Background
Though being born in Riga, current president of Latvia Republic Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga lived mostly abroad, and before elected, she lived in Latvia quite little. But she didn’t lose her roots and always stayed a patriot of her native land, striving for the Lettish language and culture and fighting for the national self-consciousness of the Latvian people. That is why her being elected only a year after coming back to Latvia cannot be called luck. Her being re-elected for the second term also proves objectiveness in the life of a professor in a number of Latvian and Canadian universities, the author of eight books and hundreds of articles Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga. The president of Latvia Republic was born on December 1st in 1937 , and already in a month her father died. At the age of seven, on December 31st in 1944, as the Soviet occupation of Latvia began, her family emigrated to Germany where she lived in a refugee camp in Lubeck until 1948. Here she finished Latvian primary school. Then her family spent ten years in Marocco where Vaira attended French school and college.
Education
She got her Bachelor degree in English and Master’s degree in Psychology while studying at the University of Toronto in Canada. Experimental psychology was the main topic of her further research. She got her PhD at McGill and Montreal universities in 1965. Her name was widely known among Canadian and international scientists as at different times she headed the Union of Canadian psychologists, the Federation of Canadian unions of social sciences, association of Baltic Studies, was Canada’s representative at the Committee devoted to constitutional reforms of Brazilian parliament. Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga is the corresponding member of the Academies of Science in Canada and Latvia.
Career
During the exhibition “Expo-67” in Toronto in 1967 Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga and her husband met a number of Soviet Latvian people, who helped them keep in touch with the motherland. In early 80s she officially started to cooperate with the Latvian Academy of Sciences and Riga University, making research in Latvian folklore. When the USSR broke up and Latvia got its independence, their house in Canada became unofficial representative office of Latvia. “We received politicians, writers, scientists and visited Latvia quite frequently. We had there more friends than in Montreal”, - recalls the husband of the current president.
Religion
So firm and persistent in politics, she is known as a sociable, preprocessing, understanding and caring person. As a true Catholic Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga goes to church with her family every Sunday.
Politics
Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga and her family moved to Riga for permanent residence in 1998, where she became a professor and then the director of the University of Latvia and the corresponding member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. On June 17 1999 she was elected president of the republic of Latvia for four years. On June 20 2003 Latvian Seim re-elected her for the second term.
Such trust is quite natural. Everybody close enough to the current Latvian leader claim she’s highly professional and persistent in achieving her goals. Her husband proves this saying his wife is “a determined person full of energy, she doesn’t like those who dithers in making a decision”.
These qualities of hers are clear in her everyday political life. Striving for a strong and stable parliamentary republic, for Latvia’s integration to all the European and international structures, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga achieved quite a lot. Particularly, Latvia’s membership in NATO and EU and its easy integration into these structures, people connect with the fact that before elected president she used to be the head of scientific discussions in a program of NATO “The Human Factor” in Brussels. It also explains Latvia’s orientation in its foreign policy, cooperating with the USA better than with Western Europe.
Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga is a global liberalist, who was trying to return the property to the owners, who owned it before 1940. She was also very successful at economy.
Russian issue
Nevertheless, even European politicians accept the fact that the current Latvian president has absolutely no contact with the Russian population and Russia itself. Though Latvia has already lost several actions in the European Court of Human Rights, the president keeps to the ideology of contemporary nationalism, claiming the Russian population to be a foreign body and a result of bolshevism occupation. Such an uncompromising position, closing Russian schools and good attitude to legionnaire movements complicate the lives of Soviet soldiers in the republic. Moreover, such politics doesn’t facilitate good relationship with Latvia’s eastern neighbours. Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga openly speaks for curtailing Russian investment into Latvia’s economy, because it can shake its sovereignty.