Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
The development of new states in Central and Eastern Europe during the inter-war period was an enthusiastic attempt to build free and democratic societies, which unfortunately was soon followed by a sense of disappointment among both the public and political elites. This eventually led to the replacement of the young democracies with authoritarian regimes in Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and other countries. I explore this growth of anti-democratic tendencies through the case of Latvian democracy and its opponents in the 1920s and early 1930s. I particularly focus on the role of the nationalist intelligentsia as the author of anti-democratic and pro-authoritarian political ideas.