The death of ‘Socialism with a Latvian Face’: The purge of the Latvian national communists,July 1959–1962

The purge of the Latvian national communists was the most extensive of the Khrushchev era. This article offers the first comprehensive examination of the purge, based on research in Russian and Latvian archives, and utilizing recently released Communist Party personal files. Previous works rarely proceed beyond the beginning of the purge in July 1959 or provide only a cursory overview. This article, however, identifies patterns in the purge with a comprehensive analysis. The methodology of Arvīds Pel?e, the purge’s architect, is explored, exposing the purge’s six distinct phases, which ousted the national communists and defined Latvian politics for a quarter-century.     

Break Out of Russia: Miķelis Valters and the National Issue in Early Latvian Socialism

This article deals with the political thought of Mi?elis Valters (1874–1968), whose early writings are considered to contain the first clearly articulated argument for independent and democratic Latvia. Until now, Valters's writings haven′t been analyzed in their own historical and intellectual context, being subjected to Marxist and nationalist ‘proleptic mythologies’ instead. However, such an analysis provides us with important insights about the intellectual origins of Latvian political nationalism. Valters's early argument for independent Latvia derives much from the legacy of Russian narodnichestvo and from German liberal legal theory, rather than from Austro-Marxism, as suggested by previous commentators.     

European political thought in the making of Greek liberalism: The second national assembly of 1862–1864 and the reception of John Stuart Mill's ideas in Greece

SUMMARY

In this article, Maria Teresa Guerra Medici introduces evidence to support the view that in Europe some of the earliest examples of the concept of the democratic election of a leader of a community can be found in the rules for choosing the heads of monastic institutions. The article examines the rules that evolved for the election of abbesses by their convent and gives examples of how these rules were applied in practice to ensure that the choices made would be acceptable to the ecclesiastical and lay authorities.     

Islamists against the class cleavage: identity formation and interest representation in the case of Hak-İş in Turkey

One of the central characteristics of current Middle Eastern politics is the weakness of class-based political organizations. While structural explanations of this pattern abound, hegemonic struggles of Islamists to erode the class cleavage have so far been largely overlooked. In order to bring this perspective into the literature, this article studies discourses, affects and policies promoted by the Islamic trade unions confederation of Turkey, Hak-??. After the introduction, I first demonstrate that the identity of Hak-?? has consistently been based on a fantasy of social cohesion and aversion to class-based politics. Building on this, I detail how Hak-?? has developed new economic and political practices, in a deliberate effort to overcome class-based unionism. Finally, I argue that the role of Hak-?? has evolved into representing workers' interests within the framework of the corporatist regime built by pro-Islamic AKP government.     

Europeans of the Peruvian Andes: A Family History, 1860s–1940s

Liberal elites in nineteenth-century Peru were eager to attract European immigrants to help modernise their country. The majority arrived independently bringing commercial skills, while a minority, contracted as colonists, settled in the tropical lowlands. This article focuses on two European communities established in the central Andean region, where immigrants from northern Italy excelled as merchants and families from the Austrian Tyrol became smallholders. Through a reconstruction of one family's history, which draws on personal letters and a photograph, the article explores the experiences, character and socio-economic transformation of these communities and the significance given to European-ness and whiteness.     

Populism in the Manifestos of Latvian Political Parties: Increasingly Used but Ineffective?

It is often stated that we live in an era of populist zeitgeist, namely, that populism today has become part of everyday politics. Despite systematic attempts to investigate the validity of this claim in Western European democracies, the situation in the Baltic states has been overlooked. This article marks the first attempt to investigate the dynamics of populism in the Latvian party manifestos by using novel research methodology to quantitatively estimate how populist Latvian political parties have become over an extensive period of time. Our findings reveal that in the last two decades populism has indeed become more widespread in Latvian party manifestos, yet it does not seem to be very effective and is largely primarily used by electorally unsuccessful parties.     

Negotiating power and authority in the desert: the Arab Bedouin and the limits of the Ottoman state in Hijaz, 1840–1908

This article explores the techniques and strategies used by Ottoman authorities to control the Bedouin with a specific focus on the province of Hijaz between 1840 and 1908. Using primary sources from the Ottoman and British archives, it argues that the Ottoman Empire developed a ‘politics of negotiation’ towards the tribes in its attempt to secure cities and major pilgrimage and trade routes against tribal attack. The principal agents of the empire who made this negotiated governance possible were the amir of Mecca and the governor of Hijaz. As a result of this policy, imperial authorities had to give significant concessions to the tribes, and they thus incorporated them into the province's imperial order. When the Ottoman economy went through a crisis, as in the 1900s, negotiated governance and order faced great problems.