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[p. 36] Aizpute School (continued).
I have to think a long time to remember just in what year I enrolled in the school and when I had to leave. It seems correct
to say that I began in the autumn of 1903, and that the first year went by peacefully. In January of the second year (1905)
the shooting of the demonstrators in St. Petersburg occurred, when the priest Gapon led them with their icons and petitions
to the tsar at the Winter Palace. After that a wave of strikes and unrest began ail across Russia, spurred especially by the
rebellion of recruits in a variety of places on the way to the Manchurian battlefield in the war against the Japanese. At
my school this second year generally passed by peacefully as well.
When the third and last year began in the fall, the unrest began all around the old town of Aizpute. We heard of a farm
laborers I strike in Kazdanga and Valtaiki [parishes] , about unrest and the burning of the German estate-houses; the Aizpute-Padure
and Kazdanga mansions were burned down. These events took place nearby, but given the travel conditions of those times they
could have been in a different country. This unrest and the strikes echoed in the walls of the school, and in our hearts as
well. We needed to read seditious poems, to learn and to sing the revolutionary songs; to receive and distribute proclamations.
Tomnovics from Kalvene was audacious in this regard, pulling leaflets out of his sleeve and scattering them around, while
I walked along on the side, going back and forth to divert attention. Fricis Osis dropped leaflets at stairs and doorways.
Reckless!
As everywhere else in Latvia, the proclaimers of the revolution were teachers. It was not long before they jailed Skudritis
from our school, Zingbergs from Laza, and the veterinarian Hertelis. That may have been at about the time when the manifesto
on liberties was issued. Our school declared a strike with the demand to free the teacher Skudriits (not Gruzitis etc. [what
does this refer to?] ). I believe that the local revolutionaries' leaders had decided to stage a demonstration to protest
these imprisonments. All across the countryside around the town the word was sent for everyone to come into Aizpute the next
day for the demonstration. All night we had to drive and walk around with this news. And the next day more people than lived
in Aizpute (around 3,000) arrived by foot and in wagons from all directions, and over-filled all of the streets in town. The
meeting was held on the field between Boju and Kazdanga Streets; a speaker's platform was raised.
The speaker was a fairly young person, slightly built, and talked about freedoms of petition, assembly, press, and others
which were issued with the October manifesto. In the middle of the speech, a unit of soldiers from the barracks farther away
on Boju Street appeared and raised their weapons toward the gathered crowd. [Nemanot = not noticing?] , those on the edge
of the crowd began to flee toward the center of town, and the speaker on the platform leaned over towards them and beckoned
for them to stay. As I recall, the meeting ended with that, and the masses of people rushed in a flood toward the center of
town. When we reached the market place, a group of dragoons rode out from the Landlords' Club and moved around on horseback
in the market. It appeared that they were about to ride into the crowd, and I began to move [forward or back? - virzities]
, when I saw one townsman in a black coat stop on the steps of the tea-house and put a bullet into his revolver. I moved on
farther, but he stayed at the entrance to the tea-house gate. The confrontation did not come to a battle; later I heard that
the imprisoned teachers were freed.
That liberation only helped Skudritis, who did not return to school, but fled to England, according- to reports. Zingbergs
(I can remember his appearance: medium build, military-cut hair, trimmed red whiskers) was later arrested again, and hanged
from the linden tree at the end of the Rokaizu plantation avenue by the Kazdanga road. Just four versts [2 -3 miles] farther
along the same road, near the Zile farmstead of Kazdanga, the Kazdanga schoolteacher Pumpurs was hanged from a roadside apple-tree.
Hertelis was caught in southern Russia, brought back to Latvia, and either shot or hanged.
During the school strike, a meeting of the student monitors was called and held in the largest classroom. There we laid
out requests for changing the school program, Latvian as the language of instruction, and so on. The speaker was a stranger;
later I heard Inspector Volmirs say he was Cubis, from Gudenieki. There was another speaker, from Liepaja. My memory is blank,
but I must have said something on behalf of the students, since I was in the graduating class. I believe this is the case,
since, when classes resumed later, Aleksandrovich [director?] came in and began preaching about what had happened. He had
me, and perhaps another student, stand up in front of the class, and speak about [nema vardot?] the meeting that had been
held. When I pretended to be ignorant, and shrugged my shoulders, he reminded me of the meeting and the call for 'vashu latyshskuyu
respubliku' -- 'your Latvian republic'. Apparently there was something in the school rules regarding politics that went beyond
the program of study. It was all incomprehensible to his thoroughly Russian head: here, after all, was a holy Russian institution
of enlightenment, and the locals were supposed to be grateful for the illumination they brought us. As I recall, it could
have been February 1906 when the inspector advised me, Fricis Osis and Pauls Markavs to leave, since they were expecting to
get orders expelling us shortly.
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