During the World War II, about 200,000 citizens of Latvia became refugees due to fear of Stalin's repression. West Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada et al. became their host countries in West. In turn, Latvia was occupied by Soviet troops and became one of the republics of the USSR. In this way, Latvian diaspora after the War was divided into two societies and on both sides of the Iron Curtain had to learn to integrate into unknown worlds where safe life in the interwar independent state of Latvia had become just a memory.

Latvian children had to attend school both in exile and at home, and the new situation required new school textbooks. Since the primer and the first reading book not only teaches to read and write, but also shapes the child's worldview, the canon of values and the collective memory (Grever, Van der Viles, 2017), the creation of primers after the War became an important matter following a question what values have to be embedded into the next generation that will grow in a completely different circumstances unfamiliar to previous generation?

One of the most important issues in the transition situation between war and peace, homeland and exile, liberalism and dictatorship became the ethnic identity of Latvian children - a subjective sense of belonging to a certain group with common history, culture, language and religion, which creates a sense of security, continuity and perception of one’s uniqueness. The sense of belonging (and hence an ethnic identity) becomes particularly important in periods of change and transition (Cohen, 2004). As the textbook is one of the tools of shaping ethnic identity (Cohen, 2004), the narrative of the ethnic belonging of Latvian children became an important issue both in Western exile and Soviet Latvia.

The objective of our study is to reveal the characteristics of ethnic identity in two different worlds – the West and the Soviet Latvia – and, on the basis of comparison, analyze the topical components of ethnic identity in the context of transition situation of the ethnic community.

The theoretical framework of our research is composed by Cohen's (2004) study on the components of representation of ethnic identity. Following this study, we constructed the components of Latvian identity, the representation of which was analyzed in primers and readers for pre-school and primary school. For comparison, we used the Latvian primers in Western exile and Soviet Latvian schools, published in the mid-1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s. Mainly we focused on primers from 1940s and 50s, when the Latvian diaspora was in an uncertain transition situation both in the West and Soviet Latvia. Later published primers were used to illustrate the development tendencies of textbooks. Different editions of eight Latvian primers published in the exile (Nirenberg, Munich, Stockholm, Chicago, New York and Melbourne) and six primers published in the Soviet Latvia (Riga) were analyzed. As representatives of Latvian ethnic identity we chose the following components: (1) common past, present and future; (2) native language and literature; (3) symbols of ethnicity: folk costume, customs and celebrations, folklore, image of homeland and national heroes; (4) state symbols: map, anthem, flag and national holidays. Although Cohen emphasizes religious affiliation as an important indicator of ethnic identity (Cohen, 2004), we abandoned this criteria because Latvians, who are predominantly Lutherans and Catholic, have never accentuated a religious component as an important one of their ethnic identity. As the number of sources used is not large, we abandoned the quantitative analysis, but focused on content analysis using both published texts and images.

In both parts of the diaspora, primers enthusiastically depicted the image of a homeland, namely, Latvia. Homeland’s landscape was praised with almost the same means: the name ‘Latvia’, Riga and the river Daugava was of great importance. However, in exile, the homeland was kept as an image of selective memories, a land of ideal happiness. In its turn, Soviet Latvia was no longer a separate entity, but part of the USSR, which was particularly emphasized in the textbooks. Latvians in exile were looking for security in the past, but Soviet Latvians sought their common identity in the narrative of future, among the “great Soviet nation”. The authors of all the primers relied on Latvian folklore because it had passed the centuries-long test and thus could be seen as a safe topic in the times of change. In exile, folklore helped to create idyllic scenes of the past, but in Soviet Latvia it could also be presented as a mean of propaganda, connecting with the artifacts of Soviet life. In exile and in Soviet Latvia, ethnic identity and its representation in folklore and homeland’s images were defined as a guarantor of security in times of change and transition. However, in both Western exile and Soviet Latvia, Latvian ethnic identity was trapped within strictly set lines. In Soviet Latvia, state censorship severely declared "taboo" themes and bans. In its turn, in exile, ethnic identity, figuratively speaking, was placed in a sanctuary and also in some way limited by isolating it from the real life of the present world.

1.Carrier P., Kabalek K. (2014). Cultural Memory and Transcultural Memory – a Conceptual Analysis. The Transcultural Turn. Interrogating Memory Between and Beyond Borders. Rapson J., Bond L. (eds.), Berlin: de Gruyter, 39-60. 2.Cohen E.H. (2004). Components and Symbols of Ethnic Identity: A Case Study in Informal Education and Identity Formation in Diaspora. Applied Psychology: An International Review. No.53 (1), 87-112. 3.Grever M., Van der Viles T. (2017). Why National Narratives are perpetuated: A Literature Review on New Insights from History Textbook Research. London Review of Education. No.15 (2), 286-301. 4.Erll A. (2011). Traumatic Pasts, Literary Afterlives, and Transcultural Memory: New Directions of Literary and Media Memory Studies. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture. No.3, DOI: 10.3402/jac.v3i0.7186. 5.Kreegipuu T., Lauk L. (2007). The 1940 Soviet Coup-d’État in the Estonian Communist Press: Constructing History of Reshape Collective Memory. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, No.4 (4), 42-64. 6.Plakans A. (2011). A Concise History of the Baltic States. Cambridge University Press. 7.Staris A. (2004). Latviešu skolas un izglītība Rietumu trimdā [Latvian Schools and Education in Western Exile]. Rietumu trimdas latviešu pedagoģiskā doma [Pedagogical Thought of Western Latvian Refugees]. Staris A. (red.) Rīga: RaKa. 8.Van Alphen F., Carretero M. (2015). The Construction of the Relation between National Past and Present in the Appropriation of Historical Master Narratives. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science. No. 49 (3), 512-530. 9.Zake I. (2010). Politics of a Refugee Community. American Latvians. New Brunswick (USA) and London (UK): Transaction Publishers. 10.Zalkans L. (2014). Back to the Motherland. Repatriation and Latvian Émigrés 1955-1958. PhD diss. University of Stockholm.