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Tag: Latvia

Inside a new Cold War brewing in an Eastern European capital

How decades of geopolitical conflict between Latvia and Russia have resulted in an internal crisis for the young Russian-speaking minority in Riga.

June 12, 2025 - Athan Yanos

Stopify: taking matters into your own hands

“Let’s not be a passive bystander if you can do something to help,” says Māris Upenieks, co-founder of the donation streaming platform Stopify, created to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine. When global leaders change their minds faster than the spring winds shift direction, and the whole world seems to be falling apart, grassroots initiatives like this can offer a glimmer of hope to us all.

April 25, 2025 - Solveiga Kaļva

What is wrong with Latvia? Why the middle Baltic state lags behind

Latvia has often been overlooked when it comes to the socio-economic advancements made in the Baltics. While neighbours such as Estonia and Lithuania have promoted themselves as technological hubs, the middle Baltic state has lagged behind overall. This position appears to be due to a variety of factors.

The cover of the Latvian weekly current affairs magazine Ir for the last week of November 2024 struck a tone hardly unfamiliar in this neck of the woods: “Why are the Estonians paying less for Rail Baltica but getting it done faster?” Close observers of the nation’s mood, aspirations and insecurities over the three-and-a-bit decades since it restored its independence will have seen comparable sentiments expressed many times.

February 28, 2025 - Will Mawhood

Making the invisible seen. The Baltic struggle for independence

A conversation with Una Bergmane, author of Politics of Uncertainty: The United States, the Baltic Question, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Interviewer: Maciek Makulski

MACIEJ MAKULSKI: How did you arrive at the point when you thought that there is still much to uncover when it comes to our understanding of the processes around the collapse of the Soviet Union and the regaining of independence by the Baltic states?

UNA BERGMANE: I would probably say by accident, since I wanted to write a master's thesis about French-Baltic relations in the 1920s and 30s when the Baltic states were independent before the Soviet occupation. But then I discovered that there was already a doctoral dissertation just defended in Paris on that very topic. So I started then to look at what seemed like the next logical thing – what France did when the Baltic countries wanted to become independent again at the end of the 1980s. What was interesting for me initially was the discrepancy between what I saw in the French archives.

June 22, 2024 - Maciej Makulski Una Bergmane

A central and eastern EU elections summary

While the results of the EU parliamentary elections in Central and Eastern Europe did not lead to political upheaval as seen in France, it is becoming clear that the far-right representation in Strasbourg will increase from this part of Europe.

June 11, 2024 - Ottilie Tabberer

Fallen heroes: the challenging issue of remembering controversial figures.

There is no model approach to dealing with how to commemorate controversial figures in the post-Soviet world. Estonia could provide an example for countries in the region on how to counter an often deafening silence.

December 12, 2022 - Owen Howells

The Rīga Conference 2022 – Live stream

The Rīga Conference 2022 is a dynamic hybrid event. It blends a traditional face-to-face meeting with remote streamlined interactions both among speakers and participants, in Latvia and abroad. Watch the live stream here - October 21st and 22nd.

October 21, 2022 - New Eastern Europe

The unfin(n)ished story of the Baltic alliance

From the region’s perspective, the 1922 Warsaw Accord between Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Poland was a significant step in strengthening geopolitical interests and safeguarding against Russian aggression. Unfortunately, the agreement ultimately failed. This year’s ratification by Finland’s parliament of its application to join NATO can be seen as a final step in this process that began over 100 years ago.

The most promising and – to a certain degree – surprising declaration made by Finland on its interest in joining the NATO Alliance immediately reminded me of the so-called Warsaw Accord. This treaty was drafted 100 years ago on March 17th 1922 and embodied the initiative of a Baltic alliance between Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Poland. Anti-Soviet in nature, cooperation ultimately failed due to reservations expressed by Helsinki. In the summer of 1922 the Finnish parliament – Eduskunta – decided not to ratify the pact. A century later, on May 17th 2022, 188 out of 200 Finnish MPs voted on accession to NATO. The story has come full circle. A story which deserves to be told.

September 29, 2022 - Grzegorz Szymborski

Resign and rule: Latvia’s local elections analysed

The low voter turnout and inconclusive results in the Latvian municipal elections are likely to be repeated in next year’s general election.

July 13, 2021 - Samuel Kramer

The Baltic states. Three peas in a pod?

The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are often together associated as a bloc, with a similar history, culture and politics. While there are some commonalities among the three countries, there are also some key characteristics that make them quite different from each other.

From the outside, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are usually viewed as one – “the Baltics”. However, their fates have only been intertwined during the last century. Prior to the end of the First World War, Lithuania had been closely connected with Poland, while Estonians and Latvians had been under Baltic German domination for seven centuries, no matter whether the ruling power was Sweden, Poland or Russia. Lithuanian and Latvian are the two surviving Baltic languages, whereas Estonian belongs to a completely different language family, together with Finnish and Hungarian.

April 11, 2021 - Andres Kasekamp

Russians in Estonia. We are not “them”, we are “us”

Access to good education, healthcare, social welfare and general public services has all contributed to the often difficult process of better integrating mostly older generations of Russian-speakers into Estonian society. The relative ease of conducting everyday life, the security of state support and the prospect of a European future for their children have bound Russians with Estonia over the last three decades.

Estonia’s Russian-speaking community became irritated by a recent speech of the Estonian president, Kersti Kaljulaid, on Estonia’s Independence Day on February 24th, where she emphatically called on fellow citizens “with a different cultural and linguistic background” to understand “(us), Estonians”. The way she chose to address Russian-speakers and other non-ethnic Estonians living in the country – paraphrased as “you, who are different, need to understand us, Estonians” – signifies the lack of understanding in the president’s office of the sensitivities of “the Russian question” from the perspective of Russian-speakers.

April 11, 2021 - Kristina Kallas

Latvia prepares for big step in LGBTQ+ rights

The issue of granting parental rights to same-sex partners has become the most important fight for equality in modern day Latvia. As parliament prepares to decide on key amendments to the country’s constitution, Latvians are struggling to understand that their freedom should not infringe on the freedom of others.

No one embodies the individual and collective fight for one's liberties and freedom in modern-day Latvia as much as Evita Goša. When her fiancée found out she was not entitled to a ten-day paid leave usually granted to fathers of new-borns, she petitioned the Constitutional Court of Latvia which agreed to hear the case.

April 11, 2021 - Ričards Umbraško

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