Andrejs Dripe’s Journalism about 
the Federal Republic of Germany 
and Its Impact on Societal Change 
in the 1980s
Jānis Oga
Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia (ILFA), Mūkusalas iela 3, Rīga, 
LV-1423, Latvia
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0398-0756
janis.oga@lulfmi.lv
This article examines travels outside the Soviet Union by Latvian writers who 
were recognized by the occupation regime and acclaimed by the public during 
the Brezhnev Era, as one of the privileges enjoyed by the so-called creative 
intelligentsia, and how those travels were reflected in their literary and 
journalistic writings. Journeys abroad elicited conflicting emotions, and writers 
had to be relatively affluent to travel. Still, they often experienced humiliation 
when confronted with the reality of their meager financial means outside the 
U.S.S.R. and the fact that they remained in imprisonment even in the free West. 
The surge in popularity of literary periodicals in the 1980s played a crucial role in 
shaping a new culture of the press and journalism, as they provided large masses 
of readers with essential information about living abroad. Notes on the travels 
include observations on the socio-economic situation, environment, and political 
events and documents that have facilitated trips to the West. The case study explores 
the travelogue by Andrejs Dripe from the 1980s. Dripe’s journalism records the 
rapid transition from the Brezhnev Era to Gorbachev’s perestroika. It becomes 
the first official source of information about the West only a few people among his 
readers have visited.
Keywords: Latvian literature / journalism / travel writing / Soviet tourism / image of the 
West / the Brezhnev Era / perestroika
177
Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 46.3 (2023)
Kathleen Parthé suggests that a thorough examination of the literary 
process in post-Stalinist Russia, and potentially throughout the entire 
Soviet era, reveals that, in numerous aspects, the significance of the 
PKn, letnik 46, št. 3, Ljubljana, november 2023
178
text surpasses that of the individual writer (Parthé 295).1 However, 
during the period of Stagnation, also called the Breznev Era, the role 
and choices of a singular writer became more visible and identifiable. A 
viewpoint regarding the contribution of an individual in the events of 
a particular era can be corroborated by research done by Dina Fainberg 
and Artemy M. Kalinovsky, who have stated that “the political, public, 
and scholarly debate throughout Stagnation in Soviet history is often 
wedged over the lines of ‘pre-crisis’ or ‘pre-renewal’.” It also has been 
emphasized that “when the Soviet Union collapsed despite Gorbachev’s 
reform and attempts to modernize the country, ‘stagnation’ became 
the primary explanation of the failure of the Soviet socialist project” 
(Fainberg and Kalinovsky xiv). It is essential to shift the usual, more 
comfortable research focus from dissidents to writers recognized by of-
ficial critics and readers. Latvian historian Daina Bleiere has written 
that historians and other researchers should continue to uncover “un-
comfortable topics, such as changes in the value system of society under 
the influence of the Soviet regime, the relationship of certain groups 
with the Soviet government, how and whether society was able to in-
fluence the Soviet regime” (Bleiere 33).2 Bleiere admits that reducing 
the question to collaboration “moves the problem to a simplified level 
(co-operation with the occupation regime is by definition evil), and 
this approach ignores the fact that the Soviet regime also had a certain 
ideological appeal, at least in its early days” (33).
The methodological basis for this paper is threefold: it derives from 
the work of Alexei Yurchak, who provides a unique understanding of 
the concept of “the abroad” in the Soviet Union as demarcating not 
actual borders or territory but an imagined space; the insights of the 
Canadian historian Anne E. Gorsuch about Soviet tourism abroad; and 
the Epp Annus’s concept of the Baltic States as the Western border-
lands within postcolonial studies.
The theoretical and historical framework
Latvian writer Zigmunds Skujiņš, after being denied permission 
for his and his daughter’s trip to Great Britain to visit Latvian exile 
writer Gunars Janovskis in 1976, writes in a letter to Janovskis on 
1 This article was funded by ERDF through the postdoctoral research project 
“Latvian Prose Writers under the Soviet Occupation: Collaboration and Non-Violent 
Resistance (1968–1991)” (Nr. 1.1.1.2/VIAA/3/19/482).
2 All quotations from the Latvian are translated by the author of the article.
Jānis Oga:     Andrejs Dripe’s Journalism about the Federal Republic of Germany …
179
29 September: “Let me tell you a joke. Jānis says: I want to go to 
England again. Peter: Have you been to England before? Jānis: No, 
but once I already wanted to go… […] We have unpacked the suit-
cases.” (Skujiņš, Letter 1)
In this letter, Skujiņš retells a popular anecdote of the Soviet era, 
the core version of which includes Paris instead of England. Alexei 
Yurchak discusses this joke as a staple of the era, linking it to another 
Soviet commonplace, namely, to see Paris and die, the author of which 
is Russian writer Ilya Erenburg. Incidentally, the Khrushchev era got its 
popular name from the title of one of Erenburg’s novels as well, namely 
The Thaw (Оттепель). The title “To See Paris and Die” is given to the 
extensive studies by Eleonory Gilburd about the Soviet and Western 
cultural communication in the Khrushchev’s era, when peaceful coex-
istence with the West became the new faith, along with the idea of the 
universality of human culture and the shared value of world civilization.
