Mazākumtautību kopienas literārās jaunrades iekļaušanās Liepājas kultūras ainavā (1960–1980)

The article aims to identify and evaluate the creative activity of minority writers and its significance in the cultural landscape of Liepāja during the Soviet period (1950s–1980s), outlining the contemporary context. The article captures and evaluates current issues related to the transfer of the literary tradition of minority Russian-language authors, opportunities for publication, relations with the Latvian-language literary community within the Liepāja and Region Young Authors Association, as well as the perspective of creative activity in the 21st century, and the aspects of social memory construction. The theoretical and methodological foundations of the article are the studies of place identity (Ross Exo Adams), microhistory, mnemohistory (Heather Murray; Jan Assmann), postmemory and ethics of memory (Marianne Hirsch; Paul Ricœur; Eelco Runia), among others. The article concludes that the literary process of the minority community writing in Russian in the period under consideration can be evaluated as an essential element of Liepāja cultural identity, a segment of the archive of experienced and inherited history. At the same time, it can be seen as a vivid testimony of postmemory, revealing the contradictory, at the same time constitutive and destabilising, character of memory. Despite the generally successful cooperation between Latvian and Russian authors, the creative process of the Russian literary community has developed as a separate phenomenon in the cultural landscape of Liepāja. The border of cultural identities based on the language, a characteristic of a bi-communal society during the Soviet period, had not been really overcome either in the Soviet period under consideration or later in independent Latvia. The reasons for this are subjective and objective, related to different understandings of the mother tongue and cultural/literary tradition, of the notions of homeland/fatherland, and of historical memory.