“Riga prided itself on its European veneer, a sort of Soviet Western veneer; every inhabitant of Riga had a story in reserve about how, say, in Ryazan, they had been asked what kind of money you have there. We were proud of our cobblestones, the weathercocks on church spires, pepper cookies (Sic!), Riga Black Balsam, and the cosy cafes—if compared with the glass-fronted boxes of the All-Union—a classic provincialism complex. It was Riga, not St. Petersburg, that was the corner of the world of which it was said: ‘If one is destined to be born in an empire, it is better to live in a remote province by the sea.’”

Pyotr Vail. “Poems About Me”. Moscow: KoLibri, 2006. p. 286.

Born in Riga, Vail has now spent thirty years as a kind of “cosmopolitan without a homeland,” living sometimes in New York, sometimes in Prague. He has written quite a number of books, both alone and in collaboration with Alexander Genis. For that part of the Latvian readership that no longer knows Russian, however, only one is familiar: the study published last year by the “Jumava” publishing house regarding the 60s in the USSR, on the much-hashed-over theme of the “sixtiers.” Vail’s writing style is superficially elegant, occasionally sloppy, and quite often ironically and self-righteously detached. For some reason, it occurs to me that this style—widely prevalent in the ocean of Russian-language texts, easy to read and digest, but then quickly and entirely forgotten—is a direct consequence of the Soviet-era kitchen discussion culture, with the meaning of its consumption of samizdat and tamizdat escalated to the point of symbolism. Back then, many supplemented or even replaced the narrow amplitude of life choices with choices of texts, tearing the texts themselves from their roots and incorporating them into often quite fantastic contexts of individual sublimation of “something noble, unknown.” However, I find the ironic and self-righteous detachment more interesting, which allows and compels Vail to label the pride in the Old Town (in his case—the Old Town of his birth!) cobblestones and everything upon them as a classic provincialism complex. Why provincialism? If we look into the Dictionary of the Latvian Literary Language, we find as the fourth definition of the word “province”: “hist. In Ancient Rome—a conquered territory governed by a Roman provincial governor.” And further, the word “provincial” is explained: “pej. Someone who is backward (usually in socio-political life); someone who has narrow, philistine interests.” It is clear why Soviet-era Riga (and all of Latvia) can justifiably be called a province; it really was a conquered territory governed by provincial governors. In that sense, there is nothing to add. Vail, however, seems to have something else in mind: that strange sensation that signalled to a Russian or Jew from Riga, upon arriving in Ryazan or Moscow, that he was not the same as those around him. Yes, they watch the same television, read the same books, but they speak with a “Baltic” accent immediately audible in Russia, sometimes even with a syntax atypical for Slavic languages. They are different. Is that enough to be provincial—someone with narrow, philistine interests? Latvia (and Estonia as well), of course, were provinces in the Roman sense of the word. It is possible that, looking down from the A4-paper thrones of Brussels clerks, they are still so today. Both the officials who have moved here over the course of more than two and a half centuries since the time of Tsar Peter the Great, and the agents and activists of state and non-governmental organisations currently sent here from “Western democracies,” fulfil the functions of “provincial governors,” and if they notice our territory, our “cobblestones” at all, it is as a trifle, which is ridiculous to compare with the grand colonnades of their metropolitan homelands. But there are others. Looking from the Kremlin, Latvia was an outpost for the fight against the creeping and lurking capitalist world, but looking from Washington and Brussels, Latvia is an outpost for the fight against the terrifying land of bears, Russia, with its unfathomable soul, and to this place—to a location that Americans once gave the name frontier—frontiersmen have always flowed and continue to flow from both sides: people of the border situation. Adventurers, spies, opportunists, sadists who have no greater joy than to torment a native, usurers, pimps. It is no wonder that the much-fabled inhabitants of Piebalga were, at times, born precisely from such imported frontiersmen. That is why we have “The Times of the Surveyors.” Latvians, as is known, are neither hot nor cold about it. While Vail resigns himself to his frontiersman’s provincialism, while conquistadors (as always, as always!) try to swindle our conductors out of their golden batons, trading them for mirrors and combs, the people quietly sing their envious and mournful songs and, if it happens that three gather together, they immediately form a party to fight against the other three.
The article was first published in the April 2007 issue of "Rīgas Laiks" magazine.