During the russian business of Latvia, the only legal folk hero for Latvian boys was Lāčplēsis (the Bear Slayer). This was declared by the first president of the Latvian People’s Front, Dainis Īvāns, who spoke on a public tv broadcast on September 26th 2025 dedicated to his 70th birthday. Īvāns was 1 of the most popular people in Latvia in the late 1980s and early 1990s and a symbol of how Latvia regained its sovereignty. The Latvian People’s Front brought together hundreds of thousands of people who played a decisive function in ensuring that Latvia could reconstruct its national sovereignty in 1991.
Īvāns recalled that he had no heroes from his own childhood whom he would want to replicate. Soldiers and statesmen who fought for Latvia’s statehood between 1918 and 1920 were a taboo subject under russian occupation. The names of these men were full deleted from schoolbooks and the public space.
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