Andrejs Plakans, a renowned Latvian-American historian and emeritus professor of history at Iowa State University, passed away on July 4, 2024 at age 83. Andrejs was a long-time member of the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies and served as AABS President during the pivotal period of 1988–1990. The AABS community mourns our friend and mentor, and we extend sincere condolences to his family and loved ones.
Andrejs Plakans, 1940–2024.
Andrejs was born on December 31, 1940, in Riga, (Soviet) Latvia. In July 1944, fleeing the re-occupation of Latvia by the Soviet Union, the Plakans family went into exile. In 1951, they emigrated to the United States, settling in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Andrejs graduated from J.P. McCaskey High School (1959), received a B.A. in history and political science from Franklin & Marshall College (1963), and a M.A. and Ph.D. in history from Harvard University (1969). During an internship in the office of U.S. Senator Hugh Scott (R-PA) in Washington, D.C., he met Barbara Sweeney, whom he married in 1964. They had two daughters, Brenda (1967) and Lia (1969).
Starting his academic career as a history instructor at Boston College (1967), Andrejs became an Associate Professor of History at Iowa State University (1975), later Professor, Department Chair twice, and retired as a Professor Emeritus (2006). During leaves of absence from ISU, he did research at UMass Amherst, UCalifornia-Riverside, University of Pittsburgh, Smithsonian Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, D.C., and University of Latvia, Riga. Books he has authored include Kinship in the Past (1984), The Latvians (1995), Historical Dictionary of Latvia (1997), Experiencing Totalitarianism (2007), A Concise History of the Baltic States (2011), and The Reluctant Exiles: Latvians in the West After WWII (2021). He co-edited 6 other books and wrote 54 chapters/journal articles.
Andrejs was an active member of the Latvian exile community and from the end of the 1980s he established cooperation with historians in Latvia and was a frequent visitor to Riga. His efforts to establish international cooperation have been recognized. Andrejs was given foreign membership status by the Latvian Academy of Sciences (1990), an honorary Ph.D. from Umeå University in Sweden (1999), and received the Order of the Three Stars, the highest civilian award for meritorious service to Latvia in a ceremony at the Presidential Residence in Riga Castle (2018).
The official obituary of Andrejs Plakans may be found on the Lensing Funeral Services website.
Andrejs served as President of AABS from 1988–1990 and gave his presidential address in June 1990. In an article published in the AABS Baltic Studies Newsletter in 2010, he looked back at the 1990 address, his and the academia’s moods and understandings at the time, as well as how Baltic Studies had been shaped in the decades after 1990. Below, we re-publish the 2010 article in full, followed by some personal thoughts from members of the AABS community who knew him well.
Reflections on convergences twenty years later
Andrejs Plakans, Professor Emeritus of History, Iowa State University, AABS President 1988–1990
AABS Baltic Studies Newsletter, Winter 2010
In June 1990 when I was privileged to give my “Convergences” presidential address to the AABS, we all understood that the unprecedented events unfolding in the USSR’s Baltic republics made the prediction hazardous. The parliaments (Supreme Councils) of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia had all proclaimed independence in the spring of 1990, and similar changes in 1989 in all the lands East of the “iron curtain” seemed to be promising the end of the old world order. But there were probably few believers in historical inevitability at the 1990 meeting, and Balticists, being familiars with the complex history of the area, knew the difference between wishful thinking and on-the-ground reality. Enthusiasm about proclamations was one thing. But the unpredictable response of the “center” in Moscow, the hesitant collective attitudes of the Western democracies, the uncertain sustainability of non-violence among Baltic-area activists – all these and other variables made projections of the future a chancy affair.
