Rebuilding Post-War Britain

Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian Refugees in Britain, 1946–51

Emily Gilbert

• Publisher: Pen & Sword History
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781473860599
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

'Germany wasn't really a place for settling in, because after the war it was pretty devastated, and there wasn't really a chance to start again, so I thought Id come to England. It was a case of people between 18 and 50 and you had to be fit because it was mainly physical work. For men, it was mines and agricultural work and brick factories and women, mainly textiles.''We were thinking it was temporary. We were thinking the war would restart with the west and the east, and that the west would win, and we would be going home. But, it wasn't like that.'After the Second World War, thousands of Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian refugees, uprooted by war and conflict in their homelands, were recruited from Displaced Persons Camps in Germany to fill labor shortages in Britain. This unknown episode in Britain's immigration history is brought to life in this book, through interview extracts and documentary sources. Women were the first recruits to the so-called European Volunteer Worker Schemes, in which 25, 000 Baltic men and women came to Britain between 1946 and 1951, to work in hospitals, textiles, agriculture, coal mining and other undermanned areas of industry. Initially regarding their stay in Britain as temporary, a majority of these Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian men and women remained in Britain their whole lives. Recently joined by more migrants from the Baltic States, this book tells the story of Britain's Baltic communities, from the earliest accounts of their arrival in Britain to the present day.

CHAPTER 1

‘A Wonderful Life’ – Growing Up in the Interwar Homelands

‘I suppose that initial growing up period were the formative years, well, that…sort of instils it into you…you see I had this farming background and the Estonian childhood, growing up in the country…it was very different to anything [in Britain].’

Heino Poopuu arrived in Britain in 1947, on the Westward Ho! labour recruitment scheme, aged just 21. Like many of the refugees who arrived in Britain after the Second World War, he had grown up in the countryside, in Heino’s case, on the idyllic island of Saaremaa, off the western shores of Estonia. In his memoir, Remembering Pussa, Heino wrote about his childhood on the island:

‘I was born and brought up during our political independence, the golden age, which ended with the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union of Stalin in 1940.’

Heino described the village he grew up in on Saaremaa – Koovi – as a stable, close-knit community of just sixty-eight residents, which sat on the shores of the Baltic Sea. This was a community in the old-fashioned sense, where people supported each other, through large extended families and strong relations with neighbours. Heino recalled that: ‘I don’t recall the term loneliness ever being used!’

The Poopuu’s farm – Pussa – was a large farmstead on the banks of the Cove of Koovi and ‘produced corn, a large variety of vegetable and fruit, flax, hemp, hops, meat, dairy products, wool, landed fish….and manufactured most of the clothing, furniture, and implements in use on the farm’. Heino lived on the farm with his large extended family, and in his memoir, he recalled some of the hardships endured by his family, as well as happier times, such as playing with his cousins around the huge windmill, that was jointly owned with the neighbouring farm.

Heino went to school in a neighbouring village and despite harsh environmental conditions, the ‘drudgery’ involved in many of the farming and household chores, as well as the relative poverty of people, it was a happy, idyllic time, when the family and the local community provided help and support in times of need. Heino described it as a ‘virtually self-sustainable life’, which provided the children and young people growing up there with a strong sense of identity, industriousness and adaptability.

Heino’s experiences of growing up in the countryside, captured so beautifully in his memoir Remembering Pussa, mirror that of many of the refugees who later came to Britain. The majority grew up on farms and in villages and recall their childhoods as idyllic, happy times. It was ‘a wonderful life,’ according to one interviewee, that contrasted sharply with their later lives in the dirty, smoggy towns and cities of industrial Britain. There is no doubt that memory and reminiscence have shaped their recollections and may have put a more favourable gloss over the often harsh realities of their lives in the homelands, but these were the memories that were shaped in Britain, and which played such an important part in exile cultures and identities.

Unlike the earlier refugees in the previous chapter who were escaping Tsarist rule and repression, the post-war newcomers had been lucky enough to grow up in newly independent countries; and moreover, countries which had experienced an unprecedented period of freedom, national awakening and relative prosperity.

Prior to 1918, Latvia and Estonia had never existed as independent states in the form we know them today (although Lithuania had enjoyed a brief spell of statehood prior to its submergence into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1387). Indeed, the word ‘Estonian’ only entered the vocabulary in 1860. Their unenviable geographical position sandwiched between East and West has determined Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia’s history for centuries.

