On the barricades

This is the story of how Latvians stopped Soviet Russian special forces in January 1991 by building barricades from concrete blocks, trucks, and tractors to protect the institutions of its democracy in Rīga. It is a story of heroism by ordinary Latvians and journalists, with lessons for the world today.

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Transcript

On the barricades

A cold, snowy day in Rīga

It is the 20th of January. I am standing in Dome Square in the old town of Rīga. The low winter sun casts long shadows over the snowy, cobbled square and surrounding streets. The cathedral tower overlooks everything as it has for centuries. Picturesque, if it were not minus 18 degrees!

I try to imagine the scene that unfolded at this very spot 35 years ago. A display of great heroism by local people against heavily armed Russian forces. Ordinary Latvians filled these streets with trucks, tractors, and piles of concrete blocks. They built bonfires to stay warm and made simple barricades, waiting to see whether Soviet tanks and armoured vehicles would arrive.

I will tell you their story.

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Latvia on the brink

Latvia had already declared the restoration of its independence from the Soviet Union on 4 May 1990, but in early 1991, that independence was more an idea than a reality. The Soviet leaders in Moscow did not accept it, Soviet troops and security forces were still stationed in Latvia, and everyone knew that force might still be used to turn the clock back.

In the first days of January 1991, signs of a potential crackdown gathered like storm clouds. Soviet OMON special police had already seized the Press Building in Rīga on 1 January, and a delegation from the Soviet Union Interior Ministry arrived shortly afterwards, officially to ‘restore order’ but, in reality, to intimidate Latvia’s new authorities.

Then came the bloody night in Vilnius on 13 January, when Soviet forces attacked the Lithuanian TV tower, killing civilians. Latvians watched in horror, knowing that Rīga could be next. Vilnius is just 260 km from Rīga. Lithuania is Latvia’s neighbour. Easily reached by road or rail. You can listen to my episode about my rail journey there on ‘A tale of two cities’. Lithuania is a fellow Baltic State with a shared history of occupation by the Russians. What happens in one state could easily be replicated in another. The tension was rising.

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The call to build barricades

At 4:45 on the morning of 13 January, the Popular Front of Latvia – the mass movement that had driven the independence push – went on the radio and called on people to gather at Rīga Dome Square. By midday, the Supreme Council was meeting on defence issues, and at two o’clock, a massive demonstration started on the 11th November Embankment, close to the square. Half a million people from all over Latvia are estimated to have gathered for the demonstration - in a country of just over 2.5 million at that time – a human wall of bodies and homemade banners stretching along the Daugava river embankment road. Soviet armed forces helicopters circled overhead, dropping leaflets warning people to go home. They didn’t.

Instead, something quite remarkable happened. Under the guidance of the Popular Front and a defence headquarters led by Andrejs Krastiņš, with deputies Odisejs Kostanda and Tālis Jundzis, they began to build physical barricades around the key places that symbolised Latvia’s fragile statehood and its voice: the parliament building, the Council of Ministers, the radio and television headquarters, the printing house, bridges and access roads, and the Interior Ministry. This was a civil defence, not a military one. The barricades protected the institutions of a democracy: its political system, its media and its police force.

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What the barricades looked and felt like

Forget the elegant Rīga old town you see today. In January 1991, the streets around these buildings were transformed into a fortified camp built from whatever Latvians had at hand. Heavy lorries, tractors, buses and timber trucks were parked across junctions. Concrete blocks, logs and scrap metal were piled up into makeshift walls. Snow and ice filled the gaps.

While the barricades looked rough and makeshift, the atmosphere around them was strangely calm and, many say, even festive. Thousands of unarmed volunteers – estimated to be around 50,000 between 13 and 27 January – took turns on guard, often in temperatures well below freezing. They burned wood in metal barrels, drank hot tea, listened to portable radios, and even played music. At one point, about 700,000 demonstrators had gathered on the streets of Rīga.

Farmers arrived from distant regions in their vehicles. Students and office workers brought blankets and sandwiches. Priests and pastors led prayers. There were rumours and fears, of course, but also jokes, songs, and an overwhelming sense of “we are all in this together”.

