World View: Every year on March 16th in Riga, the participation of Latvian soldiers in Waffen SS regiments in the second World War is commemorated. Not surprisingly, it is a controversial event in a country that now holds membership of the European Union and Nato.
Extremists on both sides of the political and ethnic divide - Riga has a considerable Russian-speaking majority - have been to the forefront in fomenting disorder on this occasion, but there is also an ambivalent attitude to the Nazi past among ordinary citizens.
The idea that the Waffen SS and some notorious Latvian security police units were simply fighting for their country's independence against the Soviet Union is widely accepted even by well-educated young people I spoke to recently in Riga.
This does not stand up to scrutiny. Hitler's plans for the Baltics included many things, but liberty and independence for Latvia and its people were certainly not among them.
The very dangerous concept that "my enemy's enemy is my friend" caused many a European nationalist organisation to resort to support for the Nazis. Many countries have faced up to these unsavoury aspects of their past with considerable courage.
There has been progress in this regard in Latvia, but a lot remains to be done.
Representatives of "official Latvia" once attended the March 16th commemoration. A defence minister and several members of parliament have marched in the past, but participation at ministerial level no longer takes place.
There have also been moves to have controversial marches replaced by wreath-laying ceremonies. The country's president, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, has studiously avoided commemorations and has attended ceremonies in memory of victims of the Holocaust.
There have been, however, and continue to be, attempts to cover up the activities of Latvian collaborators during the Nazi occupation, and critics of the commemorations have been branded as puppets of Moscow.
At the end of 2002, a memorial was erected to the tens of thousands of Jews murdered in the forest of Rumbula on the fringe of Riga. The city council attempted to exclude Latvian involvement from the inscription and pin all the blame on the Germans. Only intervention from the United States, where funding for the monument was raised, forced a change.
The inscription now begins: "Here in the forest of Rumbula, on November 30 and December 8 of 1941 the Nazis and their local collaborators shot dead more than 25,000 Jews . . ."
In his speech at the opening of the memorial, the ambassador of the United States Brian E Carlson, hardly a puppet of Moscow, spoke out very strongly and with great eloquence against those who attempted to diminish, and even erase, Latvian involvement from the collective memory.
"Some people say," Mr Carlson told his listeners, "that not all the Latvians were there voluntarily. Some say nothing done in those times under Nazi occupation was 'voluntary.' Some say those were complicated times.
"Some say that we should not mention the Latvian participation, because it was not voluntary. Some say that we should forget about the Latvian participation.
"It is uncanny that some people are adopting the Nuremberg defence used by the Nazis at their post-war trial. They too denied responsibility for their actions, saying they were 'just following orders.'
"How sad [ it is]," Mr Carlson added, "that anyone in today's free and democratic Latvia would excuse this kind of crime by saying 'it was a complicated time' or the executioners were not 'volunteers.'
"What we have learned from 20th century history is that no man has to follow orders. Each of us has a moral and ethical obligation to do what is right. We have the duty to recognise evil and immoral acts. We have the duty to refuse to take part in them. We are all volunteers on this earth.
"And, how do we teach this morality, this internal ethical standard to our children? We teach them the lessons of the past. We do not pretend that evil never happens. We do not cover up the awful truth.
"No, we print it in big letters and we make sure everyone reads it. We make sure everyone knows that this was an evil that no one of us must ever let happen again."
A little over three years later Mr Carlson's words are still valid; there is still an absence of "big letters" in Latvian attitudes to those events. While a number of Communists have been brought to trial for crimes, no Latvian involved in the Holocaust has been convicted.
The Soviet occupation of Latvia has been a greater focus for Latvian minds than the atrocities of the Nazis and their collaborators. It was more recent and is therefore more vivid in the memory.
There has been a tendency, however, to conflate the terms "Soviet" and "Russian". Russians suffered too under Stalin, a Georgian, and supporters of the regime included many nationalities, Latvians included.
Another aspect of Latvia's past is frequently ignored. In his seminal history of the Russian civil war, Evan Mawdsley wrote: "The saviours of Soviet power in Moscow, and perhaps in the country as a whole, were the Latvian Riflemen."
Without these Latvians there might never have been a Soviet Union. The Red Army's first commander was a Latvian and more recently, some of the most virulent opponents of democratic reform in the Soviet Union, such as Col Viktors Alksnis, were Latvians.
Commenting on the March 16th commemorations, a spokesperson for Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance Authority in Israel told The Irish Times that it condemned "efforts to glorify those who collaborated with Nazi Germany in war crimes and atrocities.
"At the same time, Yad Vashem encourages the Latvian government to increase Holocaust education and research so that the historical truth can come to light."
This is a remarkably tolerant comment from an organisation that might have been forgiven for making a far less charitable observation. It deserves the serious attention of the Latvian authorities, particularly the ministry of education.
• Séamus Martin is a former Moscow Correspondent and former International Editor of The Irish Times