Andrejs Ķeizars is a Kurzeme native from Usma parish, a nationally minded man who has taken a deep interest in, and researched, a period of Latvian history that is often talked about but far less studied, one connected to the Latvian Central Council (LCP). In the final stage of the Second World War, a group of people who might be called the Latvian elite of that time tried to work out how, as the Germans lost ground and the Red Army drew closer, independence could be restored. It should be added that these people were also familiar with the experience of 1918. One aspect of the LCP is its armed wing, the so-called Kurelis Group, which formed in Skrīveri but whose later activity played out in Kurzeme. A. Ķeizars has researched this subject deeply and purposefully. In this connection, a museum dedicated to the Rubenis Battalion was set up in Ugāle some time ago, and the battalion’s encampment site has been restored, from before the battles in which SS units were defeated. Digging further and taking an interest in what became of the Rubenis Battalion’s men after the end of the Second World War– who they were, where they ended up, the research, with history enthusiasts and interested parties getting involved, also led to Kabile and the Battle of Āpūznieki (in some ways a unique battle – 65 dead Chekists against 3 fallen partisans). The battle’s greatest achievement, one that should be told and stressed in almost every history book, is this: after the battle, Soviet power in that area limped along like a lame chicken for half a year, many “istrebiteli” (Soviet destruction-battalion fighters) laid down their weapons, and support for the regime grew noticeably quieter.
Delving into the events of that period in Kabile brought a realisation: the idea of an independent Latvia could not be tied to the Latvian Central Council alone, it had been far more ambitious and wide-ranging, and it continued after the war too. Recognising this, the conclusion was that a museum was needed as close as possible to the site of the Battle of Āpūznieki, one that would give a fuller account of the national resistance movement (people had talked and written about the national resistance before, but there was no single, concentrated source of information). Juris Grasmanis, a Renda local and now an opponent of the Museum of the National Resistance Movement, told A. Ķeizars that the State Forest Service had vacated the former Abava forestry office building, that the premises were empty and available, and had been handed over to the municipality. Locals well remember what the empty forestry office looked like at the time. Andrejs Ķeizars, together with Juris Grasmanis, sorted out the formalities; the municipality handed the premises over to the Rubeņa fonds by agreement, and restoration work began in 2013. Drawing in nationally minded people as the first donors and supporters, slowly, step by step, more and more people got involved in developing the museum, some of them becoming regular supporters. All the restoration and tidying-up work was done on a voluntary basis, much like a talka (a community work party). Starting in 2014, exhibition rooms, a conference hall, storage areas and workspaces emerged from what had been a partly derelict building.
It is likely that more than one person in Latvia has, over the course of life and work, met or come across people who are, quite literally, burning for a particular idea. Take Gundars Freimanis, who initiated the building of the second Īle bunker, or Ivars Zorgenfreijs, who found the funds to restore the Čevers bunker, or Sergejs Maksimovs and Roberts Reblis, who secured the restoration of the church bunker in the Stompaki bog. Andrejs Ķeizars can be described in much the same way. It should be added, and this matters, that none of the men mentioned has an easy character (people often find them difficult to deal with), but what unites them is passion, an idea and a concrete goal.
Time went on, and stories unconnected with the resistance movement began to appear… For example, that the “museum was supposedly being sold off”… Verbal, though non-existent, contradictions were manufactured between the Renda and Ugāle museums; in short, drop by drop, an impression was built up that the museum’s management in Renda “could not be trusted”. The people spreading this (the museum’s opponents) have always stressed their own patriotism, and they are good storytellers and persuaders, and… In this way, with self-invented stories and indirect hints, Andrejs Ķeizars’s image and name were criticised and, quite literally, dragged through the mud, something especially noticeable as the time came to extend the premises lease, when word appeared from nowhere that A. Ķeizars wanted to step down from running the museum in favour of the aforementioned opponents. This was even entered into what was supposedly the minutes of a meeting, minutes that were in fact composed by someone, but… for reasons unknown, it was precisely this incorrect (falsified) protocol that formed the basis for the fairly rapid founding of an association of opponents of the Museum of the National Resistance Movement. The opponents went to Kuldīga Municipal Council, arguing that the representatives of the newly founded association also wanted to take part in the museum’s work and organisational activities. The argument went: Andrejs Ķeizars is an incomer in Renda, while the representatives of the newly founded association are locals who will always be on hand. The result was an absurd situation in which Kuldīga Municipal Council, after three months of dithering, offered the Rubeņa fonds a three-month extension of the lease, with terms in the contract that were, in effect, impossible to fulfil.
