The Latvian Foundation has announced a dozen winners of small grants and plans for marking its 35th anniversary with a November meeting in Rīga.

The 35th anniversary annual meeting is scheduled Nov. 12 in Rīga. The foundation, formed in 1970 as an exile organization based in Canada and the United States, now has three of its board members living in the capital city of independent Latvia.

Any foundation member considering attending the meeting is asked to contact Chairperson Aija Abene by e-mail at aijaabens@gmail.com.

The foundation’s board of directors, meeting April 16 in Toronto, approved 12 of 23 proposals for grants of USD 2,000 or less. They include:

• Publication of the second volume of work by Latvian-American exile poet and cultural historian Jānis Krēsliņš.
• Production of a compact disc by the folk music ensemble Sudrabavots of Washington, D.C.
• Acquisition of teaching materials for the Stariņš Kindergarten and preschool of Chicago.
• Production of a compact disc by the bagpipe and percussion group Auļi of Rīga.
• Support for the Saulgrieži summer high school in Latvia.
• Production of a compact disc based on a cycle of folk songs from Latgale province in Latvia.
• Support for the 10th folklore festival in the Sēlija region of Zemgale province.
• Printing of the book Madonas novada kordziedāšanas vēstures II daļa (1940-1990), a history of choir singing in Madona, Latvia.
• Enlargement of the collection in the Aknīste city library in Latvia.
• Support for the folklore summer camp Garā pupa.
• Support for “Tautas pedagoģija ikdienā,” a collection of educational activities for families with children, proposed by Līga Vimbsone.
• Support for a project examining the country tradition of vakarēšana (spending time together in the evenings), proposed by Maruta Krastiņa.

The board of directors also decided to present eight medium and three large projects—those seeking from USD 2,001 to USD 8,000 in funding—to a vote of the foundation’s membership. Balloting will take place in the fall before the November meeting.

In all, the foundation received 42 requests for funding in the 2005 program.

The foundation also has issued a plea for members to update postal and e-mail addresses. Abens, the chairperson, said the foundation is seeking addresses for the following members: Ruta Apsa-Abakuka, Richards Argals, Artūrs Barons, Jānis Belaglazovs, Marta Bergholds, Erna Bērziņa, Ludmila Bērziņš, Rolands Bērziņš, Emilija Bērziņš, Georgs Blumentals, Gvīdo Bočka, Jānis Bolis, Ilga Briedis, Andrejs Brinģis, Edmunds Brokāns, Daina Brumelis, Inga Brūveris, Laimdota Brūveris, Imants J. Bungs, Inta Butkus, Ivars Cenne, Jēkabs Cīrulis, Marcis Daiga, Daina Dreifelda, Gunta Dreifelde, Olga Drigants, Maija Dzenis, Anita Dzirne, Anna Eiduks, Tamāra Ešmits, Antonijs Francis, Māra Galens, Astra Galiņš, Jānis Geriņš, Pēteris Graube, Alfreds Grīnbergs, Austra Gulēna, Laima Gulēna, Dace Jagars Klimane, Jānis Komsars, Ilmārs Jankovskis, Ritvaldis Jankus, Pēteris Krūmiņš, Egons Kubuliņš, Mintauts Kukainis, Valdis R. Kukainis, Pauls Kupchs, Ernests Lācis, Māris Lācis, Ivars Leja, Edgars Liepaskalns, Gunārs V. Lucāns, Ruta Lucis, Alberts Lucs, Inta Maleja, Andris Matthews, Uldis Mednis, Ilze Mednis, Ivars Melngailis, Normunds Mieriņš, Pēteris Miķelsons, Jānis Mintiks, Rita Moore, Zintis Muižnieks, Jordis Niedra-Denisovs, Pauls Olte, Oskars Ozols, Andris Palejs, Olģerts Pavlovskis, Helga Petrashevich, Vilnis Plostiņš, Zinta Pone, Imants Purvs, Ilze Rēķis, Alberts Rieksts, Mirdza Ritums, Laila Robiņš, Ainars Rodiņš, Vilis Roga, Ella Rolavs, Magdalene I. Rozentāls, Ilze Ruke, Otto V. Rullis, Dzidra Rutenbergs, Margots Salenieks, Ēriks Savics, Sandra Sebre, Valda A. Siksna, Ilze Sile, Daina Siliņš, Maretta Staprāns, Andris Šteinbachs, Ivars Štelmachers, Silvija Stots, Edvīns Stots Jr., Zubīte Streipa-Glass, Vincents Šulcs, Ilga Zemzars Svechs, Edgars Šmits, Arnolds Ticmanis, Silvija Ūdris, Anna Ulis, Alberts Upeslācis, Jānis Vanags, Valdis Vilks, Jānis Zalīte, Imants Zeidlickis, Richards Zemnickis and Jānis Zibiņš, as well as representatives of 8th Latvian Song Festival in the United States, Gaismas Pils, the Jānis Grāvlejs Memorial Fund, Greenwood Printers, the Latvian Cultural Institute, LFK-Copenhagen, Sirdsapziņas Cietumnieki #1, Sirdsapziņas Cietumnieki #2 and the Windsor Latvian Society.