It is important to note that, despite neighbouring each other and common histories, the three nations of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were culturally distinct from each other, the result of unique paths of historical development and different foreign influences. Until the thirteenth century, all three contemporary Baltic States had been a collection of independent kingdoms, inhabited by an array of diverse nationalities. The predecessors of contemporary Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians populated various regions in the area alongside other nationalities, many of whom have died out over the course of history. While Latvians and Lithuanians are descended from Baltic tribes in the region, Estonians are descendants of Finno-Ugric peoples, who were thought to have inhabited the region from the third millennium BC. Indo-Europeans were believed to have settled in the areas of contemporary Latvia and Lithuania around the same period, and intermingled with the local populations to form the basis of the Baltic tribes.

Between the thirteenth and eighteenth century, the Baltic region was invaded by several Western nations. The regions now composing Latvia and Estonia both succumbed to a German-led invasion, which resulted in to the imposition of Lutheran Christianity and the enserfment of the peasant populations. During subsequent centuries, different areas of present-day Latvia and Estonia were annexed by various foreign powers. In 1561, southern Estonia (Livonia) was integrated into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, while the rest of the region was brought under Swedish rule. Foreign regimes in charge of different parts of present-day Latvia during this period, included the Vatican, Denmark, Prussia, Poland-Lithuania, Sweden and Russia. Following the establishment of the Livonian State by the German Teutonic Knights in the thirteenth century, in the fifteenth century, Livonia was partitioned and south-western Latvia became the Duchy of Kurland under the suzerainty of the Polish monarchy. The rest of Livonia became a dependency of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and from 1629 to 1721 was annexed by Sweden. Swedish rule lasted until the start of the Great Northern War in the early eighteenth century.

The area of contemporary Lithuania was able to resist the German crusading onslaught, and in 1231, Grand Duke Mindaugas united Lithuanian tribes in the region into a nation, leading to a brief period of Lithuanian statehood. Under the leadership of his successors, notably Gediminas, Algirdas and Vytautas, the Lithuanian state expanded from the Baltic to the Black Sea. In 1387, Lithuanian Grand Duke Jogaila accepted the crown of Poland and established the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This led to the permanent introduction of Latin Christianity into Lithuania between 1387 and 1413. The union with Poland became institutionalised over a number of years, and in 1569, Lithuania was merged into a single state, albeit with some autonomy, which effectively reduced ethnic Lithuania to a provincial status. The result was extensive Polonisation among nobles and gentry, who accepted the Polish language and customs in an attempt to improve and maintain their own status in the Commonwealth. The Polish influence on Lithuania’s history has been one of the key defining characteristics of Lithuania’s past, the influence of which lasts until today, most obviously through the status of Catholicism as the national religion.

During the eighteenth century, the territories comprising contemporary Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia became subjugated to the Russian Empire, a rule which lasted until 1918. Russian annexation transformed the different regions of contemporary Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia into constituent provinces of the Russian Empire. Until emancipation in the nineteenth century, the indigenous peasantry was ruled both by the German land-owning nobility (in Latvia and Estonia), the Polish nobles (in Lithuania), and the Russian State, which sought to Russify the local populations. Mirroring developments in the rest of Europe, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia experienced national awakenings in the latter half of the nineteenth century, which led to the development of the concepts of national cultures and identities. Initially movements for greater cultural autonomy, and spearheaded by the German nobles and clergy in Latvia and Estonia, and by the Polish nobles and clergy in Lithuania, they soon developed into movements for greater political autonomy. Supported by the liberal intelligentsia and the new literate working classes, the latter having developed as a result of emancipation and industrialisation, these national movements demanded autonomy in the 1905 revolution. However, it was not until the collapse of Empire in both Russia and Germany that the opportunity was presented to successfully assert independence in 1918. Independent statehood was finally secured in all three countries in 1920, following the wars of independence.

During the period of independence, political, social and economic reforms were far-reaching, and aimed to remove all vestiges of Russian control, including the powers of the German and Polish land-owning nobility. Politically, all three countries became constitutional democracies, in sharp contrast to the earlier experience of Tsarist autocracy. Democratic systems based on proportional representation were introduced which promoted a proliferation of small parties. However, the democratic experience was short-lived, brought to an end by increasing economic problems and the political instability caused by the large number of political parties. Authoritarianism was established earliest in Lithuania, where in 1926, Antanas Smetona was brought to power by a military coup, overthrowing the democratic state and establishing an authoritarian regime. Smetona’s regime lasted until 1938, when foreign policy failures forced the establishment of a coalition government and gradual democratisation. In Latvia, Karlis Ulmanis dissolved Parliament in 1934 and established an authoritarian regime, called the ‘Government of National Unity’ which he headed as President. In Estonia, from 1934 to 1938, President Konstantin Päts ruled by Presidential Decree partly in an attempt to pre-empt a far-rightist coup. A constitutional regime was re-established in Estonia in 1938.

