Baltic Countdown: A Nation Vanishes

by Peggie Benton

  The Cross accompanied the sword, and missionaries of the Greek Orthodox Church clashed with Catholics, while the southern half of the country was for centuries involved in the struggle between the Protestant states headed by Sweden and the Catholic group led by Poland.

  Until the independence of Latvia was proclaimed on November 18th, 1918, the country was divided into three sections, often ruled by different foreign powers—Livonia in the north, Courland to the south, and Latgale, marching with the Russian border. Under a succession of semi-independent dukes, Courland achieved a degree of prosperity. Duke James, ‘too rich for a duke and too poor for a king’, as Charles XI of Sweden described him, supplied our Charles I with six men-of-war built of Courland oak and complete with cannon, muskets and provisions. When the King failed to pay the bill the Duke hedged his bet by signing a treaty of non-aggression with Cromwell. This was used as a pretext by Charles II for offering him in payment only a small island at the mouth of the Gambia River, which was good for nothing but a little pearl fishing.

  Peter the Great, seeking an outlet to the Baltic, drove the Swedes out of Livonia and took over the independent city of Riga. The Baltic barons were quick to realize the advantages of co-operation with Russia, and though a centralized system of administration was imposed, most of the governors of the new provinces were Balts who, with their administrative ability, soon occupied nearly half the important positions in the Russian Government and Armed Forces.

  In 1817 the serfs of the Baltic Provinces were freed, but at the same time the land they had acquired was sequestered in compensation, it was declared, for the loss of their labour. The serfs were free as birds—but free to starve. In spite of this, and the introduction of a government poll tax and compulsory military service the peasants, probably as a reaction against former domination by the Balts, pinned their hopes on the Russians.

  Following the ‘russification’ campaign of Alexander III, corrupt and inefficient bureaucrats swarmed into the country. Freedom of the press was abolished, the powers of the secret police were extended to cover the area and denunciations and deportations became common. Wholesale conversions to the Orthodox faith were achieved by means of bribery and Russian became the official language.

  Riga, however, was becoming the most advanced city in Russia. A Latvian middle class was established and peasants left their homes and settled in the cities to form a growing industrial proletariat, though Balts still held the most important positions in industry, commerce, banking, education and medicine. In 1905 peasant uprisings against the Baltic landowners were ruthlessly suppressed, too late to prevent the looting and burning of scores of estates. The Latvian leader, Karl Ulmanis, was sent into exile.

  With the coming of independence the position of middle-class Balts was little affected, but the landowners, their estates reduced to fifty hectares each, lost the power they had held so long and were obliged to eke out a modest existence in the country, or look for employment.

  These landowners, though acknowledging their German origin, insisted on their status as Balts and, whilst regarding Latvian achievements with reluctant admiration, their attitude towards both the Russians and the Germans was tinged with contempt. The former they regarded as incompetent and often crude, and the latter as narrow-minded, conformist and somewhat provincial.

  ‘There have been many outstanding Balts, including Madame de Stäel and her pen-friend, my ancestor Madame Kruedener,’ the baron told me, adding with pleasant cynicism, ‘but we are a bit inbred and if you go to any estate and look around you’ll probably find the family idiot up a tree.’

  This expectation had kept the boys interested during the visits we sometimes paid to neighbouring estates. There were signs of inbreeding, a certain defeatist lassitude amongst some of the Balts, but we saw nothing stranger than a squirrel in a tree top.

  ‘My great-grandmother was a foundling who was brought to Riga during the cholera epidemic in Hamburg’, Kruedener said one day. ‘Goodness knows what kind of blood she brought into the family. Whatever it was, it was welcome. She was a survivor, like me.’

  In spite of the loss of estates which before the war had covered over thirty thousand acres Kruedener displayed no resentment. The great house at Rindseln had been burned down and the family now lived in the low wooden building formerly used by the bailiff. But there was still excellent shooting, and riding through the firebreaks out in the forest, and plenty of food for the family. The mill and the forge and the great barn and dairies which had made the estate into a self-sufficient unit had been allotted each to a peasant proprietor.