During the weekend that U.S. President George W. Bush was flying to, staying in and then moving on from Latvia, Karl Altau frequently went online to see what the news reports were saying about the historic visit.

“I spent a lot of time Googling over the past week, seeing news links…grow from about 350 on Thursday morning, to 500 that evening, over 750 Friday early and then skyrocket to 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 over the weekend into Monday,” Altau said in a May 10 e-mail to a reporter. Altau is managing director of the Joint Baltic American National Committee, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, Juris Mežinskis, director of the American Latvian Association’s Information Bureau, was taking stock of his May 5 e-mailed “ALA Infogram” appeal to Latvian-Americans, asking them to write letters to local newspapers to encourage coverage of Bush’s May 7 visit to Rīga.

Although they say the coverage by American media wasn’t perfect, Altau’s and Mežinkis’s overall impression is that the news reports succeeded in telling the story of the Baltics to U.S. audiences. The American president’s stop in Latvia was part of a four-country European tour that included a May 9 visit to Moscow to join other leaders in marking the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.

“The coverage by journalists was remarkably even-handed,” Mežinskis told Latvians Online. “It was fair, because there was real controversy during the trip. Fake tension did not have to be manufactured.”

The tension had been mounting ever since January, when Latvian President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga announced she would participate in the Victory Day celebration in Moscow, but making a point to say that World War II for Latvia ended only in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed and her country regained its independence. Bush’s acceptance of Vīķe-Freiberga’s invitation to a pre-Moscow visit in Rīga was seen in many circles as American backing for the Latvian position.

The thousands of links Altau encountered on Google did not mean that thousands of separate articles were written about Bush’s visit. In fact, many American newspapers and online services relied on stories by the Associated Press, The New York Times and the Washington Post. And rather than concentrating on Latvia and its fate during the war, many of those stories focused on cooling relations between Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose nation came in for strong criticism during the American leader’s speech in Rīga.

“I expect that the coverage will peter out pretty quickly,” Altau said. “However, there was so much gained from this exposure, that I believe it may be a little easier to roust the issue back onto the breakfast table in the medium term.”

Coverage began early, Altau said, with an April 27 column by Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post. Writing about the legacy of Nazi terror in Europe, Applebaum suggested an additional tact for Bush and future presidents: “Perhaps it’s time for American presidents to start a new tradition and pay their respects to the victims of Stalin.”

Applebaum also pushed Congress to adopt a resolution calling on Russia to condemn the occupation of the Baltic states. Introduced in the House of Representatives on April 14, the resolution has seen no action since being referred to the House Committee on International Relations.

The day before Bush left for Rīga, the American Latvian Association peppered e-mailboxes across the United States with a plea for Latvian-Americans to write their local newspaper urging coverage of the visit.

“I knew there would be press coverage,” Mežinskis said. “I thought we might need to write letters to focus the press coverage on the occupation. However, it turns out President Vīķe-Freiberga was eminently successful in doing this. A second reason for writing letters was to increase the local impact. Several of my friends, co-workers and neighbors casually read the newswires about the trip. However, they really paid attention to the president’s trip to Latvia, when a Latvian they knew wrote about it.”

Across the United States, few papers previewed Bush’s visit in their Friday, May 6, editions. National Public Radio, in a preview of what some in Latvia were calling a historic visit, in its May 6 evening “All Things Considered” news show used the visit as a long introduction to a story about how young Russians are increasingly disregarding the United States. But at least NPR played sound-on-tape of Latvian Prime Minister Aigars Kalvītis speaking about Latvia’s occupation by the Soviet Union.