During the post-1990 decades, however, the reality that came into being did not fit any of the alternative futures envisaged in 1990. Perhaps the most readily identifiable progress was made in what in 1990 I termed “physical convergence.” By definition, this type of convergence – involving the movement back and forth of individual scholars – could never involve large numbers. The field of Baltic Studies had never been overpopulated, but the types of physical convergence in time became impressive indeed. Several past presidents of AABS – the tip of a small iceberg – became prominent in post-1991 Baltic-area politics. The AABS itself had a branch office in the Baltic region for a time and to this day continues to be known in the area. For Western Balticists, participation in the intellectual life of their former homelands eventually became almost routine, as westerners attended Baltic-area conferences and their Eastern colleagues formed a significant presence in Western meetings. Fellowship programs brought a steady stream of easterners to the West, and westerners spent longish periods of time as visiting professors in the Baltic region, in some cases helping to found new academic institutions. Unfortunately, no aggregate statistics are available about this phenomenon but the pattern has held steady for the past two decades. These seasonal academic migrations had visible consequences. If twenty years ago the characteristics of almost all research studies placed them into the two recognizable categories – “Western publications” and “Soviet publications” – this distinction disappeared relatively quickly. If two decades ago Western and Baltic scholars still viewed each other with polite suspicion, not knowing exactly what to expect, the international community of Balticists nowadays has no such internal divisions. Its members have coalesced (converged) and now comprise a single entity, with English and German frequently serving as the common languages of discourse. Westerners no longer have to feel embarrassed at having been kept at arm’s length from Baltic-area sources, and Baltic-area scholars no longer have any need to feel the need for “catching up” with an allegedly “more advanced” Western scholarship.
I am greatly saddened to learn of the passing of my good friend and colleague Andrejs Plakans in early July. Andrejs, one of the foundational pillars of Baltic studies in the West over the past half-century, was my closest scholarly collaborator whose first-rate work I, and many others, found especially enriching and inspiring. Born only a few years apart during World War II, we were contemporaries who met while doing research in Cold War era Helsinki in the late 1960s and completed our doctorates the same year (1969). Our shared interest in the Baltic experience in the late tsarist era, as the Latvians and Estonians began to mature as modern nationalities, encouraged a very rewarding level of cooperation between the two of us, as co-authors and above all as participants in countless panels at Baltic studies conferences in North America, Europe, and eventually the restored Baltic states.
Andrejs leaves a massive scholarly footprint through his highly productive career which stands out for its contributions to both Latvian and Baltic historiography. The Baltic Studies community, both east and west, was fortunate that the beginning of Andrejs’s scholarly career coincided with the birth of the AABS, making him available to provide input in the formative years of the organization. Most importantly, he served as president during the exciting years (1988–1990) when connections to the re-emerging Baltic states reached new levels. Before that, he was a leading figure in growing cooperation with the Baltische Historische Kommission in West Germany, which played a significant role in building scholarly bridges to the Soviet-occupied Baltic in the 1970s and 1980s.
In short, Professor Andrejs Plakans will be remembered as an outstanding contributor to the field of Baltic Studies, both as a first-rate scholar as well as a leading figure in the history of the AABS
I remember searching my mind for a general framework for my impending remarks – one that would make the address sound “presidential” but at the same time express my bred-in-the-bone historian’s skepticism toward confident statements about what might happen. This conservatism explains the hesitant nature of the “Convergences” speech. On the one hand, the old Cold War period certainties were visibly eroding quickly, and, since “Baltic Studies” itself was a Western invention, the field was likely to be affected by these changes in some way. One possible future was the disintegration of the field, as Western Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian scholars rejoined the (possibly) liberated intellectual communities of those three countries and reoriented themselves away from the “Baltic” concept. Another was the absorption of “Baltic Studies” into some larger regional studies field as yet unborn and identified (perhaps “Northern European Studies”). A third possibility was the integration of “Baltic Studies” of the Western variety with some analogous version of “Baltic Studies” anchored in the transformed intellectual life of the three Baltic countries. The premise of all these outcomes, of course, was the achievement of real freedom in the Baltic region. After some thought, it seemed to me that some form of the third alternative was most likely. This judgment was based in part on the interest and receptivity already being exhibited in the Baltic countries toward Western modes of scholarship and, specifically, toward the activities of AABS; and in part, on the experience of the AABS itself, which by 1990 was already twenty-two years old and had over time experiences various kinds of “convergences” within its own ranks. If this were possible among Western Baltic scholars, it was at least as strong a possibility that something similar might happen in the Baltic region, within the regions and with Western colleagues, once the rigid controls of the Party had weakened and – who knew – perhaps disappeared entirely.