With the example of the mentioned anecdote, Yurchak describes 
the paradox that is included in the unique understanding of the con-
cept of “the abroad” (заграница) in the territory of Soviet Union:
Zagranitsa lay at the intersection of these two attitudes toward the wider world, 
signifying an imaginary place that was simultaneously knowable and unatta-
inable, tangible and abstract, mundane and exotic. This concept was discon-
nected from any “real” abroad and located in some unspecified place-over 
there (tam), with them (u nikh), as opposed to with us (u nas)—and although 
references to it were ubiquitous, its real existence became dubious. […] These 
narratives and jokes, of which there were many in late Soviet times, depict 
zagranitsa as a Soviet imaginary “elsewhere” that was not necessarily about 
any real place. The “West” (zapad) was its archetypal manifestation. It was 
produced locally and existed only at the time when the real West could not be 
encountered. (Yurchak 159)
Yurchak calls this version of the abroad “the Imaginary West” (159). 
This concept reflects the paradoxical combination of internationality 
and isolation regarding Soviet culture’s relation to the rest of the world. 
On the one hand, the Soviet people realized that the communist idea 
they had represented to the world was based on an internationalist 
idea that implied belonging to all humankind. On the other hand, the 
Soviet people were also aware that they had virtually no opportunity to 
come into direct contact with people beyond Soviet borders or at least 
beyond Eastern European socialist countries.
Anne E. Gorsuch stresses that Soviet tourism was political, but 
politics were not its only manifestation. Soviet tourism shows not only 
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180
how Soviet citizens internalized Soviet norms and supported Soviet 
goals but also how Soviet tourists avoided official efforts to regulate 
their experience and implemented individual travel agendas. Namely, 
many tourists accepted and even actively promoted the narratives of 
the superiority of the Soviet state and citizens. Thus, crossing the bor-
der, whether the Soviet internal border or the Iron Curtain, challenged 
the traveler’s understanding of things outside the Soviet Union and 
formed and transformed political and personal identities. “If tour-
ism was olive branch and propaganda tool, it was also an opportu-
nity for personal encounter, private life, and pleasure,” Gorsuch writes 
(Gorsuch 190). The scholar argues that “the tourist experience, no 
matter how carefully supervised, was unpredictable, however” (190) 
but this knowledge enables us to look at the writers’ touring experience 
and how it reflects in their work. Latvian scholars Eva Eglāja-Kristsone 
and Zita Kārkla have studied the travel notes of Latvian writers, the 
symbolization of the border revealed in them (Eglāja-Kristsone) and 
analyzing autobiographical and literary works as a case study of the 
practice of integrating biographical cartography into fiction (see 
Kārkla and Eglāja-Kristsone, “Liriskās”; Kārkla and Eglāja-Kristsone, 
“Her Story”) while the aspects of orientalism and otherness have been 
examined by Maija Burima, who emphasizes the close connection of 
travel notes with the paradigm of colonialism, stating that writing 
travel notes was an essential part of the construction of the identity 
narrative in the colonial empires (see Burima).
Estonian and Latvian scholars have also explored travelogues pro-
duced in the Soviet and post-Soviet period and covering travels dur-
ing the occupation time, stating that “biographical narratives reveal a 
multi-layered criticism of the Soviet system and society, yet generally, 
travels were recalled in a positive way” (Rattus and Järs 964), or, “ver-
sions of […] writings published in the post-Soviet period and later 
commentaries bear witness to episodes that could not be described in 
the Brezhnev Era as well as self-censorship” (Oga 120).
What does it mean for a writer (and, more broadly, a Soviet citizen) 
to travel abroad (namely, outside the territory of the USSR) in the 
1970s and 1980s? Opportunities to leave behind the Iron Curtain arose 
after the death of Joseph Stalin, during the rule of Khrushchev—first 
to the nearby socialist countries at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s—
and also to the so-called capitalist countries. As Bleiere admits, during 
Khrushchev’s time, the regime’s policies were contradictory, and the 
control over the citizens also included limiting contact with the outside 
world as much as possible:
Jānis Oga:     Andrejs Dripe’s Journalism about the Federal Republic of Germany …
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Like many other things in the Soviet Union, information about the outside 
world was in short supply. Access to it was a privilege and a highly valued one 
at that. A certain number of scientists, intellectuals, and artists could visit for-
eign countries relatively often. Such an opportunity was given to those who 
had climbed high enough on the career ladder and whose culture of behav-
ior and communication skills made it possible to think that they would not 
bring dishonor to the USSR. On the other hand, regular visits abroad helped 
them maintain their status and gain knowledge that others did not have. 
(Bleiere 144)
Eleonor Gilburd claims in an interview: “These are artists and writers 
who traveled abroad and then depicted foreign places in writing, pencil 
or watercolors. Cultural mediators held positions of eminence that gave 
them access to mass media. And it was the state’s monopoly on radio, 
print, and cinema that assured them a country-wide audience. The gen-
eral Soviet condition of restricted information and closed borders cre-
ated opportunities for a few commanding voices to have a profound 
impact. They pursued a self-delegated mission and cared deeply about 
the reception of their efforts.” (Chernyakhovskaya) This is confirmed 
by the notes written by Latvian poet Imants Ziedonis to the Soviet 
literary magazine Druzhba narodov in 1972:
But definitely there is one task—whether on a walk or at work—to record our 
environment truly, to be true for the sake of future generations, because they 
will no longer have these opportunities—to live in this time that we live in. 