Vents Krauklis, a musician and journalist, spoke about travelling to Rīga to be on the barricades, bringing warm clothes, sandwiches, tea, a little vodka, and musical instruments. However, he advised not to take too much strong drink, as one needed to keep a clear head. Musical instruments were important because the barricades were part of the singing revolution. 

Latvian Prime Minister Evika Siliņa recently recalled:

"I was a teenager myself at the time. And now I pass on the memories to my children. For the first time I truly felt that there was something of ours that needed to be protected. It was cold. There were bonfires and it felt like we finally had our own country. And we were standing guard over it. Shoulder to shoulder. We all knew that the barriers built with amazing speed would not be able to stop the tanks if they moved in. But the barricades showed something else – that spirit can be stronger than troops, that a people can stand like a wall. Not with weapons, but with determination."

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The attack

Not everything about the barricades was song and firelight. The most tragic day occurred on 20 January. In the evening, Soviet special forces attacked the Latvian Interior Ministry in central Rīga. Automatic gunfire echoed through the streets.

Seven people in total lost their lives during the barricade events, most on this day, with more than a dozen injured. Among those killed at the Interior Ministry were Lieutenant Vladimir Gomanovič, commander of the Government Security Service, and Sergei Kononenko, an Interior Department inspector.

Two other individuals killed during the attack on the Latvian Interior Ministry on 20 January 1991 were members of a Latvian film crew working as journalists documenting the barricades: cameraman and director Andris Slapiņš and cameraman Gvido Zvaigzne. Both men worked with a crew linked to director Juris Podnieks, whose films about the Baltic independence movements later became essential visual records of the period. On 20 January, they were filming near the Interior Ministry when Soviet special forces opened fire; human rights reports from that time list them among five civilians killed in the raid, alongside those two Interior Ministry officers and a teenage bystander. Their footage and sacrifice helped document the brutality of the attack and contributed to international awareness of what was happening in Latvia, making them symbols of journalistic courage during the barricades. While a British diplomat in Rīga in the late 1990s, I was given a video copy of their footage. It shows the camera still filming as they fall to the ground after being shot. It is one of the most harrowing pieces of film I have seen. Whenever I watch it again, I become very emotional. In Latvia, Slapiņš and Zvaigzne are remembered in official commemorations of the barricades, and their names are often mentioned when discussing the risks journalists took to keep cameras rolling in January 1991.

People at the nearby barricades recall the confusion: not knowing who was shooting or if tanks were about to roll through the city. Still, the crowds did not disperse. The bonfires remained burning, and the guards stayed at their posts, even as they now understood that the threat was indeed very real.

One Latvian on the barricades remembered someone shouting “get down – guliet, guliet! – and suddenly everyone was on the frozen pavement, faces pressed into the dirty snow, listening to the crack of shots ricocheting somewhere ahead. For a moment, all that existed was the smell of exhaust, cold stone under my cheek, and the thud of my own heart”. 

Another person recalled that, “When the shooting stopped, the silence felt heavier than the noise had been. You could hear bits of ice sliding off the barricade, a radio hissing somewhere, someone coughing. People slowly stood up, brushed the snow from their coats, and then simply went back to their posts. No one suggested going home; it was as if the decision had already been made for all of us”.

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What the barricades achieved

The barricades were never really about winning a firefight with the Soviet army. Latvia had no army to speak of. They were about showing the world, and Moscow, that this small country was willing to defend its restored independence peacefully but stubbornly, with its own bodies if necessary.

The barricades started on 13 January, and active guarding of key sites continued for about two weeks, with large demonstrations and a round-the-clock presence up to and just after 20 January. On 25 January, after a national day of mourning and the funerals of those killed in the 20 January attack, the defenders were officially told they could stand down and leave the barricades. Physically, many of the structures – trucks, concrete blocks, timber – remained in place much longer for security and symbolic reasons; some barricades near the Supreme Council reportedly stayed on the streets into autumn 1992.

