A Latvian First and Always

All through this period, she recalled, her parents taught her that one has to preserve one's identity or lose it. "Remaining Latvian meant remaining who they are," she said. By age 11, she said, she understood that Latvians had a different spirit and had come from a world other than the one she was inhabiting.

In Morocco, Christians, Muslims and Jews lived together. She went to catechism classes taught by a Roman Catholic priest, and when she asked her mother for a white first communion dress, she was told she was Lutheran.

After 5 1/2 years in Morocco, the family immigrated to Toronto. "I was neither here nor there" in the new country, she said. "It took time to integrate." At the same time, she hung on to her Latvian qualities. She began to attend Latvian student dances.

As she advanced in an academic career, identity became a field of professional focus, and she developed her own theories: Natural identity is what you are born as, like a fish in water. Reactive identities are forged when others react to your strange name when all you want is to be accepted. Elective identities are those of her children, born in Canada, yet having a choice.

When she returned home in 1998, she took a job heading the Latvian Institute, whose job was to introduce the country to the world. Now that she is president, national identity remains a prime interest. One challenge is to persuade the Russians in the country, who make up 28.2 percent of the population, to adopt Latvian as their first language while maintaining Russian. Vike-Freiberga is criticized for having given up the study of Russian, which she began when she became president.

Her tiny nation of 2.3 million still has Russia breathing down its neck, with threats to shut off gas and oil. This fall, Latvia will host a summit of the 26 members of NATO. Officials in Russia find Vike-Freiberga antagonistic and too ready to take up Baltic issues with President Bush .

Some Latvians were reluctant to have the country join the alliance out of fear it would anger Russia. Vike-Freiberga has an answer for that: "We, the Latvian people, have not been put by the good Lord on this Earth to make Russia happy. We have our own lives to live and as we see fit. And we wish the Russians joy, and we wish them a happy and prosperous life."

In a relatively short time, she has earned the nickname "Iron Lady of the Baltics." She sees it differently. The chance to serve a country she thought she would never see again is, she said, "a gift from heaven."