Baltic Impressions -- Latvian Teenagers Head Home After A Taste Of Freedom For Two Months

They were both 17, and if you happened to be in some suburban shopping mall, checking out the latest video rentals, you wouldn't give them a second look.

By now, after two months in America, they had gotten new sets of clothes that could have been from a Nordstrom rack.

Because I'm a Latvian-American, and because I've written stories from Latvia, I am often asked about what will happen in the Baltics.

This is the future of those republics, young men and women such as Arnis Udris and Janis Baiks, who yesterday boarded a plane on their way back home.

If they don't care, if the heritage of five decades of dictatorship have sapped their generation of will power, then the Baltics are in trouble.

They are the ones who'll have to learn to run small businesses, and who'll experience double-digit unemployment when the outmoded factory in town closes.

Just as in the U.S., where shopping-mall kids will eventually run the country, so will it be in the Baltics.

Of course, there are no such malls in those countries. But their desires are not so different. Whether they are American, or Latvian, or Lithuanian, or Estonian, or Russian kids, they all want their MTV.

Twenty of these high-school age Latvian kids spent two months here, sponsored by Latvian-Americans.

In a newsletter in which the kids told about themselves, Janis said he enjoyed working with computers and liked playing basketball and soccer.

Arnis wrote that he liked playing guitar and worked out in judo.

Arnis shrugged as he told about how his family was crammed into a small apartment. Everybody is.

What kind of young men are they? The kind that would tell the Soviet army to stuff it and not obey the draft. The Soviet rule might be crumbling, but it still wielded plenty of power, at least two months ago.

"An army car arrives at your door; there is a driver and three people. They knock and get you," Arnis, who was the more talkative, said.

"A friend of mine was away from his house, studying for an exam, when his mom telephoned. She said, `Sleep at a friend's house. They're looking for you.' "

Arnis and Janis said they had seen young men returning from a stint in the Soviet army, where beatings and abuse are regularly reported.

"They go in clean and healthy. They return chronic alcoholics because when they're drunk they don't have to face reality," Arnis said.

That's a much different reality than a gentlemanly "Firing Line" debate.

I asked if they were hopeful for the future of their country. I told them about the passivity among the young that I had noticed in Latvia.

"Younger people are very skeptical towards everything," Arnis said. "What did we see? At school all the teachers were walking around with the Communist flag. Now they're all walking around with the Latvian flag."

I asked what they had been thinking about as they watched CNN, and read the news reports of the changes in the Soviet Union. There was a paper in front of us, showing a wire photo of a Lenin statue in the middle of Riga, the capital of Latvia, after it had been toppled.

"The statue was toppled. That's fine, but what will change?" Janis said.

Arnis said he had read the news reports about all the changes. He didn't trust the reports. A lifetime under Soviet rule had taught him that.

"What's written on paper has zero value. I want to see it for myself," he said.

Hope for his country?

"The main thing I want to see is the day when the Soviet tanks are leaving, and when there are no planes in their air bases," he said. Half of the 2.7 million population of Latvia is non-native. Both Janis and Arnis have Russian friends. They're not looking to have Russian civilians kicked out.

"Russians as a people are good-hearted. It's just the system that's bad. If Russians in Latvia work for the betterment of Latvia, why shouldn't they stay?" Arnis said.

Hope for his country?

"I'm not a pessimist. I'm a realist. I don't hope for something good to happen fast. If you hope for something to happen tomorrow, and it doesn't, then your spirit is broken," Arnis said.

Arnis wants to be a lawyer. Janis wants to work with computers. They know the economy will get worse in their country before it gets better.

That's all right, they said, as long as the Soviet army - at least 200,000 strong - is gone. Then a huge weight will have been lifted.

That's how these two 17-year-olds from Latvia talked about the events of the past week. No, they're not brimming with idealistic slogans ready-made for TV sound bites. But I think they'll be able to deal with the coming, tough, years just fine.

And I think if they met some American 17-year-olds in a shopping mall, they'd have some good conversations. It gives me hope, and not just for Latvia.