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The Celebrations have come and gone. They have finished. And will come again soon - Latvia's Jubilee Year has symbolically concluded, moving to other celebrations... On the First Advent we lit one of the four candles in the period leading to Christmas. This happened symbolically on Sunday in Alūksne, where we unveiled a 21st century column - a gift to the diligent residents of this city, who are full of ideas and had the most daring Gaismas tilti [Bridges of Light] project in Latvia. On the evening of the 22nd of August they created a path of light and flowers, connecting three city bridges.  

Long before there were Latvians, there was a land covered by ice. When the ice melted and the glaciers retreated, life returned to the land. As streams and rivers flowed into the sea, people flowed into the land. Just as the landscape transformed itself through the movement of ice and water, so too the ancient peoples that settled here adapted to these changes. Tribes, languages and cultures evolved, sometimes clashing, but also coalescing.

So here I am writing my last blog entry for the anniversary project under the slogan Light on for Latvia! In only a few days more Latvia will be celebrating its 90th birthday.

Throughout its history, Latvia has always been in the middle of things. From the moment the words ‘Baltic States' first became known in the international community, Latvia was always the middle one. We couldn't escape that. Never will. As long as the countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are always lumped together and called the Baltic States, Latvia will always be the geographic, political, cultural and spiritual middle one. It must come with the territory.

In some of my previous blog entries I told about particular places on the geographical map of Latvia that one way or anohter are tied to my own destiny. In Vidzeme it is the village of Dikli, in Zemgale - Misa and Bene, in Latgale - Aglona and Kalupe... Today the turn is to confess my love to Kurzeme. In that part of Latvia I spent time not only as a vacationer. In Kesterciems (translated from Latvian - the village of vergers) I burnt a wood stove during winter evenings and wrote a book of short stories - "White dunes".

I was working at the Latvian Legation in Washington, D.C. when Latvia restored its independence in August 1991. We received a lot of congratulations in the ensuing days, from old and new friends, but there is one I will never forget.

They say history does not know ifs: what would have been if... Nevertheless I will take the liberty to speculate that we would have to pay with much bigger blood for the regaining of Latvia's independence if during the barricades January the Democratic Russia would not have taken side of the brake-away Latvia. This was the name of the political movement headed in Moscow by the first-wave democrates, members of Council of the Inter-regional deputy group. The legendary group was created at the First Congress of the people's deputies of the USSR in June 1989 and four people were elected as members of the ruling council: academician Andrei Sakharov, the then-Head of the Committee on building and architecture of the USSR Supreme Soviet Boris Yeltsin, rector of Moscow State institute of history and archives academician Juri Afanasyev and the deputy from Estonia, department head at Tartu state university academician Victor Palm. The core of the group was comprised of other politicians, who soon would become widely known throughout the world: Gavriil Popov, Sergei Stankevich, Galina Starovoitova (later killed at the enterance to her apartment building in Saint Petersburg), Anatoly Sobchak...

Over the summer the Latvian Institute asked the young people of Latvia to tell us what kind of Latvia they want to see in 10 years. In September we received over 500 responses from some very bright girls and boys. While talking about the project with a journalist, he asked me what my vision of Latvia in 10 years would be like.

Precisely like this: both words - Riga Barricades - with a capital letter each. And although in January 1991 barricades were erected not only in Riga (they were also built, for example, in Liepaja), Riga Barricades nevertheless occupy a separate page in the history of the regaining of Latvia's independence. Remember at least the fact that heavy farm equipment from the far-away regions of the country made its way to Riga to defend in the capital the lawfully-elected Parliament and Government of the Latvian Republic, not yet recognised at that moment by the world community.

For 24 hours, Raimonds Bergmanis stood in the middle of a rain-soaked football field in Riga, Latvia and talked into a microphone. He spoke while 3,845 people ran circles around him. The runners had volunteered to each run 100 metres around the Daugava stadium track, in an attempt to break a Guinness World Record, and had come from all over Latvia (and some from Sri Lanka) to run the 24-hour relay race. The previous record of 1,848 was held by Singapore, and some Latvians thought that breaking this Guinness World Record would be a nice gift for Latvia's 90th birthday.