At present, the “patriots” have convinced some of the local activists that further involvement in the museum’s activities is pointless, because “someone will appropriate it all anyway” and so on. Worst of all, the strange and utterly short-sighted ambitions described above have ended in nothing for the very people the museum was dedicated to: the members and supporters of the national resistance movement. The museum buildings currently stand empty, there are no tours, and no one tells the story of the years-long heroic resistance. Given that this is the only museum of its kind in Latvia, the artificially created situation looks very bad indeed.
The events of 2025 around the museum suggest that the founders and activists of the newly established association planned to get rid of Andrejs Ķeizars and, with everything already in place, simply move into premises and an exhibition prepared by others. No one had expected the exhibition to actually be moved out (since there is no longer a lease for the premises). It is possible that someone at Kuldīga Municipal Council does sense that the situation could turn into a serious scandal, because any extension of the lease, or any clarity at all about what would happen next, was, quite simply, left to stew for eight months, and as a result Latvia’s only Museum of the National Resistance Movement has moved out of the premises it had occupied until now.
It looks as if the opponents will not be able to create anything similar, and in any case that would take years. Locals, colleagues and partners know Andrejs Ķeizars’s character very well; as noted, it is not a simple one, but his passionate conviction about the idea is compelling, and it has produced results. Every eiro donated to the museum has turned into something tangible that visitors and supporters could actually see. It should be added (and in situations like this it is usually forgotten) that A. Ķeizars has also put a considerable amount of his own personal funds into the museum, something which, unfortunately, interests no one.
A vivid and important trait of Andrejs Ķeizars’s character is a strong national identity, which is becoming ever rarer nowadays but remains, and will remain, very important. People whose great-grandfathers, grandfathers and fathers suffered under foreign powers, or took part in the fighting, have supported the museum’s work. For those with Latvian roots this matters, because it stands in contrast to mere idle talk. If we recall the recent, invented and made-up attacks on Egils Helmanis, who honoured Vilis Janums in Ogre, it is worth pointing out that, in substance, the Museum of the National Resistance Movement did similar work. It should be added that the museum’s activities have repeatedly tried to look at the resistance movement and the situations connected with it from a different angle, since war almost always also means great chaos, which only later generations are left to make sense of.
To keep raising these issues in Latvia takes a fair amount of enterprise and, it must be said, even courage, because resistance to bringing this kind of information to light still feels quite strong; we see this often enough. It may be that certain parties’ ideology has no interest in the national resistance, and that this is felt outside Riga too, since, as the saying goes, what matters in Riga is not always what matters in the regions, and vice versa. Perhaps in this case the voters of Jaunā Vienotība and the Nacionālā Apvienība will judge it correctly, since it was precisely representatives of these parties on Kuldīga Municipal Council, together with the ideologues of the newly formed association, who decided the course and the means of destroying the museum.
When we agreed to talk, you mentioned that around Renda, one way or another, two museums have come into being, or more precisely two organisations – the Museum of the National Resistance Movement, which we have known for quite some time now, not least because the museum uses the former Abava forestry office premises, and the association “Renda National Resistance Movement Museum”, which is in fact a group of people who supposedly want to do something in connection with the existing museum.
You’ve spotted and named the nuance precisely – there is the Museum of the National Resistance Movement, which operated in the former Abava forestry office building, and the so-called opponents of the museum – the Renda National Resistance Movement Museum. At one time we were all like-minded people. (Was it really all fake?)
Am I right in understanding that the former Abava forestry office building, and the outbuilding next to it where the exhibition was housed, now stand empty?
If you go there, you will find empty buildings and bare walls. Exactly right!
Who exactly makes up your opposition, what do they research, what are they interested in? Have other national partisans or another resistance movement come to light?
I can’t say that the opponents research anything. What they want is to argue. It should be added that our opponents, who use the word “museum” in their name, don’t actually have a museum at all, only the word – “museum”. Over the years, a few of the so-called opposition figures have taken part in the museum’s work now and then (mainly practical, hands-on tasks).
Several years ago, when visiting the Renda area, the museum team seemed a fairly united group, proud of what was then (and still is) Latvia’s only museum dedicated to the national resistance movement, built with their own hands. One vivid line from the guide’s account has stayed in my memory – a great deal is said about the grim post-war period, the deportations, the collective farms and so on, while forgetting that there were plenty of people who did not accept the situation, who fought and resisted; it’s important to remind people of this, to tell the story, to talk about it loudly and often.
