All About Latvia

A friend of mine directed me to this site, listing many reasons why Latvia is a great country. Some of them are true, some not.

Here’s the sampling:

Latvia is the best country in the world

…because only in our woods, while going mushroom-picking one can find a well-hidden Maserati Quattroporte.

…because only our government goes to China on an experience exchange visit.

…because employees at McDonalds make more than our teachers.

…because in our version of “Who wants to be a millionaire?“, one can win 50,000 lats.

… because in Latvia, a bottle of beer costs less than a bottle of water.

… because our inflation is easily noticed. The larger the inflation, the larger the Prime Minister.

… because only in Latvia, we have a president who doesn’t pretend to be stupid. He really is.

… because America has a Freedom statue, we have a monument.

… because Latvian Prime Minister soon won’t fit into a TV set to announce the latest inflation figures.

… because our government is very stable. You can cry, you can picket, you can demonstrate. You can sue it, but nothing will bring it down.

… because only in Latvia, you can say I love my fatherland and be called a fascist.

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On Aug. 31,professional and amateur photographers from three Baltic States, Ukraine, Russia, other European countries, and the U.S. captured a slice of today’s life — the same way they have done 20 years ago. “One Day in Latvia: 20 Years Later” allows us to compare the life in Latvia today with the way it was 20 years ago when Latvia was still part of the Soviet Union.

Twenty years changes many things. The Soviet Union is no more. Shopping malls and supermarkets replaced empty shelves of the Soviet gastronoms. The wind of change, which began to pick up at the end of the 1980s, blew past us, leaving the three countries free and democratic.

In 1989, people of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined together in a live chain connecting three Baltic capitals to show their right to self-determination and independence from the Soviet Union.

That was the peaceful revolution.

Since then, three Baltic brothers went their own ways.

It was important for Lithuania to preserve the farming sector of its economy, along with developing a strong retail market. You cant find an area of the Latvian capital without the most famous Lithuanian import - Maxima stores.

Estonia developed itself into an IT power house, earning a nickname “E-stonia.” It became the birthplace of Skype and the home of the most free economy in the world. The flat tax policies became emulated in other countries, including Latvia and Russia.

Latvia is now trying to develop itself into a transportation corridor between Russia and the rest of Europe.

If Estonia takes a Scandinavian approach to problem solving and Lithuania is culturally and religiously close to Poland, Latvia is stuck between the rock and the hard place.

The rock is the Russian Federation. The hard place is the European Union. Both sides subscribe to different democratic and economic values. And somewhere in between there, you’ll find the small country of Latvia, whose 2.3 million people are also torn between the West and the Wild East.

The role of neither here nor there isn’t new for Latvia. At the dawn of independence from Czarist Russia in 1917, all three nations adopted declarations for self-determination. Lithuanians in Russia and German-occupied Vilnius proclaimed that Lithuanians demand “the right to decide for themselves its political fate and destinies.” At the same time, Estonians demanded their own statehood from the Russian Provisional Government, which wanted to see Estonia as part of the Russian Federated Republic. Estonians would have none of that.

Only Latvia stands unique among the three nations. The Latvian Political Conference said that Latvians have a right to self-determination, however “Latvian shall be a political autonomous unit within the Russian democratic republic.”

Today after two Soviet occupations, Nazi occupation, Latvia still stands on the crossroads between the West and East. Jokingly I say that Latvians are just Russian-wannabes, but it appears that Latvians are more closely associated with Russian values than with those of the West.

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