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The Reluctant Exiles
Latvians in the West after World War II
Series: - On the Boundary of Two Worlds, Volume: 45
The book is a group biography of the 175,000+ Latvians who fled their homeland during the final year of World War II (1944–45), lived until 1951 as refugees in Sweden and Germany, and then dispersed to other countries throughout the world.
The post-1945 history of these Latvians includes a description of their lives in ‘displaced person’ camps in post-war Germany, dispersion in the 1949–1951 years, resettlement in new host countries in Europe and overseas, strategies of adaptation to the new circumstances, organizational efforts, acculturation and assimilation, measures of cultural and linguistic preservation, renewal of contacts with the old homeland, generational change and disagreements, political mobilization, changes in personal and group identity, and, after 1991, the inclusion by the Latvian government of the descendants of this post-war population into a formally designated ‘Latvian diaspora’ (Diaspora Law, 2019).
The post-1945 history of these Latvians includes a description of their lives in ‘displaced person’ camps in post-war Germany, dispersion in the 1949–1951 years, resettlement in new host countries in Europe and overseas, strategies of adaptation to the new circumstances, organizational efforts, acculturation and assimilation, measures of cultural and linguistic preservation, renewal of contacts with the old homeland, generational change and disagreements, political mobilization, changes in personal and group identity, and, after 1991, the inclusion by the Latvian government of the descendants of this post-war population into a formally designated ‘Latvian diaspora’ (Diaspora Law, 2019).
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Andrejs Plakans was Professor of European History from 1975 to 2006 and is now Emeritus Professor at Iowa State University.