Latvian mailer | Saturday, 1 January 2000

News, Pictures, and Lat Chat for the New Millennium!

We hope your New Year's celebrations were happy and safe!

We've seen a lots of comments about what the new millennium will, or should bring. The Latvian president, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, may have said it the simplest and best...

"We are the ones now writing pages into history and we are molding our land the way we want to see it."

We couldn't resist the temptation to reflect ourselves on the past two millennia of Latvian history, and what the next one might bring—see our "Editorial" section.

This week's link, in keeping with the "Year 2000" theme, is a link to the site for the Latvian Song Festival 2000, to be held in Toronto this year.

This week's picture is of the Freedom Monument, taken around New Year's two years ago. It's one of my favorites—I have it set up as my background... when Peters archives the mailer on our site, we'll add the option to copy it as a "BMP" .

Our first AOL Lat Chat of the millennium will happen as usual... starting 9:00/9:30 Eastern Time Sunday, follow this link on AOL: Town Square - Latvian chat

Ar visu labu,

P.S. For the more numerically minded out there, we do realize that the actual turn of the millenium comes next year!

Editorial  —  Our Greatest Resource

The history we are taught is not a chronicle of achievements, but a chronology of conquests. Anglo-Saxon England arises with William the Conqueror in 1066. A century later, Latvia arises with the invasion of the Knights of the Sword and the eventual founding of the bishopric of Riga in 1201—a date Latvians know as intimately as the English know 1066.

For the eight centuries afterwards, the Baltics—and Latvia in particular—sat at the crossroads of regional and global superpower greed and fear, a perpetual battleground over trade and security interests.

Our folk songs spring from this history. One war-bound youth consoles his sweetheart not to weep, another sings a cheerful goodbye to his homeland. A battle survivor speaks of blood-red skies dawning and of soldiers’ sorrows. An orphaned girl sings fondly of her parents; a young boy plays soldier. Latvians do not sing of growing old and gray.

In the late 1500’s, a traveler wrote that between Riga and Tartu (Estonia), “no cock was left to crow, no dog was left to bark.” After the bloody Russian capture of Riga in 1710, annexing Livonia, historians estimate a mere 90,000 Latvians were left alive.

Yet, always, love of duty prevails over war; love of life prevails over death. Through this maelstrom, Latvians have doggedly and unceasingly clung to their language, their culture, and their homeland.

The “call home” is a power every Latvian knows. At the end of WWI, a Latvian battalion inside Soviet Russia found themselves stranded—faced with surrender—when Latvia declared independence. They marched to the Pacific and circumnavigated the globe to get home.

Our first millennium was one of tribalism. Our second millennium was one of servitude. What of our third millennium?

The fractious ineffectiveness of Latvia's first modern independent government was no accident. The cohesion of focus on the goal of freedom dissipated once independence came. Through his vision and selfless dedication, Karlis Ulmanis provided the unity of purpose that allowed Latvia to achieve remarkable progress.

Once more we have freedom, and seemingly, once more, our sense of purpose appears dissipated. It is with remorse that we watch Latvian legislators pass laws to put profit into their own pockets. Recall the easing of the tariff on imported sugar—as Latvian business profits rose, Latvian sugar beets rotted in fields to be plowed under. In America, at the end of the Civil War, we called these people “carpetbaggers.”

The biggest industrial investment in Latvia's history will be a pulp mill. What better metaphor for grinding up Latvia's riches—leaving the waste, exporting the wealth? (What of the corruption pulp logging has already engendered?) If lumber were harvested, milled and finished, and then either exported or further manufactured into products—adding Latvian ingenuity and labor—that would generate prosperity for a far larger citizenry and serve a greater good. As it stands, Latvia’s “gold” is being refined and taken away, while we are left with nothing but dross and some tax revenue.

What empires did for nearly a millennia we now supplicate business to do freely. Political independence means nothing if we subvert it into economic dependence. Latvia will not rise from the profits of free enterprise “trickling down” to its people and to the state—Latvia will rise only if the interests of the people and the state come before those of individuals and businesses. Latvia will not rise as a “service” or “transit” economy (the economic collapse in Russia has brought home the frailty of that plan)—Latvia will rise only if it produces agricultural and manufactured goods imbued with the truly unique added value of Latvian creativity and industriousness. This behavior cannot be legislated; it must come from the heart—out of love of duty, as our folk songs teach us.

