Janis Cakste
Jānis Čakste was the first president of Latvia and had been arguing its case in Europe since before the state existed. Born in 1859 on a farm in the Jelgava district, the son of a tenant farmer, he studied law at Moscow University and returned to practise as a lawyer in Jelgava, where he founded a newspaper and a Latvian society. He was elected to the first Russian Duma in 1906 and signed the Vyborg Manifesto protesting its dissolution, for which he served three months in prison and was barred from further election. During the First World War he worked on refugee relief for the enormous numbers displaced by the fighting in Courland, and in 1917 went abroad to argue for Latvian self-determination, publishing a book in Switzerland and lobbying at Versailles. He chaired the People's Council that proclaimed independence on 18 November 1918, and then the Constitutional Assembly that drafted the Satversme — the constitution adopted in 1922 and still, with interruptions, in force. He was elected the first president in 1922 and re-elected in 1925. The office he held was deliberately weak, which suited him. Latvia's parliamentary system produced short-lived coalitions from a very large number of parties, and his role was to hold the constitutional forms steady while governments came and went — which he did without ever attempting to expand his own authority. He warned against the fragmentation of the parliament and proposed reform through amendment rather than by decree. He died in office in 1927, and some hundred thousand people attended the funeral.
- Lived: 1859 CE – 1927 CE
- Nationality: Latvian
- Roles: statesman, head_of_state, lawyer
