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Paper short abstract

The Latvian folklore revival movement (1970s–1990s) re-valorized and re-imagined rurality as a symbolic escape from Soviet rule. Interest in rural pasts and peasant lifeways provided spaces of alternative identities, cultural agency, and contributed to resistance during late socialism.

Paper long abstract

The folklore revival movement in Latvia (1970s–1990s) is both an emic and etic term that reflects on the heightened interest in folklore and traditional culture in large parts of society. In opposition to the staged folklore performances endorsed by Soviet cultural policy, the movement articulated countercultural creativity and alternative lifestyles. As a form of cultural resistance, it became a part of the Singing Revolution (1987–1991) that contributed to the Baltic states’ eventual independence.

The folklore revival exemplifies what Giustino, Plum, and Vari (2013) describe as “socialist escapes”: cultural practices that provided symbolic avenues of autonomy when physical escape from communist regimes was nearly impossible. In Latvia, the participants of the folklore movement, which were primarily urban youth, imagined and enacted a symbolic return to an idealized rural past. This nostalgia for imagined authenticity fostered both the search for continuity with pre-Soviet traditions and the creation of autonomous spaces outside the ideological framework of the Soviet state.

Central to the movement was the aspiration to embody folklore as a lived practice rather than as a staged performance. Relating to rurality, this was pursued by locating rural farmsteads for seasonal celebrations; conducting fieldwork with elderly residents in rural areas who preserved agrarian knowledge; and, during perestroika, engaging with environmental activism.

This paper investigates how rural lifeworlds were imagined and represented within the folklore revival movement and how such mythologized visions of rurality intersected with broader sociocultural processes of late socialism. The analysis draws on interviews, published sources, and audiovisual materials.