Friday, November 06, 2009

Baltic Night at the Yale Club

Last night I met a friend of Ojars Kalnins, the Latvian-American whose strange fate is recounted in RTRP. For many years National Review and (oddly) the State Department were the only people who, apart from the Baltic-American community, kept alive the notion that Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were legitimate countries, wrongly annexed by the Soviet Union. After the fall of Soviet Communism, they regained their independence, though Russia labors to sap it.

My new Latvian acquaintance told me that he likes to ask Swedes, What was the second-largest city in the Swedish empire in the 17th century? Primed by his question, they cleverly answer: Riga. Then he tells them the correct answer: Stockholm. Riga was larger back in the day.

Embattled countries get to play one-up.

11/06 02:17 PMShare