On September 15, 1986, in the Latvian village of Jurmala along the Baltic Sea, U.S. Ambassador Jack Matlock made history when he told a crowd of Latvians, "We Americans have a special interest in Latvia, since many of your relatives and descendants are now Americans and have made a distinctive contribution to our society."
For an independent-minded people who have been living under Soviet occupation since 1940, Matlock's words carried special significance. It was not so much what he said but how he had said it: he had spoken in fluent Latvian, in a land where predominantly Russian-speaking Soviet authorities view both Latvian nationalism and Latvians living in the United States as a thorn in the side of the multinational Soviet Empire.
Matlock's presence at the controversial 1986 U.S. Soviet conference in occupied Latvia, and his later remarks that the U.S. government "has never recognized and will not recognize the legality of the forcible incorporation of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia into the Soviet Union" had been brought about, in part, by Latvians living in America.
Throughout their history Latvians have been caught in a vise between conflicting major powers. Apart from a twenty-two-year period between the world wars, they have spent the last eight centuries under foreign rule. And yet they have not only endured as a people and culture, but emerged on numerous occasions to exert an influence far exceeding their relatively small numbers. For Latvians, preservation of their cultural heritage is an act of national pride and political necessity.
Torchbearers of a captive culture
Of the nearly one hundred thousand Latvians in America, almost all are refugees who fled the Soviet takeover of their country, or their American-born descendants. They are a tall, fair-haired, light-eyed people, who have demonstrated the resiliency of an ethnic group striving for acceptance and achievement in its host country, while doggedly preserving its cultural heritage. Reserved and formal in public gatherings, they let their emotions and spirits flow freely among family and friends. Above all, they are characteristically hard workers whose high personal standards of excellence in anything they undertake exemplify the best of the Northern European work ethic.
Like most immigrants, the Latvians who came to America following World War II started from scratch. After initially taking jobs as laborers on farms and in factories, in the ensuing years a remarkable number forged successful careers in such professions as engineering, medicine, law, and education. They expect even more from their children.
Almost every child born to Latvian parents in America has probably encountered these golden rules from infancy: "You will speak Latvian, and you will graduate from college." As a result, many second and third-generation Latvians are active in their Latvian communities while pursuing careers in the highly competitive fields of computer sciences, high technology, communications, and business.
If Latvian-Americans are characterized as typically goal-oriented, one motivating force behind this need to achieve is an almost crusading sense of pride in their
...
Read Full Article
|
