It was not the flag but the language that drew the signatures then. On 11 July 1988, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR created a working group to examine proposals for improving the Latvian SSR Constitution and other legislation. A seemingly technical decision quickly acquired a loud afterlife: after the group’s appeal, 354,280 signatures were collected in support of giving Latvian the status of a state language. That autumn the Supreme Soviet ruled on Latvian’s status, and in 1989 it entered the constitution.

At the start of the Awakening, the language issue joined cultural self-confidence to arguments about statehood and law. The October 1988 decision and the 1989 constitutional amendment followed a broad signature campaign in which Latvian was demanded not as a matter of everyday convenience, but as a foundation of public life.