Only one woman entered the history of the Soviet Union, about whom it can be said that she led the work of the government of the country. The post of deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR from 1988 to 1990 was held by Alexander Biryukov, but she did not become chairman. The situation changed only after the collapse of the Union. And the new Minister of Latvia (Prime Minister) of Latvia, Laimdota Straujuma, is the fifth representative of the former USSR who led the government of her now independent state from Moscow.
13th Premier
Laimdot Straujuma, elected on January 22, 2014, as the Latvian Prime Minister, became the 13th head of the Latvian government after the country's separation from the USSR. Replaced Straujuma who voluntarily resigned after the collapse of the shopping center in Riga and the death of 54 people in it, Valdis Dombrovskis. By the way, under Dombrovskis she was also part of the government, in which she headed the Ministry of Agriculture. Among her predecessors, the current president of the country, Andris Berzins, was the prime minister.
Incidentally, all the former leaders of the Latvian government, including those who lived and worked in Riga before World War II, were exclusively men. Let one of them be called Anna. But among the presidents there was a place for a woman: from 1999 to 2007, the Baltic state was headed by Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who returned from years of emigration to the United States. It was under Vick-Freiberg that the political career of the new Latvian prime minister started. In November 1999, Straujuma, a well-known economist specializing in agriculture, began working as deputy secretary of state in the Ministry of Agriculture. Just a year later, Laimdota became the Secretary of State, and in 2011 she headed the ministry itself.
Cross of recognition
63-year-old Strauyuma, despite his high state rank, is a completely non-public person. The maximum that is known about the personal life of the first lady of the government, this marital status - "divorced", and the presence of two adult sons, with politics or agriculture in no way connected. In the country, she is sometimes even jokingly called a “modest grandmother, ” and is very respected. The latter is evidenced, for example, by the fact that according to the results of a sociological survey conducted in June 2014, 55.5% of Latvians rated the prime minister's activity positively. And negatively - only 30.1%.
The presence of a large number of professional awards and titles at the doctor of economic sciences (the theme of the dissertation is called "Assessment of the Use of Production Resources in Latvian Enterprises") is also impressive. Working in the 90s as the director of the Latvian Agricultural Consulting and Educational Support Center, Straujuma was elected an honorary member of the British Institute of Agriculture. And already in the 21st century I received a letter of thanks from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia, the medal of the Ministry of Agriculture "For Initiation" and the State Cross of Recognition.