The reasons for the disputes or the split aren’t clear to me either, although I’ve had to think about it a great deal. One – ambition, another – simply foolishness, a third – perhaps some material interest. On that last point, I’ve heard plenty of talk about taking over the museum; I sense that the opponents see the museum only as the objects sitting in the display cases, that is, the material side, not the message, not the intellectual side, not the collected and presented information. Museum pieces, at somewhere like the Ikšķile market, do carry a certain value, which could run into the thousands of euros.
The Museum of the National Resistance Movement (hereafter – the museum) belongs to the Rubeņa fonds. A nodibinājums (foundation) has no members as such, only founders, who in turn appoint a board that manages the property belonging to the foundation. I suspect the troublemakers assume a foundation is almost the same thing as a biedrība (association), which it certainly is not.
The Rubeņa fonds manages two museums – the so-called small one, dedicated to Lieutenant Rubenis’s battalion and located in Ugāle, and the large one, also dedicated to the post-war resistance movement, located in Renda. Both museums have been, and continue to be, built on a voluntary, community basis; not counting people who have helped us once or twice at various talkas, no fewer than 200 people from different parts of Latvia, mostly from Kurzeme of course, have taken part in creating the museum. The great majority of the museum’s exhibits (around 300 items) have reached us by various routes, but all of them are donations; we have around 40 donation agreements, though unfortunately none of the donors are among the opposition.
What exactly happened in 2025? If I understand correctly, the time came when the lease with Kuldīga Municipal Council for the use of the premises (the former Abava forestry office) needed to be renewed.
We are now nine months on since we submitted our application (on 12 May) to Kuldīga Municipal Council, asking to extend our use of the premises. In that time we have not received a clear answer; there have been meetings, arguments, sharper exchanges of words, an exchange of letters, press interviews and newspaper articles. Kuldīga Council and the newly formed association have built themselves a strong tandem, and it’s working.
As is well known, Kuldīga is a jewel of Latvia, whose brand also rests on restoring and preserving historic buildings, so questions of history are hardly foreign to the municipality.
Stepping back a little from the question of possible ambitions: recently I came across what I think is the best doctoral thesis on raiderism written in Latvia to date; its author, Jānis Joksts, examines the problem thoroughly and in detail. Reading it, I noticed certain parallels with our own situation. How do you get hold of property that belongs to someone else? You can scheme, you can smuggle your way in, you can arrange to be gifted it. Buying it, it seems the most straightforward solution of all, apparently occurred to no one here.
As is well known, raiderism has reached serious proportions here, but the law-enforcement bodies aren’t prepared to fight it properly. Reading the thesis, I concluded that I had ended up in a similar situation: “I own something, I can prove it, but there will be an opponent trying to persuade everyone that my proof is wrong, faked, arranged,” and so on. The person organising a raid wants to turn the situation 180°, doing everything possible to convince as many people as they can what a crook the current owner supposedly is. Raiderism is, in a sense, an absurd business.
The situation I’ve described came to a simple end – on 31 October we moved out of the museum premises, and with that any relationship with Kuldīga Municipal Council came to an end too. Naturally, moving out, sorting and packing also cost money – five large lorries, ten small vans, several thousand euros in all. My colleagues and fellow alumni are ready to raise donations for a new exhibition somewhere else. The exhibits have been split up across several locations. Given how insecure the situation is, with the rule of law effectively ceasing to apply and unique items in our care, it was necessary to keep them safe.
Since Kuldīga Municipal Council and the State Police’s North Kurzeme precinct did not respond to the Rubeņa fonds’s complaints about the new association’s misconduct and possible falsification of documents, and since the opponents’ arsenal of tactics came to include damaging locks, breaking down doors and stealing the Rubeņa fonds’s property, we moved the most valuable exhibits to avoid further provocations. We decided to inform the prosecutor’s office of the transport routes and timing.
The opposition figures, who had simply been hoping to get their hands on the exhibition and the rest of the museum’s collection, were very surprised by how quickly we acted.
How does Kuldīga Municipal Council explain its indecision – the museum has been operating, that much is known, so why the hesitation?
…because a second association has appeared, there is no other explanation. The museum’s contribution and its work up to now are simply never touched on in the discussions.