Despite mixed political and economic fortunes, social reform during this period was significant, and included the expansion of the education system and the introduction of basic social welfare systems. Overall, there was a rise in living standards and wage levels in all three countries during the inter-war period. The inter-war period also saw the dual processes of urbanisation and industrialisation, which had begun under Russian rule, continue. Approximately one-third of the population of Latvia and Estonia lived in urban areas of over 2,000 residents, as did about one-seventh of Lithuania’s inhabitants.

Inter-war Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia had small populations. In 1934, Estonia had a populace numbering just over 1.1 million, while Latvia had a more sizeable population of almost 2 million. Lithuania had the largest number of inhabitants – just under 2.4 million in 1937. Lithuania was also the largest country in terms of area, although the fact that the distance from the northernmost point of Estonia to the southern tip of Lithuania is less than the length of England, gives some impression of the size of the three countries.

Despite their small geographical area, the populations were fairly widely dispersed, although growing urbanisation and industrialisation was leading to a concentration of people in a small number of urban areas. The most striking difference between urban and rural areas was that life in towns and cities was more cosmopolitan and culturally diverse than rural life. In the capital cities, architecture expressed a wide variety of foreign styles and influences, from Riga’s art nouveau architecture, to Tallinn’s Swedish and Danish buildings. Many aspects of culture and everyday life in the cities were reminders of an occupied past and a multi-ethnic present, from the very name of Tallinn itself (meaning ‘Danish castle’), to Riga’s synagogues. Riga during the inter-war period was sometimes described as a ‘small Paris’. Photographs of Riga from this era show well-dressed men and women walking down busy streets, full of shops and cars. A Latvian woman now in Britain, but who grew up in Riga, described the city in the inter-war period in the following terms:

‘…it was a lovely city. …it was a really western city, nice shops and nice cinemas and being capital of Latvia, we had opera house there. We had three theatres, and no end of cinemas and everything happened there, exhibitions… It was, very, very nice there.’

Tallinn, Estonia’s capital was also culturally diverse, with a variety of ethnic groups, and an array of cultural influences visible, particularly in its architecture, from Denmark, Sweden and Germany. As a seaport, and incredibly close to Helsinki, Tallinn like Riga enjoyed a wide variety of foreign influences from abroad.

The new capital of Lithuania during the inter-war period, Kaunas, was not as cosmopolitan or culturally diverse as Riga, although diversity could be seen particularly with Lithuania’s Jewish population, as well as Polish influences, and its membership of the Hanseatic League in the seventh century, through buildings such as the Merchant’s House.

Kaunas was Lithuania’s capital during this period because the geographical boundaries of inter-war Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were slightly different from the present-day. Vilnius was then part of Poland, having been captured by the Polish leader Pilsudski in 1920, during the wars of independence. As a result, Kaunas became the capital of interwar Lithuania. Kaunas lay in the eastern interior of Lithuania while the capitals of Latvia and Estonia were ports on the Baltic Sea (Riga and Tallinn respectively).

All three countries had significant minority groups, many of whom lived in the capital cities. George Kennan, an American diplomat and historian, who was based in Riga during the early 1930s, described how Riga enjoyed a variegated and highly cosmopolitan cultural life, including newspapers and theatres in the Lettish, German, Russian and Yiddish tongues and vigorous Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Russian Orthodox and Jewish religious communities.

The proportions of the total populations belonging to ethnic minorities were approximately one-tenth in Estonia, one-fifth in Lithuania and one-quarter in Latvia. Russians formed the largest minority in Estonia and Latvia (eight and ten per cent of the total population in 1934), and Jews were the largest minority group in Lithuania (seven per cent in 1923). Jews and Germans were also sizeable groups in Latvia and Estonia, and significant Polish and German communities existed in Lithuania.

Evidence suggest that attitudes towards Russian inhabitants during the inter-war period were negative, but that they were regarded as less of a threat than other groups, such as Jews or Germans, primarily because they had less economic power. Russians were linked to the most recent oppressors, the Tsarist Empire, and they were looked down upon, regarded as uneducated and slovenly. The comments of a Lithuanian woman in Britain reveal the negative attitudes towards Russia in independent Lithuania:

‘The attitude in the inter-war period towards Russia was ‘If you’re Russian you’re a communist and that was it’. Russia was bad. Russia was not clever. If you’re a Russian you’re poor, you’re uneducated. Russian was aligned with communism. Communism was bad and that was it. If you were a communist that was the … worst thing you could be, a communist and that was that.’