  ‘Quite irrational’, commented Kruedener. ‘Formerly all this was used by everyone. A peasant had his share of the produce and could bring his wood to the mill and his grain to be threshed. Now, the buildings are falling into disrepair. None of the peasants can keep sufficient animals to manure his fields or afford machinery to work his holding, though I must say that the State has made a good job of the big dairy co-operatives, and exports are booming—particularly to your country.

  ‘The landowners were wrong to despise the Latvians,’ he continued. ‘They’re tough and intelligent, wonderful craftsmen with a feeling for timber and natural materials, and whatever the stories put about by my people, they’re clean to the point of destructiveness. It’s not so difficult to keep things clean once they’re in order, but after the devastation of the last war I’ve seen them polishing the few remaining panes of glass in a window or scrubbing a shell-torn floor. Of course, they’re a bit surly, but after so many years as under-dogs, who wouldn’t be?’

  The Latvian passion for order was evident in Riga. In spite of the mixture of races and traditions, the town was run with doll’s house neatness. Under the drifting clouds of autumn large yellow leaves floated down from the trees and formed jagged patterns on the glistening pavements. But they were not allowed to lie, and in the parks, women with clean kerchiefs over their heads moved about ceaselessly in pairs, carrying small wooden stretchers on to which they gathered the leaves as they fell and tidied them away.

  The language problem was tackled just as methodically. The Latvian language, though of considerable philological interest, is of little use outside the frontiers, and there was no incentive for foreigners to learn more than the limited amount which concerned their daily needs.

  But the Latvians, clinging to this symbol of their heritage, had a very high standard of literacy, even through the periods when the teaching of Latvian was suppressed or limited in the schools. So with Independence in 1918 there was a surge of interest in the vernacular. In order to purify the language of distortions a department of philology was opened in the State University. As new words are constantly needed to keep a language up to date, a small cash reward was offered to anyone inventing an acceptable Latvian equivalent for a modern foreign word. These new Latvian words were listed in the local newspapers.

  Unless one were content to walk everywhere it was essential to know the Latvian names for the Post Office, the railway stations, the Central Market, and so on, otherwise bus or tram conductors would refuse to issue a ticket. Numbers were vital too, as stamps were sold on the same basis. German and Russian were current in the shops, but most of the business in the market was conducted in Latvian by the peasant women who sold fruit and berries and fresh vegetables in summer and, all the year round, delicious dairy products, fresh fish and game. It is surprising how quickly one learns the essential words when one is interested or hungry.

  Winter was tightening its grip and drawing the sap deep into the earth. The wide clear skies of early autumn had shrunk to a grey blanket pressing down on the leafless branches and clustered roofs of the city.

  The sense of claustrophobia was overwhelming. The two small states of Latvia and Estonia lay side by side between the mute boundaries of Russia and the sea. Below these two, Lithuania, with Poland on her east and East Prussia to the south, completed a trio bound, it seemed, to remain on the sidelines of intern
ational events.

  But though space was confined, time could be extended, and I decided to explore backwards into the history of the country and to discover more of the Latvian point of view. Unfortunately, I could not read the Latvian language and owing to political prejudices accounts in other languages were hardly likely to be helpful. I needed some personal contact. The various racial groups established in the country tended to mix very little, and even the Anglo-Russian families, some established for four generations or more, limited most of their social contacts to their compatriots and some White Russians and Balts.

  One day, however, when I was visiting the Consulate, a thin grey-haired man with wire-framed glasses approached me timidly. ‘I am Pekšens, professor of history at the State University, and I like very much to learn English. I study, but I need conversation. Do you know where I can find it?’

  I suggested that we might meet and talk from time to time. The Professor’s vocabulary was extensive but the sentences flowed awkwardly, so when he was caught up in a subject he would lapse into German, the lingua franca of the Baltic States. This was fun for me, but bad value for him; however, he seemed quite happy about it.

