What do you think?
Rate this book
The Testimony of Lives: Narrative and memory in post-Soviet Latvia
Vieda Skultans left Latvia as a refugee at the age of six months. In 1990, she returned for the first time. This text is both a personal account of a homecoming and an anthropology of a people trying to come to terms with its past and to face an uncertain future. Based on more than 100 interviews carried out in the wake of Latvian independence, it gives voice to stories of dispossession and exile and of ambiguous returns. At the same time it unpicks the process of memory itself, showing how personal memory is shaped by the traditional narratives of national history and culture.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published November 27, 1997
35 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 6, 2025
Pushmipullyu
In the childrens’ books about Dr. Doolittle, there’s a rare animal called the "Pushmipullyu" that has two heads and seems to be going in two directions simultaneously. I was reminded of that creature while reading Skultans’ book because it seems to be headed in several directions. I sympathized with the reason for this, but still felt that she should have decided what she really wanted to write. Peoples who live in the borderlands between stronger nations have always paid the price. Such a people are the Latvians who, not counting past centuries, found themselves stuck between Russia and Germany during the mid-20th century upheavals called the “World Wars”. Devastated by international as well as civil wars, the Latvians of that time lived through hell. Thousands were killed, others sent to Siberia, others became refugees in many parts of the world. The author here, of Latvian descent, but never having known Latvia except through the memories and culture of her family, went to that country to study the incidence of neurasthenia. Medical anthropology perhaps, perhaps just a medical study. But listening to the tales of people who suffered from that condition, she realized that there was a deeper subject that begged to come to light---the experiences of those generations who suffered from 1915 to 1922 and from 1940 to 1991. So, her attention distracted, she began to delve into the “testimony of lives” which many volunteers offered her. They are indeed tragic tales of lives wasted, suffering, death, disaster, loss. But as I said, the book takes you in different directions. One is about the neurasthenia, but this is certainly not a medical study. I think she could have mentioned this in the preface and let it drop. The second is about the nature of “narrative”, “endowing the past with meaning” and the way that “narrative” succeeds or fails to describe a coherent life. There is, to my mind, entirely too much intellectualizing about this topic. A separate book, for those who would like to consider this important topic, would have been better---or at least an article in some academic journal. And the third, which forms the real guts of the book, the material for which you will read this book, is the testimony itself. I think she could not decide what the basic topic of the book was. One reason for saying this is that the history of Latvia, which all outsiders would need to know, is put into an appendix at the end. If you are concerned to tell the Latvian story, surely you would put it at the beginning. So, this is a book which falls between the cracks, so to speak. For a purely personal narrative which may give you some deeper feeling for the Latvian story, you could do much worse than read “A Woman in Amber” by Agate Nesaule.
In the childrens’ books about Dr. Doolittle, there’s a rare animal called the "Pushmipullyu" that has two heads and seems to be going in two directions simultaneously. I was reminded of that creature while reading Skultans’ book because it seems to be headed in several directions. I sympathized with the reason for this, but still felt that she should have decided what she really wanted to write. Peoples who live in the borderlands between stronger nations have always paid the price. Such a people are the Latvians who, not counting past centuries, found themselves stuck between Russia and Germany during the mid-20th century upheavals called the “World Wars”. Devastated by international as well as civil wars, the Latvians of that time lived through hell. Thousands were killed, others sent to Siberia, others became refugees in many parts of the world. The author here, of Latvian descent, but never having known Latvia except through the memories and culture of her family, went to that country to study the incidence of neurasthenia. Medical anthropology perhaps, perhaps just a medical study. But listening to the tales of people who suffered from that condition, she realized that there was a deeper subject that begged to come to light---the experiences of those generations who suffered from 1915 to 1922 and from 1940 to 1991. So, her attention distracted, she began to delve into the “testimony of lives” which many volunteers offered her. They are indeed tragic tales of lives wasted, suffering, death, disaster, loss. But as I said, the book takes you in different directions. One is about the neurasthenia, but this is certainly not a medical study. I think she could have mentioned this in the preface and let it drop. The second is about the nature of “narrative”, “endowing the past with meaning” and the way that “narrative” succeeds or fails to describe a coherent life. There is, to my mind, entirely too much intellectualizing about this topic. A separate book, for those who would like to consider this important topic, would have been better---or at least an article in some academic journal. And the third, which forms the real guts of the book, the material for which you will read this book, is the testimony itself. I think she could not decide what the basic topic of the book was. One reason for saying this is that the history of Latvia, which all outsiders would need to know, is put into an appendix at the end. If you are concerned to tell the Latvian story, surely you would put it at the beginning. So, this is a book which falls between the cracks, so to speak. For a purely personal narrative which may give you some deeper feeling for the Latvian story, you could do much worse than read “A Woman in Amber” by Agate Nesaule.
Displaying 1 of 1 review