My LTTE to "The Nation" RE: Mark Ames's "Bush's Bitburg?"

[NewHampshireDem]

I thought it was necessary to point to some omissions from Mark Ames's pice, "Bush's Bitburg?" In his haste to paint the Latvians as willing collaborators of the Nazis and the Russians innocent victims of Latvian prejudice Ames willfully ignores that during WWII, Latvia was twice occupied by Stalin's forces.

I do not argue against Ames's claims of mass exterminations of Jews in Latvia, other than to point out that his estimate of 96% mortality may in fact be low--it very well be that 99% of Latvian Jews were killed. There were collaborators within Latvia, just as there surely must have been in Russia to allow the extermination of more than 3.5 million Russian Jews.

However, the acts of some Latvians do not justify the brutality they suffered at the hands of Stalin. When the Soviets occupied Latvia in 1940-41 under the terms of their non-agression pact with Germany, they began mass deportations of the native Latvians, exiling some 15,000-20,000 or more Latvians.

In 1944 when the Stalinists again 'liberated' the Latvians from Germany occupation, the Latvians merely traded one oppressor for another. In that year alone alone, more than 35,000 Latvians were deported to northern Russian. By 1945, more than 100,000 Latvians had been deported and countless others simply murdered by the Stalinist regime. Between 1944 and 1949, more than a third of the Latvian population was a victim of forced deportation, war, mass murder, or exile. During the Soviet occupation, the native Latvian language and culture was nearly destroyed, and even today make up barely half of their own country's population. Is it any wonder that in Latvia, as with most of the former Soviet republics, nationalism has such a strong appeal?

If Ames wants to ferret out revisionist history, perhaps he could begin in his own country and with his own piece.

Here is a link to Ames's article:

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050523&s=ames

Here you can find my own DU post with, ironically enough, the same title as the reprehensible article.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1767366

<on edit>
I'm really getting sick of hearing Latvia referred to as a "former Soviet republic." Fuck that ... Latvia had a hell of a lot of history before 1945.