Abstract

In August and September 1987 demonstrations in Riga, Latvia, and in the other Baltic states, Estonia and Lithuania, openly challenged Soviet rule by recalling the 1918 declaration of independence and protesting the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that brought the Soviets back into the Baltic in 1940. In 1988, there were public commemorations of the forced removals of Latvians from Riga to Siberia in 1941 and 1949. These events marked the emergence of a confident and resurgent Latvian National Independence Movement.2 It was in this post-Soviet climate of historical recuperation that the lost children of Latvia appeared as figures of the nation’s origin. Here, we discuss the complex issue of how childhood memory is reconfigured as national memory, and then placed on an international stage to compete with multiple sites and experiences of human trauma for visibility and condolence.