Imagining the Nation
Subtitle: History, Modernity, and Revolution in Latvia (Post Communist)
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
Published: September 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 280
ISBN-13: 9780271022031
Subjects: Cultural studies; European history: postwar, from c 1945 -; World history: postwar, from c 1945 -; Political Science; History - General History; History: World; Eastern Europe - General; Government - International; History & Theory - General; Latvia; Post-Communism; Social change; Social conditions; Women
Description: "As Latvia and other former Soviet-bloc countries seek to rebuild and transform their societies, what is the central dynamic at work? In Imagining the Nation, Daina Stukuls Eglitis finds that in virtually all aspects of life the guiding sentiment among Latvians has been a desire for normality in the wake of the "deformations" that marked the half-century of Soviet rule.

In seeking to return to normality, many people look to the West for models; others look back in time to the period of Latvian independence from 1918 to 1940 before the years of Soviet domination. Ultimately, the changes in Latvia and other East European countries are closely tied to a vital reimagining of the past, as the logic of progress long associated with "revolution" is amalgamated with nostalgia for what is gone.

The radiant utopias of revolution give way to widely shared aspirations for a return to the normal in politics, place names, private property, and even gender relations." "Eglitis draws upon published and unpublished documents, campaign posters, maps, and monuments, as well as interviews with Latvians from all walks of life."--BOOK JACKET.