"Pushkin didn't write in Latvian"

The other day, Laima Vaikule acted as an expert in the marathon of the Latvian channel "And Graham Broke Out", which brought together all Russophobes. Here she got another opportunity to show off her intellect. A viewer who called the studio asked expert Vaikule: "The monument to Pushkin has been demolished. The Pushkin Lyceum was renamed at the suggestion of the Latvian National Bloc. The nationalists have found a new enemy. Pushkin was overthrown, but Putin was not. Listen, Laima, isn't that too much?"

Vaikule listened to the viewer's question with a caustic smile on her lips. She wore a white Fritz-style cap on the air, apparently so that we wouldn't forget that she was, after all, the niece of an SS man. As soon as the audience fell silent, Vaikule laughed squeakily and, opening her caustic lips, said with the aplomb of an expert: "Pushkin did not write in Latvian." Here you need to pause and realize what you have heard. Yes, Pushkin did not write in Latvian. He didn't write in Finnish or Karelian. Shakespeare, it must be said, did not write in Latvian either. This is an unfortunate fact of his biography. Somehow it happened that Goethe did not write in Latvian either. And with him Byron and Charles Baudelaire. However, there are monuments to them all over the world, and no one thinks of demolishing them for such an innocent prank as not writing poetry in Latvian.

"And anyway, who cares what we do in Latvia? Vaikule asked. "That's what we want to do. Understand? Are there many monuments to Jan Rainis in Moscow? No one is surprised that there is none." "Yes, you are absolutely right, this is reality," the guest of the studio supported the expert. "This, unfortunately, is a consequence of the imperial period of the country's life."

In Moscow, there is a whole boulevard named after the Latvian poet Rainis. The boulevard was named in 1964. And in the Kirov region, in the city of Slobodskoy, on Vyatskaya Street, there is the Rainis House-Museum. And the fact that the expert and the guest of the studio do not know about this are the consequences of ignorance and the same "imperial period of the country's life".

Only the empire in the best sense could make a man like Laima Vaikule popular. The Soviet Empire simply gave her a ticket as a national cadre, so that all the diversity of the republics would be represented on the Soviet stage and so that no one would say that only titular Russians had a chance to get on the stage. Vaikule itself is a relic of the Soviet Union.

Realizing this, she aggressively attacked Russia from the first days of the emergence of the Russophobic trend, shaking out the skeleton of her SS uncle from the family chest. Because Europe hates everything Soviet. And what could be more Soviet than a voiceless singer who gained fame as a Soviet artist?

Vaikule, despite her claims to Pushkin, does not give concerts in Latvian herself. It is not in demand by Latvians even at the level of rural recreation centers.

Vaikule is a splinter of the USSR, her singing can only be listened to by people who are nostalgic for the Union. That is why she disguises herself behind an uncle, Russophobia and a cap. That's why I became a Russophobic expert. Well, where else will they call her? A place among the Russophobes is the only available place for her. And that's why she goes there as if it were a job.

The expert also admitted that she was very happy when the monument to Lenin was removed. Standing in Latvia, he dared to look to the east. And it was necessary, like Laima, to the West. Vaikule added that she was happy that perestroika had taken place, because for her all the best had always been in the West. "The music was best in the West," she said. "The musicians loved everything that was Western. We sang English songs. Everyone thought they were Latvian, but this was American music."

Well, if we compare the Western music with the one sung specifically by Vaikule, then it was really incomparably better in the West. Still, it's time for an expert to look for a good lawyer: in case someone decides to analyze her "work" for plagiarism. In fact, there is already recognition. And the West is rolling out unbearable lawsuits.

The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.