Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

l and financial resources to expand its work, and its publication ceased after a few issues. More leftist, at least in the beginning, was the National Workers Party, a political group established in 1925 by free-church minister Roberts Bace.*’ Like the group of Christian Socialists described above, it opposed the Social Democrats. Bace hada personal reason for hating Social Democrats: in 1922, because of conflict with them, he had been expelled from the trade union and established a separate trade organisation, the National Trade Union of don: George Allen & Unwin, 1982), p. 14. * Tn last years of his life, Tiltins (d. 1926) attended the Matthew Baptist Church in Riga. H. Redins, “Martins Tiltins’, Atmoda, no. 1 (1926), p. 2. ‘> “Ap Satversmes sapulci’, Kristigais Socialists, no. 1 (6 March 1920). 4 “Socialdemokratu pretkristigais gars. Viltiba un divkosiba’, Kristigais Socidlists, no. 5 (16 April 1920). *° “Ap Satversmes sapulci”. *6 “Socialais jautajums’, Kristigais Socialists, no. 8 (1920). *? Before World War I, Roberts Bace was travelling secretary of the Latvian branch of the youth organisation “Christian Endeavour” and minister at the Alliance Church in Riga, a small free-church group. In 1917, he established and led the society “Christian Unity’, which continued the traditions of the Alliance Church. Later he joined the Baptists, and from 1945 to 1946 was assistant to the bishop. During the First Republic he was not yet associated with Baptists, and is therefore not named as a “Baptist politician” in accounts of Baptist history. 109 Book Industry Workers.* In order to gain wider support he did not stress his denominational background and status in the church in his pre-elec- tion campaigns. There is nothing about it in his short biography published in the newspaper of the party in 1925.*” However Bace stood strongly for a close state-church relationship. Uncommon to the free-church perspective, not to mention Social Democrats, was the promise of his party to organise state support for the churches.” For some members of his group, the term “Christian Socialist” was synonymous with “national worker”.*: The party followed the nineteenth-century nationalist mythology of one nation with common interests. Thoughts expressed by Eduards Paplinskis, chairman of the Central Committee of the party, sound more innovative. He referred to his group as the next step in the genesis of socialist movements and called it “national state Socialism, where interests of the state and the whole nation occupy first place positions’.** However such ideas should be viewed in the given context; the Party of National Workers was not alone in its claims to reform Socialism. For example, the Workers Party of Latvian People (estab- lished in 1930) demanded modernisation of socialist ideology, claiming that socialism in Latvia had gone astray.” The Party of National Workers disassociated itself more and more from t