Paper short abstract:

Paper focuses on the life story of Peteris Jansons which reveals memories, characteristic not only to the first generation refugees. Jansons was also recruited by the Latvian Central Council as a ferryman for their organized refugee boats between Sweden and Latvia.

Paper long abstract:

Personal narratives, including life stories, still hold particular importance in the former totalitarian countries, also Latvia. The conditions for developing a collection of life stories and for studying oral history were set in place by the late 1980s, when the country experienced the Atmoda (Reawakening). The long years of keeping silent had finally come to an end and people began talking about all they had experienced, thereby creating a multi-voiced counteraction to Soviet-era history.

The Latvian exile communities were one of the most ideologically misrepresented topics during the Soviet era, only after the Atmoda it was finally possible to talk about them freely. How people felt when they left Latvia? What were they thinking? How did it happen? How did they adjust themselves in the new countries of residence? What did it mean to be an exile?

Proposed paper focuses on the life story of Peteris Jansons which reveals memories, characteristic not only to the first generation refugees: life period spent in Latvia; disruption of the customary life and the escape; the first uncertain steps in a foreign country and the gradual adaption. In Sweden P. Jansons was recruited by the Latvian Central Council as a ferryman for their organized refugee boats. As such, he crossed the sea for 28 times. The ferrymen had a secret mission as well - they had to deliver messages to the Swedish Intelligence, therefore even in Sweden P. Jansons could start to share with his memories only after the collapse of the Soviet Union.