Illustrations depicting typical Latvian scenes from that country's first period of independence, c. 1930s. From Latvia: Country and People, Latvian Legation, Washington, D.C., 1948, in the Alfreds Bilmanis Collection.

With the achievement of Latvian independence in 1991 came new problems, not the least of which was the status of the significant Russian-speaking minority in the country which now found itself outside of the borders of Russia. Debate and dissension over citizenship and language issues roiled Latvian society and politics. Since independence, the meaning of national identity has been renegotiated, both in a legal sense and in a broader, cultural sense. The question of what it means to be "Latvian" has been considered from various angles, with some asserting that solely linguistic and cultural criteria should apply, while others advocate a more inclusive definition based on national territory, extending citizenship and nationality to Latvian Russians.

Partly as a result of such controversies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) emerged to monitor political extremism and to assist the Latvian state as it prepared to seek admission to the European Union, whose comprehensive and strict criteria for membership require each country's law and practices to conform to EU standards in a process known as "harmonization." The Latvian Center for Human Rights and Ethnic Studies collection in the archives, which documents the activities of this NGO, contains literature on extremist groups in Latvia, ranging from neofascist to "National Bolshevik," including rare, difficult-to-find leaflets, posters, and political literature that circulate in a semiclandestine manner.

Image from campaign literature for the Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party (LSDSP), 2001. Latvian Subject Collection, box 15.

Such extremist literature is by no means representative of Latvian politics in general, and the archives also has materials concerning mainstream political parties in the country, including the Latvijas Cels collection of papers and documents from the political party whose name translates as "Latvia's Way" and which played an important role in government in Latvia during the 1990s. The Latvian Oral History Project collection consists of a series of recorded interviews with leading political figures in Latvia. The interviews, conducted in 1999–2000, include one with former state president Guntis Ulmanis and one with the late Ieva Lase, a dissident sent to the Gulag in the 1950s, with additional interviews contemplated as part of an ongoing effort to document Latvian political life.

As part of its important Studies of Nationalities series, the Hoover Press has published The Latvians: A Short History by Andrejs Plakans, which tells the story of Latvia from pre-modern times into the mid-1990s. Latvian history, of course, is not finished, and the three Baltic states have survived to add their own individual contributions to the mix known as contemporary Europe. As they do so, the Hoover Institution Archives will continue its long tradition of collecting materials from the Baltic region, including Latvia.