Harry C. Merritt

Tomorrow at UMass Boston, I will give a talk on historical narratives of/memory work by veterans of the Waffen-SS Latvian Legion as an interesting case of "overcoming defeat"

New podcast episode! 🎙️

This month we share an episode from our colleagues at the EUROPAST podcast: "The Battle for Memory: Populism vs. Pluralism in Public History" with Professor Jan Kubik. It's a fascinating and highly timely listen - check it out now! vist.ly/4cd8e

AI Is Hollowing Out Higher Education Olivia Guest & Iris van Rooij urge teachers and scholars to reject tools that commodify learning, deskill students, and promote illiteracy.

Smart people keep saying…

“AI technologies severely impede humans’ ability to learn and retain skills… Rather than expanding our intellectual horizons, these technologies undermine the very conditions that allow us to think for ourselves.”

I suppose it deviates a from the theme, since it is set in a future gynocracy that prohibits lesbian relations (and reproduces asexually), but I would propose the 1984 Polish movie Sexmission as one of the best examples of this genre…

I will be giving a lecture on the Holocaust in Latvia this Thursday at the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center in Providence, RI
bornsteinholocaustcenter.org/event/the-ho...

The Prussian city of Konigsberg is a microcosm for the twentieth century. This week, explore the it's storied legacy as we deep dive with @nicoleeaton.bsky.social into her book, "German Blood, Slavic Soil: How Nazi Königsberg Became Soviet Kaliningrad."
patreon.com/posts/how-konigsberg-141130456

I will be giving a lecture on the Holocaust in Latvia this Thursday at the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center in Providence, RI
bornsteinholocaustcenter.org/event/the-ho...

If I remember correctly, Kauffmann’s inspiration for traveling to Courland (and thus writing the book) was a lustful encounter with a beautiful Latvian-Canadian woman. Such an absurdly French premise, just as cliched as some of his observations about Latvia…

This was screened by Cinebeasts in 2010(?) and the venue had double-booked us so that we had to stop it exactly at the moment when John had returned to Doc's shack in the aftermath of the kangaroo hunt, which was quite a cliffhanger. But an incredible film, more so when I actually finished it...

If you're wondering why one of Superman's antagonists in the 2025 movie is a Radovan Karadžić analog from "Boravia," a seemingly Slavic, onion-domed land of militarism and ethnic hatred, see my Awl (RIP) essay on imaginary Eastern Europe in comic book films:
www.theawl.com/2015/08/the-...

My thanks to @balticstudies.bsky.social for their support in the publication of my book with Oxford University Press, Latvian Soldiers of World War II: Fighting for the Homeland in Nazi and Soviet Service!
bsky.app/profile/balt...

Congratulations to Oxford University Press and @harrymerritt.bsky.social for receiving the AABS Book Publication Subvention! The award will support Harry's monograph, "Latvian Soldiers of World War II." Learn more: aabs-balticstudies.org/2025/07/13/o...

I think it was phrased best as the "privatization of the instruments of coercion" (Jan T. Gross, Revolution from Abroad, p. 117)

On postcolonialism and Westsplaining. Ohh, and Eastsplaining too.

Of course, the utilisation of postcolonialism in CEE, which is not unreasonable in any sense, can easily overplay its understanding of colonisation elsewhere. It's is understandable but must be delivered with due consideration

martindbrown.substack.com/p/on-postcol...

Competative victimhood doesn't quite work if you don't know your history

There's a call for papers going round everybody! Pleased to announce the BASEES Study Group on the Baltic States' third annual workshop on 30-31 August in Glasgow, welcoming submissions from postgrads and early career researchers.

What do you know about Great Britain? Test your knowledge! (from the November 1, 1974 "Foreign Language Corner" of Plēsums, newspaper of the Latvian Academy of Agriculture in the Latvian SSR)

Most Americans now say the government should do more to solve problems

Huge opportunity for a political party that believes government can do good things. Public opinion is finally shifting after 50 years of right wing anti-government propaganda. This isn't the time for cowering and throat clearing www.cnn.com/2025/06/01/p...

Senate Republican JRPG Villain Caucus
bsky.app/profile/bria...

I don't think any of this actually happens without the last ten years of campus panic and I've yet to see anyone even explore that question seriously.

"If people whose ancestors have lived here for a long time...are asked to feel only like tenants here, nothing good will come of it. I am not a tenant in Latvia, I do not rent my room. I am part of this nation and belong to it."
-Valentīna Freimane, "The Law of Antigone"
bsky.app/profile/mkap...

Feels extra bleak that one of Google's top search results for habeas corpus directs you to this utterly useless AI graphic

Mavriks Vulfsons on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 1988

These Latvian veterans did so collectively, as the Association of Latvian Riflemen, in the Popular Front of Latvia or in the Latvian National Independence Movement, or individually, as when Latvian Jewish veteran Mavriks Vulfsons exposed the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1988.

Valentīna Freimane, a Latvian Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust in hiding in Riga, commented that the Red Army "came [to Latvia] as liberators and stayed as occupiers." Yet some veteran Red Army Latvian Riflemen also challenged Moscow's dictates and helped to end the Soviet occupation.

This V-E Day/Victory Day, I am thinking of the Red Army soldiers of the 130th Latvian Rifle Corps who liberated Latvia from the Nazi occupation in 1944/45, some of whom also later contributed to the restoration of Latvian independence from the Soviet Union from 1988-1991.

It’s time to reconsolidate a counterculture and politics against this shit. Science, art, medicine, poetry, philosophy as the beautiful life, the fullness of human civilization, that they want to destroy. Humanism, not cynicism, not slop, not tech “””nerd””” culture

Darkly humorous that liberals spent 2016/2020 lecturing leftists about Weimar Germany and the KPD's shortsightedness ("After Hitler, our turn!") but now the official Democratic Party strategy is to "play dead" and let Trump run wild ("After the midterms/2028, our turn!").
bsky.app/profile/davi...

"May 1st - International Workers' Solidarity Day. In commemoration of the May 1st, 1886 protest by Chicago workers, May 1st, 1889, was declared International Workers' Solidarity Day." (Alnis Mitris, Latvian SSR, 1986)

Come to this court and cry: how the Holocaust ends Published in Journal of Baltic Studies (Vol. 54, No. 2, 2023)

Linda Kinstler's book, Come to This Court and Cry, ably details the twisted history of Cukurs's life and legacy, including the previous cases up before the Latvian Prosecutor General's Office. I reviewed the book for the Journal of Baltic Studies in 2023:
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Latvia again closes case against ‘Butcher of Riga,’ tied to mass murder of Jews - Jewish Telegraphic Agency Some far-right Latvians venerate Herbert Cukurs, whom Mossad agents assassinated in 1965.

The Latvian Prosecutor General's Office closes the case on Holocaust perpetrator Herberts Cukurs, effectively posthumously exonerating him (again), despite copious evidence of his participation in the Nazi occupation's SD Arājs Kommando.
www.jta.org/2025/04/25/g...