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Mouse: "Yes, yes, Mr. Rainis: a big political party makes a big shriek, and great men have great fear." (satirical magazine Pūcesspieģelis on 1925.10.31) |
Rainis jolted awake. A loud thump had slashed
through the night and the poet’s sleep. Rainis squinted his eyes against the
dim moonlight that flooded the bedroom through the open window. Heartbeat
thudded in his chest. He sat up in the bed, frozen for a moment, straining his
ears to find the source of the noise. No, just the neighbour’s dog barking.
Nothing else. But maybe… Maybe he also heard footsteps sinking into the
distance... The urge to take a look took over. The poet’s muscles tensed as he
slowly lowered his legs on the bedroom floor. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he
suddenly noticed something unusual. Something in the room was different. A gust
of air ran across the poet’s face. Instinctively Rainis turned his head to the
bedroom door. He gasped. It was wide open!
Rainis was important. He was important in many
ways. He was a famous poet, he was a beloved playwright. He was the closest
Latvians ever got to a Nobel Prize in literature or any Nobel Prize for that matter.
A real heavyweight in the arena of the Latvian culture. This is what most
people would say. What most people tend to forget is that as so many other men
of culture before and after him, he committed the capital sin of… smearing his
suit against the dirty part of our life – politics. Yes, Rainis was a
politician. He was the window dressing of the largest political party, a
minister of education, and even a presidential candidate. This latter and nowadays
lesser known part of his life was exactly the reason why the events of the
night of 25 October 1925 turned into such a mystery and scandal.
So what exactly happened that night? Actually,
nobody knows “exactly”. But there’s a truckload of strong opinions resting on
flimsy foundation. So let’s dive into this mystery by unpacking the events of
the night from the eyes of the great poet himself. Around 1 am, Rainis was awaken
in his 2nd floor bedroom by a loud noise that came from outside. He
immediately noticed that the bedroom door to the stairs was open. The poet went
to the window in hope of locating the source of the noise, but there he stumbled
upon something totally unexpected – a wooden ladder resting against the wall of
the house, right next to the window. He rushed downstairs and met the maid who had
not gone to bed yet. She had heard the noise too, as if something had hit the
wall of the house…
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The bedroom window from inside |
That was everything Rainis could say about the
event. Luckily, daylight and police could reveal more. Officers did not find
anything strange in Rainis’ room, nor did they find anything missing. There was
nothing near the house either. But they did
find something in the wet soil in the garden. At least three sets of footprints
that lead to an ugly break in the fence that separated the property from the
street. The footprints were not just any footprints. They were left by Shimmy
shoes. This is important. Let’s put a pin in it for now. As for the ladder, police
did not have to rack their brains much – it had been stolen from the neighbour’s
yard the same night.
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The ladder right next to Rainis' 2nd floor window |
No one had seen the mysterious
intruders either in the house or near it. But, boy, they had been seen on the
street! In many forms and shapes. People in the neighbourhood simply could not
hold the story down – getting the description of the suspect was like trying to
jump over potholes in a dark street on a moonless night. One eye-witness
assured he had seen a person walking down the street with a flashlight. Another
one somewhat confirmed that – he remembered a man with a flashlight, but riding
on a horse. One of the neighbours said that he had seen not one, but several
persons with flashlights walk by the Rainis’ house dressed in student uniforms.
Let’s pin this piece of clothing to our detective corkboard. We’ll get back to
it later. Meanwhile in another witness story, the “several” students had
dropped their uniforms turning into normal people, but had grown in number
instead, plus a weirdly specific one – 15.
Police did not really know what to make of it. In
the end they ruled that it has been a failed burglary attempt. Which was not a
bad guess since at the time, burglaries by climbing through windows were as
popular as ever. This type of criminals used ladders to enter apartments, and
while one of them was inspecting the room, others were waiting under the window
for the loot to be handed down. Police assumed that in this case the burglar
got scared of the sleeping poet and fled the scene. Indeed, experience showed
that these burglars were not eager to socialize with their victims and had a
habit to throw their plan and themselves out of the window if they encountered
anyone in the apartment.
And this is where the story could have ended if
it was not for the socialists. The left-wing press did not buy it. They
insisted that this had been an attack of a political nature, supposedly kidnapping
and even an “assassination attempt”. It was assumed that one of the attackers
had already entered Rainis’ bedroom and opened the door to the stairs to
prepare an escape route for the rest of the gang whose task was to carry the poet out. It would
have gone buttery smooth if it had not been for the maid downstairs whose
presence scared off the intruder.
