Critical Analysis: Walking Since Daybreak. As a text rich with examples of postmodern and post-colonial writing, Modris Eksteins' Walking Since Daybreak is a wonderfully layered account with which one can attempt to prove Kellner's main point.

        As with many postmodern texts, the book is also concerned with the (oft-ignored) history of the Other. In this case, the Other is that marginalized peoples in the North-Easterly corner of Europe, the Baltic people. Thus, the book also serves as an important postcolonial text, one that serves to give voice to those that have been unnoticed and unheeded for so long. Eksteins' account details exactly how the Baltic region has been at the heart of a tug and pull between its German neighbours to the East and particularly, the Russians to the West. For the Soviet Union was indeed a Colonial empire, according to many Baltic scholars. Even if its defenders would contend that the Soviet Union served as a liberator of world and a facilitator of emergence from other “real” colonial empires (which would have been the case in the First World War), the actions of the U.S.S.R were blatantly expansionist and it simply failed to acknowledge its own hegemonic, self-serving interests and actions.  But Violeta Kaleris writes that the Baltic found “being lumped together with the rest of colonized humanity unflattering, if not humiliating, and want to be with the 'civilized' parts of the world.”  Perhaps Eksteins alludes to this throughout the book as he details how fiercely independent peoples such as the Letts and Lithuanians grew to accept their fate with every foreign incursion. The First World War for instance, saw Latvians divided, battling each other. Some fought alongside the Red Army, others with the Germans and the White Army. In many cases, the colonization inflicted by the Soviets is even worse than that of the Western European Imperialist powers. As she observes, “The Soviet Empire was more self-consciously invasive and ambitious than West European Empires: its instruments were more blunt and it emphasized different routes to that end.” Ultimately, Baltic postcolonialists are concerned with the composition of discourse that reflects the reality of the various different ethnicities, languages and experiences of the several colonial periods in Russian expansionism and hegemony. 

        This postcolonial narrative is portrayed throughout Eksteins' book by the clever cuts from event to event and time period to time period. For instance, this fractured structure is seen in the paralleling of Baltic struggles with the personal struggles of the author and the rest of his family. He describes the destruction of Riga and Mitau, whilst also describing his family’s brushes with disaster: a bullet grazing his temple, heavy artillery fire mere feet from the refugees’ and Displaced Persons’ bomb shelters- this is what it was like to be on the ‘borders’ of warfare, as he so aptly puts it.

        More subtly however is the use of his grandmothers’ character to portray this sense of fragmentation: Greita for instance, is introduced to the reader as a fair and innocent young lady. Taken advantage of by her Baltic German master, she is essentially cast to the wayside but remains in his employ and under her masters’ watch. A change had taken place however- the once innocent girl had now been corrupted. “She seemed unable to disengage from her fling with fable and fortune. She exuded pretense and prejudice toward the household help and even her own family. As her beauty faded, she became miserly and bitter.”  Her soul, Eksteins writes, had been splintered. Similarly, the Baltic land, rich with untapped natural resources had been fought over since the twelfth century.  The battle between the indigenous population and Christianity preceded the horrors of the twentieth century, when the Baltic peoples were constantly in the clutches of their stronger neighbours, whether it be the Soviet Union or Germany. If they stayed, they were the subject of a tug-of-war between two powerful forces, their land slowly eroded. If they left, to Germany as many did in the dying throes of the Second World War, then they were once again in the control of the Germans (after the German Barons in Latvia.) All of this results in a region characterized by “unstable frontiers, blurred definitions of identity and place, a fragmented psyche of ambiguity and trauma emerging from centuries of violent occupation.” Thus, Greita’s character is a device and a metaphor that serves to enforce this sense of the slow loss of Baltic life and culture. 

        Following along this theme of fragmentation, the tome also serves as a comment on the increasingly fragmented nature of human memory. Indeed, memory is a key theme in the book and it seems as if Eksteins is directly influenced by Pierre Nora’s Le Lieux de Memoire and the intersection between memory and history. Nora for instance makes the distinction between real memory- which is ‘pure’ and unviolated by society’s problems- and history, which is how modern societies- in “an acceleration of history”- have attempted to shape the past. The problem however is that there exist core truths in memories that historical records simply may not make clear  As a result, what we would term ‘modern memory’ has become inherently archival in its nature and nothing more than the “gigantic and breathtaking storehouse of a material stock of what it would be impossible for us to remember.”  In other words, to use the translated quote Eksteins includes in his writing, history has become “the deciphering of what we are in the light of what we are no longer.” 

        In an intensely personal account such as this, Eksteins gives voice to the Baltic people, by presenting the memories of those closest to him: his father, his mother through letters, journals and other correspondences. Particularly in the second half of the book, his fathers’ entries illuminate much of the events that transpire. On finding out that they have been denied clearance to go to Sweden for instance, the author simply recounts his father’s words: “The Dream is over.”  These are not simply words on a page- one feels this sense of despondence. By framing part of the book as a memoir, by intercutting it with the tragic events that are happening all around them, these events feel ‘real.’ Similarly, certain excerpts in the book even contain speculation probably passed down from generation to generation (as in the case of ‘the girl with the flaxen hair’). Because of the narrative style it is presented in, it all contributes to the formation of an almost ‘real’ memory.

        Finally, while issues of class and race are fairly easy to read in a narrative that describes such a story, it seems important to comment on the role that women play in the book. In fitting in with the theme of giving the voiceless a voice, this also seems to be the case here (however briefly.) Greita, as has already been mentioned, was a metaphor used to personalize Baltic struggles but there are other instances where Eksteins draws sympathy to the plight of women. Baltic women for instance, were viewed as being sexless life-givers. Anyone else was seen as “being corrupted by an alien spirit”- in this case the Bolsheviks. Bitter Germans resented their womens’ fraternization with German troops, referring to them as Yank sweethearts. But as the author points out, in a decimated European continent, they played a key role in its survival. She isn’t referenced much, but the European female is very much an allegory for the struggles of the continent in the book. 

        With poetic flair, precise facts and an engaging family history, Eksteins manages to string together a unique narrative that details the trials, tribulations and traumas. He gives a voice to the voiceless, and for better or for worse, adds a personal touch so often missing from traditional textbooks. Near the end of the book, we learn of Heinrich Boll, who upon seeing his first undestroyed city remarks “it seemed to me improper, a particularly deplorable form of disaster for the city to have escaped disaster in this way.” Given the nature of the text and the way it is constructed, it is hard to see this quote, juxtaposed as it is, having a stronger effect on the reader than it does here. 

Resources Consulted:

-Eksteins, Modris. Walking since daybreak: a story of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the heart of our century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1999.

-Jenkins, Keith. The postmodern history reader. London: Routledge, 1997.

-Kelertas, Violeta. Baltic postcolonialism. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006.

-Nora, Pierre . "Between Memory and History." Representations 60 (1989): 1.

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