Paper short abstract:

The focus of paper is to look at Soviet Latvian textbooks in the 1920s-1930s. The use of folklore in teaching is ambivalent: on the one hand, they help to maintain Latvian identity, on the other, the use of folklore becomes an ideological tool in a totalitarian system.

Paper long abstract:

In 1918 the independent state of Latvia was founded, but not all Latvians chose to live in the newly established state. Approximately 180 000 Latvians lived in the USSR in the 1920s-1930s: they were a diaspora that, for political and ideological reasons, did not have close ties with the Latvian population, however, they were one of the nationalities in the multinational USSR that tried to preserve their Latvian identity. Latvians in the USSR had their own network of schools, Latvian higher education institutions, periodicals, books and literature, theaters, and amateur circles for both adults and children. One of the ways of preserving "Latvianness" was to develop appropriate educational content, but on the other hand, there was the pressure of the totalitarian regime, which was especially intensified in the 1930s. The focus of my paper is to look at Soviet Latvian textbooks in the 1920s-1930s, focusing on how folklore was taught. All teaching materials integrated folklore texts - folk songs, fairy tales, fables, riddles, proverbs, etc. On the one hand, teaching Latvian folklore could be seen as an attempt to construct a Latvian identity through it, on the other hand, these textbooks use folklore materials and (especially) paratexts as an ideological tool to construct an interpretation of certain texts. As a result, the use of folklore in teaching and the parallel texts are ambivalent: on the one hand, they help to maintain Latvian identity, on the other, the use of folklore becomes an ideological tool in a totalitarian system.