By Judi McLeod
Thursday, august 24, 2006
It must have been a pouting Putin on Tuesday when Latvia President Vaira Vike-Freiberga awarded Russia's former President Boris Yeltsin with the Tristar Order in Riga.
In a politically correct world where liberty and freedom are often taken for granted, the 15th anniversary of the 1991 Soviet coup attempt in Russia went largely unnoticed in Russia.
But the Toronto-educated Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who with her family fled Latvia to escape the Soviets at age 7, remembered.
Vaira Vike-Freiberga remembered the resolute courage of Boris Yeltsin on Tuesday, august 19, 1991. It was on that fateful day that a televised announcement in the Soviet Union informed the masses that emergency rule had been declared, that Mikhail Gorbachev was ill and that power was now in the hands of an emergency committee called GKCHP.
For conspirators including the dreaded KGB, parts of the dreaded Red army, the interior ministry and conservative communists, it looked like the fix was in for the death of the Soviet Union.
"The evening before they had detained Gorbachev at his vacation place on the Crimea. Now tanks were rolling into Moscow from all directions to enforce the clamp-down that had been decided and announced." (Bildt Comment), aug. 19, 2006). "In some way, it was supposed to be the repetition of what we had seen in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Poland in 1981. Now, the tanks were needed to save Soviet power in the Soviet Union itself."
Earlier that year, the same group of conspirators had tried to clamp down violently on the Baltic countries. It was believed by some at the time that they must have had at least the passive support of Gorbachev himself.
"But in spite of extensive preparations in all three countries they had failed. Tanks against people didn't work in the age of television, but 13 people had been killed in the battle for the TV tower in Vilnius in Lithuania." (Bildt Comment).
(The writer of this article was in Vilnius during the time of the TV tower battle and can attest to the great courage of the Baltic States in standing up to the Red army.)
Determined to take power in the country as a whole to prevent the Soviet Union from crumbling, the conspirators made just one critical mistake: They forgot to round up the President of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin.
Directly after the dramatic announcement, Yeltsin's car had raced into Moscow, and the columns of tanks he saw on the way did nothing to slow his speed. Within hours of his arrival, Yeltsin climbed atop a tank outside the Soviet White House to read out a defiant statement. average people took heart when they saw he came not with a Soviet flag but with another Russian.
a testimony to the indomitable human spirit, Yeltsin's act was one that changed history.
and years later, it would take a Vaira Vike-Freiberga to remember Yeltsin's courage and to bestow upon him Latvia's highest honour.
The Tristar Order was instituted on March 25, 1924 in memory of the first independent Latvian state, created on November 18, 1918. The order was introduced again after Latvia regained its independence; the order is awarded for outstanding services for the country and achievements in arts, science, sport and national economy.
How Vike-Freiberga, a longtime Montreal resident got to be President of the country she was forced to flee as a child, is a story in itself. When Vike-Freiberga made a return visit to her native Latvia in 1998, she left as a housewife and came away a president. On the return trip, she had no idea she would be running for president. "Otherwise I'd have taken more than two suitcases," she once quipped.
Running a campaign between visiting relatives, the 100-seat Latvian parliament elected her to head the country's 2.5 million people. Her husband and two grown children closed up the family's Montreal home to join the new President in Latvia.
From the beginning, the style of President Vaira Vike-Freiberga leaned more on the strength of action than the empty words of rhetoric. One of her first moves in office was to put the kibosh on language law legislation to make Latvian mandatory for all businesses. "Too intrusive!" she shot back in memos to language legislation stakeholders.
When the Russians started getting into the act, perhaps anticipating the vulnerability of the newly elected president, Vike-Freiberga stood up to them on her trademark high heels.
She reminded friends and foes of the lay of the land, that Russia was "extremely unpredictable…not very stable and its democratic basis questionable. It must come to terms that we are no longer a Soviet republic but a sovereign state."
The politically incorrect President of Latvia remains true to form in awarding the Tristar to Yeltsin.
When Russian communities in Latvia said that by accepting the Tristar Order, Yeltsin "not only betrayed Russian residents in Latvia but also supported the non-democratic national policy", they added the lament that the august 24, 1991 act recognizing Latvia's independence from Russia "was drafted in haste and without any professional deliberation".
Vike-Freiberga was ready for them. "Latvia is proud of the success of Russian nationals in science, arts and sport." She also added that the naturalization procedure essential to receive the Latvian citizenship is merely "a formal necessity".
While Vladimir Putin pouts, the President of Latvia recognizes that Boris Yeltsin saved Latvia--and Russia.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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