history of Latvia
The history of Latvia began around 9000 BC with the end of the last glacial period in northern Europe. Ancient Baltic peoples arrived in the area during the second millennium BC, and four distinct tribal realms in Latvia's territory were ident ...
was a broad
leftist
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soc ...
social and political movement that followed
the First Latvian National Awakening
The First Latvian National Awakening or the First Awakening ( lv, Pirmā Atmoda) was a cultural and national revival movement between 1850 and 1880 among the Young Latvians, a group of well-educated Latvians, who, opposed to the Baltic Germans, B ...
(led by the Young Latvians from the 1850s to the 1880s) and culminated in the
1905 Revolution
The Russian Revolution of 1905,. also known as the First Russian Revolution,. occurred on 22 January 1905, and was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. The mass unrest was directed again ...
. Participants in the movement were called ''jaunstrāvnieki''.
History
The beginning of the New Current is usually given as 1886, when the movement's newspaper, '' Dienas Lapa'' ("The Page of the Day"), was founded by Pēteris Bisenieks, who ran the
Riga
Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the B ...
Latvian Craftsmen's Credit Union.
Pēteris Stučka
Pēteris Stučka, sometimes spelt Pyotr Ivanovich Stuchka (russian: Пётр Ива́нович Сту́чка, german: Peter Stutschka (in contemporary writings); – 25 January 1932), was a Latvian jurist and communist politician who served ...
, who later headed the Latvian
Bolsheviks
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
, became the editor of ''Dienas Lapa'' in 1888. From 1891 to 1896, the paper was edited by Bisenieks and
Rainis
Rainis was the pseudonym of Jānis Pliekšāns (September 11, 1865 – September 12, 1929), a Latvian poet, playwright, translator, and politician. Rainis' works include the classic plays ''Uguns un nakts'' (''Fire and Night'', 1905) and ''Ind ...
(the
pen name
A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name.
A pen na ...
of Jānis Pliekšāns). Rainis, who became Latvia's foremost dramatist and the literary figure "inseparably linked to the birth of the independent Latvian nation and the struggle for freedom" ivars Stranga was also the leading figure in the New Current. Under Rainis and Stučka—the latter was again editor in 1896-97 -- ''Dienas Lapa'' turned to
socialism
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
; shut down by the Ministry of the Interior in 1897, the paper took a moderate turn under the editorship of the philosopher and publicist Pēteris Zālīte (formerly an editor of ''Mājas Viesis''—see the Young Latvians article) between 1899 and 1903; despite its moderation under Zālīte, the paper was again shut down by the censors, re-emerging in 1905 as the
Social Democratic
Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote so ...
newspaper before its permanent closure.
Evaluation
The historian Arveds Švābe describes the New Current as "connected to the political awakening of the Latvian working class, its first organizations, and the propagandization of socialist ideas.". Most historians point to what the painter Apsīšu Jēkabs called "the beginning of a cleft between the Latvian farmer and his farm hand" in the 1870s, and by 1897 there were 591 656 landless peasants in what is now Latvia (compared to 418 028 smallholders and their dependents).
Their partial urbanization led to a growing proletariat, fertile ground for the ideas of western European socialism, and this coincided with a loss of momentum for the Young Latvians, whose ideas had been enfeebled by
national romanticism
Romantic nationalism (also national romanticism, organic nationalism, identity nationalism) is the form of nationalism in which the state claims its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs. This includes ...
as a gulf grew between the bourgeoisie and the poor, the leading
nationalists
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: T ...
of the era having been arrested and exiled. Rainis smuggled German Marxist literature into Latvia in two pieces of luggage in 1893: the work of
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
Karl Kautsky
Karl Johann Kautsky (; ; 16 October 1854 – 17 October 1938) was a Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theorist. Kautsky was one of the most authoritative promulgators of orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels in ...
. This "luggage with the dangerous contents," as the historian Uldis Ģērmanis called it, was the seed of the Latvian Social Democratic Party.Daina Bleiere, Ilgvars Butulis, Inesis Feldmanis, Aivars Stranga, Antonijs Zunda: ''Latvijas vēsture: 20. gadsimts.'' Rīga: Jumava, 2005.