Whose Heir is Latvia?

Valsts valodas centrs (Center of the State Language) states on January 16:

Since now on use of foreign languages is unaceptable. The Russians, talking to each other in Russian, are threatening the Latvian language and show irrespect to the Latvians. It is cannot be tolerated when employers doing their service and professional duties are communicating in a foreign language.

According to the newly establishe requirement, if some employers' communication is heard by other people (e.g. in public transport, shops or offices), they are allowed to speak the one and only state language of Latvia, i.e. Latvian.

Here it should be metioned that according to the census of 2011 there are 26,9% Russians in the total population of Latvia, and 33,75% of Latvian population speak Russian at home.

A question arise: why is there only one state language in the country? At the same time there is no question why this Center is called by locals the "Language Gestapo".

For those who think Latvia is a European country duly presiding the EU I propose to check (at least in Wikipedia) the positions of Sweden in Finland and, say, German in Belgium. Have you noticed these language are spoken by considerably lesser part of population than Russian in Latvia? Do you know how long the territory now known as the Republic of Latvia was a part of Russia (whether the Russian Empire or the USSR)?

Well, taking into account the aforesaid, there is nothing to be surprised in the following info:

Poster of the exhibition that won't open in Paris....

Latvia blocked an exhibition in UNESCO devoted to the history of Holocaust. The title of the exhibition reads "The Hijacked Childhood: Holocaust Victims as Seen by Children Prisoners of the Nazi CC Salaspils"; all the materials for the exhibitions were delivered to Paris, yet the Riga officials decided the exhibition would spoil "the image of Latvia" during its presidency in the EU.

Salaspils was not a regular Konzentrationslager. One of its specialties was blood collecting from children for wounded Wehrmacht soldiers; witnesses reported, up to 500 ml at a time on a daily basis, till unavoidable and quick death. The report of investigating commission signed on May 5, 1945, read, in particular:

Having explored 2500 sq.m of territory at Salaspils camp and excavated just one fifth thereof, the commission found 632 child corpses supposedly from 5 to 9 years of age; the corpses were situated in layers...
At the distance of 150 m from this grave in the direction to the railway the commission discovered a place 25x27 m in size with the ground impregnated with an oily substance and mixed with ashes containing unburnt remains of bones of children from 5 to 9 years of age: teeth, articular heads of femoral and humeral bones, ribs, etc.

On Freedom of Speech

In my opinion, it's a pure fun and a brilliant, exemplary sample of hypocrisy of some politicians of the post-Soviet political scene.

Inese Vaidere, a member of the European Parliament for Latvia, has written a letter to Martin Schulz, the President of the EP requesting to prohibit entry to all the EU countries to Alexander Dyukov, a Russian historian.

Yes, Dyukov expresses viewpoints that the current political beau-monde of the Baltic countries and now Ukraine generally dislike. He digs deep into the bloody cooperation of Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian Nazis and volunteers with Hitler Nazis during the WW2. He does so good that in Latvian media they always call him 'a pseudo historian', and the Latvian foreign ministry announced him a persona non grata. What a nice and logic way of a scientific dispute with someone with an unwelcome point of view, isn't it?

Recently he presented to the European Parliament his book devoted to human rights violations in Ukraine since February, 22 to May 22, 2014, that is during the events that were hypocritically called the 'Revolution of Dignity'. So Mrs Vaidere, being — quite traditionally for new political elites of Baltic countries — ultra-patriotic and russophobic, raged upon the fact that such a person was permitted to the EP.

Freedom of speech, you say? Do you know what that is? It's not only about your possibility to say how bad the USSR (or Russia, or Putin for that matter) is; it is also about the very same possibility for us to openly say things, some of which you definitely might dislike. Yet none of us lives in paradise, and there can be lots of criticism in all directions. But any argument or dispute should be logic to be positive.

And now back to the funny side of the story.

Alexander Dyukov was born in 1978. A year after Inese Vaidere, an economist, became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Isn't it hilarious?

In fact, in all post-Soviet countries many people whose current wealth is based upon a firm Soviet background are now acting as if willing to be more Catholic than the Pope. Sometimes it means to be more anti-Soviet than, say, Sir Winston Chirchill, and more russophobic than Adolf Hitler.

To be trendy.