MATTHEW HEISE

Latvia and Estonia seem to be increasingly irreligious or pagan. A few years ago I was astonished to see wooden figures of the old Latvian gods in the popular Baltic seaside resort of Jurmala. Estonia routinely polls among the least religious countries in Europe. How did they arrive at this point? Did Soviet consciousness minimize the role of Christianity? As the reform era of perestroika dawned in the late 1980s, what role did the institutional Lutheran Churches play in the two countries, and what could that tell us about their citizens’ relationship with Christianity? Robert Goeckel provides wonderful insight here, creating an effective framework in which to address these questions and more.

As he seeks answers to how successfully these two Baltic republics were severed from their Lutheran roots, Goeckel painstakingly lays out their Soviet history. The initial religious policy after 1944 was accommodating and showed uncertainty as to how quickly to restrict local Western Christian churches, with which the Soviets were unfamiliar. But after excitement among the local population grew over a possible return to faith following the Second World War, the authorities clamped down. One recognizes the old Soviet playbook here, as the tactics are similar to those used against the Lutheran Church in Russia during the early years of Soviet rule. With the lack of a powerful Orthodox presence in Latvia and Estonia, the Communists could also cut to the chase in their attempts to drastically minimize the role of the local Lutheran Churches. Nationalization of church property, arrests of pastors, banning church publications, increasing taxes on churches and clergy, delaying confirmation from the age of 16 to 18, atheist indoctrination of young people: All of these tried-andtrue tactics were repeated in the Baltic States. Riding events out while wearing down the resolve of Christian believers over time was also something in which the Soviets were well versed. 

Unlike in Russia, however, Baltic Lutheranism was associated with the nation-state, and Latvia and Estonia had been independent for two decades prior to the Second World War. The Soviets therefore had to tread warily, or they could arouse nationalist sentiment in support of the Lutheran Church, as when restricting “cemetery day services,” an Estonian folk tradition for commemorating the dead. In order to diminish national consciousness within the two local Lutheran Churches, they needed compliance at the very top of their hierarchies. They therefore placed obedient bishops into positions of authority in an attempt to gain the upper hand. 

In Russia, Bishops Arthur Malmgren and Theophil Meyer had fought the Soviets with a tenacity that the Lutheran faithful in Latvia and Estonia could only have wished for in their own bishops. Both were established leaders in the Lutheran Church in Russia at the time of the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power. The Communists ended up biding their time until Bishop Meyer’s death in 1934, and their extreme pressure led an aging Bishop Malmgren to leave for Germany in 1936. Following the Soviet annexation of Latvia in 1944, leading cleric Kārlis Irbe [nephew of a pre-War first bishop with the same name] was found to be in the same mold as those tenacious Russian-German bishops, so in 1948 the more pliable Gustavs Tūrs was installed instead. For his part, Estonian Lutheran Archbishop Jaan Kiivit [Sr.] served as a useful tool for the Communist Party in Estonia after his installation in 1949, advocating for the Soviet international perspective on peace and supporting collectivization. 

In order to consolidate their authority by manipulating the bishops while still presenting a positive front to the West, the Soviets also needed to severely curtail the role of the laity. As Goeckel notes, “By subverting the intrinsic democratic features in the synodal structure, the regime guaranteed that Lutheran Church leaders would derive very limited legitimacy from synods.” The dvatsatka [Russian: group of 20] was the original Soviet model of appointing 20 laypeople as a church council in order to provide a semblance of lay participation while also allowing the potential for coercing clergy when necessary. This tactic had worked well in Soviet Russia during the 1920s and 1930s: Whenever an international organization questioned the Church’s freedom, the Soviets would point to lay participation in the decisionmaking process of the congregation. Whenever the Soviets chose to close a congregation, on the other hand, they only needed to threaten members of the dvatsatka with arrest or deportation. Repeating this procedure in Latvia and Estonia allowed for little resistance to centralized authority in the person of the bishop, effectively appointed by the state and under its control. Recalcitrant laypeople could be curbed by pressurizing the bishops, while recalcitrant clergy could be curbed by pressurizing the dvatsatka: It was a win-win situation for the atheistic state. 

