Nacionālās pašapziņas un starpnacionālo attiecību atspoguļojums Vitebskas guberņas latviešu apriņķos 19.-20. gadsimta mijā E. Voltera un F. Kempa pētījumos

ENThe second half of the 19th century is the birth of many nations in Europe, when the loyalty to the sovereign was replaced by a sense of national unity. During that time, one part of modern Latvia was separated both religiously and administratively in the Vitebsk governorate of the Russian Empire. The majority of inhabitants of Rezekne, Ludza, and Daugavpils districts were Latgalians, who were already unequivocally identified by Russian ethnographers as part of the Latvian folk in the middle of the 19th century. The Russian administration extended the ban on Latin printing to these three districts as part of the campaign against education in Polish and Lithuanian. Thus, for half a century Latgale found itself in a state of information isolation and retained all the features of the agrarian society described by E. Gellner, where belonging to the local community rather than to a larger group like the Latvian people is more important. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that, on the basis of language and religious differences, the Baltic Latvians and Latgalians alienate each other. The Latvians in the Baltics are Lutheran and use Gothic font for writing. Latgalians are Catholics and use Latin font for writing. Latvians in the Baltics have created a united cultural space and do not understand the need to integrate Latgalians into it. Latgalians, on the other hand, wouldnít accept the opportunity to assimilate in the Baltic Latvian environment.The differences between religious archetypes and media make the region of Latgale an interesting research object to understand the contemporary situation in the resolution of cultural conflicts. Integration of the ruling Russian ethnic group into the Latgalian environment and the integration of Latgalians into the relatively small Belarusian cultural environment was taking place in Latgale, despite the fact that Russian, Polish, and German cultures used economic and administrative methods to strengthen their position in the region. The sources under study provide also insight into the process of forming relations between indigenous and Jewish people in the region, who, on the one hand were respected as careful owners and suppliers of forbidden information, and on the other, were hated as greedy creditors. In this situation, the treatment of individual members of the community is exposed to the whole group. Key words: Francis Kemps, Karl Eduard Gottfried Wolter, Latgale, Latgalians, Latvia, Latvians, nationalism.