Riga

“ I was conscious of a peculiar thrill on coming into contact with Russian officials, whom I had instinctively detested since the days of my sympathy with the Poles as a boy. It seemed to me as if the harbour police must read enthusiasm for the Poles in my face, and would send me to Siberia on the spot, and I was the more agreeably surprised, on reaching Riga, to find myself surrounded by the familiar German element which, above all, pervaded everything connected with the theatre. ”

“ Livonia was begging for help, but she was not quite open in her dealings yet. The Polish army, valiant but undisciplined, might not be equal to the task. To have Riga would be a good thing; but what wasthe use of Riga without ships, without a fighting and a merchant navy? Sigismund, a born diplomat, dreamt of a league which would unite the Scandinavian Powers and the Hanse towns under his own direction; a cunning politician, he sought to provide himself with the weapons he lacked—regular troops, ports, and a fleet. ”

“ Perhaps Germany does not know this, for she seems not to know anything about the hearts and minds of any people. The mechanics of nationality she knows and understands. The psychology of it she never understands. However, I do not believe that Germany’s recent attack and partial conquest of the islands before Riga are a prelude to a march on the capital or on Moscow. What Germany probably wants is the splendid loot to be found in Courland and Esthonia. Riga, which is a city of 400,000 inhabitants, is, next to Petrograd, the most important port on the Baltic Sea. ”

“ Returning northwards and continuing the journey to the other side of the Baltic, the dominions of the Grand Duke of Muscovy would not be reached immediately. Riga, the port most usually aimed at, belonged to Poland; the alternative harbour of Revel to Sweden. The choice of Riga is another instance of the contemporary preference for travelling by water rather than by land. However far out of the straight line between Danzig and Moscow, it was both the nearest coast town to the latter and also at the mouth of the river, the Dwina, which is navigable for the longest distance west of Moscow. ”

“ Having direct railway communication with the fertile parts of southern and south-eastern Russia, Riga has become the second port for foreign trade on the Baltic, ranking next after St Petersburg. The port freezes on an average 127 days every year. The larger ships cannot reach Riga, and are unloaded at Ust-Dvinsk (formerly Dunamünde) . By no means all the trade with the interior is transported by the railways; no inconsiderable portion of the goods is carried by water. ”

“ She began by instigating the inhabitants of Livonia to insist upon the fulfilment of an ancient convention, by which the Courlanders were obliged to bring all their merchandises to Riga: certainly a very strange and hard condition, by which a nation, that had on its coasts excellent harbours happily situated, should be obliged to go, at a great expense, to embark the products of its soil in a foreign city. ”

“ Yet it would be unfair to say they were all like that, for these Baltic peasants were sturdy fellows enough, and, I should say, hard fighting men.
In Riga we put up for three or four days, waiting for a train into Russia and permission from Soviet representatives in that city to cross the Russian frontier. In spite of our visas from headquarters, those Riga Bolsheviks were extremely insolent and put up a blank wall of indifference to our requests for railway facilities. There seemed to be no chance of a place in any train, and very little chance of a train. ”

“ The province was, at that period, virgin soil sparsely inhabited by a Finnish population possessing neither cohesion nor historical consistency, and, consequently, docile and easily assimilated. Everywhere else—all along the Baltic coast, in Esthonia, in Carelia, and in Courland—though the Swedes might be driven out, the Germans still remained firmly settled; the neighborhood of their native country and of the springs of Teutonic culture enduing them with an invincible power of resistance. Riga in the present day, after nearly two centuries of Russian government, is a thoroughly German town. ”

“ And then, if a girl feels herself tired, or wants to marry a respectable man, there will always be at her disposal not a large, but a sure capital. So is it done in the best establishments in Riga, and everywhere abroad. Let no one say about me, that Emma Edwardovna is a spider, a vixen, a cupping glass. But for disobedience, for laziness, for notions, for lovers on the side, I will punish cruelly and, like nasty weeds, will throw out—on the street, or still worse. Now I have said all that I had to. Nina, come near me. And all the rest of you come up in turn. ”

