The Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation often accepted donations in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, or it bought items and collections that could not be displayed in the museum’s permanent display but which had a historical and cultural value and were a testimony to pre-Soviet Latvia.
Research Archives of the Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation
Istorijat zbirke
In the immediate post-Second World War period, efforts at preserving cultural values/artefacts from independent Latvia were often considered by the Soviet authorities as a political transgression, if the artefacts were connected with people or organisations that were politically suspect from the regime’s point of view. The routine 'cleansing' of undesirable artefacts in museum collections took place in the 1940s and 1950s, and the acquisition of new ones was virtually impossible. Attempts to preserve these artefacts could end in a criminal investigation and persecution, as happened in 1946 with several employees at the Museum of the History of Latvia. The situation changed a little in the mid-1950s. In the more ‘liberal’ climate of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation often accepted donations or purchased items and collections which could not be displayed in the museum’s permanent display, but which had a historical and cultural value. When the owners of these items and collections were politically unacceptable people (such as the wife of the well-known official of independent Latvia General Jānis Balodis), the items were purchased under other people’s names, and the donors were registered just as ‘N.N.’ Although the management of the museum, and the Ministry of Culture, which had to approve all purchases, were politically reliable people from the point of view of the Soviet regime, they understood that material evidence about independent Latvia had to be preserved. Part of this policy of tacit approval was the acceptance of the Grinbergs-Grosvalds family collection, a collection of works by the photographer Vilis Rīdzenieks with a picture of the proclamation of independent Latvian statehood on 18 November 1918, and a collection of negatives by the photographer Krišs Rake with several thousand pictures of members of different state and NGOs from independent Latvia.
Opis sadržaja
The research archives of the Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation are a testimony to the everyday resistance by museum employees against the political intolerance of the Soviet regime regarding policy on the formation of museum collections. Although most employees of the museum, and the Ministry of Culture, which had to approve all purchases, were not involved in dissident activities, there was a tacit agreement that artefacts that were important from a historical and cultural point of view had to be preserved. In this way, for example, a photograph of the proclamation of the independence of Latvia on 18 November 1918, from the collection of the photographer Vilis Rīdzenieks, was preserved, although under the Soviet regime it could not be displayed. At the end of the 1980s, when the movement for the restoration of independence started, these artefacts became very important, and were displayed at exhibitions and published. The research archives comprise documents about the purchase and donation of such collections and artefacts, and how it was done.
