Really fascinating, thank you. I realize that it's a bit off topic here, but why were the two countries created after the fall of the USSR, as opposed to a Livonian state? If I remember correctly, the Estonians aren't necessarily considered Slavic - sharing closer language and cultural ties to Finlands. Is this the reason for the lack of cohesion between them and the Latvians?
As far as the bolded, did Leo Komorov grow up in Estonia and move to Finland when his talents were apparent?
Sorry for the hijack, both the Baltics and the Balkans have always intrigued me.
You just stated a couple of things that could be bad for your health if said to a local.
First of all, Latvia is not Slavic in any respect. Why on Earth would you assume that?
Quite the contrary, Slavs have been their arch-enemy for most of recorded history. It's like saying Greeks are Arabs or Persians.
Culturally, Latvia is Lutheran/Protestant, with Riga being one of the centers of Reformation. It has been a part of the West since the 1200s, which means it has been subject to the same historical processes as the rest of Western and Northern Europe. For instance, it was a mercantile colonial power in the 17th century, it was subject to the Swedish Church Law, with most people being literate by the 1700s.
The language itself is Baltic, a separate language tree, which in the case of Latvian was written in Gothic script of Latin since being written down. Balts were a separate civilization with their own religion and culture in pre-history. Old Prussian culture and its Baltic tribal structure and warrior ethos had a major effect on East Prussia and by extension the formation of the Prussian state that later unified Germany.
Estonia and Latvia were not 'created' after the USSR ceased to exist. They were created after a war of independence in 1918. As I said before, they were under a military occupation from 1945-1990, waging large scale guerrilla warfare well into the 1950s and collaborating with US, UK and Swedish secret services and trying to topple the regime until they were given up on. And it were the Baltics that ended the USSR in the 80s, with peaceful mass resistance and millions of people taking the streets. This led to a domino effect across the different parts of USSR that eventually made the whole thing go down. It did not 'fall' as if it were an autumn leaf.
The Livonian state was formed by the Baltic German nobility before the concept of ethnicity and nation states existed. Latvians and Estonians are entirely distinct ethnicities, which is why each has their own nation state, just like any other European country. So it's not a question that I understand. It's like asking why isn't Spain and Italy a single Roman state.
And if we get down to the basics, the Balkans are a radically different part of the continent with no relation to the Baltics, other than the 3 letters 'b', 'a' and 'l', similar to ballet. Which, too, is something else altogether.
