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Title: Jānis Jahimovičs papers
Date (inclusive): 1940-2001
Collection Number: 2017C1
Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Library and Archives
Language of Material: Latvian and Russian
Physical Description:
3 manuscript boxes, 1 oversize box
(2.3 Linear Feet)
Abstract: Diaries, memoirs, other writings, personal and legal documents, printed matter, and photographs relating to dissidence in
the Soviet Union and the movement for Latvian independence.
Creator:
Jahimovičs, Jānis, 1931-2014
Physical Location: Hoover Institution Library & Archives
The collection is open for research; materials must be requested in advance via our reservation system. If there are audiovisual
or digital media material in the collection, they must be reformatted before providing access.
For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Materials were acquired by the Hoover Institution Library & Archives in 2016.
[Identification of item], Jānis Jahimovičs papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Jānis Jahimovičs, a Soviet dissident and Latvian independence activist, was born in 1931, near Daugavpils, as Jan Jachimowicz,
the tenth child of a Polish forester's family. The population of this part of southeastern Latvia was made up of Latvian,
Polish, Russian, Belarusian, and Jewish communities, each with its own schools as well as religious and cultural institutions.
When the Soviets occupied the country in 1940, a consequence of the Soviet-Nazi pact partitioning East Central Europe, Jahimovičs'
Polish school was closed and, as he noted in his autobiography, "if you wanted to study, you had to change your nationality,"
and so he did. His remaining education was in Latvian and Russian, his name changed to Ivan Iakhimovich or Jānis Jahimovičs,
and Russian became his first language. His family survived the war relatively intact, save for two older brothers, one drafted
into the Red Army and killed near Moscow in 1941, and another, mobilized into the Waffen-SS Latvian Legion, whose fate remains
unknown.
After years of communist indoctrination in government schools, Jahimovičs became a politically active true believer in his
younger days. From 1951 to 1956 he studied in the historical-philological faculty of the Soviet university in Riga. Soon after,
he became a teacher of Russian language and literature and a local school inspector. He joined the Communist Party in 1961.
A serious Communist, he tried to work in accord with his convictions in the areas of economics, culture, and "socialist freedom."
The authorities, appreciating his ideological commitment and administrative skills, appointed him chairman of the model collective
farm "Jaunā gvarde" (Young Guard). During his years directing the farm, Jahimovičs continued to study the classics of Marxism-Leninism,
which gradually led him to the realization that the ideals professed by the writers were a far cry from the Soviet reality.
In January 1968, inspired by Czechoslovak Communists led by Alexander Dubček and their slogan of "socialism with a human face,"
Jahimovičs wrote to Mikhail Suslov, the chief ideologue of the Soviet party, condemning the trials of Soviet dissidents as
"a great harm...to our party and the cause of communism..." Two months later he was expelled from the Communist Party; in
May he was dismissed as chairman of the collective farm. Jahimovičs grew close to the faction of human rights activists who
were Communists or former Communists whose most prominent member was former Soviet general Pyotr Grigorenko who aimed at the
"restoration...of Leninist norms of party life." In July 1968, the group signed an open letter in support of the Czechoslovak
reform movement of Alexander Dubček. A few months later, after the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslvakia, Jahimovičs
and Grigorenko issued an address "To the Citizens of the Soviet Union" that was critical of the Soviet suppression of the
Prague Spring and demanded the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country.
On March 24, 1969, Jahimovičs was arrested and subjected to an "expert judicial-psychiatric evaluation" in Riga and in Moscow,
the results of which called for compulsory "treatment." He became one of the first Soviet dissidents subjected to such measures
of "social defense." His wife, a schoolteacher, was banned from working with children. While in a Riga psychiatric hospital,
where he spent more than two years, he became friends with Iļja Ripss (now Eliyahu Rips, a prominent Israeli mathematician
and Bible code authority) who was incarcerated for attempted self-immolation in protest over the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
After his release in 1971, Jahimovičs was banned from Riga, so he returned to his hometown of Daugavpils. Effectively silenced
and isolated, he kept his views to himself, working for many years as a nurseryman in the municipal parks department. He returned
to political prominence in the late 1980s, during Gorbachev's perestroika, as a supporter of the Latvian National Front (Latvijas
Tautas fronte) and independence. He ran for public office but did not get elected. After retiring, Jahimovičs devoted his
time to social work among the unemployed of Daugavpils. He died in his hometown on August 5, 2014.
Scope and Content of Collection
The Jānis Jahimovičs papers include personal and legal documents, photographs, diaries, memoirs, poetry, a notebook with materials
on the poet and singer Vladimir Vysotskii, legal documents, and numerous samizdat materials relating to dissidence in the
Soviet Union and the movement for Latvian independence.
Latvijas PSR Valsts Drošības Komiteja selected records, Hoover Institution Library & Archives
Boris Ravdin collection, Hoover Institution Library & Archives
Mavriks Vulfsons papers, Hoover Institution Library & Archives
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Dissenters -- Soviet Union
Latvia -- History