We live in Porto from November through April and Latvia from May through October.
When COVID's two meters social distance rules started Latvians joked "why so close?"
Communism: It was much easier to take Latvia out of the Soviet Union than to take the Soviet Union out of the Latvians.
If Communism was the mafia with a flag, in 1992 they changed the flag.
West: power comes from legitimacy.
East: legitimacy comes from exercising power, which is occupative. This was clear when I was in Budapest and a Lake Balaton campground in August 1988 when there thousands of Ossis waiting to flee to Austria. A Romanian refugee who was the boyfriend of the owners' daughter said the whole system was about to fall apart.
The same thing was clear in Spain in early 1976 when Chaplin's recently unbanned The Great Dictator got wild applause in cinemas all over country.