(qtd. in Rožkalne 456)
The year 1964 marks the end of Khrushchev’s thaw. The Brezhnev Era 
began with Détente of the Cold War and stagnation (1968–1979) and 
with the so-called second Cold War (1979–1985), when “the space for 
personal freedom expanded more and more. Especially since the end of 
the 1960s, the efforts to get into the head of every citizen, to ‘zombify’ 
have greatly decreased. External behavior was more important—don’t 
jump out, do not say anything you should not, at least outwardly be a 
normal Soviet person.” (Bleiere 153; see also Noack)
Tourism outside the USSR required not only status but also financial 
means. Although wages for a Soviet citizen rose in the 1960s, with daily 
costs remaining the same, ordinary workers still did not have enough 
money to travel. For instance, farmers in the 1950s and the 1960s faced 
this problem. In the 1970s–1980s, as collective farms became richer, 
the situation changed. The intelligentsia, on the other hand, although 
not paid more than industrial workers, had opportunities to earn more, 
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182
for example, by giving private lessons or renting out additional living 
space available only to the creative intelligentsia (Gorsuch 84).
Latvian writers’ opportunities to travel were provided by various 
organizations, such as the Union of Latvian Soviet Writers, the Latvian 
Committee for Cultural Relations with Compatriots Abroad, the Soviet 
Committee for the Defence of Peace, the Latvian SSR of Sciences and 
the USSR Academy of Sciences, on behalf of various transnational 
friendship organizations, in cultural delegations, such as choirs and 
dance groups, as well as tourists, using the routes offered by the official 
company “Inturist” (Eversone and Oga). In exceptional cases, it was 
also possible to visit foreign countries by personal invitation. However, 
with the preconditions for the trip to occur, there was still a high prob-
ability that it could be canceled at the last minute. Extensive ques-
tionnaires, unpleasant questions, especially when traveling to the West, 
suspicion, and insecurity; the whole process became very stressful for 
tourist candidates, and often the travel intentions were not revealed to 
even the closest people until the day of departure (Gorsuch 111).
In the period of the Détente of the Cold War, tensions between the 
Soviet Union and the United States eased, which had a positive effect 
on tourism and cultural exchanges. Scientific-technical and cultural 
cooperation between West Germany and the Soviet Union started in 
the late 1950s. It flourished in the Brezhnev’s Era when the Treaty 
between Germany and the Soviet Union, was signed in Moscow in 
August 1970. It launched German policy vis-à-vis Eastern Europe 
(Ostpolitik), paving the way for the normalization of diplomatic rela-
tions and confirming the peaceful territorial status quo between the 
Soviet Union and the Federal Republic of Germany. The development 
of Soviet tourism with the West was facilitated by the Helsinki Final 
Act in 1975.
Researcher Madara Eversone has counted, in the documents at the 
archives of the Latvian Soviet Writers’ Union, that in the 1970s, a total 
of 606 trips were made abroad, including within the USSR, while in 
the 1980s, 575. These documents do not contain information on all 
trips abroad during the period, as writers also traveled within other 
institutions. In the archive documents, information on trips abroad is 
relatively systematic until 1985. In later documents, the information 
is incomplete due to the political and economic changes in the coun-
try when opportunities to travel outside the Soviet Union gradually 
became more available. There are fewer tourist trips to the West among 
the members of the Latvian Writers’ Union, in comparison with trips 
to the Socialist Bloc countries. The analysis of the documents shows 
Jānis Oga:     Andrejs Dripe’s Journalism about the Federal Republic of Germany …
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that trips to the West took place within delegations of various organiza-
tions, to Sweden (at least 31 trips), the Federal Republic of Germany 
(28), Finland (22), Canada (14), Great Britain (12), USA (11), Italy 
(10), Greece (10), France (10), Denmark (7), and other countries (see 
Eversone and Oga).
In his memoirs, Andrejs Dripe, writing about traveling as one of his 
hobbies, similarly compared it to a special kind of disease, addiction:
The dullness of writing helped my dullness of travel a lot. And not just in the 
form of author’s fees. Members of the Writers’ Union, however, had advan-
tages and greater choices. […] I didn’t travel like an ordinary tourist, but I was 
assigned, I was part of a small special group. These privileges were given by the 
status of a member of the Writers’ Union […]. It cannot be denied that we had 
our advantages. (Dripe, Bez 248, 241)
However, writers also had to show their initiative, especially in the 
competition between the Soviet republics: “A lot came from Central 
Asia, but very few came from the Baltic republics. If you didn’t ask 
for it yourself, then you were rarely sent anywhere.” (Ziedonis 83) 
Scholar Madara Eversone rightly links the privileges enjoyed by mem-
bers of the intelligentsia and creative unions to the political goals of 
the Soviet government:
It was in the interests of the Communist Party to ensure the loyalty of the 
creative intelligentsia, so the status of a member of the Writers’ Union granted 
several household and material privileges. The material benefit from the Liter-
ary Fund gave the members of the Writers’ Union the opportunity to go on 
creative business trips, including to foreign countries, to receive travel tickets 
to sanatoriums, resorts, etc. (Eversone 19)
Writers’ travels abroad, on the one hand, can be seen as a different, 
unique manifestation, because writers enjoyed a special status as repre-
sentatives of the intelligentsia. On the other hand, as Mārtiņš Kaprāns 
admits, “trips to capitalist countries also serve as a context for nor-
malization, as they shed light on the positive experience of the Soviet 
era and quite often show that despite the limitations and difficulties, 
people had opportunities to see the world” (Kaprāns 178–179).