People say the current chairwoman of Kuldīga Municipal Council has a very good relationship with the family of the loudest opponent. In my view, the hesitation happened, firstly, because they were waiting for the second association to be established, and secondly, because they listened very attentively to the second association’s claim that they were supposedly not being let into the museum, which is not true, and thirdly, because a myth is being kept alive that the “outsider” Ķeizars – who came from Ugāle – “has now gathered everything up and will sell it off nicely”, while the real patriots of the museum are the ones who now, with everything ready-made, want to come in and get to work. The exhibition has not been sold to anyone; for every one of the past years I (Andrejs Ķeizars) was ready to work, and quite literally to fight, to keep going in what is for now an empty building, and to carry on building the museum.
There is also a third building near the museum, belonging to Latvijas valsts meži, and talks began about the possibility of acquiring it for the museum, in order to create a Renda local history museum. Why? While researching the national resistance movement, one thing after another kept surfacing, like mushrooms after rain: the story of Renda’s rich past. For instance, in the time of the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, Renda had metal foundries and gunpowder mills. By working actively in the parish, talking to people, and asking about the materials and possible exhibits they had, a great deal could be achieved. Unfortunately, with the uncertainty created by the municipal council, the question of expansion has not been taken any further.
To sum up, it must be said that, as a result of Kuldīga Municipal Council’s attitude and deliberate indecision, a significant page has been torn out of our opportunities for patriotic upbringing and education, something that is unacceptable given today’s geopolitical situation.
Have historians not intervened in this absurd situation?
They have. Uldis Neiburgs, director of the Institute of Latvian History at the University of Latvia, took part in one of the meetings held at Kuldīga Municipal Council and set out a professional historian’s view. The heads of the Latvian War Museum and the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia have also stated their positions.
How is the situation seen in Renda parish?
Local supporters of the museum say that one particular incident sealed their attitude to the new association. On 1 June this year, the National Soldiers’ Association was re-established in Kuldīga, with the founding of a Kuldīga branch. People who had worked at the museum also took part; it was a patriotic event, and we watched a film about Eduards Pāvuls.
On 3 June a cyclist rode up to the museum, a tablet fixed to his handlebars, lots of bags on him. He comes over and says he’s from the USA. It turns out he’s from Washington, and his grandfather took part in the war, fought in Normandy. The American had recently toured France, looking for the places where his forebear had fought. Digging into historical accounts, he found the story of Kurzeme, where the Germans held out right up until the end of the war (the Courland Pocket). How so? He’d come to Latvia planning to make a big loop – starting in Vaiņode, going to Lestene, Zante, and from there driving through the forest to reach our museum, which is marked on the map of the Baltic states’ military heritage. During the two hours he spent at the museum, the visitor filmed and photographed everything, and was pleasantly surprised that, quite literally in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a forest, there was a museum like this, telling the story of the resistance from 1940 to 1990. On the museum’s ground floor there was an exhibit – a partisan bunker, with mannequins dressed in partisan clothing. While telling the story, the guide notices that… the mannequins have no hats on. It turns out that one of the people at the 1 June event decided the hats were there for the taking… There were four flags by the museum, and the “patriots” took those too.
The American wrote a glowing review in the guestbook before heading on to Sabile and Tukums. Why tell this story? Here is a person spending a whole month in Latvia, taking a genuine interest in important pages of our history, while we, like idiots, are burying a good thing. It’s shameful!
There’s also the important question of the gift from Ukraine’s 14th Brigade to the museum, received in the summer of 2024. Who took it, and when?
A gift from Ukrainian soldiers is also just a gift; who took it, and for what purpose, is not known. All we know is that the Ukrainian gift disappeared after one of the “patriots’” events.
Before we started talking, you mentioned that you’ve been criticised over Aivars Lembergs’s attendance at the opening of the museum’s second building (the exhibition).
For the opening of the museum’s second building, marking the centenary of Latvia, we invited the heads of all the surrounding municipalities – Tukums, Talsi, Ventspils, Saldus, Kuldīga – to attend. A. Lembergs came too. On that point I’ll add that the public doesn’t support a good many of his actions, but it isn’t only the picture-perfect good boys who defend the homeland in war.
In the Rubeņa fonds’s early years, he was one of the first, and one of the most interested, visitors to exhibitions and lectures on the Kurelis Group, held at Ventspils’s main library and museum.
Is there anything you’d like to add to close the conversation?
I’ve heard the view that some of the officials caught up in this mess could have handled the mandate given to them by the public more thoughtfully, but that’s for the residents of the municipality themselves to judge. As for myself, I can say that setting up the museum at its new address will take time and energy. It won’t be boring!
Photographs courtesy of Andrejs Ķeizars, the Rubeņa fonds and zemeunvalsts.lv
