LATVIAN HISTORY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 39, 14 January 1935, Page 2

LATVIAN HISTORY.

TEXTS MODIFIED AFTER RESEARCH. History books are to be altered, and ! the supposed “700 years of Latvian j slavery,” when Letts were said to be j subordinated to other races, are no longer to be mentioned, according to a statement made recently bv A. Grins, editor of the Latvian Government Journal. Mr Grins has declared that as a result of researches a now view of Latvian history has been established. He maintains that it is untrue tq talk of 700 years of slavery. The period of subordination, in his view, was eertainlv not longer than 200 years. “A't the time when the Knights of the German Order conquered the territory now called Latvia, not one Latvian was ; subject, to bondage,” Mr Grins de- j clared. “He was a free man bearing | th° emblem of his freedom —his sword [at his side. Together with the German knights, the Letts and Lives who lived in this country at the time participated in the battles fouglit for this country.” “The Letts too,” Mr Grins continued, “had their shave in the victory of the German Order over the i Russians under Ivan the Terrible.” | According to the new historical teaching it was- only at the beginning lof the sixteenth century, under the j Poles, that the idea began to develop j that a peasant is bound to his land. At this time the landowners confined the 'peasants to their farms in order to | secure the taxes the peasants had to pav. . Mr Grins declared that even then bondage in its complete form started only with the eighteenth century invasion of the Baltic bv Russia. But in the nineteenth century bondage, was abolished in the three Baltic provinces of Livland, Estland, and Kurland - modern Latvia —due to the intervention of liberally minded Baltic aris- | tocrat.s.