Historical policy and memorial culture in Latvia in the early 2020s

The politics of memory in the Latvian Republic in the early 2020s are analyzed. The role and place of intellectual communities is studied. These communities act as the main spaces of the genesis and functioning of memorial culture and collective historical memory in modern social and political thought in Latvia. The novelty of the study lies in the examination of the current stage in the development of the historical policy of the Latvian society in the context of a lack of original sources-based interdisciplinary works focused on the analysis of the memorial cultures of the post-Soviet space in Russian historiography. It is shown that: 1) as one of the systemic segments of modern Latvian society, the intellectual community significantly contributes to the development and transformation of memorial culture; 2) the range of memorial practices of Latvian intellectuals varies from historical revisionism to attempts to form a liberal memorial canon; 3) memorial practices of modern intellectual community are interconnected with the development of civil and ethnic nationalist discourse; 4) the participation of intellectuals in memorial politics actualizes the political and ideological heterogeneity of modern society, contributing to the parallel development of various forms and dimensions of historical memory. It is assumed that the role of the Latvian civil society in the historical politics of modern Latvia will increase, and the intellectual community will remain an active participant in collective memory policy.

latvia, collective memory, intellectuals, historical politics, wars of memory, culture of memory