The stenographic account of the plenary meeting of the Latvian Communist Party Central Committee (LCP CC) that took place on 9-10 October 1957 shows most vividly the confrontation between the conservative faction of the LCP and its more liberal part, especially regarding the situation in literature, the applied arts and journalism, and the mood of the intelligentsia in general. This confrontation was influenced by the 1956 events in Hungary and Poland. Most CC members speaking at the plenary meeting represented the conservative faction, complaining about the ‘formalism' and ‘bourgeois nationalism' cultivated by artists, as well as the indirect support for the liberal tendency by many Moscow functionaries. However, the mood at the meeting was that the conservatives at that moment were on the defensive, but they managed to strike back in July 1959, when the liberal faction was defeated.