Aleksandrs Kirsteins—a long time member of the People’s Party and the chair of the Latvian parliament’s international affairs committee—has been expelled from the People’s Party after complaints from the local Jewish community about his antisemitic statements, according to a May 27, 2005 report by the Baltic News Service. The party’s statement referred to the fact that Mr. Kirsteins has “several times caused outrage by his statements about Jews, integration [of the country’s non-Latvian population], and the need for repatriation of the Russian population of Latvia to its ethnic motherland” (as a result of the Soviet occupation, Latvia has a large Russian minority, which some nationalist Latvians think should not be allowed to stay in the country).

The People’s Party’s action came as somewhat of a surprise, since the day before, its leader Atis Slakteris publicly defended Mr. Kirsteins, claiming that his statements should not be seen as antisemitic. However, other members of the country’s governing coalition sharply criticized Mr. Kirsteins.

While Mr. Kirsteins has reportedly made radically nationalistic statements before without any consequences (one of the ethnic Russian community’s main newspapers Chas claimed on May 27 that he once publicly called for violence against Russians), the final straw appears to have been Mr. Kirsteins’ reaction to a May 23 statement by the Council of Jewish Communities of Latvia.

The Council’s statement, published in full by the Regnum news agency on May 23, condemned “a worsening climate of antisemitism in recent times” sparked by what it termed attempts in the Latvian media to rehabilitate “the executioner of the Riga ghetto” Herbert Tsukurs—a Latvian collaborator with the Nazis implicated in Holocaust era crimes against Jews. The Council accused Mr. Kirsteins of being part of those attempts, and of allying himself with “radical” forces in the country.

Mr. Kirsteins responded by characterizing members of the Council as collaborators with external enemies of Latvia, whose ideas “facilitate a split within society.” He then made an explicit reference to the role that some Latvian nationalists accuse Jews of playing in the brutal occupation of the country by the Soviet Union in the year before the Nazis invaded: “Taking into account historical experiences which the authors of the statement refer to, it wouldn’t be wise to repeat the mistakes of the 1940s, when they [the Jews] openly collaborated with enemies of the Latvian people.” This accusation was used by the Nazis and their local collaborators to justify the Holocaust in the Baltic states.

The Council’s statement referred as well to a recent attack on Rabbi Mordechai Glazman in the old part of Riga, claiming that since this incident: “Many members of the community have lost their sense of security—the center of the city has long ago become a place for constant meetings of extremist-minded youths dressed in the fashion of European neo-Nazis. The freely gather near the Centrs department store, on Domska Square, and in other places, thanks to the total indifference of the police.”

A May 25 report by the Baltic News Agency revealed that Rabbi Glazman was not physically assaulted, but he was confronted by a group of youths who shouted neo-Nazi slogans at him at the Centrs department store. Police reportedly refused to open a criminal investigation into the incident. An Indian worker was assaulted in the same place a month before in a possibly racist attack.

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