🧵 Soviet Estonian covers of Western rock/pop music:
Tiiu Varik, "Eile veel" (1966) [The Beatles, "Yesterday" (1965)]
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFtc...
Over the long weekend, I encountered an even stranger American bastardization of pronouncing Italian cured meat than "gabagool" for capocollo. In Southwestern Rhode Island, locally produced soppressata is called "suppi"/"soupy" and it is as delicious as the name feels embarrassing to say out loud.
On June 2, 1988, at a plenum of the Latvian Writers' Union Mavriks Vulfsons exposed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact's secret protocols, publicly airing them for the first time in the USSR. In response, Latvian Communist Party head Boris Pugo declared, "You killed Soviet Latvia!" bsky.app/profile/harr...
I was interviewed about my book, Latvian Soldiers of World War II: Fighting for the Homeland in Nazi and Soviet Service. My thanks to @peripheralhist.bsky.social for the thoughtful questions and the chance to share my thoughts!
bsky.app/profile/peri...
Jaak Joala, "Ausus" (1982)
[Billy Joel, "Honesty" (1979)]
www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4e6...
I can extend the offer made to those present at the AABS conference book panel here: a discount on purchasing the book (print edition available outside the UK starting on June 26) and temporary free access to the introduction online. See the attached images for details.
My first book talk was on Saturday at the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies conference in Urbana-Champaign, IL. A welcome opportunity to engage in dialogue with scholars in the field (and appropriate, given the support from @balticstudies.bsky.social that made publication possible).
Peeter Tooma, "Vaikus" (1979)
[Simon & Garfunkel, "The Sound of Silence" (1964)]
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL4P...
“What you're seeing is a race-based pogrom. We are seeing men going door to door asking to get the foreigners out based exclusively on the colour of their skin.”
www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cr...
Northern Ireland's first minister says masked men were "burning families out of their homes". One pastor says black people were targeted, while an MP calls it a "race-based pogrom".
For all those interested in the history of the Second World War and Latvia, we have a new author interview for you. Check out our conversation with @harrymerritt.bsky.social on his recently-published book 'Latvian Soldiers of World War II' www.peripheralhistories.co.uk/post/latvian...
www.peripheralhistories.co.uk
In Latvian Soldiers of World War II: Fighting for the Homeland in Nazi and Soviet Service (Oxford University Press, 2026), Harry C. Merritt explores the wartime experiences and postwar legacies of the...
