Working Abroad in Latvia
About the author: Sally Egan ’22 is an FSI Global Policy Intern at the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Riga, Latvia.
If you asked me to name a single fact about the country of Latvia before this year, I probably couldn’t have done it. I knew it was in Europe somewhere and that was all. But as I approach the end of my fourth week living here in Riga, working for the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, I can’t imagine a better place to spend my summer.
Latvia is one of the Baltic states which had independence from 1918–1940, but was then occupied first by the Soviet Union, then by Nazi Germany, and then by the Soviet Union again up until 1991. At this point, chaos ensued, as people had been used to occupation for so long that there wasn’t a lot of remaining institutional knowledge about how to run a country. The Soviet occupation left many people with no money, and once the Soviets pulled out, Latvians who had been removed from their houses and apartments decades ago suddenly wanted them back, leaving the current occupants without housing. After several years, the country settled down into a level of normality, though the economy never entirely recovered- by one colleague’s estimate, the average salary is about 1,000 euros per month, which is close to the poverty threshold in the United States. I’ve never been a history person, but I find myself drawn to learning more about the tumultuous roller coaster ride that Latvia has been through over the past 100 years, and I am amazed by how incredibly functional the country is now, less than 30 years after regaining its independence.
Beyond learning about Latvia’s rich history, I was fortunate enough to travel to Tallinn, Estonia for their song and dance festival, Laulupidu, which happens every five years. On the second day of the singing portion of the festival, there were 30,000 Estonians from the entire country all singing to a crowd of 100,000, with another half million Estonians live streaming at least some part of the song and dance festival (for context, the population of Estonia is only 1.3 million). I also traveled to Oslo, Norway last weekend, and while the food, random artwork, views, and Nobel peace center were all amazing, I missed the cheap prices of everything in Riga.
Of course, the whole reason I’m in Riga at all is for my internship at the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, which is dedicated to learning about and improving strategic communications within the NATO allied countries. This involves the analysis of social media communications, direct and indirect messages from military actions, the use of fake Twitter and Facebook accounts, hybrid warfare techniques, and, of course, the impact of the disinformation crisis and future technological developments. Thus far, I’ve mostly been reading over publications and watching conference proceedings and extracting and summarizing the most important information. It’s been both enlightening and frightening learning about many of the ways technology and social media can impact the future of democracy.
Overall, I’ve had a great couple of weeks in Riga, which I’m now convinced is one of the most underrated cities in the world, and I’m excited to see how the next part of my summer unfolds.