In Latvian literature, this period is particularly notable for writers’ 
attempts to talk about nationally important, even decisive, topics in 
journalism (more directly) and fiction (in figurative language). In jour-
nalism, including travel notes, it is increasingly possible to tell, both 
by directly criticizing (Burima 73) and by comparing—one kolkhoz 
or Soviet farm with another, aesthetic phenomena or cultural develop-
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184
ments in other republics of the USSR, socialist or capitalist countries 
with what is happening in the Latvian SSR.
In some cases, the information provided in travelogues created the 
effect directly or indirectly intended by their authors—to encourage a 
closer look at what is happening in the country itself, to highlight, con-
tinue and nurture national values, traditions, and identity. Analyzing 
the Tajikistan travelogue Perpendikulārā karote (Perpendicular Spoon, 
1972), the acclaimed collaborative work of Latvian poet Imants 
Ziedonis, Ukrainian writer Vitalij Korotič and Latvian photographer 
Gunārs Janaitis, Burima has admitted that “against the Soviet ideal 
of forming a sense of togetherness, Latvian travelogues strengthened 
Latvian identity in relation to exotic cultures at the other side of the 
Soviet empire […]; the travelogues fostered Latvian national identifica-
tion as opposed to its exotic others” (Burima 71, 73).
Writers of the Stagnation period valued travel notes and journal-
ism in general, its main task when viewing it alongside fiction. In 
1972, Ziedonis wrote that “documentary genres are equal, organically 
co-growing with other prose genres” (qtd. in Rožkalne 456), while 
Miervaldis Birze stated: “I also consider pure journalism to be seriously 
evaluated [along with prose].” (Birze 5)
To a large extent, this is related to the rapid rise in popularity of lit-
erary periodicals, which reached its apogee during the National Revival 
(Atmoda in Latvian, Atgimimo in Lithuanian), when, as the Lithuanian 
literary scholar Viktorija Jonkutė wrote, “a new culture of the press and 
publicistic writing was forming. The literary press and the overall public 
communication sphere of the time also included manifestations of the 
changes in historical discourse, sociodynamics, and a new wave of intense 
(self-)expression. The cultural press was a particularly lively, dynamic 
sociocultural phenomenon. Literary and cultural periodical publications 
in Lithuania and Latvia had undoubtedly become an intense, influential 
and unifying cultural, social and political force […]” (Jonkutė 9).
Trips can be divided into two main groups: professional (experi-
ence exchange) and tourist (leisure) trips. However, travel notes also 
provide evidence of certain goals. For example, for both Zenta Ērgle 
and Zigmunds Skujiņš, trips to Africa are closely related to childhood 
memories, that is, realities or what they read, and the fulfillment of 
childhood dreams. Skujiņš’s writing about Africa in 1966 is like proof 
of Yurchak’s thesis about foreign countries as an imaginary space:
As a child, I lived mainly in Africa. […]. This spring I went to Africa again. 
Years go by. Not only hair turns gray, but so do dreams. I will not say that 
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everything remained completely intact in my memory, and yet—I did not 
come to Africa but returned as if to a childhood yard that I had long known 
and walked many times. With a trembling heart and curious eyes. What are 
you really like, Africa? […] Interesting and a little scary. You want to believe, 
but doubts also torment you. As if I were not just a tourist, but an auditor. 
(Skujiņš, Jūtu 16)
Zenta Ērgle defined the purpose of the trip similarly:
“In my childhood, a quilt hung next to my bed. It featured a jungle. […] 
Falling asleep in the evenings, I wondered: when I grow up, I will go to 
Africa and walk through a real jungle. […] Children’s adventure literature 
was replaced by serious books—stories about Africa by Grzymek, Hunter, and 
other authors. Longing for southern exoticism could not be quenched even by 
a double workload and family cares.” (Ērgle 6–7)
The list of goals for foreign trips should also include a specific creative 
intention—to write notes of a smaller or larger volume, a book, such as 
Andrejs Dripe, Zenta Ērgle, Miervaldis Birze, or a broader plan, using 
the foreign trip in a sense only as a background—like Ziedonis’s trip to 
Japan and the Philippines together with the choir Ave sol in 1978 and 
1979 to write a book about the choir and its conductor Imants Kokars. 
Memoirs of Andrejs Dripe testify another purpose of the trip:
In the spring of 1989, Ziga [writer’s wife] and I were both in Finland. I wanted 
to see this clean, harsh land and its high level of culture (Finnish libraries are 
unique), so that I could roughly imagine what Latvia would be like if the 
occupation of 1940 did not take place. (Dripe, Bez 248)
This is in line with the opinion of the Estonian scientist Epp Annus 
about the Baltic States as the Western borderlands and the close con-
nection of the Baltic States with neighboring countries:
Here, the Western borderlands enjoyed the advantage of a still-active pre-
Soviet cultural memory, in comparison with those lands where Sovietization 
processes started immediately in the post-revolutionary years: in the Western 
borderlands, a living memory kept alive continuities with pre-Soviet times. 
(Annus 240)
Visits to the neighboring Western countries in a sense, helped to give 
colors to this continuity, which through the works published in the 
1980s, promoted non-violent resistance and a return to the value sys-
tem of pre-war Latvia, namely, “though cultural events and artefacts 
such as national festivals, films, songs, and novels did not in themselves 
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186
lead to massive resistance against Soviet rule, these, too, together with 
oral memory, sustained a national layer in cultural imaginaries and pre-
served the potential for a future decolonial politics” (240–241).
