Talk:Pytalovo

The edit was indeed correct. Not whole Abrene district was transffered from Latvian SSR to Russia, but eastern half of it (Abrene district was larger and included as well areas that are part of Latvia until now). Implying that Guberniya and Oblast is the same is wrong (thus couldn't be said "added back to Pskov Oblast" because previously it was part of Pskov Guberniya). As well, the mistake of missing parenthesis was corrected. Burann 12:01, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

German Version
There is a German version at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pytalowo which links here, but teh English version does not know this. Neither do the Russian or Bulgarian ones. How to fix this? If I knew how, I may even start a Dutch translation.

Judging from http://f15.parsimony.net/forum25980/messages/241.htm - I'd be tempted to believe that the phrase "renamed" Jaunlatgalle is not strictly correct. Jaunlatgalle looks like the Latvian version of Neu-Lettgallen, the German name. Jewish genealogy lists on the Internet also suggest Jews were living in Neu-Lettgallen in the 19th century. --pgp 14:34, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
 * You should have added de:Pytalowo to the page. I fixed the interwiki link now. --Ghirla | talk 14:43, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the name, could some ethnic Latvian point it out since when exactly the name Jaunlatgale was used in Latvian contexts for this town (I mean, was it so that in Latvian language the town was called Jaunlatgale even before 1920, or was the name invented then?)? What is the history of name Abrene? I edited the article some due to this, as well changed "raion" into "district" - as far as I understand, in Wikipedia raions of Russia are called districts. Change it back if I am wrong here. As well I added information about interesting places. Burann 18:29, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Ghirla, thanks for the info. I did do the Dutch version. ;>) But, basing myself on the website of the town, I decided to use 1782 rather than 1878 as first mention date (and I translated some of Burann's info on interesting places)

Burann: perhaps Neu-Lettgallen/Jaunlatgale and Pytalovo were not exactly the same place? Perhaps Pytalovo was just a hamlet with some Russian peasants in the vicinity of the place called Neu-Lettgallen by German Balts and Jews? Then, after the railroad came to the place, the Russian part grew so much that it eventually encompassed the earlier place? Neu-Lettgallen ia a funny name to give to a place or a village. It could be the answer of a Latvian peasant, asked by a German Baltic knight for the name of this place. Or it could be the name of a castle, watching over a particular area. Vyzhgorodok is not far from Pytalovo. What we really need is this book: http://www.bestwebbuys.com/The_Placenames_of_Latgola-ISBN_0918375029.html?isrc=b-search

I still have a number of questions:

1) was the whole Abrene region a part of Poland before the partition? The % of Lutherans among ethnic Latvians (pre-1939 statistic) is 20-25%. Rather high for an area that was controlled by Roman Catholic Poland for such a long time. And rather low for a Latvian area NOT controlled by Poland. Lutheranism tends to decline in areas where authority favours another religion. Could the percentage indicate immigration from other areas in Latvia?

2) Where are the Old Believers in that religion statistic? Many of them had been living in Latgale for a very long time, and could therefore speak Latvian. Were they counted as ethnically Latvian, but Orthodox as to religion? It would explain the difference between the ethnic percentage and the religious one (55% Latvian but 48% Orthodox).

