Kristīne Beķere. Latvijas labā: Politiskā darbība trimdā 20. gadsimta 40.–80. gados. Rīga: LU Akadēmiskais apgāds, 2022

Abstract

The book Latvijas labā: Politiskā darbība trimdā 20. gadsimta 40.–80. gados (For the Good of Latvia: Political Activities of Latvian Exiles from the 1940s through the 1980s), written by the chief editor of The Journal of the University of Latvia. History (Latvijas Universitātes Žurnāls. Vēsture), historian Kristīne Beķere focuses on the political actions of Latvian exiles in the Western world during the postwar, and especially, Cold War era. The purpose of the study is to provide an overview of the activities of the Latvian exiles related to the protest movement against the occupation and annexation of Latvia by the USSR. The book defines many periods of exiles’ activities. K. Beķere has identified the most important activities for each stage of history and describes them in a chronological order. Thus, for example, the author describes the period of the emergence of exile after the Second World War, the strengthening of exile organisations, and the development of political activities during the escalation period of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, and the period since the 1970s (Cold War relaxation or detente phase), which created new more active forms of exile’s international protest against the occupation of the Baltic. K. Beķere’s book marks the increasing attention in historiography towards the history of the Latvian exiles. In recent years, for example, a voluminous book by the US–Latvian historian Andrejs Plakans has been published. The book For the Good of Latvia is one of the important contributions to systematise both – the information about the political history of the Latvian exile community and its important information work in the world mostly during the Cold War era.