Latvia

Latvia (capital Riga), the middle one of the three Baltic States, started the Second World War as an independent republic and ended it as an involuntary component of the USSR.

In 1939, Latvia was ruled by the dictator K. Ulmanis, after a decree had dissolved all political parties in 1934. It was a member of the League of Nations whose independence had been established by a treaty signed with the USSR in August 1920, and was confirmed by a Treaty of Guarantee signed on 9 March 1927. But as in Estonia, the regime was motivated by fears of Soviet agitation and of the influence of dispossessed German landowners and the Nazi–Soviet Pact of August 1939 secretly assigned Latvia to the Soviet sphere of influence. On 5 October 1939 Latvia was forced to sign a Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation with the USSR, which permitted Soviet troops to be stationed there. Most of the German population was then repatriated to Germany and Poland. Then in June 1940 the whole country was occupied under the pretext that Latvia had not abided by the conditions of the treaty. There was subversive agitation against the government; widespread killings and arrests; fraudulent elections conducted by the Soviet security organs (see NKVD); and by the declaration of a Latvian SSR that was formally admitted to the USSR on 5 August 1940. This first Soviet occupation, from June 1940 to July 1941, was a time of mass terror, when all of Latvia's native institutions were destroyed.

Following their invasion of the USSR (seeBARBAROSSA), the Germans occupied Latvia from July 1941 to April 1945. It was incorporated into the Reich Commissariat Ostland; Latvian police and military units were formed and served on the Eastern Front under German command; two Latvian Waffen-SS Divisions were recruited; and the Jewish community was concentrated, especially in the Riga ghetto, and killed.

The second Soviet occupation took place in stages in 1944–5 because the Wehrmacht's Army Group North was cut off in the Courland Peninsula and did not surrender until 8 May 1945. It was accompanied by a renewed wave of terror, and by forced collectivization of the peasantry. Latvia's population was much diminished by the deportations and repressions, and by the loss of the German and Jewish elements. A postwar influx of Russians increased their number to 35% of the population.

Norman Davies