The monument to those killed on the barricades in 1991 is made in the form of a symbolic bonfire. The author of the project, Ojārs Feldbergs, did not invent excessive forms; the monument is austere and symbolic, as befits a memorial sign to tragic events.
January 20, 1991, is a day that is written in Latvia's history in red letters and stained with the blood of 5 people who laid down their lives in the name of the country's freedom.
In honor of the dead, the wounded, and the hundreds of thousands who defended the streets of Riga around the clock in the cold January of '91, this day is called the Day of Remembrance of the Defenders of the Barricades.
Throughout January, commemorations in memory of the sad events of those times are held in Latvia, memorial bonfires are lit in all the squares, around which people gather. The pyramidal bonfire became a symbol of the events on the barricades, because when the protesters stood in the streets of the capital in 1991, it was very cold and such bonfires were burning everywhere, by which the fighters for freedom kept warm. More than half a million people took to the streets then; many even came from villages on their agricultural machinery, for lack of cars.
The purpose of the standoff was to give the Lithuanians time to form their own government, legislative authority, police, and get out from under the control of the USSR.
On the night of January 19 to 20, after provocative actions by OMON, a shootout began; the OMON officers captured the suspected instigators of the shooting and wanted to take them to the pro-government prosecutor's office. By the time the convoy arrived in the city, the protesters had erected barricades near the Ministry of Internal Affairs building and met the vehicles with a hail of gunfire. A brutal shootout began, in which 5 people were killed and 8 wounded.