Why were they called off? By late January, the immediate threat of a large‑scale assault in Rīga had diminished. After 20 January, there were no further major OMON attacks on central state institutions, and political channels with Moscow were being used instead. The funerals on 25 January marked a psychological turning point: leaders aimed to avoid further casualties, demonstrate that the mobilisation had achieved its goal of deterrence and visibility, and shift from emergency street defence back to more normal political work.

Politically, the display of non-violent civil resistance helped to deter a full-scale crackdown in Latvia similar to the one attempted in Lithuania, and it impressed foreign governments observing events in the Baltic States. In the months that followed, as Moscow itself descended into crisis and the coup against Gorbachev failed, Latvia’s trajectory towards de facto independence and international recognition became irreversible, culminating seven months later in the August 1991 constitutional decisions.

In the years that followed, around 32,000 people received the Commemorative Medal for Participants of the Barricades of 1991 – a small, round piece of metal with the message, ‘I was there when we stood together’. For many Latvians, it is more a reminder of a moment when fear and courage existed side by side than a mere decoration.

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The role of journalists

As a teacher of Public Relations and communications, and a podcaster - thus an independent journalist - I was keen to discover the role journalists and the media played around the barricades. I found out that journalists, both Latvian and foreign, were central to how the barricades were understood in Latvia and abroad, and their work was regarded as a strategic part of the resistance rather than mere reportage.

Latvian Radio was the primary source of news and coordination, broadcasting Dainis Īvāns’s early-morning appeal on 13 January that effectively initiated the barricades and later providing continuous updates on where help was needed. Radio journalists worked almost nonstop, relaying information from the Supreme Council, Popular Front, and various barricade sites, which enabled tens of thousands to gather and remain coordinated even as Soviet forces attempted to intimidate or isolate them.

Journalists at Latvian Television interrupted pre-recorded speeches - most notably by Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis - to report the shooting at the Interior Ministry once they learned of it, bringing raw reality on air in real time. After Soviet OMON seized the Press House on 2 January, halting most newspaper printing, the Supreme Council’s Press Centre effectively became a news agency, publishing multilingual bulletins about attacks, casualties, and political decisions. Led by Aleksandrs Mirļins, the Press Centre was set up specifically to inform Western media about events in parliament and on the streets, with press releases prepared in English and other languages for immediate use by foreign outlets. Latvians in exile volunteered at the Press Centre, using their language skills and contacts to turn local reports into internationally accessible material and to push those stories into Western newsrooms. Around 1,000–1,500 foreign journalists were accredited with the Supreme Council in January 1991, and the Press Centre issued hourly bulletins on developments, casualties, and official decisions. Dainis Īvāns later described these press releases as “the first monument” to the fallen and the first international accusation against those responsible for the shootings, emphasising how vital communication was to the strategy.

Foreign correspondents from outlets such as the BBC, the Washington Post, the New York Times, The Times, Newsweek, CNN, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and others relied on information from local fixers and the Press Centre to report quickly on attacks and the extent of peaceful mobilisation. Radio Free Europe expanded its Latvian-language broadcasts, while its journalists worked through nights verifying every report with at least two independent sources before broadcasting, to counter Soviet disinformation. Coverage of non-violent crowds confronting Soviet troops and special forces appeared in Western media despite the distraction of the Gulf War, helping ensure that “events in the Baltics did not go unnoticed” and fostering political sympathy for the Baltic cause. Latvian officials and later commentators have argued that this international visibility – driven by journalists and media workers – helped limit the scale of Soviet violence and strengthened Western support for Latvia’s eventual recognition.

Contemporary and later testimonies emphasise that many journalists saw themselves as part of the awakening movement: “the media’s role was huge because all of the awakening was started by journalists,” as one study of late‑Soviet broadcasting summarised. Accounts collected by LSM - Latvian Public Media - and in subsequent research describe reporters and producers sleeping in studios, dodging OMON raids, or using improvised networks of phones and couriers to keep information flowing even when buildings were threatened or occupied. Journalists acted as organisers, witnesses, and international amplifiers of the barricades, using radio, television, and press networks to mobilise people within Latvia and to ensure the rest of the world could not look away.

