When I first visited Soviet-occupied Latvia in 1978 as a tourist, I was told it was best not to go near “The Monument.” There it was, this massive, imposing object with a soaring obelisk topped by bronze female figure, standing tall in the heart of Riga, and we tourists from America were told it would […]
A cursory look at Latvia’s National Development Plan 2014-2020 would suggest that foreign policy seems to play a very small role in Latvia’s future. The Foreign Ministry is solely responsible for only one section and that primarily deals with strengthening Latvia’s political and economic interests abroad. However, each ministry is assigned a “Territory of Responsibility.” […]
You probably don’t have a ‘policy’ toward foreigners. Most people don’t. We just deal with ‘em as we meet them. If you live in a city like London or New York it feels like everyone is a foreigner. Them or us in an ethnic sense doesn’t mean much in a melting pot; we all become […]
Back in 2008 I edited the revised and expanded translation of Uldis Germanis’ legendary history of Latvia, “The Latvian Saga”. Since Germanis had written the book in 1959 from Sweden and the story stopped with the Soviet occupation of Latvia during World War II, I wrote several additional chapters for this new edition to bring […]
What is Latvia for?
A few years back when nation branding expert Simon Anholt was interviewing civic leaders in Latvia he began each conversation with a simple question, “What is Latvia for?” Anholt usually poses this question to help governments get their priorities straight before committing themselves to a nation branding strategy. What politicians invariably discover is that the pursuit of economic growth, tourism, and investment (the usual reasons nations seek […]