Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic

The National theater housed the People's Parliament in 1940

Demonstration in Riga on November 7, 1940

Poster of the Latvian SSR Supreme Soviet Election on January 12, 1941

In the following months of 1940 the Soviet Constitution and criminal code (copied from Russian) were introduced. The elections of July 1940 were followed by elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in January 1941. The remaining Baltic Germans and anyone who could claim to be one emigrated to the German Reich.

On August 7, 1940 all print media and printing houses were nationalized. Most of the existing magazines and newspapers were discontinued or appeared under new, Soviet names. In November 1940 banning of books began, in total, some 4000 titles were banned and removed from circulation. Arrests and deportations of some authors, like Aleksandrs Grīns, began, while others, such as Jānis Sudrabkalns, started writing poems about Stalin.

As Latvia had implemented a sweeping land reform after the independence, most farms were too small for nationalization. While rumors of impending collectivization were officially denied in 1940 and 52,000 landless peasants were given small plots of up to 10 ha, in early 1941 preparations for collectivization began.[15] The small size of land plots and imposition of the production quotas and high taxes meant that very soon independent farmers would go bankrupt and had to establish collective farms.

Arrests and deportations to Soviet Union began even before Latvia officially become a part of it. Initially they were limited to the most prominent political and military leaders like President Kārlis Ulmanis, War minister Jānis Balodis and army chief Krišjānis Berķis who were arrested in July 1940. The Soviet NKVD also arrested most of the White Russian émigrés, who had found a refuge in Latvia. Very soon purges reached the upper echelons of the puppet government when minister of welfare Jūlijs Lācis was arrested.

In early 1941 the Soviet central government began planning the mass deportation of anti-Soviet elements from the occupied Baltic states. In preparation, General Ivan Serov, Deputy People's Commissar of Public Security of the Soviet Union, signed the Serov Instructions, "Regarding the Procedure for Carrying out the Deportation of Anti-Soviet Elements from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia." During the night of 13–14 June 1941, 15,424 inhabitants of Latvia – including 1,771 Jews and 742 ethnic Russians – were deported to camps and special settlements, mostly in Siberia.[16] While among the deported were such obvious candidates as former politicians, wealthy businessmen and farmers, policemen, members of Aizsargi and NGO leaders, even philatelists and enthusiasts of Esperanto were included in the June deportation as unreliable elements. Some 600 Latvian officers were arrested in the Litene army camp, many of them executed on the spot. Many political prisoners were summarily executed in prisons all over Latvia during the hasty Soviet retreat after the German attack on June 22, 1941. In total Latvia lost some 35,000 people during the first year of the Soviet rule.

Some of the deportees had received warnings to stay away from home and were hiding either among friends or in forests. After the German-Soviet war began many of them organized small guerrilla units and attacked the retreating Red Army soldiers and greeted Germans with the flag of independent Latvia.

German soldiers greeted in Riga on July 1, 1941

"Two Worlds" – an anti-communist and anti-semitic Nazi propaganda board in Latvia, summer 1941

This well-known image was taken by a Nazi perpetrator of the mass killings of 2,749 Jews on the beach near the city of Liepāja, in Latvia, from 15 to 17 December 1941. These women had been forced to disrobe and then pose for the camera. Scholarly work has led to the identification of some of the women shown. From left to right: (1) Sorella Epstein; (2) believed to be Rosa Epstein, mother of Sorella; (3) unknown; (4) Mia Epstein; (5) unknown. Alternatively, (2) may be Paula Goldman, and Mia Epstein may be (5) instead of (4).

The Nazi invasion, launched a week later, cut short immediate plans to deport several hundred thousand more from the Baltics. Nazi troops occupied Riga on 1 July 1941.

During the short period of interregnum Latvians created two bodies that sought to restore independent Latvia: the Central Organizing Committee for Liberated Latvia and the Provisional State Council.

Immediately after the installment of Nazi German authority, a process of eliminating the Jewish and Gypsy population began, with many killings taking place in Rumbula.

The killings were committed by the Einsatzgruppe A, the Wehrmacht and Marines (in Liepāja), as well as by Latvian collaborators, including the 500–1,500 members of the Arajs Commando (which alone killed around 26,000 Jews) and the 2,000 or more Latvian members of the SD.[17][18] By the end of 1941 almost the entire Jewish population was killed or placed in the death camps. In addition, some 25,000 Jews were brought from Germany, Austria and the present-day Czech Republic, of whom around 20,000 were killed. The Holocaust claimed approximately 85,000 lives in Latvia,[17] the vast majority of whom were Jews.

A large number of Latvians resisted the German occupation. The resistance movement was divided between the pro-independence politicians of the Latvian Central Council and the armed Soviet partisan units under the Latvian Partisan Movement Headquarters (латвийский штаб партизанского движения) in Moscow. Their Latvian commander was Arturs Sproģis.

