Latvia vanquished the Russian armed forces by singing. Indeed fought over by the Russians, Poles and Swedes it was annexed to the USSR in 1944. To show their opposition to this domination at the beginning of the 1990’s the Latvians notably rallied to sing together the best known of their “daïnas”, popular songs that come from ancestral series of poems, under the encouragement of Sandra Kalniete, the first European Commissioner to represent this country and now MEP. The demonstrations were successful since in 1994 the Russian troops finally left the country. Governed from 1999 to 2007 by Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the first ever female president from a former Soviet country, Latvia joined the European Union in 2004. It was seriously affected by the economic crisis in 2008 but recovery seems to have been underway since 2011.