“ When we reached Riga, we learned that two hundred and forty peasants had been waiting on the dock two days, waiting and waiting for the ship from America. Not waiting for food, for Riga was not in a famine province, but waiting that they might not miss the opportunity and the honor of unloading the American ship that had brought food to their unfortunate brothers in the interior. As soon as they could get into the hold of the ship, one hundred and forty of them began the unloading. They worked night and day, without rest, determined to unload the entire cargo themselves without help. ”

“ In the great Baltic port and its neighbourhood there were 30 depôt battalions, 8 squadrons, and some Cossacks and field artillery, which, with garrison troops, totalled perhaps 14,000 men, sufficient to defend the fortifications and outlying places, but not to furnish any considerable detachment for the field. Riga was furthermore defended by Russian and English gunboats and bomb-brigs; and naval assistance to almost any amount was available from the British Baltic fleet, should it be necessary. Riga was practically secure against any but a very large army. ”

“ The war with Poland which Gustavus resumed in 1621 was a much more difficult affair. It began with an attack upon Riga as the first step towards conquering Livonia. Riga was invested on the 13th of August and surrendered on the 15th of September; on the 3rd of October Mitau was occupied; but so great were the ravages of sickness during the campaign that the Swedish army had to be reinforced by no fewer than 10,000 men. A truce was thereupon concluded and hostilities were suspended till the summer of 1625, in the course of which Gustavus took Kokenhusen and invaded Lithuania. ”

“ The city imagines that the end of the world has arrived. Of the young girl herself they found a foot here, an arm there, a leg elsewhere, and fragments of flesh pretty well everywhere. It was never known what had become of the hundred schellings that were lying on the table or of the furniture. One servant-girl was dug out from the ruins without a hurt; she was more fortunate than the brother-in-law of the burgomaster of Riga. They managed to drag him out by sawing some rafters beneath which he was buried, but he died of his wounds on the third day. ”

“ Just previous to the fall of Warsaw the eastern front, roughly speaking, was formed by the two sides of an equilateral triangle, with the northern side starting from a point on the Gulf of Riga, about forty miles northwest of Riga, and with the southern side starting from Chotin on the River Dniester in Russian Bessarabia, very close to the point where that Russian province touches Rumania and Galicia. ”

“ A few weeks later the storm burst, and Riga reeked with fire and carnage, as did many another city, town, and village, from Petersburg to Odessa.
I discerned the same ominous state of things—the calm before the storm—at Dunaburg and Wilna, but it was not until we had left the railroad and were well on our two days’ cross-country ride to Zostrov that I became acquainted with two important ingredients in that “seething pot” of Russian affairs,—to use Mishka’s apt simile. Those two ingredients were the peasantry and the Jews. ”

“ I shall pass rapidly over the rest of my journey from Riga, across Courland and Lithuania, as far as the Prussian frontier, and shall only say a few words about the new profession I assumed on quitting St. Petersburg. The character of a bohomolets could not any longer serve me, now that I was going in a contrary direction from Novgorod, and I was also about to cross countries which, like Courland or Samogitia, were either of Catholic or Protestant beliefs. ”

“ The task of a Reich commissioner with his seat of office in Riga will therefore largely be an extraordinarily positive one. A country which 700 years ago was captured by German Knights, built up by the Hanseatic League, and by reason of a constant influx of German blood together with Swedish elements was a predominantly germanized land, is to be established as a mighty German borderland. ”

“ Livonia carries on a large export trade, especially through Riga and Pernau, in petroleum, wool, oilcake, flax, linseed, hemp, grain, timber and wooden wares; the Dvina is the chief channel for this trade.
Education stands on a much higher level than elsewhere in Russia, no less than 87% of the children receiving regular instruction. The higher educational institutions include Yuriev (Dorpat) University, Riga polytechnic and a high school for the clergy. ”

“ At noon a village of some size was reached, Riga by name, and here the passports of the travelers were demanded by a bearded Russian officer who stopped the sledge before the military post in the center of the town.
He glanced over the document with sudden interest, whispering to several companions standing near, and then handed it back to Sandoff.
“If your excellency wishes a good hotel,” he said, “I can direct you to one—or perhaps you would prefer the hospitality of the barracks? The best we have is at your service. Our commander, Colonel Nord, is absent, but will return before evening.” ”