3) What is the meaning of "Братское кладбище" and "Братская могила" on the town's website? There seem to be a lot of them around Pytalovo. All of them Forest Brothers' sites? --pgp 10:04, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The Old Believers were not counted as ethnic Latvians; I doubt that there were many (or even any) in the area, since they mostly lived compactly in certain areas, but not in that area (and very few of them could speak Latvian, by the way; they were rather closed communities with very high illiteracy rates). There were many Orthodox ethnic Latvians, especially in the eastern regions -- the ethnic breakdown of the Orthodox in all of Latvia in 1935 was 59,31% Russian, 33,03% Latvian, 4,89% Belarusian, 0,65% Estonian and 2,12% others; Jānis Pommers, a Lett, led the separate church until his murder near Ķīšezers in 1934 (his relics are in the Cathedral in Rīga, which is being refurbished by an inter-ethnic, inter-denominational NGO, Svet); the autonomy was liquidated immediately upon the Soviet invasion by the Exarch Sergei Voskresensky. There was some movement from other areas in Latvia into the Abrene district, especially into the town, and from Estonia (the Lutherans from what was known as Lauru kolonija, an ethnic Latvian enclave in the Setu area that had become part of Estonia once the border was drawn), especially into the northernmost civil parish. The town of Abrene itself did not exist except as a hamlet prior to its inclusion in Latvia; it did not get town status until 1933, and was known as Jaunlatgale 1925-1938. I will try to find out what Neu-Letgallen actually referred to, but my guess is that it may have been an estate name. I gave some details on the town last year in Talk:Abrene district. --Pēteris Cedriņš 12:31, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info on the Old Believers. However, I did read somewhere that they had more or less assimilated into Latgale society. Which explains why they did not leave when Latgale became territory of the Russian Empire. As Old Believers did elsewehere - some of them fled from the Tsar all the way to Mexico. As should already have been clear from my German link, Neu-Letgallen may have been an estate or soem castle at the beginning, but it was definitely used as the name of a village in the area. Jewish material on the web: http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/Pinkas_latvia/pinkas_latvia.html --pgp 13:31, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Old Believers weren't assimilated into Latgalian society - not then and not now. Baltic guberniyas had different religion, so Old Believers could live their live according to their beliefs - remote from others. Even nowadays they are one of the group of people, who don't use latvian - or in that matter - even latgalian dialect.

92.22.63.253 (talk) 23:08, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * "Братская могила" (communal grave)The burial place of several soldiers killed during WWII. Comunal grave is situated in the middle of Pytalovo public garden.


 * The list is rather vague as to time except in certain cases, though -- but estate names were often the names used for inhabited areas, with not a little confusion when it comes to hamlets ("sādžas"); one often says "__ pagasta __ sādža," or "the __ hamlet of __ civil parish" (some of the hamlets are strung out to the point where one wouldn't even realize one was in one). The other list linked to here, "Deutsche Exonyme in Lettgallen," contains serious errors -- for instance, "Malinowka - Naujene - russ. Malinowka (Malinovka)"; Naujene is Nevgin in Russian, the site of the original Dünaburg (ca. 19 km from the present Daugavpils -- the name derives from the Baltic for "new castle" ), whilst Malinovka is a different place. As to the Old Believers having been "assimilated," I'd be interested in the source -- "integrated" in some sense, but I wouldn't say that the Old Believers are "assimilated" even now. Daugavpils has more Old Believers' congregations than any city in the world, by the way. They had their own political party between the wars. Integration in Latgalia did not necessarily mean linguistic integration, since the region was (and is) very multicultural and was heavily Russified -- only 18,9% of the ethnic Russians in Latvia knew Latvian in 1930, for example. As to Vishgorod (Vyzhgorodok) -- it's Augšpils in Latvian; a Russian bastion against Livonia was built there in 1430 but destroyed by Bathory in 1581. The village that then appeared became a major center for the area from the 1870s until the founding of Abrene/Pytalovo in 1925. --Pēteris Cedriņš 14:37, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
 * the border detachment made Tagunova from the Eagle, born in 1977, famous.He hung leaflets in all the barracks calling for catching postmen for stealing a letter with a marked banknote. 176.65.96.227 (talk) 22:27, 18 March 2023 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure about placename Jaunlatgale, but regarding funny names - it is not funny from german view. Germans utilized burgh system in their expansion - central town was called burgh(burgh is place where was gathered and stored grain - in our modern times we can imagine it as central warehouse). Around the burgh-castle there were ~10 villages inhabitated by german colonists(who provided grain to burgh) - they were created near native inhabitant villages and germans rarely made up new names - like russiansd like to do - they used modified local names in fashin where place of nativews usually changed name by adding Old- in name, so it became Old-Place or new-german inhabitated place became known as New-Place. For example in Latvia there are Vec-Saule and Jaun-Saule in near vicinity - Vecsaule before germans was called Saule. There might be as well native creations of towns with names New-Place and even later nongerman places which were called in this fashion, but remark about german knight is really silly - he would understand why that place was named as new. And in the early beginnings of Livonia aproximatelly this area was under Livonian order control - it would be logical to hold borders by natural obstacles, like rivers, not something like guberniya borders, that were ususally drawn on maps. Anyway - russians are the latest arrivals in this area and even after Latvia became independent there were latvians still living on the other side of the border in Russia - much more further than Abrene.

