Latvian Leader Talks Country’s Future

Former Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga chatted with students about issues ranging from past Soviet domination to energy independence over lunch and dessert in Kirkland’s Private Dining Hall yesterday.

Vike-Freiberga, Latvia’s first female president and a Spring 2008 fellow at the Institute of Politics, said that after years of subjugation at the hands of the Soviet Union, Latvians have come to cherish their independence.

In fact, when asked whether Latvia’s geopolitical interests align more with Western Europe or Russia in the post-Putin era, Vike-Freiberga said that “there is not even a question.”

“I certainly do not see any wish at all to reintegrate with the Russian sphere of influence, quite to the contrary,” she said.

Vike-Freiberga added that Latvia should join with Estonia and Lithuania, its fellow Baltic nations, to find a common energy policy in order to reduce Latvia’s severe dependency on Russia for oil and natural gas, and that potential solutions may involve nuclear power and other alternatives to fossil fuels.

But Vike-Freiberga noted that while Latvia has shared history with its other Baltic states, they are not necessarily the same in all respects.

“We do not have a homogenous group of post-Communist countries,” she said.

Describing her tenure in office, which lasted from 1999 to 2007, Vike-Freiberga said that increasing Latvia’s international recognition and removing Russian troops from Latvian territory were her two greatest challenges.

For her greatest accomplishments, Vike-Freiberga noted that Latvia entered the EU and NATO under her leadership. Contrary to what she thinks historians will say, she said that these were very difficult tasks.

“I worked damn hard!” Vike-Freiberga said with a laugh.

Martin M. Wallner ’11, a student from Austria, said “it is an interesting contrast between [Latvia’s] first wanting to leave the USSR and then wanting to join the EU.”

And Anna Shabalov ’10, a native of Latvia who is ethnically Russian, said it was “very interesting how [Vike-Freiberga] lived in Canada her whole life and then became the president of Latvia.”

Vike-Freiberga was born in Latvia but escaped with her family following the Soviet occupation in 1944, fleeing to Germany, Morocco, and eventually Canada.