“ In the north the King of Poland was installing himself as lord and master on part of the ancient possessions of the Order, and proclaiming himself suzerain of them all. Riga, while submitting to the same authority, remained in theory a free city of the Empire, and so preserved a shadow of independence. The Swedes kept Revel and Harrien. Oesel, Wiek, and Pielten were subject to Magnus. And the Muscovites, established in the Bishopric of Derpt, in Wirland, and along the Lettonian frontier, were preparing to dispute the ownership of the whole country with all its other occupants. ”

“ They are chiefly in southern Russia. The fair of Riga is an exception. The fair of Kiakhta is in Asiatic Russia, as are also those of Irbit and Yekaterinburg. I shall first notice the smaller fairs, and finally that of Nijni. ”

“ German influences prevailed; Albert took Dorpat, made it the seat of a new bishopric, and organised the whole country ecclesiastically until his death in 1229; although it was not until 1255 that Riga became the Metropolitan of the Livonian and Prussian Churches. The Order of the Sword ceased to resist, and in 1237 it merged itself in the Teutonic Order in Prussia. The conversion of Livonia was followed by that of Semgallen in 1218, and finally the inhabitants of Courland, threatened on all sides, accepted baptism (1230) as the only alternative to slavery. ”

“ While she has written novels and verse of considerable merit her chief reputation rests on her dramatic works: Ilga. Heteras mantojums. Spriditis (fairy tale) . In her Dzelzs dure (The Iron Fist) she gives some remarkable descriptions of conditions in Riga in 1918-19, during the German occupation. ”

“ "Home to your own people. How nice! I have no people to go to. I have one sister, who lives with her husband at Riga. She is my only relation, and I never see her." ”

“ It was not till 1710 that the conquest of Courland, with the remainder of Livonia, including the important harbours of Riga and Revel, gave to Russia that free navigation of the Baltic sea which Peter had longed for as the greatest benefit which he could confer upon his country. ”

“ But the eastern front proper is really that region where the Teutonic allies and the Russians opposed each other, forming a fighting line almost a thousand miles long. It stretches from rugged old Riga on the shores of the Baltic Sea in the far north, down through Poland to the Carpathian Mountains, touching the warm, sunlit hills on the Rumanian frontier. When the total losses of the Great War are finally counted it will probably be found that here the heaviest fighting has occurred. ”

“ Religion and Instruction.—The majority of the population in Latvia is Protestant, but in Latgale and one district of Courland there are also many Roman Catholics, while in Riga, Windau and south-east of Livonia there are about 200,000 Greek Orthodox Letts. Jews form about 4.29 per cent. ”

“ The manufactures are insignificant, and the poorer classes support themselves by gardening, boat-building and the flax trade, while the merchants carry on an active business with Riga in corn, flax, hemp, tobacco, sugar and timber. ”

“ A complete cultural autonomy was enjoyed by Estonia and Latvia as well as by Lithuania; their art and their theaters were active all through these years; many faculties of the university at Dorpat functioned and so did some faculties in Riga; the judicial sovereignty of these countries was under the power of the indigenous administration—national directorates as they were called—with all the authoritative departments necessary for the administration. ”

“ SE of Riga;
home of Bearslayer and his foster father,
Lielvardis.
Lielvardis [Lee-ell-var-diss] : The Latvian Lord of Lielvarde; foster father
of Bearslayer.
Liga [Lee-gu] : The Goddess of Song.
Ligo [Lee-gwu] : Sing! (midsummer songs) .
Ligusoni Priests [Lee-gu-swon-yee] : People selected to lead the (pagan)
midsummer rites at the Azure Mountain.
Livian lands: The lands of the Livs: In Western Latvia, and
thus the first area occupied by the Germans.
Livs: A Finnic (i.e., non-Latvian) people who lived
along the shores of the Gulf of Riga and the
Daugava estuary.
Lucifer: The Devil. ”