From Entangled Memories to Entangled Decoloniality Soviet Nostalgia in Latvia’s Postcolonial Present

Abstract

This article explores Soviet nostalgia in Latvia as a prism through which to rethink decolonial theory in post-Soviet Europe. Drawing on qualitative interviews with Latvian-and Russian-speaking participants, it shows how memories of the Soviet period crystallize around three competing but interdependent orientations: occupation and loss, the “golden age” of stability and welfare, and ambivalent integrative perspectives that negotiate between trauma and appreciation. These narratives are not self-contained but relational, evolving in response to one another within unequal fields of legitimacy. The article introduces the concept of entangled decoloniality to capture this dynamic, extending insights from memory studies into decolonial debates. By analyzing nostalgia as both affective attachment and contested epistemic resource, the article demonstrates how Latvian memory politics unsettle conventional binaries of colonizer/colonized and highlight the embeddedness of imperial legacies within national polities. In doing so, it situates the Baltic experience as theoretically generative for global decolonial thought.