Women in Latvia Today Changes and Experiences by Irina Novikova center of the country, is now populated by more than 40 per cent of non-Latvians, mainly, people who moved to m akb rumim h &hmM the country in the post-war period and their oflipring. ap* h mtaurahn #amihNw- The discontinuity, thus, provides an inherently contro- sovi&tjqr ucompapbe Junr phe & comk versial for the " rm~ to past," S P ~ ~ Y from a woman's point of vim, a native woman of Latvia and a postwu settler. In the Soviet period a majority of non-indigenous Tbe endeavour to recreate the prewar Republic of Lacvia bar reuealedproblemutic arpects becuu~e the politics of "regainingnormuIi9" is confronted with a dramatics lb changed Lutuian society. hi4rarcbies poli&ws, konom~ues et so& omt h ccs @mu drs pmpectiues iconomiqws intherrantes et une nouvellc mobiliti socialr. Latvia matured into a national unity within the confines ofthe Russian empire and became an independentstate in the twentieth century. The birth of the nation-state was the result of external fictors-World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917. The young Latvian nation- state underwent political changes from the democratic developments of the 1920s to the setup of dictatorship in 1934 and forced incorporation in the USSR in 1940. This long-term process resulted in changing the economic, social, and gender relations that were characteristic for Latvian society before 1940. Since 1940, the peoples of Latvia have gone through experiences common to the population of the Soviet Union: deportations, the devastation of World War 11, and forced restructuring of the traditional economy and way of life. The restoration of Latvia's independence e n d e d the process of defining the country's 50-year political andeconomic dependencywith the Soviet social- ist system. The democratic endeavour to recreate the nation-stase of the prewar Republic of Latvia through political, economic, and legislative measures has already revealed its problematic aspects because the politics of "regaining normality" is confronted with a dramatically changed Latvian society. The postwar politics of forced industrialization and modernization was carried out in part due to the internal migration of the female labour force from rural to urban areas in Latvia and by inviting women from other territo- ries of the Soviet Union. Industrial urban areas have become highly populated by non-lztvian people. Rip, the capital of ktvia, the largest industrial and cultural . . - people, though engaged in politics and economy,were not integrated in the Latvian cultural and linguistic commu- nity. The Latvian taught in non-Latvian schools was not the language of political, ideological, bi-cultural, social and economic interactions. "Colonizern attitudes were not rare. Sovietization through the politicized Russian language simultaneously promoted the gradual national and cultural identity of its non-latvians with the Soviet socialist system. For Latvians, on the other hand, the Soviet period turned out to be the time of bitter disillusionments and losses. Latvian national history w;ls incorporated into Soviet determinist historiography, and memories of the past were kept in the "counter-reality" of the fimilial circlethe language-protecting sphere and the domain of the maternal. In Soviet socio-political and economic transformation, the homeland-the Mother's space-was becoming de- tached from the nation; and the idea of a traditional home with its fimily attachmentswas losing its historically and socially rooted values. The condition of being Other-to one's own history, own motherland-dominated the national consciousness. Life inlunder the Soviet regime simultaneously romanticized the image of the past-free motherland and shaped a split existence. The woman- mother became a symbolic site of the repressed otherness of the nation to its historical memory; its sociocultural reproductions were blocked by the reality of the Soviet present. A shared drum, however, may easily become utopian. The alternativeimaginarythat stimulates a radical change in the existing power relations cul incorporateand repro- duce the mechanism of repression embedded in these power relations during restructuring. As Nanette Funk argued, it is the tendencies on the level of the totality (the Soviet Union) that stimulatedthe processes in the particu- lars (the republics). These issues are very significant for understanding the present-day political and economic situation and looking into women's experiencesand selfawareness in htvia and the problems confronting a national women's movement in the post-Soviet transitional period. Today women in both ktvian and non-latvian communities constitute VOLUME 16, NUMBER 1