The interwar period saw an energetic promotion of national cultures and identities in all three countries by the new national leaders, in an attempt to solidify and strengthen national, rather than regional, religious or class identities, which had proliferated previously. Earlier strategies to promote national identities begun in the nineteenth century were intensified.

As in the national awakenings, language played a vital role as a means to solidify and unify the nation. One of the earliest reforms was the recognition of Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian as the official language of the state. Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian language schools were organised, and national literature was promoted. A curriculum was introduced educating pupils about the history and culture of their nation, and nineteenth century Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian poems and novels were read. As the school system was expanded, the classroom became one of the key forums for the consolidation of national identities. Folk songs were printed in school textbooks, which in Latvia were standardised throughout the country from the 1920s onwards. History textbooks linked the child’s own life with that of his or her predecessors, and constructed an identity, which was deeply rooted in the countryside. The different parts of the country were linked together in textbooks, to promote a sense of national unity. The young Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians were not only taught about their own nation, but also about other countries in the world, including their previous oppressors and more respected nations, including Great Britain and Sweden. The Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian states were clearly situated in the world, with charts and statistics comparing their nation’s progress with that of other nations.

In addition to school reforms, arts, education and other cultural endeavours were promoted. Folk traditions, national literature, music, theatre and dance were vigorously supported by the State. The new states were embellished with a variety of symbols and motifs, denoting national identities and imprinting on the mind of every citizen, a series of identifiable national images. Flags, coats of arms and national anthems were introduced as symbols of the independent nations.

A series of festivals, celebrations and religious days punctuated the routine in both town and country and formed a significant component of the culture and annual cycle of life in each nation. These included days marking events in the farming calendar, weddings, births, funerals, national days and name days. Some of these had been marked for centuries, some were new days introduced during independence, and others were old traditions now celebrated freely, having been repressed during the Tsarist years.

Some of the national festivals in the three Baltic States were based on the countries’ ancient pagan past, when celebrations were held marking important dates in the farming calendar. One of the most important of the old traditions which was celebrated freely and with renewed vigour in the independence period was St. John’s Day, an important fertility festival held at midsummer. St. John’s Day was celebrated in all three Baltic countries, but was perhaps most important in Latvia. Jānis, a Latvian man, living in Leeds described the celebrations in Latvia:

‘St John’s Day – that was the most…important thing for everybody in the countryside. Nobody went to sleep that night, until sunrise of course. That’s allowed. That’s allowed by the Latvian tradition. Well of course, where [there] was somebody called name Jānis…they had to stay at home and wait for somebody to call to, you know, they used to come singing in the neighbourhood. And then when that was done they spend about half an hour or so eating and drinking and what have you, and playing music and dancing or whatever and then you go to the next house where there is John…where there is a John in the family, they’re just waiting. They have to provide the beer and the eating and so on.’

New days marking national independence were introduced in all three countries to instil a sense of national pride and nationhood. Latvian Independence Day was celebrated on 18 November, Estonian Independence Day on 24 February and Lithuanian Independence Day on 16 February. However, the significance of these days was initially muted. Heino Poopuu described the celebration of the new National Independence Day in Estonia:

‘February the 24th was declared an annual public holiday to commemorate the Declaration of Estonian National Independence in 1918. This event lacked tradition and had some way to go before being accepted as a proper by the older generation in our community.’

However, in later correspondence he stressed that while ‘older generations in my village certainly did not attend any of the annual Independence Day official ceremonies on 24 February but as a pupil of our local school I was expected to and did take part in these on several occasions.’ He attributed the lack of enthusiasm to the immaturity of independence and the ‘conservatism of the country folk’. Only later, during the Soviet period and in exile, did the National Independence Day...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Prologue – A Brief History of Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians in Britain before the Second World War
• 1. ‘A Wonderful Life’ – Growing Up in the Interwar Homelands
• 2. ‘Life was nothing then. Life meant for nothing’ – War and Displacement, 1939–1945
• 3. ‘We were in heaven!’ – Life in the Displaced Persons’ Camps
• 4. ‘A valuable addition to our manpower’ – The Recruitment of Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians for labour in Britain
• 5. ‘I’ve never seen chimneys like it!’ – Initial Experiences in Britain
• 6. ‘We got disorientated for quite a long time’ – The 1950s
• 7. ‘I’ve got used to being here’ – 1960–1985
• 8. ‘We were living in the past’ – The impact of homeland independence on the Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian communities in Britain
• 9. ‘This is our home now!’ – The migration of Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians to Britain since 2004
• Epilogue – Rebuilding Post-War Britain – The Contribution of Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians
• Endnotes
• Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• Plate section