  It was only after several meetings with Pekšens that I learnt, to my surprise, that we were living under a dictatorship. One was so used to the stereotypes—black shirts, brown shirts, hoarse cries of ‘Duce, Duce’ and ‘Heil Hitler’, thumping boots and sudden disappearances—that one accepted any country with a peaceful tenure of life and plenty of individual freedom as a democracy. And this had been Latvia’s status when I left in 1933.

  When Latvia gained independence the Government set to work in a mood of optimism. Democracy, which they had chosen, meant freedom, so anyone was free to form a political party, with the result that some of the parties in the Saeima, the Latvian parliament, had less than ten members. The outcome was confusion and compromise and, as usually happens in a troubled situation, corruption crept in, encouraged by economic depression. Constitutional reform was blocked by hard-headed parties of the Left and Right. The Communists were building strategically placed blocks of flats, potential fortresses like the Karl Marxhof in Vienna, and the Nazi ‘Nationalists’ were running a clandestine Hitler Youth Movement.

  By early 1934 things had reached such a pitch that there was a real fear of civil war. In May, just as in Estonia two months earlier, the government declared a state of siege and the Saeima was dissolved. Some of the left wing deputies were arrested and later released, and the Communist Party went underground. A Government of National Unity was declared by President Ulmanis and General Balodis, both old fighters for Latvian independence, and since then things had gone along quietly, Ulmanis having declared that he would only stay in office until constitutional reforms had been carried out. But that was four years ago.

  Towards the end of November our belongings arrived, neatly packed beneath the Gestapo seals, and we moved into a flat in one of the old-fashioned apartment houses in the Ausekla iela, just opposite the dock where the ships left for the outside world. Someone had told us that Reginald Urch, for many years Times correspondent in Moscow and afterwards in Riga, was being transferred to Helsinki and no longer needed the maid who had been in his employ for seventeen years.

  One chilly afternoon we called on Urch in the small wooden house where he was just packing up. ‘Lotte is an original,’ he said, ‘a white witch one might say. At some phases of the moon she’s strange, but she can cook, and if she takes a fancy to you, all her spells will be benign. Are you a good housekeeper?’

  I hesitated. ‘I like a comfortable home and good food, and a clean bathroom and kitchen ...’

  The interview was turning out a little differently from my expectations, as it seemed that it was I who was being put to the test. Lotte, having evidently decided to use Urch as her representative, was not at home.

  ‘I think you’ll suit each other. Lotte is not very fond of dusting ornaments, but when you can write your name on the top of your desk she’ll understand, and for a week or two everything will be spotless. Lotte is honest and speaks good German,’ said Urch as we parted. ‘We are very fond of her. I hope you will thank me.’

  When we arrived at the flat Lotte was waiting outside the tall varnished front door, a stout woman in her fifties, wearing a tight black coat. Her large floury face had the pallor of a freshly picked mushroom and her frizzy hair had obviously been tinted with henna, but not for some time. The gaps in her front teeth gave them an individuality which seemed to suggest that they, too, were involved in any conversation and her eyes, the red-brown of a faithful setter, appeared a little out of focus.

  Two men in blue uniforms, each with a length of rope coiled round his waist, were standing beside her with our suitcases at their feet. Each wore a cap with a brass badge reading respectively FIX and FAX.

  Without any formal greeting to us Lotte weighed in on the two freelance porters, who earned a living by wheeling bundles and boxes from one point in the city to another.

  ‘Wipe your feet. Put the luggage down there.’ She slapped into their outstretched hands half the amount we should have ventured to offer and closed the door firmly. We were evidently hired.

