Bearslayers: the rise and fall of the Latvian national communists - 71

The 1959 purge of the Latvian national communists has long been cast in black-and-white terms: Russification and resistance; victimisers and victims.

Conventional wisdom holds that Nikita Khrushchev was behind the purge.

After all, he was the Soviet premier - he stopped in Riga just a few weeks before, and even the leading victim of the purge, Eduards Berklavs, labelled him the culprit.

William D. Prigge's analysis challenges this view and untangles the intricacies of Soviet centre-periphery relations like a political thriller.