All the bourgeois papers are full of shocking news about atrocities carried out by the “Latvians” in the Russian Baltic provinces. Tears are flowing everywhere about the poor German victims of the Latvian people’s rustic wickedness. Collections have already been organized for these victims, and the nation’s noblest and finest—from whom not the faintest touch of human sympathy could be extracted after the outrageous atrocities committed by Cossacks against defenseless Russian people—are now besides themselves with pious rage because of the mistreatment endured by their compatriots. And yet no one has either tackled or answered the following question, from any point of view: From where did these sudden outbreaks of hatred against the Germans in the Baltic provinces erupt? Who are these Germans and who are these Latvians who are currently engaged in open civil war with each other? The following private correspondence from Livonia gives us ample answers to these decisive questions:
Riga, December 18. You already know fine and well that the first news reports about developments here that have been trumpeted out into the world feature colossal exaggerations, and generally give an utterly unclear picture of developments. There were no signs of murders or conflagrations, either here in Riga or in other municipalities. Labor had simply announced a general strike and then acted on that, because Latvian Social Democracy assumed that this had already been announced for the whole of Russia. The outstanding discipline by which the workers here followed Social Democracy’s watchwords, bringing the whole life of industry and trade to a standstill, was certainly capable of putting the bourgeoisie into real shock—and also of making them furious. Yet that in itself is not enough to explain the general panic. Another movement needs to be examined in this context, our rural movement. It needs first to be said, that here in the Baltic provinces, in the heart of the countryside, utterly unique relationships rule the day. The prevailing form of land ownership is the highest rung on the ladder of chivalric large land ownership, i.e., clearly a latifundia economy.
In Livonia, for example, about one-third of the whole land area consists of large pieces of land, owned by the aristocracy, while the same people own roughly half of the same type of estates in Courland. There is, opposite to these, a large mass of the rural proletariat, exploited in an inhuman way through the system by which leased land is procured from the latifundia estates. And yet the lot of the east Prussian “bonded servants” still sometimes appears enviable in comparison to the Helot* existence of rural workers in Livonia and Courland. What, however, colors this purely class relationship in a peculiar way is the fact that the whole of the landowning aristocracy are, without exception, German Junkers, while the rural proletariat is Latvian. Religion is irrelevant here. Both Latvians and Germans are Lutheran. And the difference of nationality would of course normally be irrelevant, because rural Latvian folk are very good-tempered and not bothered about anyone’s nationality. It is only the Germans who have made themselves hated for being brutal owners of the latifundia. Because, as far as the Germans were concerned, national hatred did of course play a part. They didn’t just treat the poor Latvian peasants with the usual Junker inconsideration, but also displayed the full disdain of the “hegemonic nationality.” And, in fact, from the perspective of the Latvian peasant, the rulers for decades weren’t the Russian Cossacks but rather the German owners of feudal estates who treated the rural population like despicable slaves without any rights. It must be added that the Protestant clergy also rank among the large landowners here. These aren’t the typical Lutheran country pastors like in other northern countries. No, the gentlemen clergy here sit together at the same heavily laden table with the Junkers, with whom they are intermarried and interbred, and help these aristocrats break the backs of the Latvian country folk twice and thrice, keeping them hostage to the system.
This ruling Junker caste was until very recently content with Russian absolutism’s rule-of-the-lash, as were the German bourgeoisie in the municipalities, who were no less industrious in nourishing themselves through the exploitation of the Latvian industrial workers. Of course, the misters grumbled loudly about the Russification of schools and civil society. Yet it was their own brutal class rule that had created the very situation whereby the Russification of the schools could enable poor Latvian people to attend middle- and higher-level schools for the first time! As long as the German Junkers lorded over the teaching system, the sons of Latvian people were not allowed to slip through the gates of the higher-level schools! All in all, however, the Baltic noble families had and have such strong connections and influence at the tsarist court in Petersburg that the peasants were entirely within their power.
The Social Democratic movement increased rapidly in recent years, at first in the municipalities. January 22 of this year was the starting signal for a series of general strikes executed in impeccable fashion in Riga, Tallinn, and Jelgava, etc. Social Democracy started to gradually spread its sphere of influence in the heart of the countryside. And then, when the first signs could be seen that the slaves wanted to raise “their hackles,” the Baltic German Junkers immediately pulled all strings in Petersburg at their disposal to obtain “increased protection” over the people in Livonia and in Courland. All these lords “of this and that” painted such a threatening picture of the situation in the Baltic provinces for the tsarist camarilla that they naturally found willing listeners among the government of the knout, who “blessed” these lands by imposing martial law right at the start of the year.
One example may serve as demonstrative for many to describe how the Junkers began to champion their “holy rights” with the help of the nagaika. In spring of this year—I cannot recall the date more exactly at this moment in time—one of the mighty of this German Junker clan, Prince [Anatoly Pavlovich] Lieven, set out to “pacify” all peasants in the whole region. With a detachment of Cossacks, he suddenly ambushed the village of Szagarren, which still belongs to the governorate of Kaunas but is close to the border, and ordered all the peasants to be flogged. A bookkeeper by the name of Janson was also whipped on the order of this superior human being. Because Szagarren actually belonged to the estate of the Russian prince Naryshkin and the violent Junker happened to stroll into another wolf’s territory, Naryshkin brought charges concerning the Cossack raid before the Qadi court,* and Prince Lieven was given seven days house arrest. And that is how a German aristocrat does business, with the support of martial law and with the help of the Cossacks.
It is not hard to imagine what hatred and fury have stored themselves up in the hearts of Latvian country people in the course of these last months! The current uprising is over nothing more than repaying their debts. The people’s readiness to use violence exactly matches the long years of violent exploitation and repression by the German Junkers. The brutal “gentlemen” are simply harvesting the hatred that they sowed among their slaves. Prince Lieven, the hero of Szagarren, was, as we see, one of the first victims to be killed. And yet there are also other ways in which the Junkers are harvesting the fruit of their own seed. The long condition of war, houses for Cossacks in the villages—all this has shaken up rural workers politically, and has revolutionized them. This educational experience has enabled the Latvian peasants to quickly grasp what urban Social Democracy had tried earlier with the greatest effort to make clear to them. Now the peasants understand that they must hate both the Junkers and absolutism, and that their closest ally is the urban worker. The atrocities of the rural unrest are the work of the German Junkers, yet the political education crystallizing out of the unrest, and now being strongly expressed, is the work of Latvian Social Democracy. Masses of rural workers are now streaming into our midst under the universal banner of a democratic republic for the whole empire.