No culture has a richer treasure trove of folk designs and patterns. No culture has produced or preserved as many ancient songs, stories, ballads, and sayings. Latvian and its slighly older sibling Lithuanian are arguably the most archaic living Indo-European languages. While Greek, for example, is "older," it has diverged from its Proto-Indo-European roots — to which Lithuanian and Latvian remain truest.

Politicians toss out Latvianized English to appear erudite; as one pontificated on TV, my relatives told me they knew him and he was “dumb as a boot.” They don’t vote anymore because “they’re all like that.” University professors demand Latvianized English by grading it higher than Latvian—you can’t get an “A” without it. We have nurtured and preserved our heritage through centuries of repeated near extinction—at times through the acts of a single individual. Are we so full of ourselves that we now have the insolence to jettison our heritage to indulge academic and intellectual foppery?

The creativity, the vitality, the tenacity of the Latvian people is like no other. Notwithstanding my Swedish blood and Silvija’s Polish and Lithuanian blood, we are completely Latvian. Every Latvian is a testament to the power of this cultural identity. Even as foreign powers waxed and waned across the Latvian landscape, their subjects—Poles, Lithuanians, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Russians, Germans—saw the true value of the land, its people and culture, and chose to settle there; through the generations, their progeny, too, became proud heirs to the Latvian heritage.

Let us open ourselves to our history, our culture—our heritage. In the next millennium, let us use all the means at our disposal to ensure that the world once again knows of Latvia. Let Latvia and its leadership work diligently and unceasingly to capitalize on the most valuable, the most potent, the most productive of all its resources—Latvians themselves. There can be no greater purpose—nor greater or more lasting reward.

Latvian link

SONG FESTIVAL - TORONTO 2000

This is the home page for the Song Festival planned for Toronto in the summer of 2000. It includes a timetable of activities and information on ordering tickets to various events. Members of LatChat will be performing, and many others attending. If you have any questions—contact me directly and I will try and point you in the right direction—Toronto! —Gunars (Zulis@aol.com)

Link:	Toronto Song Festival 2000
URL:	http://www.latviansongfest.com/english/english.html

In the news

Even as the new millennium dawns, the problems of the old follow. Widely reported was the "discovery" of Konrad Kalejs in Britain; he is alleged to have participated in the Holocaust in WWII. Also in the news, the economic outlook for 2000. Y2K seems to have come and gone without incident. And the top news item, of course, was the resignation of Boris Yeltsin as President of Russia—what might we expect of Putin?

© 1999 The Australian Associated Press
By Trevor Marshallsea
LONDON, Dec 28 (AAP)—The British government was under increasing pressure today to pursue and investigate Australian citizen Konrad Kalejs for alleged involvement in the murders of thousands of Jews as a Nazi commander during World War II.
The Israel-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which tracks old Nazis around the world, last night said Mr Kalejs was living in the Rugby area of the English county of Warwickshire, having left Australia last year.
The Centre said it had written to Warwickshire police to inform them that Mr Kalejs—who escaped conviction for war crimes in Australia last year owing to insufficient evidence—was living in their area.
And Britain's Holocaust Educational Trust today joined the campaign against Mr Kalejs by calling on Home Office Secretary Jack Straw to investigate the 86-year-old.
Trust chairman, former Labour MP Lord Janner, said Mr Kalejs should be prosecuted in Britain if there was sufficient evidence. If there was not, Britain should still follow the example of Canada and the US by deporting him, Lord Janner said.
"They only do that (deportation) if they are sufficiently satisfied that a person is guilty of war crimes," he told BBC radio.
"They don't want him in their country. If that is correct, we don't want him in our country either.
"Certainly, we are not talking about burglary or housebreaking. We are talking about personal involvement in mass murder."
Mr Kalejs moved to Australia after the war and obtained citizenship in 1957.
He later moved to the US but was deported in 1994 after the allegations against him became public.
He then lived in Canada for three years before being deported in 1997 back to Australia, where his high profile war crimes trial was held a year later.
Wiesenthal Centre director Efraim Zuroff called on Warwickshire police to "take immediate action so that this mass murderer will not continue to enjoy the undeserved hospitality of the United Kingdom".
"He features relatively high on the list of those we would like to see prosecuted," he said.
The Home Office said it was unaware of the matter last night, though a spokeswoman said the allegations against Mr Kalejs would be investigated, with the Immigration Service cooperating with police if that "became appropriate".
Latvian-born Mr Kalejs is alleged to have been an officer in the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police, known during the Second World War as the Arajs Kommando mobile murder squad.
Mr Kalejs, who has always denied the accusation and claimed he was a student during the war, is accused by researchers of collaborating with the Nazi SS.
The Arajs Kommando unit was under the control of Viktors Arajs, jailed for life in Hamburg in 1979 for war crimes including murder.
Mr Kalejs is also alleged to have worked as a guard at the Salaspils concentration camp near the Latvian capital, Riga, where other murders were committed.
Eli Rosenbaum, who led the US Justice Department enquiry into Kalejs, told the Guardian that "the evidence we presented in court was documentary evidence that he was in the Arajs Kommando, a mobile killing unit, and we presented testimonies of people who served with him who implicate him in atrocities".
"When he is in Australia, he is the the focus of constant media attention. I assume the purpose of him going to the UK was to hide out in your country," he said.
Labour MP Robin Corbett, head of the parliamentary commission on home affairs, told The Guardian newspaper Mr Kalejs should be pursued if there was sufficient evidence against him.
British law allows for war criminals to be pursued even if their crimes are not committed on British soil.
AAP tm/pjs