A condition or emotion that seems to be experienced by all travel-
ers, regardless of status or hand, is the lack of money due to the Soviet 
Union’s restrictions on currency exchange (see Oga). Many authors 
also testify to this in their notes, speaking as if it were a matter of 
course, thus identifying with those staying at home. These feelings are 
often accompanied by shame and even humiliation. Zenta Ērgle does 
not avoid mentioning the limited funds in the notes as a phenomenon 
related to travel: “Gorgeous silver products in the showcases—trays, 
cups, medallions, bracelets. No matter how great our bargaining skills 
are, they will not be bought for us. But you can have fun, it doesn’t cost 
anything.” (Ērgle 39) Imants Ziedonis shares his feelings of shame only 
in his notes about his trip to India, published in the post-Soviet period: 
“We didn’t have any money, and we were already told in Moscow that 
our money means nothing to them in India and the currency exchange 
is so small that we won’t be able to do anything, that there will be many 
poor people and we can settle with pencils […]. But I was ashamed to 
give him pencils for that shell.” (Ziedonis 106)
When traveling abroad, the free time that travelers manage to spend 
outside the official excursion program and when they can get away 
from the ever-present “supervisors” is critical—both by walking alone 
or in small groups and by meeting Latvians in exile in private parties, 
gaining the above-mentioned unpredictable experience. Testimonies 
about time outside the official travel program as extraordinary unau-
thorized activities are recorded (with infrequent exceptions) only in 
notes published in the post-Soviet period. Usually, it is related to a 
private experience, breaking out of limitations.
Unauthorized adventures are often also related to intimate life, 
which was still taboo in the USSR in the 1980s. Dripe recalled in 1994: 
“I got to know the famous pleasure and entertainment districts, I usu-
ally walked alone in Soho in London, Clichy Boulevard, and Pigalle 
Square in Paris. […] I was neither condemned nor excited, I just had 
to see it and realize that this is how life is.” (Dripe, Bez 244)
Writers also tried to get acquainted with the limited sex experience 
in the Soviet Union, and tried to buy and bring home, for example, 
porn magazines. In the letters and diaries of other prose writers and 
poets, not considered this time, there is evidence of visits to video 
salons, and temporary intimate relationships, for example, a Latvian 
poet with a lady from among the exiled Latvians.
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Case study: Andrejs Dripe and his travelogue 
The rapid transition from the Brezhnev Era to Gorbachev’s perestroika 
has been recorded in Andrejs Dripe’s 1986 book Līdzatvestais: Pasauli 
neapturēt (What I Have Brought Along: Not to Stop the World), which 
contains travelogues and notes from his visits to the Federal Republic 
of Germany as well as a chapter on his travel to Syria, Yemen, and 
Morocco.
Andrejs Dripe (1929–2013), Latvian writer, publicist, and peda-
gogue, gained wide attention with his novel Pēdējā barjera (The Last 
Barrier, 1971) and a book of non-fiction Kolonijas audzinātāja piezīmes 
(Notes of a Colony Educator, 1975) in which he used his experience 
as a teacher in a juvenile offender colony. Dripe was one of the first 
in Latvian Soviet literature to address issues related to re-education, 
the effectiveness of punishment, and the conditions of imprisonment. 
In the 1980s, Dripe’s popularity was strengthened by other non-fic-
tion books and Līdzatvestais. The writer, journalist, and editor Aivars 
Kļavis has admitted, in 2021, that “thanks to such peaks of this genre as 
Ziedonis’s Courland [Kurzemīte] or Dripe’s Notes of a Colony Educator, 
at that time [in the 1980s in Latvia] [literary] journalism was extremely 
in demand and popular” (Kļavis 37).
The success of a famous and regime-friendly professional writer 
allowed Dripe to travel privileges. Dripe also held both paid and pub-
lic office in the Writers’ Union and its primary organization of the 
Communist Party (a member since 1975) where he was elected, in 
1981 and 1983, as the Deputy Secretary and responsible for organiza-
tional work (LNA1 99; LNA2 96). In his memoirs, Dripe has repeat-
edly mentioned the “dullness of travel” and his interest in youth, which 
made him go on regular trips to the Soviet Union, socialist countries, 
and the West. It must be admitted that Dripe’s travels and travelogues 
became more intense in the mid-1980s after, in March 1982, he joined 
the KGB’s agents, as shown by his card in the LSSR KGB’s document 
archive (KGBAC).
In his memoirs, in 1994, Dripe remembers that “many people, suf-
fering from the madness of travel like me, have never been to the bor-
ders. Either the pedigrees were wrong, or they had ‘sinned’ against the 
government of the ‘beloved’ workers themselves, but they were consis-
tently denied foreign passports” (Dripe, Bez 248). Dripe claims that 
he has not received permission on several occasions and that his trip 
to Cuba in the late 1960s may not have taken place because his chil-
dren built a bunker while playing in the forest in the summer, which 
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188
has aroused the interest of the authorities (239). Dripe’s trips include 
both business and leisure trips to socialist satellite countries, Western 
countries, and the so-called exotic countries, both as part of delegations 
of organizations and by private invitation. Until the mid-1980s, Dripe 
had traveled a lot: to the German Democratic Republic and Poland in 
1972, Somalia and Yemen in 1975, the United Kingdom (London) in 
1975, Morocco and Spain in 1978, France in 1979, East Germany, 
again, in 1979, Hungary in 1981, Near East in 1982, Romania in 
1982, Syria in 1982, West Germany in 1984, Sweden in 1984.
