The physicist who walked Latvia out of the USSR and commanded the nights of the barricades
On the night of 20 January 1991, after Soviet special forces stormed Latvia's Interior Ministry, killing five, Godmanis telephoned Soviet interior minister Boris Pugo, who told him: 'I was not involved.'
A Latvian physicist turned politician, Godmanis earned his doctorate in solid-state physics and taught at the University of Latvia before joining the Latvian Popular Front in 1987. After the Front's victory in the 1990 Supreme Council elections, he became the first prime minister of a Latvia that had declared the restoration of its independence, and during the January 1991 barricades he coordinated the defense of strategic sites and personally telephoned Soviet interior minister Boris Pugo, who denied any involvement in the OMON attack. He returned as prime minister in 2007, steering Latvia through the global financial crisis until his resignation in 2009.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1973–1988Lecturer at University of Latvia, researcher at Institute of Solid State Physics
- 1989–1990Deputy Chairman, Latvian Popular Front
- 1990–1993Prime Minister of the Republic of Latvia
- 1998–1999Minister of Finance of Latvia
- 2006–2007Minister of the Interior of Latvia
- 2007–2009Prime Minister of Latvia
Related historical events
The released KGB file and the courts
On 21 December 2018 Latvia's National Archives released its index of cards of agents of the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB), and Godmanis's name returned to the centre of a public dispute. The published card asserts that he was registered in March 1988 as an agent under the alias "Pugulis", a date that overlaps with his joining of the Popular Front, though the card itself shows only a registration and says nothing about what information he may have passed on or whether the registration was voluntary.
Godmanis contested the collaboration claim in court, and the court found that there had been no fact of conscious collaboration with the KGB. The case file, however, was later reported to have disappeared from court archives. In November 2017 the commission for the scientific study of the Latvian SSR KGB stated that the court had refused to hand the commission the file and that it was no longer in the court's archive, while the National Archives director stressed that only a court can conduct a full investigation of whether a person was indeed a KGB collaborator. For a man who headed Latvia's government twice, in 1990-1993 and 2007-2009, the episode condenses the difficulty of settling the Soviet past from documents whose provenance and custody are themselves disputed.