  The front door opened straight into a large dining room. From this, one door led to a drawing room which in summer would look into the green tops of the plane trees in the street outside. Next to it was our bedroom. A long passage, dark and narrow, skirted an unprepossessing bathroom, Lotte’s bedroom and the kitchen, and culminated in the guest room where the boys were to sleep during the holidays. This room, with its open view, gave one something of the relief experienced as a train comes out of a tunnel.

  While Lotte bustled off to the shops we opened one packing case after another, pulling out books and treasures, savouring the joys of having a home once more. Nothing of value had been taken. Only some letters and diaries and a perfectly harmless parody of Fletcher’s ‘Hassan’, written by our colleagues in Vienna about the clients in the Visa Office, were missing. We hoped that somewhere in Berlin the Gestapo were puzzling about the meaning of the verses.

  Chapter 3

  For Christmas 1938 we were given home leave, but first we had to take a Bag down to the Legation in Kaunas on our way to catch the boat in Memel. The United Baltic Corporation ran a line of cargo ships with some passenger accommodation, and we were to sail in the BALTEAKO, one of the smaller vessels. At this time of the year there would be no other passengers.

  Kenneth had never acted as King’s Messenger before but legends of spies in transcontinental expresses—and even our recent brush with the Gestapo—added a touch of excitement as we boarded the Berlin train.

  ‘Don’t let the Bag out of your sight,’ said Hobson, the Consul. ‘Take it into the dining car for meals. If one of you goes to the loo, the other must stay with it. The Berlin Express will be stuck full of Germans.’

  Our first-class compartment was empty until the train, with a final clang from the engine bell, drew out of the station. Then a tall German, his face seamed with duelling scars, came down the corridor and, after peering into the carriages on either side, moved in with us. When we went to the restaurant car he followed us. As we finished our coffee, he too rose. At the Lithuanian frontier he presented only a thin leather brief case to the Customs officials, who waived it away. Kenneth was, ex officio, immune from search, but my suitcase was lifted down from the rack, opened and riffled through with the bored, busybody air that so many Customs men adopt.

  Arrived at Kaunas, we piled our things into one of the waiting droshkies which rolled soundlessly over the cobbles on its elephantine rubber tyres.

  In the constricting cold of early December the town looked infinitely drab, making one appreciate, in retrospect, the imposing streets of Riga. Kaunas was a makeshift capital, formerly a small garrison town, and patchily modernized after the loss of Vilnius to Poland during the frontier squabbles which followed the First War. Though a few tasteless modern buildings h
ad been put up in the centre and some of the streets were paved, most of the houses were low-built to allow the defenders a clear field of fire—a precaution understandable in this case, since it was here that Napoleon crossed the Niemen on his march to Moscow.

  Our room was booked at the Hotel Metropole, a name which led us to hope for a certain standard of comfort. But once more, I found myself sitting in a hotel bedroom of anachronistic drabness while Kenneth washed off the smoke of the train and set out for the Legation with the precious Bag.

  It was some time before he returned. Tom Preston, the Chargé d’Affaires, felt isolated in Kaunas and was only too happy to chat with someone from the metropolis of Riga.

  ‘And what about the Bag?’ I asked. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Kenneth replied a little flatly. ‘As a matter of fact, Preston didn’t even open it. He just said “Thank goodness my laundry’s back from Riga. There’s no one here who can iron a dress shirt properly”. He asked if we were enjoying the Baltic States and said that one of his colleagues had described them as “solid, stolid and squalid”. He obviously didn’t know them very well.’

  We had been warned that meals were served late at the Metropole, but after waiting till ten on the first evening we found the waiters still in their shirt sleeves when we went down to dinner. They may well have expected to spend the evening on their own, as there was only one other guest. This was a stocky man wearing his dark hair combed in inky strands across his bald head, and a well-preserved suit. He ate his dinner in abstracted concentration while the waiters fussed over him and scrambled for the loose change he left on the tablecloth. It was midnight before the black coffee which ended the meal was served, with slices of lemon and lumps of the hard sugar which is meant to be held between the teeth so that the hot liquid can be sucked through it.