The Nazis planned to Germanise the Baltics by settling some 520,000 German settlers there 20–25 years after the war.[15] In 1943 and 1944 two divisions of Latvian Legion were created through a forced mobilization and made a part of Waffen SS in order to help Germany against the Red Army.

Soviet soldiers in Riga, October 1944

VEF palace of culture

Song and Dance festival, 1955

In the middle of 1944, when the Soviet Operation Bagration reached Latvia, heavy fighting took place between German and Soviet troops which ended with a stalemate and creation of the Courland Pocket which allowed some 130,000 Latvians to escape to Sweden and Germany.

During the course of the war, both occupying forces conscripted Latvians into their armies, in this way increasing the loss of the nation's "live resources". In Courland, Latvian Legion units fought battles against Latvians of the Red Army.

In total, Latvia lost some 20% of its population during World War II. In 1944 part of Abrene District, about 2% of Latvia's territory, was illegally ceded to the RSFSR.

In 1944 the Soviets immediately began to reinstate the Soviet system. After re-establishing military control over the country, in February 1946, elections of the Soviet Union's Supreme Soviet were held, followed, in February 1947, by Latvian Supreme Soviet elections and only in January 1948 elections to the local Soviets.

After the German surrender it became clear that Soviet forces were there to stay, and Latvian national partisans began their fight against another occupier: the Soviet Union. At their peak some 10,000–15,000 partisans in disorganized units fought local battles against Communists, NKVD troops and Soviet government representatives. Forest brothers consisted not only of the former Legionnaires or German supporters, but men who were trying to avoid Soviet conscription, dispossessed farmers, even priests and school pupils who wrote and distributed patriotic leaflets and provided shelter to partisans. Many believed that a new war between the Western powers and the Soviet Union was imminent and expected Latvia to be liberated soon. After the 1949 deportations and collectivization the resistance movement decreased sharply, with the last few individuals surrendering in 1956, when amnesty was offered. The last holdout was Jānis Pīnups, who hid from authorities until 1995.

The first post-war years were marked by particularly dismal and sombre events in the fate of the Latvian nation. 120,000 Latvian inhabitants deemed disloyal by the Soviets were imprisoned or deported to Soviet concentration camps (the Gulag). Some managed to escape arrest and joined the Forest Brothers.

On 25 March 1949, 43,000 mostly rural residents ("kulaks") and Latvian patriots were deported to Siberia and northern Kazakhstan in a sweeping repressive Operation Priboi, which was implemented in all three Baltic States and approved in Moscow already on 29 January 1949. Whole families were arrested and almost 30% of deported were children under 16.

In the post-war period, Latvia was forced to adopt Soviet farming methods and the economic infrastructure developed in the 1920s and 1930s was eradicated. Farms belonging to refugees were confiscated, German supporters had their farm sizes sharply reduced and much of the farm land became state owned. The remaining farmers had their taxes and obligatory produce delivery quotas increased until individual farming became impossible. Many farmers killed their cattle and moved to cities. In 1948 collectivization began in earnest and was intensified after the March 1949 deportations and by the end of the year 93% of farms were collectivized.[19]

Collective farming was extremely unprofitable as farmers had to plant and harvest according to the state plan and not the actual harvest conditions. Farmers were paid close to nothing for their produce, as Stalinist system was based on squeezing them dry for the benefit of heavy industry and military needs. Grain production in Latvia collapsed from 1.37 million tons in 1940 to 0.73 million tons in 1950 and 0.43 million tons in 1956.[15] Only in 1965 did Latvia reach the meat and dairy output levels of 1940.

During the first post-war years Moscow's control was enforced by the Special Bureau of CPSU Central Committee, led by Mikhail Suslov. To ensure total control over the local Communist party a Russian, Ivan Lebedev, was elected as the Second Secretary, this tradition continued until the end of the Soviet system. Lack of politically reliable local cadres meant that the Soviets increasingly placed Russians in party and government leadership positions. Many Russian Latvian Communists who had survived the so-called 1937–38 "Latvian Operation" during the Great Purge were sent back to the homeland of their parents. Most of these Soviets did not speak Latvian and this only enforced the wall of distrust against the local population. By 1953 Latvia's Communist Party had 42,000 members, half of whom were Latvians.[15]

To replace the lost population (due to war casualties, refugees to the West and deportees to the East) and to implement a heavy industrialization program, hundreds of thousands of Russians were moved to Latvia. An extensive program of Russification was initiated, limiting the use of Latvian and minority languages. In addition, the leading and progressive role of Russian people throughout the Latvian history was heavily emphasized in school books, arts and literature. The remaining poets, writers and painters had to follow the strict cannons of socialist realism and to live in constant fear of being accused of some ideological mistake which could lead to ban from publication or even arrest.

During the short rule of Lavrentiy Beria in 1953, the policy of giving more power to local communists and respecting local languages was introduced. More freedoms came after the 1956 de-Stalinization. Some 30,000 survivors of Soviet deportations began returning to Latvia. Many of them were barred from working in certain professions or returning to their homes.