Dripe’s memories mention his trips abroad in the 1970s and 1980s: 
Poland and the GDR (1972, coincides with what is mentioned in the 
archive documents); Yemeni TDR, Kuwait (1975, on file: Somalia, 
Yemen); “after some time” Morocco (in archive documents 1978); 
Syria (in archive documents September 1982); Algeria (not mentioned 
in documents); England, Spain, FRG, Sweden, France (all mentioned 
in documents); together with his wife: GDR, Hungary, Romania (all 
mentioned in the documents; the wife is mentioned only in the records 
of the Hungarian trip). Dripe writes that the trips to Syria and Algeria 
were “organized by the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Union of 
Writers of the USSR” (Dripe, Bez 244) (this is also mentioned in the 
Writers’ Union’s documents on Syria) and that there were only two or 
three people in these groups (244).
Summarizing and comparing the Writers’ Union’s documents and 
Dripe’s journalisms, it can be concluded that there is no evidence of 
the following Dripe’s trips in the archive documents: (1) Algeria (a trip 
organized by the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Writers’ Union 
of the USSR for a group of three people together with translator Olga 
Vlasova and Kazakh writer Anuar Alimzhanov; no date clarified); (2) 
a ship cruise along the Mediterranean Sea (Malta, Tunisia, Spain, 
France, Italy, date unknown), together with his wife; (3) VFR (1981, 
together with Latvian actress Dina Kuple, a trip organized by the 
Cultural Relations Committee); (4) Yugoslavia (date not established); 
(5) VFR (1984, individual trip “at the invitation of Dzidra Vilka to 
get to know the life of the local youth”; Dripe, Bez 247); (6) Canada 
(1988); (7) Finland (1989, together with his wife).
Dripe’s trip to West Germany took place in the spring of 1984 
and lasted about two months. The route of the journey, according to 
the travel notes, was the following: Rīga–Moscow–Hamburg–Essen–
[mainly staying in Hamburg and Essen, Dortmund, Münster, Freiburg 
were also visited]–Hamburg–Moscow–Rīga. During the trip, Dripe 
intended to get acquainted with the youth and the life of young people 
Jānis Oga:     Andrejs Dripe’s Journalism about the Federal Republic of Germany …
189
in West Germany. He visited schools, talked with students and teach-
ers, and followed young people in their work and free time and their 
life in farming communities. Dripe’s travelogues are complemented by 
photographs taken by himself, which have been published both in peri-
odicals and in books.
The manuscript of the book was completed and submitted to the 
publishing house at the end of 1984. It was first published as an arti-
cle Pasauli neapturēt (You Can’t Stop the World) with the subtitle Visit 
to the youth of VFR in the magazine Liesma (Flame) (run of 174,000 
copies) in 1984 (No. 8–11); separate section Ārākāpēji (Those Who are 
Stepping Out) was published in the daily newspaper Padomju Jaunatne 
(Soviet Youth) (circulation 216,000 copies) in February 1985.
An expanded version of the article is included as a separate chapter 
in Līdzatvestais, the manuscript of which was completed and handed 
over to the publishing house at the end of 1984. Two official review-
ers of the publishing house were appointed for the manuscript: for-
mer Soviet diplomat in Sweden Ivars Ķezbers and former instructor of 
the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Latvia, and head 
of the press sector, and Ēvalds Strods, the organizational secretary of 
the Writers’ Union. In an internal review of the book, Strods wrote: 
“Dripe’s ‘bags’ contain things that the Latvian reader has seen little 
by little because until now there are no large-scale works on the life of 
young people abroad.” The Writers’ Union’s archive documents show 
that despite the backlash of the reviewers, on September 23, 1987, at 
the closed meeting of the first organization of the Communist Party of 
the Writers’ Union about Dripe’s “personal contribution to the pro-
cesses of social renewal,” he reported on the “problems” of the book, as 
he had compared the West German youth in Germany with the youth 
in Soviet Latvia (LNA4 78).
Līdzatvestais was published in the summer of 1986, with a circula-
tion of 40,000 copies. It was recognized as the most popular journalistic 
book of 1986; this fact was also emphasized by the writer and publicist 
Māra Svīre in the above-mentioned closed meeting of the communists 
of the Writers’ Union in 1987 (LNA4 78). By the time the first reviews 
were published in the periodicals in February 1987, and in exile Latvian 
media abroad even at the end of 1988, the book was already outdated 
but still relevant. It is confirmed by the publication of the translation 
of the chapter You Can’t Stop the World in the very first issues of the 
monthly Rodnik, the Russian version of the popular magazine Avots (A 
Spring). The editor of Rodnik Oleg Mihalevich wrote: “I had already 
received Andrejs Dripe’s voluminous article Stop this World—I Want 
PKn, letnik 46, št. 3, Ljubljana, november 2023
190
to Get Out about the youth of the West, and everyone was undeniably 
interested in how they live there.” (qtd. in Kļavis 221)
The book starts with short impressions from various Western European 
cities (London, Paris, Marseille, Rome, Madrid, Stockholm, Hamburg), 
where the author has observed unusual behavior of young people since 
the 1970s, such as sleeping in parks, playing music in the tunnel, pros-
titution, etc., with such an account of travels and their routes, causing 
readers’ trust or, on the contrary, suspicions about Dripe’s special status 
compared to other writers and the author’s contemporaries. This section 
is followed by the paragraph that apparently proves the changes of the 
Soviet colonial traveler’s in the last period of the Stagnation:
One fine spring day, the wheels of TU-154 hit the concrete of the runway at 
Hamburg Airport. A very short moment in the air, and I’m already there—in 
a completely different world. It should be emphasized right away—it really is a 
different world. We often forget it, measure and compare it with our yardstick, 
with what fits here, at our home. (Dripe, Līdzatvestais 13)
As it is stated by Eglāja-Kristsone, “the Soviet tourist was like a camera 
pointing outwards to get pictures to show to armchair tourists and au-
thorities, but the descriptions (publications in the press, books) lacked 
an ‘inward’ look, a personal encounter with the other, so research. Of 
course, there is no reason to claim that the tourists did not do it, in the 
same way, not only the tourists themselves change over time but also 
the descriptions.” (Eglāja-Kristsone 12)
Dripe represents those travelers who have changed and, besides their 
notes to “armchair tourists”, provides his own research. He has used a 
wide range of literature, though his interests were not West German 
geography but statistical data and the latest periodicals. With quota-
tions from VFR newspaper and magazine publications, the author 
raised questions already at the beginning of the chapter, to which he 
seeks answers in the following subsections: how young people imagine 
the future, what their goals are, why young people are so pessimistic. 
