{"id":5210,"date":"2013-02-14T13:50:44","date_gmt":"2013-02-14T20:50:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5210"},"modified":"2013-02-14T14:52:58","modified_gmt":"2013-02-14T21:52:58","slug":"the-secret-police-as-ethnographers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5210","title":{"rendered":"The Secret Police as Ethnographers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The next issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies<\/em> will be devoted largely to new forms of Paganism in the Baltic countries, if all goes as planned.<\/p>\n

One article that I have been reading is entitled “The Dievturi <\/a>Movement in the Reports of the Latvian Political Police, 1939\u20131940.”<\/p>\n

This movement itself started in the 1920s\u2014and promptly fissioned. (Insert “Peoples’ Front of Judea” joke here.) But that origin does make it an old-timer in contemporary Paganism.<\/p>\n

Latvia gained its independence in 1919, following the collapse of czarist Russia and Latvia’s own factional war. It became a republic, but a politician named Karlis Ulmanis<\/a> dissolved Parliament and seized power in a bloodless coup in 1934. His authoritarian nationalist government<\/a> lasted until the Soviet Union occupied Latvia in 1940.<\/p>\n

During that time, however, the political police were spying on all political, dissident, and unusual groups, including the Pagans. I don’t want to steal Prof. Anita Stasulane’s<\/a> thunder, but she made an interesting discovery in the national archives: notes on Pagan meetings and rituals made by a police “mole” in the group.<\/p>\n

There is so much there: who attended the meeting, what was talked about, what songs were sung, how the altar was decorated . .\u00a0 .<\/p>\n

Imagine, for example, if someone had infiltrated that Yeshua ben Yusef’s group two thousand years ago \u2014 and that the scrolls had survived and been re-discovered. New Testament studies would sure look a lot different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The next issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies will be devoted largely to new forms of Paganism in the Baltic countries, if all goes as planned. One article that I have been reading is entitled “The Dievturi Movement in the Reports of the Latvian Political Police, 1939\u20131940.” This movement itself started […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[131,201,5],"class_list":["post-5210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-europe","tag-latvia","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1m2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11548,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11548","url_meta":{"origin":5210,"position":0},"title":"Interview with an American Pagan Studies Scholar in Latvia","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 20, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Long-time Pagan studies scholar Michael Strimska has been in Latvia the last few months on a Fulbright, teaching at Riga Stradii\u0161 University. He edited the volume Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives\u00a0 and guest-edited a recent\u00a0 issue of The Pomegranate devoted to Paganism and politics. The university has published\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Europe\"","block_context":{"text":"Europe","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=europe"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5491,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5491","url_meta":{"origin":5210,"position":1},"title":"A Quick Encounter between Fire and Thunder","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 8, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The next issue of The Pomegranate will include a special section on the revival of Paganism in Latvia, a revival that blossomed in that Baltic nation's first period of independence, 1917\u20131940, or between the Russian Revolution, which released Latvia from the old empire, and the beginnings of World War II,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"ogle_002_sm","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/ogle_002_sm1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/ogle_002_sm1.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/ogle_002_sm1.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":7744,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7744","url_meta":{"origin":5210,"position":2},"title":"Paganism Close Under the Surface","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 9, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In central and eastern Europe, and maybe elsewhere, there is a tradition to end a group hunt for deer, boar, and other animals with a ceremony. I have never seen the like in America, but then all my hunting has been with individualistic Westerners \u2014 which is not to say\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"hunting\"","block_context":{"text":"hunting","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=hunting"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11803,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11803","url_meta":{"origin":5210,"position":3},"title":"Book to Explore Paganism in Early Modern Lithuania","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 25, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"I post a lot about old and new Pagan movements in the Baltic nations, a region that I have never visited, although some of my family members have.((One of my older sisters lived the last couple of years of her life in Kaunas, Lithuania, but that had nothing to do\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Latvia\"","block_context":{"text":"Latvia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=latvia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/shrine.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/shrine.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/shrine.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10588,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10588","url_meta":{"origin":5210,"position":4},"title":"Religion News Service: Baltic Pagans Spurred by Conservation","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 2, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"A new article from the Religion News Service, which does not normally acknowledge polytheists, describes the long-standing Pagan revivals in the Baltic republics: The pagan [sic] religions have been spurred especially by a growing awareness of climate change and the rise of conservation movements that tap into a deep local\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Estonia\"","block_context":{"text":"Estonia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=estonia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/webRNS-Baltic-Neopaganism2-053119-807x454.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/webRNS-Baltic-Neopaganism2-053119-807x454.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/webRNS-Baltic-Neopaganism2-053119-807x454.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/religionnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/webRNS-Baltic-Neopaganism2-053119-807x454.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":7137,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7137","url_meta":{"origin":5210,"position":5},"title":"Shai Feraro on Canaanite Reconstructionism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 25, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Israeli scholar Shai Feraro talks about Canannite (i.e., Pagan) reconstructionism in present-day Israel. This is an excerpt from his presentation at the recent conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism in Riga, Latvia. (Wish I could have been there.) He makes a reference to the \"Canaanites\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5210"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5214,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5210\/revisions\/5214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}