Interwar Independence & Cultural Consolidation

1904 - 1917

When the 1865 printing ban was lifted in 1904, Latgalian cultural production exploded — newspapers, books, societies, and a renewed sense of distinct identity emerged after 40 years of silence. Francis Trasuns, elected to the Russian State Duma in 1906, became the movement's political voice. This awakening paralleled Lithuanian and Estonian national revivals across the empire's western borderlands, but Latgale's was shaped by a unique question: whether to remain separate or unite with other Latvian lands from which it had been divided since 1561. The First Latgale Congress, held 9-10 May 1917 at the cinema 'Diana' and Atbrīvošanas aleja 56 in Rēzekne, answered with a deliberate act of self-determination — a community that had been separated for three centuries chose union. This was not a natural reunion but a conscious political decision by a people whose Catholic faith, Latgalian language, and separate historical experience made them culturally distinct from the Lutheran, Germanically-influenced regions of Kurzeme and Vidzeme. The Congress site and the Latgale Culture and History Museum's collection of awakening-era publications let you read the arguments that Latgalians made for and against their own unification.

1940 - 1991

The Soviet occupation of 1940, interrupted by the German invasion and Holocaust (1941-44), then restored in 1944, brought the most catastrophic rupture in Latgale's festival landscape. The Holocaust destroyed nearly all of Latgale's Jews — approximately 9,000 murdered from Daugavpils alone, with fewer than 100 survivors from the ghetto. An entire calendar of Jewish holidays and lifecycle rituals that had structured urban life for 200 years vanished. The surviving synagogue on Cietoksna Street stood as a mute witness through the Soviet era. Meanwhile, Soviet industrialization brought large Russian-speaking populations to Daugavpils and Rēzekne — not primarily Old Believers (who pre-dated Soviet rule) but new industrial migrants housed in the Daugavpils Fortress (the DVVAIU military aviation engineering school occupied it 1948-1993). The 1958 Latgale Culture Week was explicitly designed to counter Russification and the fear that Moscow might detach Latgale to Belarus — but the post-1959 purge restored Russification policies and banned Latgalian publishing. Yet Catholic practices survived: the Aglona pilgrimage continued even under state atheism, the basilica was elevated in 1980 for its 200th anniversary, and the 1986 Christianity anniversary was celebrated with state permission. Old Believer communities in villages like Slutišķi maintained their pre-Nikonian liturgical calendar in parallel with both Catholic and Soviet calendars — a third rhythm of worship in a region where three systems of time competed.

1772 - 1904

The First Partition of Poland in 1772 transferred the Inflanty Voivodeship to the Russian Empire, folding Latgale into Vitebsk Governorate — severing it from the Polish-Lithuanian world that had shaped its Catholic identity and connecting it instead to an empire that treated Latgalian as a dialect to be suppressed. The 1865 printing ban, triggered by the January Uprising, forbade Latin-script publications in Latgalian — a prohibition that was simultaneously anti-Polish (punishing Uprising participants) and anti-Latgalian (creating a 40-year gap in literary production unmatched in other Latvian regions). Yet this era also brought the railway (1860, St. Petersburg-Warsaw line through Daugavpils and Rēzekne), aristocratic estate culture (the Plater and Borch families' palaces at Krāslava and Preiļi), and the construction of Daugavpils Fortress (begun 1810) — Russia's answer to Napoleon on the Latgale frontier. Church Hill in Daugavpils, where four churches of four denominations stand side by side (Lutheran 1893, Catholic 1902, Orthodox 1905, Baptist 1908), is the most vivid expression of the multi-confessional reality that neither the Polish kings nor the Russian Tsars could flatten. The Latgalian language survived the ban through oral tradition and handwritten calendars (Andryvs Jūrdžis), but the 40-year literary gap fundamentally shaped the region's cultural development differently from other Latvian regions.

From 1991

When Latvia regained independence in 1991, Latgale's cultural revival was both deliberate and fragile. Pope John Paul II's 1993 visit to Aglona drew 300,000 pilgrims — the single largest gathering in Latgale's modern history, confirming the Aglona pilgrimage as the region's most powerful continuity mechanism and its primary international signal. The Diocese of Rēzekne-Aglona was established in 1995, with Sacred Heart Cathedral as its seat, giving institutional form to Catholic Latgale. The Latgalian language was protected under §3.4 of the Official Language Law as a 'historical variant of the Latvian language' — a careful compromise that acknowledges the scholarly debate without resolving it — and Volūda (founded 2005) became the primary organization protecting and popularizing Latgalian culture. The Mark Rothko Art Centre, opened in 2013 in the Daugavpils Fortress arsenal, reconnects Daugavpils to the Jewish artist born there in 1903 — the primary public acknowledgment of the erased Jewish heritage. The Latgale Culture and History Museum holds the largest collection of Latgale ceramics, and the annual Latgale Potters' Days (April) represent a post-Soviet revival of traditional craft as cultural festival. Old Believer prayer houses in Daugavpils continue their pre-Nikonian liturgy. What you experience today in Latgale is not a timeless folkloric landscape but a consciously revived one — the Catholic-Aglona pilgrimage has genuine deep continuity, while pottery markets, language workshops, and heritage routes are products of determined cultural work against the pressures of Russification, depopulation, and the UNESCO-classified 'Vulnerable' status of Latgalian.