Riga City Council does not normally attract the attention of normal people. If for a while nothing worth mentioning gets stolen or, say, astronomical summer arrives and less salt is scattered on the roads, nobody is particularly interested in what Latvia's largest local authority is up to.

The renaming of Riga's streets stirred up stronger waves than usual. There were even fairly sharp exchanges of words, both among politicians and in society at large. One person turned out to feel very close to Pushkin's poetry, another was fond of Lermontov, and someone else thought that Maskavas Street was such a historic name that it should have been added to the intangible cultural heritage list.

In older times it was simpler: street names arose naturally and nobody attached too much importance to them. If butchers worked there, then Miesnieku Street; if smiths, then Kalēju; if the smell was strong, then Siļķu Street; if it was dark and there was a good chance of getting a fist in your face, then Maisa Street. If we still stuck to that tradition today, no discussion would be needed. We would have Pothole Street, Short Street and Long Street, Insolvency Street, Salt Street, McDonald Street (in honour of the bun shop, not the French marshal), Wedding Street and so on.

Unfortunately, that is not how it is. For a good while now, at least the main streets have been named in order to shape a cultural space, to prove one truth or another and in all sorts of other ways to convey something. As a rule, changes to street names are discussed in the monuments commission, where outside experts sit alongside the elected members. But often some urgent street name crops up – either in honour of an anniversary, or as an initiative from outside. Then some politician or group of politicians usually tries to push it through more quickly. No special procedure has been laid down for how street names ought to be chosen. Purely in theory, if one councillor decided that a street should be named in honour of Mickey Mouse, of their own dog or of the fire-bellied toad, and a majority of councillors voted for it, that could quite calmly be done.

It is no secret that politicians most often take their bearings from public opinion. First they commission an opinion poll, from it they learn what is on the people's minds, and then a nicely turned-out politician relays it on television in precisely such a form that an auntie in Bauska can say: "Oh, how well he speaks!" Well he might. He is saying exactly what the auntie herself has already told one polling firm or another.

It is likewise no secret that, since February 2022, the Latvian voter finds everything connected with Russia particularly repugnant. Renaming streets is therefore a good and, above all, simple manifestation of the popular will in action. Of course, it always comes with the usual political ritual: there are debates, one set of experts or another is called in, and in the end there is a result.

The political ritual is similar in all democratic countries, but in Latvia, where everyone knows everyone, it is a little reminiscent of wrestling "bouts" in America: everyone is supposedly aware that it is theatre, yet they pretend it is all happening for real. The same often happens with Latvian politics. The opposition tables a great many proposals, debates them heatedly, looks for arguments as to why these proposals are good or bad, and then rejects them. Coalition proposals are tabled in exactly the same way, debaters take the rostrum, heated discussions ensue, yet it is known in advance that the proposals will be supported. That does not stop anyone appealing to conscience, urging others to think again, to listen... But that almost never happens. If people with television cameras and other journalists have turned up to the sitting in large numbers, the discussions are always livelier, and a contest ensues over whose two sentences will make it onto "Panorāma". The more experienced have already mastered the formulas that help you get on television – what to say and how, so that it is your sentence that ends up illustrating the "Panorāma" news.

Of course, there are individual councillors, perhaps even a fifth of them, who are either still young or slower to be visited by revelations about the true order of things. They debate for real, each time in the hope that this time they will actually manage to convince their colleagues. They often get angry, start swearing, even shouting, and sometimes it comes within a whisker of a brawl.

The street question was different in that it woke everybody up – both those who, as usual, only wanted to get on television, and those who in the heat of an argument would happily punch a colleague in the face. Yet in the end things went exactly as they always do: the proposals were tabled, the debates were had, passions swirled, but in the end everything was adopted and supported. As is customary in a democratic country.

Is such a system good or bad? As the late Socrates once said, pestering his listeners: there are no things about which one can say whether they are good or bad. It always depends on the context. Given that Latvian society not infrequently suffers from a mental layout in which the operative symbols have not been shifted since Soviet times, there could well be some benefit in such a change of landmarks. After all, Latvia has no Dickens Street, no monument to Darwin or Oppenheimer, no plaque in honour of some Swedish king's mistress.

In fairness it should also be added that it is not only figures of Russian origin who have a connection with Latvia's history and cultural space. Take Harald Hardrada, who, riding from Constantinople to inherit his father's throne and later meeting his end in England, most likely travelled through Riga (which at the time had not yet been built) and could quite reasonably have earned at least his own pavement, if not a whole street. Unfortunately, our entire cultural space was in Soviet times based precisely on the culture of the "great" Russian people. The information space is no different: the average Latvian knows perfectly well what Filipp Kirkorov is famous for, but is practically uninformed about Swedish, Finnish or Polish pop stars.

So on the whole one may conclude: everything that is happening is happening for the good. There are, of course, and always will be, the more radically inclined, who will cry that more still needs to be changed. That Pētersala is named in honour of Peter I and Katrīnas Dam after the Russian empress Catherine. But, as Sigmund Freud once noted, sometimes Catherine is just Catherine and Maria is simply Maria (not to be confused with the Mexican soap opera). Some names accumulate good connotations, others bad. If the street names changed this time round and the monuments toppled had come to be associated more with the bombing of Mariupol than with a poem about white sails, then it is just as well that they will no longer be there.

The Latvianisation of place names was already popular in pre-war Latvia. A case I rather like is when a place in Latgale called Pusķaki was renamed Puskaķi. In the Soviet-occupied territories a whole heap of place names often had to be changed in one go as well. In the Königsberg region, names were dreamed up for the little rivers on the spur of the moment according to whatever was most topical at the time – Khlebnaya, Kolbasnaya and so on. Sometimes names change their meaning historically and take on a new one, especially if the language has shifted. We have, for instance, a Jērkules Lake, which has nothing to do with either lambs or sacks: in the Livonian tongue it means "Village Lake", so for us, literally, Village Lake Lake. This time the popular will, expressed through the councillors we elect ourselves, took the form of renaming Russian names into more Latvian ones. If we ever do get a Fire-Bellied Toad Street, it will happen in different circumstances, when the world's political atmosphere is not so overheated.

Of course, seen from the outside, it looks as though the council members are narrow-minded, are fighting against elements of history and culture, read little poetry and are generally poorly versed in elementary matters. That is probably the honest truth, too. But as the society, so the councillors. As Sartre said, if you look in the mirror long enough, sooner or later you may see a councillor in it. So it is quite natural that most political questions do not particularly trouble anyone from day to day, but when it comes to renaming streets or setting up drunk tanks, everyone suddenly becomes an expert – even the councillors. Such is democracy. Is that a good thing? There is no way of saying. It simply is. One could, of course, wait for an enlightened monarch who would rename even the streets beautifully and wisely. But at some point he too would go out of his mind, and if he did not, the throne would be inherited by his cretin of a son. And what then? Councillors at least can be voted out, and can even be dismissed.