A CITY PAPER interview with the leader singer of the Latvian band BrainStorm, Renars Kaupers. More than one local band has dreamed about it, but virtually none has actually succeeded in breaking into pop music markets beyond Baltic borders—except, that is, Latvia’s BrainStorm. In recent...

The story of a Latvian woman whose double-agent father defected to the United States, and of how she finally found her way back home. By Benjamin Smith On the morning the Iron Curtain rattled open for her, Ieva Lesinska was standing in a Marriott Hotel suite in Washington. It was September...

An exclusive CITY PAPER interview with Johnny Logan. If there was ever anyone who personified the Song Contest, at least in the eyes of committed Eurovision watchers, it’s Johnny Logan. The Irishman is, hands down, the most successful participant in its 45-year history. He’s won Eurovi...

Growth, GDP per capita, Inflation, Unemployment, Wages, Trade, Investment Annual GDP Growth Around the time of the Soviet collapse, Baltic economies were in free-fall. In 1992, all three were registering breathtakingly dismal growth figures of between -15 to -30 percent. But thanks to impres...

The once seemingly impossible dream of Baltic European Union membership is now in the bag. One word, “Yes!”, filled the entire front page of Estonia’s Postimees newspaper the day after the country passed its referendum in September, 2003. Latvians popped champagne corks a week later when...