In Priekule, in mid-summer and still in independent Latvia, Jānis Peters was born on 30 June 1939. The sources record him not only as a poet, but also as a publicist, public figure and diplomat; later his words rang out in Raimonds Pauls’s songs, he led the Writers’ Union and, during the Awakening, moved to the front of the Popular Front. The Foreign Service obituary also recalls another role of Peters’s – the first Latvian ambassador to the Russian Federation after the restoration of independence.

Peters’s biography links the cultural sphere of the Soviet period with the political nerve of the Awakening. His work with Raimonds Pauls brought poetry into mass song, while in 1988–1990 the Writers’ Union around him became a place where cultural authority turned into political action.