Most of the answers point to fear of unemployment, war, lack of moti-
vation, and feeling alienated from adult society.
During his trip, Dripe was trying to get acquainted with the youth 
and life of young people in West Germany from different angles. He 
talked to students and his contemporaries.  Although the author moral-
izes on the “shadow sides of capitalism” and the “slavery for money,” 
the well thought advice and undertone of the book are clear: you must 
work hard and learn hard to succeed. Describing his communication 
difficulties with locals, Dripe gives good advice to young people in 
Jānis Oga:     Andrejs Dripe’s Journalism about the Federal Republic of Germany …
191
Latvia—to learn foreign languages: English, French, and German. It is 
not said, but is clear that people abroad, especially in the West, do not 
speak and do not understand Russian.
Of course, the lack of language skills also hindered me tremendously, and I 
always blamed myself for not having learned the same English that the major-
ity of people in the West are familiar with. (Dripe, Līdzatvestais 10)
Though it is mentioned directly only in a couple of places, it is also 
understandable that the author tries to compare the youth of West 
Germany and their prospects with the youth of Soviet Latvia. Friendly, 
though often exaggerated, intonation made the book easy to read and 
allowed it to become extremely popular:
When it comes to guys, the most eye-catching trend is hair toning, coloring, 
blow-drying and perming. So, strongly feminine orientations. Rarely, each 
other already paints their lips and wears earrings. If earlier it was only men 
for sale and homosexuals, now you are no longer sure who is standing in front 
of you—a person with pathological tendencies or simply a fashionable young 
man. A girl becomes more masculine in her appearance, a boy becomes more 
feminine. How long will it be? Come on, guess! […]
Many of the above have already been taken over by our boys and girls. It 
shows attentiveness and interest. I wish this attentiveness was just as vividly 
expressed in other, more serious areas of life! (Dripe, Līdzatvestais 189)
Most likely, this was the first book in Soviet Latvia in which it was pos-
sible to find out more about the realities of zagranitsa or “Imaginary 
West,” such as unemployment, drug addiction, strikes, TV series, 
horoscopes, publications on sex in youth magazines, high fuel prices, 
discrimination from an official source, etc.:
Living in a vain month after month, realizing that time is passing, but you 
are nothing there, others are working, but you are living at the expense of 
what they have earned, doesn’t that seem terrible to you? (Dripe, Līdzatvestais 
59); McDonald—cheap canteens that young people like to visit” (159); TV 
is showing the 129th (!!!) episode of the American series Dallas. Fashionably 
dressed millionaires and their offspring roam there, mirrors of villa swimming 
pools shining, super expensive sports cars gliding by. Even millionaires have 
their heartaches, love dramas, and family disagreements. (66)
As mentioned, one of the most unpleasant conditions that all travelers, 
regardless of status and convenience, seem to experience is the lack of 
money. Dripe claims that he was received by exiled Latvians during his 
VFR trip, and this also made it possible to compensate for the lack of 
PKn, letnik 46, št. 3, Ljubljana, november 2023
192
financial resources. Dripe formulated it as a peculiar exchange of ser-
vices, although in his notes, he did not mention by name either Dzidra 
Vilks, who privately officially invited the writer to the VFR or other 
West German Latvians:
Furthermore, and this is very important, my friends could help me there. 
Several of them have also visited us in Latvia. Their hospitality meant a lot 
because I couldn’t afford to pay the fabulous sums for hotel rooms. (Dripe, 
Līdzatvestais 12)
It is possible to define three conditional circles of topics that Andrejs 
Dripe is interested in: (1) Young people, continuing what was started 
in previous books. In a letter to a poet Velta Toma, living in Canada, 
in 1987, Dripe wrote: “I’m writing this and that, but nothing sane is 
coming. […] As usual, young people and their pain are interesting to 
me. I intend to have a non-fiction book ready, consisting mainly of 
young people’s letters. Many of them are writing to me, the letters 
are piling up. Don’t get me wrong, but young people with all their 
maximalism and stupidity seem much closer to me than their old and 
promising contemporaries.” (Dripe, Letter)
2) A man, a contemporary, or a friend of thoughts and arguments, 
in the free world. In the book, Dripe has various interlocutors from 
local Latvian and German circles: Mr. Mauer, Mr. Sauer, and Fritz 
from Hamburg. Admittedly, Dripe has few associates, but perhaps this 
is a false maneuver.