© 1999 Reuters Ltd.
By Alan Crosby
RIGA, Dec 30 (Reuters)—If 1999 goes down as the year of pain for the economies of the Baltics, 2000 should be the year of gain.
Hit hard by the 1998 Russian financial crisis, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had expected to rebound this year as companies reoriented trade westward.
But recovery from recession, difficult for even the most developed economies, proved nearly impossible. Worse, it exposed that eight years after all regained independence from the Soviet Union, the supposed radical surgery to some industries had been little more than cosmetic.
"A lot of problems caused by the Russian crisis were already there, they had been covered up until then and this forced them into the limelight," said Gunnar Tersman, an analyst at Sweden's Handelsbanken.
SIMILARITIES OVERSHADOW DIFFERENCES
Since breaking free from Moscow's 50-year grasp, all three have taken great pains to cast their own shadow, even at the expense of "Baltic unity," a geographical and not cultural closeness, they argue.
Yet for all the differences, 1999 showed the three were suffering through a lot of similarities.
Second quarter year-on-year GDP in Lithuania was down 4.0 percent, off 1.8 percent in Latvia, and -2.3 percent in Estonia. Unemployment rose, governments in all three changed this year.
Sluggish economies slowed the flow of state revenues and all three were forced to adopt unpopular austerity packages that still could not keep budgets from expecting year-end shortfalls.
Estonia has approved a balanced 2000 state budget though questions remain as to whether it can keep to it after scrapping its 26 percent corporate profit tax.
Latvia meanwhile has approved a budget shortfall of two percent of GDP, while Lithuania is struggling to meet IMF expectations of a 2.8 percent fiscal gap, risking an $80 million standby agreement and access to key low cost World Bank structural adjustment loans.
"There may be a small fiscal deficit in Estonia in the range of one to two percent of GDP, a change from our previous forecast of zero percent," said Toomas Reisenbuk, an analyst with the Baltic investment bank Trigon Securities.
"Latvia appears on track too but there are structural problems (in Lithuania) and changes to the budget will not fix the outstanding issues and the first quarter will show if the structural problems have been addressed."
CURRENCY DANGER LURKS IN LITHUANIA
If Estonia and Latvia keep their budgets at or very near current targets, analysts said their currencies should not come under much pressure next year.
But, they warned, the same cannot be said for Lithuania.
The litas currency is pegged to the dollar at four-to-one under a currency board system that forces the central bank to back all currency in circulation with reserves.
Though it was considering a change to a dollar/euro basket to reflect the changing face of trade in Europe, the central bank announced in the autumn that it would not make any changes to the system until mid-2001, when a direct shift to a euro peg will be made.
Currency traders and analysts said that while the move may bring short-term stability, it risks longer-term damage if the dollar strengthens, making an already over-valued currency even more of an obstacle to exporters by hindering their competitiveness.
"Keeping in mind the very concrete assurances of the central bank to keep the litas rigidly pegged to the dollar until mid-2001 it is unlikely the central bank will give in to exporter wishes to weaken the litas," said Stanislovas Dzindzelieta, treasurer of Savings Bank.
EU INVITATION BOOSTS OUTLOOK
Despite the turmoil, analysts are optimistic that all three have set in motion the necessary plans to put a poor 1999 behind them and enter the new millennium on the correct path.
All three expect modest GDP growth of between two and four percent in 2000.
Those plans also helped Lithuania and Latvia garner an invitation from the EU in December to join detailed membership talks. Estonia already had its invitation.
Though membership is still a long way off—2003 is the earliest forecast date—the increased status that comes with the EU invitation is expected to boost the region in the eyes of foreign investors, bringing badly-needed funds to cash-starved equity markets and industries looking for sources of capital.
"The Russian crisis is now coming to an end and all three Baltic states are turning around, the fastest being Estonia, as companies adjust to the changes and manage to build further growth in the West," said James Oates, an independent Baltic strategist and president of Adriatic Baltic Group.

