The Second Awakening is an epoch or a complex of processes, tendencies of ideas and
events, which took place from 1915 to 1919 and ended in the foundation of the state of
Latvia. The Second Awakening as a phenomenon consists of several important components: the formation of battalions (later regiments) of Latvian riflemen and battles won by the Latvian riflemen, activities of the Latvian refugees’ organisations during the First World War, ideas and activities of the Swiss emigration officials, a.o. The first one who used the concept of the Second Awakening to denote a qualitatively different epoch than the period of the First (national, Neo Latvians) Awakening, was publicist Ernests Blanks. This paper presents a conceptualised concept of the Second Awakening and focuses on the development of the idea about independence within the context of the historical significance of battles fought by the Latvian riflemen. In the paper, the concept of forgetting in the studies on memory is being brought to foreground by paying a closer attention to the findings of Paul Connerton and Aleida Assmann about the research potential on the concept and phenomenon of forgetting. The paper also briefly describes the field study and encompasses archival materials that have been obtained within the frame of the Latvian Council of Science project “Experience in the City: Narratives, Memories and Heritage of the Place”. The obtained data provide information and facts about the places in Riga’s Pārdaugava, which have witnessed the events of the First World War and the War of Independence, and which allow concluding that even today, a field study as a method can broaden our knowledge and provide testimonies about more than a century-old memorial places and their adapting to the everyday life and family history, as well as to the tradition of the research on memory, despite the fact that they exist in a dynamic and rapidly changing environment. Though the concept of the Second Awakening was used in the period of the Third Awakening, the paper asks a research question: today, when the active process of the Third Awakening is over — can we speak about the Second Awakening as about an understood and widely reflected upon concept? The Second Awakening has been subjected to repressive deleting from the Soviet ideology, the components that
formed it have been selectively or totally forgotten under the pressure of the Soviet ideology. Consequently, we draw a conclusion that despite the prominent place the Second Awakening takes in the history of Latvia, the concept and phenomenon of the Second Awakening have been insufficiently investigated.