The Nationalization of Latvians and the Issue of Serfdom: The Bal ...

From 1940 onwards, there were considerable disruptions due to the war Latvia found itself drawn into. From 1945 until 1991, there were two divergent streams in Latvian scholarship: academics and scholars who formed part of the Latvian diaspora around the Western world, and Latvian, Marxist-influenced scholars writing under the edicts of an ideologically driven Communist political apparatus in the Soviet republic of Latvia. M. Stepermanis’ investigation³³ of peasant unrest and uprisings in Livonia from the period 1750–1784 provides great insight into a dimension of relations between the Latvian serfs and German landholding nobles, despite the Marxist ideological overtures and interpretation of historical events. Given the ideological constraints, Heinrich Strods³⁴ can, nevertheless, be considered a prolific and important writer whose research produced valuable historical and statistical insights that can act as a guide in his breakdown of social, demographic, and other historical information of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Latvia. Thus his work, especially in areas such as Latvian serf income streams outside of agriculture and farming in the first half of the nineteenth century, is highly relevant to any investigation of the Livonian Ständegesellschaft when considering the impact of agrarian and social reforms.³⁵

Since Latvian independence, Strods has continued to publish a number of insightful and important articles and essays on Livonian history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His evaluation positively appraises the Baltic German baron Carl Friedrich Schoultz (1720–1782)—who attempted to introduce reforms of agrarian and social relations on Baltic German landholding manorial estates in Livonia—as an important representative of the enlightened Baltic German nobility.³⁶ In the Latvian diaspora, writers such as Edgars Dunsdorfs,³⁷ Andrejs Johansons,³⁸ and Andrejs Plakans³⁹ were influential, and they wrote on historical, anthropological, and ethnographical dimensions of eighteenth-century Livonia, with particular emphasis on the Latvian serf.

In the time since Latvian independence in 1991, a vibrant and prolific intellectual scene in Latvia has resulted in the strong engagement of Latvian scholars with many of the issues central and peripheral to Livonia’s Ständegesellschaft.