Soon after Stalin's death number of Latvians in Communist party began to increase. By this time many locally born communists had achieved positions of power and they began advocating a program that centered on ending the inflow of Russian speaking immigrants, end to the growth of heavy industry and creating light industries better suited for local needs, increasing the role and power of the locally born communists, enforcing the Latvian language as the state language.[20] This group was led by Eduards Berklavs who in 1957 became the Vice-Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Orders were issued that non-Latvian Communists should learn some Latvian within two years or lose their jobs.

They were opposed by the Russian Latvian communists who had been born to Latvian parents in Russia or Soviet Union, had returned to Latvia only after World War II and usually did not speak, or avoided speaking Latvian in public. They were supported by the politically influential officer corps of the Baltic Military District.

In 1958 Soviet education law made learning of national languages voluntary, in fact ending Russian interest in learning them.

In April 1959 a fact-finding delegation from Soviet Central Committee visited Riga. During Nikita Khrushchev's visit to Riga in June 1959 hard-line elements complained about the nationalist tendencies in the Party and with the blessing from the Moscow started purges of national communists and local communists, who had been in power since 1940. In November 1959 the long-serving First Secretary of the Party Kalnbērziņš and Prime Minister Vilis Lācis resigned from their posts and were replaced by hardliners. During the next three years some 2000 national communists were dismissed from their positions, moved to insignificant posts in countryside or Russia.

The first post-war census in 1959 showed that the number of Latvians since 1935 had declined by 170,000, while Russians had increased by 388,000, Belorussians by 35,000 and Ukrainians by 28,000.[21]

Because Latvia had still maintained a well-developed infrastructure and educated specialists it was decided in Moscow that some of the Soviet Union's most advanced manufacturing factories were to be based in Latvia. New industry was created in Latvia, including a major machinery factory RAF and electrotechnical factories, as well as some food and oil processing plants. TV broadcasts from Riga started in 1954, the first in the Baltics.

In the second half of the 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev started to introduce political and economic reforms called glasnost and Perestroika. In the summer of 1987 large demonstrations were held in Riga at the Freedom Monument, a symbol of national independence. In the summer of 1988 a national movement cohered in the Popular Front of Latvia. The Latvian SSR, along with the other Baltic Republics, was allowed greater autonomy and in 1988 the old national flag of Latvia was legalized, replacing the Soviet Latvian flag as the official flag in 1990. Pro-independence Latvian Popular Front candidates gained a two-thirds majority in the Supreme Council in the March 1990 democratic elections.

Up to the reassessment of Soviet history in USSR that began during Perestroika, before the USSR had condemned the 1939 secret protocol between Nazi Germany and itself that had led to the invasion and occupation of the three Baltic countries,[39] the events in 1939 were as follows: The Government of the Soviet Union suggested that the Governments of the Baltic countries conclude mutual assistance treaties between the countries. Pressure from working people forced the governments of the Baltic countries to accept this suggestion. The Pacts of Mutual Assistance were then signed[40] which allowed the USSR to station a limited number of Red Army units in the Baltic countries. Economic difficulties and dissatisfaction of the populace with the Baltic governments' policies that had sabotaged fulfillment of the Pact and the Baltic countries governments' political orientation towards Nazi Germany led to a revolutionary situation in June, 1940. To guarantee fulfillment of the Pact, additional military units entered Baltic countries, welcomed by the workers who demanded the resignations of the Baltic governments. In June under the leadership of the Communist Parties political demonstrations by workers were held. The fascist governments were overthrown, and workers' governments formed. In July 1940, elections for the Baltic Parliaments were held. The "Working People's Unions", created by an initiative of the Communist Parties, received the majority of the votes.[41] The Parliaments adopted the declarations of the restoration of Soviet powers in Baltic countries and proclaimed the Soviet Socialist Republics. Declarations of Estonia's, Latvia's and Lithuania's wishes to join the USSR were adopted and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR petitioned accordingly. The requests were approved by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

The Russian government and officials maintain that the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states was legitimate[42] and that the Soviet Union liberated the countries from the Nazis.[43][44] They state that the Soviet Union acted in response to Germany-oriented policies of the three Baltic states that resulted from alleged secret talks conducted by the governments of these states with Nazi leadership[45] and that the subsequent entry of additional Soviet troops into the Baltics in 1940 was done following the agreements and with the consent of the then governments of the Baltic republics. Thus the official postulates of the Soviet historiography are continued without significant amendments. They also maintain that the USSR was not in a state of war and was not waging any combat activities on the territory of the three Baltic states; therefore, the word 'occupation' cannot be used. The Russian Foreign Ministry stated that "The assertions about [the] 'occupation' by the Soviet Union and the related claims ignore all legal, historical and political realities, and are therefore utterly groundless."[46]