3) The common and the differences between the Federal Republic 
of Germany and Soviet Latvia.
Directly from Dripe’s book, most readers first learned about sev-
eral of the phenomena mentioned above, which already entered the 
Latvian post-communist space in the early 1990s. This was later, in 
1994, acknowledged by the author: “From today’s [the early 1990s] 
point of view, of course, this book has its shortcomings and due to 
the fees required by the regime (otherwise the work would not have 
been published at all), but this happened minimally, and in gen-
eral I am not ashamed of my work. It was the first semi-open book 
that introduced Latvian youth to the world of their Western peers.” 
(Dripe, Bez 247)
Also, in his travel notes, Dripe has repeatedly emphasized that the 
knowledge of the inhabitants of the VFR about the Soviet Union is 
little, superficial, and negative. Like in other authors’ travelogues, 
like Ērgle’s notes on Africa, Papua New Guinea, and Australia, Dripe 
Jānis Oga:     Andrejs Dripe’s Journalism about the Federal Republic of Germany …
193
repeatedly mentioned that the people he met in West Germany, like-
wise people from other continents, had never seen a single tourist from 
the Soviet Union before.
Conclusion
In the so-called Brezhnev Era, the writers were materially provided and 
took advantage of the system’s advantages and privileges, which, al-
though associated with inconvenience and insecurity, allowed them to 
go on exchange and tourism trips outside the USSR to the so-called 
“capitalist countries.” Traveling to the West allowed the writers to 
compare conditions inside and outside the Soviet Union and to draw 
conclusions about the possibilities of “free Soviet citizens” as tourists 
entering the free world. The different understanding of it, according to 
Alexey Yurchak, lay beneath the term zagranitsa or “Imaginary West.”
Notes on the travels include observations on the socio-economic 
situation, and environment and reports on the political events and doc-
uments that have facilitated trips to the West. Often experience comes 
as a surprise to the travelers themselves: for example, people of other 
nationalities, language barrier, the lack of money.
The travelogue by Andrejs Dripe records the rapid transition from 
Brezhnev’s Era to Gorbachev’s perestroika and becomes the first offi-
cial source that informs about the realities of the real West only a 
few people among readers have visited. Travel notes on a trip to the 
Federal Republic of Germany, which belongs to the end of the stagna-
tion period, the period of “perestroika” and the National Revival, is 
one of the texts that characterize these changes, when exactly this look 
“inward” comes to the fore and personal impressions outside the tourist 
group routes. It was a private experience that sometimes led to anti-
Soviet views or actions—thanks to trips abroad, travelers could return 
home apparently unchanged on the outside, but having experienced 
internal changes, both personal and political. Through Dripe’s travel-
ogues, a wide audience of Latvian and Russian readers, both in Latvia 
and in the territory of the former USSR, was informed about the life 
and views of Western youth in the mid-1980s. Though considering 
the still slow flow of information at the end of the stagnation period 
and the beginning of “perestroika,” Dripe’s writing was relevant and 
to some extent prepared the readers for upcoming changes in society.
PKn, letnik 46, št. 3, Ljubljana, november 2023
194
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Novinarstvo Andrejsa Dripeja o Zvezni republiki 
Nemčiji in njegov vpliv na družbene spremembe v 
osemdesetih letih 20. stoletja
Ključne besede: latvijska književnost / novinarstvo / potopisi / sovjetski turizem / podoba 
Zahoda / doba Brežnjeva / perestrojka
Članek obravnava potovanja latvijskih pisateljev zunaj Sovjetske zveze, ki 
jih je v dobi Brežnjeva dovoljeval okupacijski režim in jih je odobravala jav-
nost, kot enega od privilegijev, ki jih je uživala t. i. kreativna inteligenca, ter 
pokaže, kako so se ta potovanja odražala v njihovih literarnih in publicistič-
nih delih. Potovanja v tujino so vzbujala nasprotujoča si čustva, pisatelji pa 
so morali biti za potovanja razmeroma premožni. Kljub temu so pogosto 
doživljali ponižanje, ko so se soočali z realnostjo svojih skromnih finančnih 
sredstev zunaj ZSSR in dejstvom, da so tudi na svobodnem Zahodu dejan-
sko ostajali v zaporu. Porast priljubljenosti literarnih revij v osemdesetih letih 
je imel ključno vlogo pri oblikovanju nove kulture tiska in novinarstva, saj 
so velikim množicam bralcev zagotavljale pomembne informacije o življenju 
v tujini. Zapiski o potovanjih vključujejo opažanja o družbenoekonomskih 
PKn, letnik 46, št. 3, Ljubljana, november 2023
196
razmerah, okolju in političnih dogodkih ter dokumente, ki so olajšali poto-
vanja na Zahod. Študija primera obravnava potopisni dnevnik Andrejsa Dri-
peja iz osemdesetih let prejšnjega stoletja. Dripejeva publicistika beleži hiter 
prehod iz dobe Brežnjeva v čas Gorbačovove perestrojke. Tako Dripe postane 
prvi uradni vir informacij o Zahodu, ki so ga sicer obiskali le redki izmed 
njegovih bralcev.
1.01 Izvirni znanstveni članek / Original scientific article
UDK 821.174.09-992Dripe A.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3986/pkn.v46.i3.10