When I started graduate school long, long ago, Andrejs Plakans was probably my first historian of record for Latvia’s history — I was in awe, an accomplished historian and a trailblazer in writing the kind of history of Latvia that I wanted to. I read his contribution in Thaden’s Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland with as close to bated breath as an aspiring historian could muster. His The Latvians: A Short History still sits on my bookshelf although seemingly every page is dog-eared and every passage underlined.
Nevertheless, when I was asked to write my first book review for a small, academic journal for Plakans’ first edition of The Historical Dictionary of Latvia, I could not control my precocious and conceited graduate student enthusiasm. I had only done preliminary research for my dissertation, but I was already sure that I knew more about everything than a maven of the field. I wrote a damning review, not overtly critical, but filled with the lukewarm praise that cuts so deeply in academic language. I remember even writing that a historical dictionary will be judged for what is in it, and what is not, and that this dictionary had shortcomings on both counts. I sent the review away and it was published and I started to learn more about Latvia’s history and appreciate Andrejs Plakans even more.
We began to work together, meeting at conferences, in the archives, at panel discussions. Andrejs always took a sincere interest in what I was writing and where I was working. Once he subtly and backhandedly asked if I had a copy of the review I wrote of his dictionary. I stumbled through some excuses and that I would find it and send it to him, although I was too cowardly to actually send the review. Still, he involved me in future projects and acted as a patron connecting me to needed funding at a critical time. Our relationship, although still mostly professional, became closer and I was always thrilled to see him at an upcoming conference or event. I remember particularly warmly the 2010 SASS-AABS conference in Seattle, a book panel at Yale, and an academic conference in Uppsala. Each of these combined solid academic inquiry and a sense of camaraderie. But still, I never sent that review, and he never asked to see it again.
Then, the publisher of the Historical Dictionary of Latvia contacted me and said that they wanted to publish a third edition (the second edition answered all of my sophomoric critiques in that long-ago review). The publisher further informed me that Andrejs Plakans did not want to write the third, but suggested I take over the mantle. It was the ultimate, classy and pointed retort — it was as if Andrejs finally responded to me by saying let’s see if you can do better. It was both a challenge and a compliment. We co-authored the third edition and my naive criticism about what should go in and what should not, follows me to this day. I see all sorts of new academic work or on-going developments in contemporary Latvia and think should this go in if there is a new edition, should something come out of the last one. Above all this is the challenge that Andrejs Plakans has left us all — he showed us what could be done and challenged us to do more. He will be missed even if his work carries on.