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How the 20th January is commemorated today

Fast forward to today. Every year on 20 January, Latvia observes the Day of Commemoration for the Defenders of the Barricades. In Rīga, there are official ceremonies: flowers are laid at the Freedom Monument, at memorial stones on Bastejkalns where the cameramen were shot, and at the graves of those who were killed. The main sites protected by the barricades - the parliament building, the Council of Ministers, and the former ‘Telegraph and Telephone Exchange’ - all held open events the previous weekend. 

But there are also more intimate rituals. In the morning, church bells rang across Latvia, and a memorial bonfire was lit in Dome Square, which burned throughout the day. In the evening, people gathered outside the Latvian parliament, where a fire was lit, then moved the short distance to Dome Square for a special concert, “With the power of death”, which recounts the events that happened in January 1991. I could see veterans of the barricades standing side by side with teenagers and children, exchanging stories and trying to pass on what that time meant. All Latvian schools held a lesson on the significance of the barricades. I checked with my son, and his school did just that. There was also a memorial barricade in front of Rīgas Imantas Vidusskola. The Latvian president has described these events as the ‘uniting fire’ of the barricades: a flame that still warms Latvia’s sense of itself as a civic community.

Beyond Rīga, towns across Latvia hold their own events on or around 20 January – concerts, talks, candle‑lit marches – marking not a military victory but a collective memory of civic bravery and solidarity.

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Where visitors can learn more about the barricades

For visitors wanting to go beyond the plaques and bonfires, Rīga has a couple of essential stops. The first is the 1991 Barricades Museum on Krāmu iela, located in the old town. It grew out of the memorabilia collected by the association of participants and now displays photographs, personal belongings, and even a reconstruction of part of the barricades and a 1991 apartment kitchen.

Staff and guides – often people with personal experiences of the events – can walk you through the timeline and point to a map showing exactly where barricades and bonfires stood around the cathedral and parliament. It is small, personal and surprisingly powerful.

A short walk away is the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, whose exhibitions place the barricades within the broader history of Soviet and Nazi occupations, mass deportations, the national awakening, and the eventual restoration of independence. There you can see photographs and testimonies that demonstrate how the barricades were both a culmination and a starting point.

Near the bridge in Bastejkalns, you can find the granite memorials dedicated to the two cameramen, Andris Slapiņš and Gvido Zvaigzne. It marks the place where they were shot. Pay your respects to them and their bravery.

Then, armed with the site knowledge you gained in the 1991 Barricades Museum, walk around the old town. Visit Dome Square, stroll past the Saeima (parliament) and the Council of Ministers, and view the bridges of the Daugava that were blocked. See the tall TV tower on Zaķusala in the distance. With a bit of imagination, it is not difficult to picture the bonfires, concrete blocks, and trucks that formed the barricade defences back in 1991.

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Closing reflection

For many Latvians, the barricades are not just distant history. They are a living memory that influences how people perceive their state, neighbours, and their role in Europe today. The phrase ‘barricades of freedom’ continues to feature in speeches and textbooks; the events are taught to children and remembered each January through articles, films, and social media posts. A good source for English language articles and videos is the LSM English website of Latvian Public Media.

As an Englishman in Latvia, it is difficult not to notice the contrast: how quietly these stories are woven into daily life, and how vast they become when you take the time to listen. Standing by a 20 January bonfire in Dome Square, watching young people hear these memories for the first time from those who experienced them, you realise that the barricades were never merely about stopping tanks. They were about fostering a sense of shared responsibility for the country, which still flickers, faintly but resolutely, in those fires today.

To me, as a human rights activist, the events demonstrate that when enough people support a cause, it is possible to defeat even the most totalitarian armies through non-violent, peaceful resistance, protests, or boycotts. Although the barricades in Rīga were erected 35 years ago, the need to oppose oppressive regimes remains. Across the world, the heroic actions of Latvians serve as a lesson to us all.

[Illustration by An Englishman in Latvia from an image by Andis Jurjans, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0. Music by zec53 from Pixabay]