Coverage increased on Saturday, May 7, but marginally. Domestic national and local news dominated front pages, with stories about topics such as the potential for military base closings and the annual running of the Kentucky Derby horse race being common. Latvian-Americans hoping that their ancestral homeland would be the top news of day would have been disappointed. Many media payed little attention to Latvia itself, focusing instead on how Bush’s presence in Rīga was being viewed in Moscow. “Bush in Latvia as Putin fumes,” read a headline over a story by Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press in the May 7 edition of the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester, N.Y.

The broadcast and cable television networks, of course, were the first to report on the day’s events in Latvia. On the ABC network, Bush’s visit was the lead story, but on CBS and NBC the No. 1 spot went to new insurgent attacks in Iraq. Still, all three showed scenes of Bush in Rīga, laying a wreath at the Freedom Monument and speaking about freedom and democracy. However, the stories weren’t as much about Latvia, but about the drifting apart of Bush and Putin. ABC did note that the roots of the current diplomatic disagreement is Vīķe-Freiberga’s statement regarding the occupation. CBS News White House Correspondent Bill Plante’s report included a brief interview with Pauls Raudseps, an American-born editor for the daily Rīga-based newspaper Diena.

Altau gave relatively good marks to several cable and broadcast television reports on the visit,  but said he was “peeved” by a Maria Danilova report for the Associated Press that ran May 7 in the Washington Post and other print and online outlets. “As Moscow celebrates on Monday, aged veterans are thinking back to the war that began for them with the German invasion on June 22, 1941,” Danilova wrote.

“Danilova neglected to inform that the Soviet Union, as a Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact co-conspirator with Nazi Germany, invaded Eastern Poland on Sept. 17, 1939,” Altau said, “forced their troops upon the Baltics a few weeks later, and then invaded Finland on Nov. 30, 1939, to begin the four-month long Winter War. “

Mežinskis said media reports also failed to follow up on Bush’s admonishment to the Baltics to press forward on integration of their Russian minorities.

“How did Latvia come to have such a large Russian minority? There were allusions to a difficult occupation, but no clear narrative about how Latvians were killed or deported, and how non-Latvians were given favorable treatment in moving to Latvia,” Mežinskis said. “It was not mentioned that many people living in Latvia are more loyal to Moscow than to Rīga. It was not noted that some resist learning Latvian and want segregation, not integration.”

Altau also said some media outlets continue to incorrectly report that the Baltics are former Soviet republics.

“The whole point is that they weren’t—they were forcibly occupied, annexed,” he said. “Restored Baltic independence meant that legal continuity was not a figment of our imagination.” NPR’s Don Gonyea, the radio network’s White House correspondent, is among those who have used the term “emerging democracies” to characterize the Baltics, which Altau said is a “definite improvement.”

The Latvian parliament has approved a declaration condemning the Soviet occupation and asking Russia to accept that it is morally, legally and financially responsible for losses incurred by the Latvian people.

The declaration, “Deklarācija par Latvijā īstenotā padomju sociālistisko Republiku savienības totalitārā komunistiskā okupācijas režīma politikas nosodījumu,” was approved May 12 in a 70-23 vote, with one member of parliament abstaining, according to Latvian media reports. The vote split largely along party lines, with the leftist People’s Harmony Party (Tautas saskaņas partija) and For Human Rights in United Latvia (Par cilvēka tiesībām vienotā Latvijā) opposing the declaration.

Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union from World War II until August 1991. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has denied that an occupation occurred, arguing instead that Soviet troops were introduced into Latvia on the basis of an agreement between the Latvian and Soviet governments.

The declaration asks the Latvian government to demand reparations from Russia as well as the return of Latvian archives removed during the Soviet occupation.

The declaration was introduced in the parliament on April 22 by the conservative party Jaunais laiks (New Era).

Also on May 12, the European Parliament adopted a resolution that includes language acknowledging the suffering endured by Eastern and Central European nations following the end of World War II.

The resolution, titled “The future of Europe sixty years after the Second World War,” notes that “for some nations the end of World War II meant renewed tyranny inflicted by the Stalinist Soviet Union.” It states that the European Parliament is “aware of the magnitude of the suffering, injustice and long-term social, political and economic degradation endured by the captive nations located on the eastern side of what was to become the Iron Curtain.”

The European Parliament resolution was adopted on a vote of 463 in favor, 49 against and 33 abstaining, according to the parliament’s press office.