlin-linked foundation Pravfond, was published in Russian in Moscow this year. Historians describe it as propaganda, yet Latvia has no modern, comprehensive publication to set against it. The topic was covered by the TV3 programme “Nekā personīga”.

What the book contains

The book has eight authors, the lead being Maksim Grigoryev, head of the history centre of the so-called “special military operation”. Among the others are Aleksandr Dyukov and Vladimir Simindey, who have been on Latvia's blacklist since 2012, and Ruslan Pankratov, a former Riga City Council member who fled a Latvian court. He faces charges of violating European sanctions and inciting national hatred against Ukrainians. The foreword was written by Leonid Slutsky, chair of the Russian State Duma's Foreign Affairs Committee.

The book spans the period from prehistory to the present day. It claims that Latvians did not win their state but received it as a gift, that 1940 was not an occupation but a voluntary accession, that deportations were an “effective method”, and that independent Latvia after 1991 is an “ethnocracy”. Pravfond granted the project 1.7 million roubles, about 19,000 euros. Documents leaked from the foundation also include a critical review pointing to errors in names and titles and the use of Wikipedia as a source. Publication was therefore delayed by a year.

Lack of Latvia's own research

Uldis Neiburgs, director of the University of Latvia's Latvian History Institute, explains that the propaganda approach is to select facts that fit and discard those that do not. Gustavs Strenga, tenured professor at the Latvian Academy of Culture, stresses that such a book is manipulation. Toms Ķikuts, director of the National History Museum of Latvia, notes that no academic work covering the whole of Latvian history has appeared in Latvian over the past decade.

A state research programme that gave 1.7 million euros for studying the 20th and 21st centuries ends in December. Roughly one in ten applications to the Fundamental and Applied Research Programme is funded, and politicians are considering granting money only to research with commercial potential. Education and Science Minister Ilze Indriksone (National Alliance) acknowledges that research must continue. Strenga warns that Latvia may soon lack specialists able to write, for example, about the Duchy of Courland.