Copyright 1999 Reuters Ltd.
RIGA, Jan 1 (Reuters)—Below is a breakdown on how the Baltics are said to be faring in dealing with the millennium bug in the key areas of electricity, telecommunications, water distribution and aviation.
Estonia
Electricity: As of 0015 local time, the Estonian energy system was working normally with no warning alarms sounding or emergency systems coming into use, Eesti Energia press department director Kaie Saar said.
Telecoms: Eve Karma, a dispatcher for fixed line Eesti Telefon, said the system was running normally and no problems or interruptions had been reported. She added that mobile phone networks had been overloaded and busy but no Y2K problems were reported.
Aviation: Nothing unusual has been reported and all systems are working as normal, a spokeswoman from the Estonian National Y2K Information Centre said.
Water: No problems, either Y2K-related or otherwise, have been reported, said the Estonian National Y2K Information Centre spokeswoman.
Latvia
Electricity: Latvenergo official Pavils Raudonis says no problems have been reported.
Vilnis Kreslinsh, head of DC Baltija, a pan-Baltic grid operator and joint-venture of Baltic power companies, says there were no problems to report, as all operations—including Ignalina—were running flawlessly.
Telecoms: Elgita Strazdina, the head of Lattelekom's Y2K project division, says the system has seen no disruptions, apart from some usual year-end overloads, which have been overcome.
Water: Riga Water head engineer Valentins Kuchers says water supply functions were normal.
Aviation: Latvian national carrier Air Baltic had no planes in the air at midnight December 31. Latvian air traffic control official Viktor Matveyev says there were no problems and there were no planes in the air over Latvia within a radius of 500 km (310 miles).
Lithuania
Electricity: Lithuanian Energy Y2K coordinator Vladas Pashkevichius said all energy systems were working properly and the grid load and frequency were in good shape.
Telecoms: "For the moment it seems there are no Y2K computer problems, just high traffic in some places," Gintaras Monkevichius, the head of the Lithuanian Telekom's Y2K project division, told Reuters.
Water: Martynas Bieliunas, head of the government's Y2K centre, said all water systems were operating perfectly.
Aviation: Lithuanian Airlines did not fly on December 31 and will not on January 1. Bieliunas said early reports showed the civil aviation systems had passed the date successfully.
Nuclear power: "The date passed normally. The work was not interrupted and there were no problems with the computers or the automated systems," Viktor Shevaldin, general director of the Ignalina nuclear power plant, told Reuters.

As we have heard, Boris Yeltsin has resigned and named Vladimir Putin in his place. Who is Putin and what can we expect? This small analysis excerpt from a recent Stratfor (a private analysis group) report sheds a little light...
Stratfor—Putin, even more than Primakov, represents the return of the Gorbachevite–men interested in reform as a means to preservation of the state apparatus and the national interest. Putin struck quickly [after his appointment as prime minister]. The Swiss bank accounts of Berezovsky, a leading oligarch closely tied to Yeltsin, were frozen while criminal investigations moved forward. A massive military force was gathered around Dagestan, including air power. Significantly, Putin announced that these soldiers would be paid the same amount as troops in Kosovo: US$1,000 a month for privates, not the US$100 promised and frequently not paid. Russia began raising the specter of Russian troops not remaining under NATO command and instead collaborating with Serb forces in order to protect Kosovo Serbs from the KLA. Russia began building pressure on the Baltics. Russia condemned and threatened Latvia on human rights violations concerning Russian citizens in Latvia. Russia cut off energy supplies to Lithuania.

Picture album

The Freedom Monument, two New Year's ago... Peters was disappointed the snow all melted just before he arrived!