92.22.63.253 (talk) 23:08, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Axis link
I have a problem with this link:
 * Documents of the Soviet Intelligence Testify: Abrene Region is Latvian Territory

Apart from the bad English ("Abrene region is mentioned as the Latvian territory") the main argument seems to be that Moscow's spies in German-occupied Latvia were always using the Latvian names of these places. Well, for starters, a lot of these spies must necessarily have been ethnic Latvians, because ethnic Russians in German-occupied Latvia would have found it very difficult to operate as spies. Also, both sides (the Latvian spies and Moscow headquarters) were probably using Latvian maps, because there had not been much time between the Soviet invasion and the German one to make Russian maps that gave all these places their historical Russian names back. Using Augspils instead of Vyshgorodok (the place of a late medieval Russian fort protecting against the German Knights) is a case in point. This naming argument is therefore useless.

Proof that the source website is suspect: http://www.axisglobe.com/article.asp?article=134

I quote from this article:

"Attempts by Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius to gain recognition from Moscow of the fact of their occupation from the Forties through the Eighties and demanding the return of the seized territories, are cynically rejected as "harmful aspirations to reconsider the historical results and significance of WWII." (my bold letters)

Surely, Wikipedia contributors are again and again reminded by Latvians and Estonians that Riga and Tallinn (let us forget Vilnius for a moment) do not really demand the return of these territories? And this article is not from 1991, it clearly says "31.05.2005" at the top.

I propose to delete the Axis link (which has already been deleted from the Abrene Region article, by the way). If not, a link must be made to the article above pointing out this precise passage so as to show that this source is doubtful.

--pgp 14:40, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I won't object to the link's deletion (it is rather error-ridden and the English is indeed poor), but I'm afraid I haven't been around Wikipedia long enough to know what the policies for external links are -- if you could point me in the direction of some explanatory pages, I'd appreciate it. The fact is, though, that the Russian language link contains rather dubious material, too, and many articles have numerous links to questionable pages (e.g., the comparison of Lithuanian and Latvian citizenship policies linked to in two articles is not very informative and somewhat propagandistic). Personally, I would rather see more links than links to only, er, NPOV material. --Pēteris Cedriņš 14:53, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I am certainly newer than you as far as Wikipedia is concerned. Until now I did something on Huizinga (Dutch). Plus some editing (anonymously still) in English and Dutch. I will ask the guy who recently welcomed me into Dutch Wikipedia about guidelines in this matter. This link is actually rather easy to debunk, and possibly counter-productive.

By the way, "mesto pytok" (quoted by this Russian link) translates into German as "Galgenplatz" - and yes (see English "gallows") the second "g" in some Germanic dialects disappears or turns into a "w". This could be a case of German speakers misinterpreting the place name for their Russian neighbours, or "mesto pytok" could simply be folk etymology. (sorry, forgot to sign)--pgp 16:34, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Izvestya article
This mentions 76 Latvian inhabitants. It also has interviews with local residents who used to live there before WWII, and complain about Latvinization. So, it does not seem like everybody was compelled to leave in 1944-1946.

By the way, should the fact that Pytalovo was the first area where agriculture was privatized (under Gorbachev) not be mentioned here?--pgp 12:40, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Pytalovo. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20140307165038/http://www.klubs415.lv/majaslapa/rakstupielikumi/Latviska_Jaunlatgale.pdf to http://www.klubs415.lv/majaslapa/rakstupielikumi/Latviska_Jaunlatgale.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 00:37, 3 December 2017 (UTC)


 * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Пыталово.jpg  I dont know how put photos in page Кунимаро Сэнгэ (talk) 01:14, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
 * But I am not sure why would one want to add this photo to the page. Ymblanter (talk) 06:45, 7 November 2022 (UTC)