It’s not hard to guess who were turned into the
perpetrators of this heinous crime – of course, the ideological opponents of
the socialists – the right-wingers. Did the press know more about this than
police, than anyone else? Well, they certainly did know one thing – the most prominent
member of the socialist party had just turned into a victim, so it was an
opportunity to rake in some public support for their side. And rake they did!
Even two newspapers in Finland drove claws in this juicy story and printed
articles about “fascist terror” against Rainis! Which made the Latvian embassy
in Finland intervene to calm down the Finnish press.
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"Fascist terror in Latvia. 15 thugs attacked the writer Rainis' apartment" reported Finnish periodical Hämeen Kansa on 29.10.1925 |
Pinning it on the right-wingers was an easy jab
at the time. Driven by not only the usual animosity between the both ends of
the political spectrum, but also some blood-soaked resentment and need for a revenge.
You see, the relationship between the left and the right in 1925 was torn to
pieces and stomped in the ground. In March that year, political campaigning in
the streets had turned into clashes between the two sides. It culminated with right-wingers
drawing handguns and shooting the socialist activist Aleksandrs Masaks dead in
the street.
It would be more likely for Masaks to come back
from the afterlife than for people to calm down. Days grew into weeks, weeks
stretched into months but the two sides kept rubbing against each other finally
reaching the explosion temperature at the end of the same year. There were
three bombings of editorials of left‑wing newspapers. These were diligently repaid
by three identical attacks in the beginning of 1926 – this time smashing to
pieces right‑wing periodicals. If it was not enough, 1925 was also a big year for
elections – Latvia chose both its parliament and the president. And the martyr-against-his-will,
Rainis, happened to be the left‑wing presidential candidate. So there was
enough tension and motivation packed in the barrel to blow this little bizarre
incident out of proportion.
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After the explosion at the editorial of Latvijas Sargs (Guard of Latvia, a right-wing periodical) |
Yes, police and the common-sense pointed at just another failed burglary. While socialists frantically shook their fingers in a different direction. And it’s not like they were downright blind punching darkness. There were two pieces of evidence that kept the glimmer of the kidnapping theory from dying out. It’s time to return to our detective corkboard. Let’s take a look at the first pin – the Shimmy shoes. This footwear originated in the US with the rise in popularity of the Shimmy dance in the 1910s. In the early 1920s, both the dance moves and the shoes walked on dance floors in Latvia as well. It’s quite strange that such ordinary burglars would wear such extraordinary equipment. It’s not like they were going to a bank to cash in a fake check. It’s even less likely that all of them would choose such unfitting style of shoe for this type of crime.
Now, the other piece of evidence is not as solid since it came from the most short-sighted part of investigation – the eye-witnesses. Some of them said that the people they saw pass by Rainis’ residence were wearing student uniforms. Why would that be of any importance? Well, back in the 1920s, being a student was not cheap. Online classes by shady-sounding universities were yet to be invented. However, the young intellectuals were not known for practicing crime to fund their academic endeavours. But, yes, due to the expenses, the higher education was not for everybody, certainly not for the working class. That theoretically removed the common folk from the crime scene leaving the better-off right-wingers with “blood on their hands”. Just theoretically, of course. But the student gown together with the dancing shoes were enough to dress up the right-looking suspect and run the story.
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"Kidnapping of Rainis One Autumn Night" – the cover of the satirical magazine Aizkulises on 31.10.1925 |
The story got passed around from newspaper to newspaper like it was a bottle in a student corporation. But did it have a satisfying ending? Were the flashlights‑wielding, student‑looking, Shimmy-dancing culprits put behind bars? Even the minister of interior was pressured to solve this matter ASAP! However, not even an appeal to the higher institutions produced any results. No one was ever caught nor sentenced. No new evidence nor leads emerged either. And although the story was turning dry, the press still looked for a chance to squeeze out one last drop of news material. Not a month passed and they were making their typewriters creak again. For a good reason. There was a new attack on Rainis’ apartment! But, no, there was not. It turned out to be just a hoax that some morning periodicals were just too eager to munch on hungry for something to print.
But what about Rainis? What did the protagonist of this great scandal think?
Did he have his own conspiracy theory? Did he ever go on to rant about
fascists? He didn’t. Rainis kept his opinions to himself. The only time he
publicly said something about the case was at the police station in the morning
right after the attack. There he declared that, no, he did not believe it was political.