Language, Individual & Society, Volume 18, 2024

Abstract: In 1940, the Baltic States were occupied as a result of an armed seizure by the USSR, followed by annexation. Prior to the occupation, the Baltic region had a strong agricultural sector. After the occupation, private farms (homesteads) and small farmers’ cooperatives were forcibly merged into collective farms (kolkhozes) and state farms (sovkhozes), which were forms of collective farming in the countryside of the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc satellite states in Europe. Situated on the periphery and comprising the ethnic Baltic populations where they were the numerical majority, the kolkhozes became enclaves where, despite numerous repressive reforms and the utopian management of collective farming, the connection with the pre-occupation national sentiment, commemoration of the cultural and historical code of independent Latvia, remained unbroken throughout the decades of occupation. A significant role in the transmission of these codes and the formation of a decolonial atmosphere was played by nonfiction texts, or documentary prose, devoted to the life (and critique) of kolkhozes and sovkhozes by several important Latvian writers, published in the 1970s and 1980s. These texts coexisted with (1) the national imaginary - ethnographic and cultural-historical images, facts, personalities, and events that highlighted the social and cultural life of kolkhozes and sovkhozes before the occupation, and (2) the mimicry of the Soviet occupation era, or ideological tributes - references to Soviet ideological attributes and political doctrines. One of the most prominent writers who skilfully integrated the national imaginary into the texts dedicated to kolkhozes, or kolkhoz narratives, was Imants Ziedonis (1933–2013).