ABSTRACT
The Old Latvians tended to work as skilled laborers or farmers and most of them were moderately wealthy, for example, the majority of them owned their homes. The voice of the radical socialists and supporters of the Soviet Union among the Old Latvians was the newspaper Amerikas Latvietis, which in the mid-1950s came under a complete control of the Soviet propaganda institutions. Some of the Old Latvians were even believed that the idea of national statehood itself had first originated among the Latvians in America. The Old Latvians who were convinced Communists gathered around the newspaper Amerikas Latvietis and owned a Workers' Club close to downtown Boston. Although the Old Latvians and the post-World War II emigres were united by a common ethnic identity and, for the most part, loyalty to their homeland, there was an insurmountable gap between them. Assurances constituted a major part of the resettlement process for Latvian DPs.