Yet despite the Soviets’ best efforts, the Baltic peoples did not show signs of becoming militantly atheistic. When describing the Estonian Lutherans’ mindset, Archbishop Kiivit noted that, “they relate to the church as a natural phenomenon, which neither attracts them nor repels them.” This somewhat ambiguous response to the Church would allow for a status quo that would simultaneously give the Soviets hope that the Church would gradually wither away while Kiivit and fellow Lutheran leaders could argue that their actions were keeping the Church alive. In Latvia, Archbishop Tūrs appears to have followed the same path, and the fact that his predecessor, Kārlis Irbe, had been arrested for not toeing the Soviet line was never far from his mind. Tūrs’ public praise for the Red Army’s liberation from the German fascists struck the right tone from the Soviets’ perspective, and he would do little to disappoint them in general. However, even Archbishop Tūrs pursued a nationalist policy that was not entirely to their liking. The Soviets wanted a Church in name only, reduced to basic functions but not allowing for spiritual publications or seminaries, something for which Tūrs advocated. Archbishop Kiivit too would not be a Soviet stooge in perpetuity. Once the Soviets permitted international contacts in order to advance their foreign policy and present a “human face” to the rest of the world, Kiivit would eventually prove to be too cozy with the West for the KGB’s comfort. He was pushed aside in 1967 and replaced as archbishop by Alfred Tooming, whom the state considered “loyal, realistic” and unlikely to pose a challenge. 

During the succeeding decades, the situation in Latvia and Estonia largely mirrored the leadership changes in the Kremlin. From the breath of freedom that came from Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization program to the political stagnation that occurred under Brezhnev, the local Lutheran Churches kept in lockstep. By the end of Brezhnev’s rule in 1982, it was obvious that religion had become moribund primarily due to indifference rather than ardent militant atheism. After celebrations for the Quincentennial of Luther’s birth in 1983, openings to the Western world occurred more frequently. Bilateral relationships with Western European Lutherans flourished as a new generation of pastors looked to do things differently from the older generation. The winds of change were blowing: In Estonia, my friend Villu Jürjo drew young people through summer church camps and criticized new laws on  religion promoted by the increasingly out-of-touch Archbishop Edgar Hark. Other reformers like Harri Motsnik, who served Estonian Lutherans in thenLeningrad, decried the state’s destruction of spiritual values. Finally, when Gorbachev began to open the path to reform after 1985, Lutherans in Latvia and Estonia took advantage of the changes to encourage still greater freedom. 

Here, Goeckel argues that they played harmony instead of melody, with Moscow being the driving force for societal change, not Riga or Tallinn. In the end, there is little doubt that Soviet rule seriously damaged Lutheranism in Latvia and Estonia. Their Churches’ weak institutions and accommodation to the state did not bring forth anyone comparable to Cardinals Wyszyński or Mindszenty, as the Catholic Church had in postWar Poland and Hungary. A cultural Christianity best exemplified by song festivals and cemetery days—or an openness to “believe in anything,” as G.K. Chesterton may have reasoned—seems to have been the Latvian and Estonian response to the steady drumbeat of atheist propaganda. However, there have been some positive signs of revival in the Latvian Lutheran Church in post-Communist times under Archbishop Jānis Vanags, one of those dissident pastors from the 1980s. Perhaps the church bells have not fallen completely silent?

Matthew Heise is executive director of the Michigan-based Lutheran Heritage Foundation. His forthcoming book, The Gates of Hell: An Untold Story of Faith and Perseverance in the Early Soviet Union, will be published by Lexham Press in 2022. It investigates persecution of the Lutheran Church in the Soviet Union before the Second World War by drawing upon archival sources and survivor accounts.