How the ‘Russia Threat’ Is Fueling Latvia’s Bitter Identity Politics

In 1987, in the twilight years of the Soviet Union, when Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika was loosening the screws on free enterprise, high-school teacher Bronislav Zeltserman opened a new teaching center in Riga, the capital of what was then the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. In a country receptive to new ideas for the first time since the 1950s, Zeltserman hoped to develop academic thinking and rear a new generation of students connected to the West. Tapping into the spirit of the times, he called his project “Experiment.” The Soviet Union collapsed four years later, in 1991. Today, the small Baltic nation […]