This personal convergence was facilitated by technological change and institutional support, though in 1990 I failed to recognize the rapidly growing importance of the first of these. Easy telephone communications, e-mail, the phenomenal expansion of internet-based research, the proliferation of e-books and e-journals, the growth of large readily available data bases of primary source documents and secondary literature – all these have enabled Balticist colleagues to feel that they inhabit a single internally connected universe, virtual though it may be at times. In my own daily work, I can communicate – in Latvian – with colleagues in Riga almost as easily and quickly as with those in the next office in my university department. The institutional infrastructure – that is, university-based programs – for all such transformations, however, developed rather unevenly, creating far fewer permanent connections between North American and Baltic institutions than between Baltic-area and other European institutions. Perhaps this was inevitable, given the relative cost of creating and maintaining such connections. Judging by the experience of my own university – Iowa State – the early 1990s began with almost unchecked enthusiasm for contact-building: delegations traveled in both directions, signed memoranda of understanding, and sought to create exchange programs that would place academics from one partner within an existing program in another for a period of one or more years. The expectation was that both partners would be gainers in arrangements. In North America, however, many of these exchange arrangements eventually lapsed, their originators having retired or died, interest having flagged, or money run out; another contributing factor in North America was the diminution among academic planners of the concept of area-studies itself. In Europe, however, the resources on international regional organizations and the European Community provided continuous investments, particularly after the three Baltic states became members of the EU in 2004. Also, countries such as Germany and Sweden, whose histories were directly linked to the Baltic region, continued to evidence considerable interest and provided healthy levels of support. One outcome of all these institutional linkages was that the forms of academic institutions in the Baltic countries became more “Western”: degree programs were renamed, course offerings were changed, programs altered their content, and Baltic institutions became full-fledged members of vast number of continental networks. Nonetheless, regardless of reform and partnership arrangements, most Baltic academic institutions retained their own character. Institutional convergence was much less readily identifiable than was the physical convergence of Balticists as individual scholars.
Of the three kinds of convergences mentioned in my 1990 talk, intellectual convergences and their characteristics are the most difficult to describe precisely. It is fairly clear, to my thinking, that Baltic Studies remain a distinctive field: the interests of its practitioners form a coherent body of scholarship, made so by its geographic focus and the continuous presence of certain themes: the problems of small-statehood, the effervescence of political nationalism, the maintenance of national consciousness, the prospects of linguistic and cultural annihilations, the preservation of national sovereignty, unfavorable demographic patterns, relations between majorities and minorities, globalization, and economic development. Many of these were prominent in Baltic-related scholarship before the events of the past two decades; others have been more relevant by the historical changes of the recent past. The critical mass of insightful scholarship, however, did change its venue. Two decades ago most politically unconstrained Baltic Studies scholarship was taking place in the West, even though it was weakened somewhat by its intellectual distance from the Baltic area; nowadays that distance no longer exists, but at the same time the relative quantity of Western scholarship about the Baltic area continues to shrink when compared to that which is being produced by scholars in the three Baltic states or by Western scholars whose work has become much more deeply embedded in the ongoing life of the three Baltic republics. Whatever their personal histories, practitioners of Baltic Studies now work within the same large intellectual frameworks, formulate their questions much in the same way, refer to the same secondary sources, and generally publish in the same journals and with the same publishing houses. Existing differences among scholars are nowadays more a matter of interpretative nuance and style and less a matter of broad ideology. One might say that the field has become internationalized more than ever before, with the nationality of the scholars writing about Baltic themes being nearly irrelevant. The concerns of the émigré generations of AABS are no longer dominant, or at least have been reformulated; the Cold War frame of reference has disappeared; and the younger generation of Baltic scholars on the European continent are developing a European identity, which my definition excludes North America. Even so, the most recent publications in Baltic Studies, regardless of the origins of the authors, tend to share an interest in questions of personal and national identity, gender themes, environmental concerns, and media history; and a great many write more about representations of reality in the past and present than seek to establish what that reality really was or is. This is intellectual convergence of a kind but it is different from what Baltic Studies adherents might have expected twenty years ago. Balticists whose creativity proceeds from a conscious Baltic identity – as best exemplified in our field by the poetry of Ivar Ivask – nonetheless, are still few and far between.
AABS mourns the passing of Andrejs Plakans, president of AABS in 1988-1990. I met Andrejs first at the 1998 Bloomington conference, when we were on a panel on Baltic historiography (published in JBS 30:4, 1999), he as one of the most prominent scholars in Baltic history and me, just making my first steps in this field. Apart from his comprehensive books on The Latvians (Hoover Press, 1995) and A Concise History of the Baltic States (Cambridge, 2011), I benefitted in particular from his unpublished PhD (Harvard, 1969) on “The National Awakening in Latvia, 1850-1900.