 Students of the school at the Latvian embassy in Moscow, 2019 | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 18,979, including 1,089 Latgalians (2010 Census) [1] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Moscow, Bashkortostan, Siberia | |
| Languages | |
| Russian, Latvian | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Latvians |
In Russia, Latvians are a small ethnic minority scattered across its various regions. In the 2010 census, 18,979 in Russia identified as ethnic Latvian, down from 28,520 in 2002.
There have been several waves of migration of Latvians to Russia following the annexation of the Latvian lands by the Russian Empire in the 18th century.
A Latvian Lutheran church existed in St. Petersburg since 1849. [2]
During the 19th century, many landless Latvian peasants moved eastwards, establishing settlements in Siberia and the Urals. Thousands of Latvians migrated to Russia as refugees during the First World War. A number of Latvian Bolshevik politicians and activists settled down in Russia after the Russian civil war and became members of the Soviet state leadership.
According to the results of the First All-Union Census of the Soviet Union of 1926, more than 151,000 ethnic Latvians lived in the USSR. Numerous Latvian cultural organizations, publishing houses and schools were created in various regions of the USSR. The largest and most influential organization was Prometejs Society, headquartered in Moscow. [3]
In the 1930s, thousands of Latvians faced repressions by the regime of Joseph Stalin. Starting from November 1936, the NKVD carried out the so-called "Latvian Operation", a mass campaign of repressions targeting specifically persons of Latvian origin. First of all, the targets were activists of Latvian organizations, former Red Latvian Riflemen, immigrants from independent Latvia, and even senior governmental officials and prominent communist revolutionaries like Jānis Rudzutaks, Jukums Vācietis, Jānis Bērziņš, and others. More than 21,300 persons were sentenced during the operation, of which 16,575 were executed. [4] In total, about 70,000 ethnic Latvians in the USSR were killed during the repressions of the 1930s. [5]
After the Soviet re-occupation of Latvia in 1944 and establishment of the Latvian SSR, a few Latvians migrated within the USSR, in particular to Moscow and Leningrad. During Perestroika in the 1980s, new organizations of the Latvian diaspora have been established in major cities. Many Latvians went back from Russia to Latvia following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the restoration of the independence of Latvia.[ citation needed ]
An autonomous Latvian municipality exists in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan – the Arch-Latvian Selsoviet. Latvian settlers came to the region in the 19th century. [6] The Latvian municipality was established in the 1920s, during the ethnic emancipation of the early Soviet years (Korenizatsiya). The Latvian kolkhoz Jaunā dzīve ("New Life") was established there in 1929. Today, Latvians make up approximately 300 out of almost 2000 inhabitants of the municipality.
In Siberia (modern Krasnoyarsk Krai), the village Nizhnyaya Bulanka (Russian : Нижняя Буланка, Latvian : Lejas Bulāna) was founded by Latvian settlers in 1859. The village still exists and has less than one hundred inhabitants.[ citation needed ]
Since the 1990s, there is a number of Latvian organizations and Latvian Lutheran parishes in Russia, primarily in major cities such as Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Omsk, Tomsk, Smolensk and others. [7] The Moscow Latvian choir, Tālava, was established in 1993. [8]
Several Latvian communists are buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow: Pēteris Stučka, Arvīds Pelše, Jānis Lepse, Jānis Valdovskis, Oto Vērzemnieks, Jānis Zvejnieks, as well as the Riga-born scientist Mstislav Keldysh.
The Republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the Union Republics were national-based administrative units of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The Soviet Union was formed in 1922 by a treaty between the Soviet republics of Byelorussia, Russian Federation, Transcaucasian Federation, and Ukraine, by which they became its constituent republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Latvia or simply Latvia, was a republic in the Soviet Union. The Latvian SSR existed for over 50 years, from 5 August 1940 to 6 September 1991.
The Latvian Riflemen were originally a military formation of the Imperial Russian Army assembled starting 1915 in Latvia in order to defend Baltic territories against the Germans in World War I. Initially, the battalions were formed by volunteers, and from 1916 by conscription among the Latvian population. A total of about 40,000 troops were drafted into the Latvian Riflemen Division. They were used as an elite force in the Imperial and Bolshevik armies.
Jukums Vācietis was a Latvian Soviet military commander. He was a rare example of a notable Soviet leader who was not a member of the Communist Party, until his demise during the Great Purge in the 1930s.
Arvīds Pelše was a Latvian Soviet politician, functionary, and historian.
Pēteris Stučka, sometimes spelt Pyotr Stuchka;, was a Latvian jurist and communist politician, leader of the pro-Russian Bolshevik puppet government in Latvia during the 1918–1920 Latvian War of Independence, and later a statesman in the Soviet Union.
Yan (Ian) Karlovich Berzin, was a Latvian Soviet communist politician and military intelligence officer.
The Communist Party of Latvia was a political party in Latvia.
Ivan Ivanovich Mezhlauk was a Soviet politician and statesman who was the first first secretary of the Communist Party of the Turkmen SSR as well as its first president.
The Latvian Socialist Soviet Republic was a short-lived socialist republic formed during the Latvian War of Independence. It was proclaimed on 17 December 1918 with the political, economic, and military backing of Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik government in the Russian SFSR. The head of government was Pēteris Stučka with Jūlijs Daniševskis as his deputy.
The Ukrainian Front, formerly the Army Group of Kursk Direction, was a Red Army group during the Russian Civil War, which existed between January and June 1919. The army group was created to invade Ukraine after the withdrawal of the Austrian-German occupation force in November 1918 and to fight the Ukrainian People's Republic, as well as the troops of the Entente which had landed on the Black Sea coast.
The Declaration and Treaty on the Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics officially created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union. It de jure legalised a political union of several Soviet republics that had existed since 1919 and created a new federal government whose key functions were centralised in Moscow. Its legislative branch consisted of the Congress of Soviets of the Soviet Union and the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union (TsIK), while the Council of People's Commissars composed the executive.
The Kommunarka firing range, former dacha of secret police chief Genrikh Yagoda, was used as a burial ground from 1937 to 1941. Executions may have been carried out there by the NKVD during the Great Terror and until the war started; alternatively, bodies of those shot elsewhere might have been brought there for later interment. As Russian historian Arseny Roginsky explained: "firing range" was a popular euphemism adopted to describe mysterious and closely-guarded plots of land that the NKVD began to set aside for mass burials on the eve of the Great Terror.
Jan Antonovich Berzin was a Latvian village teacher, later Bolshevik revolutionary, journalist and Soviet diplomat. He was Ambassador of the Soviet Union to Austria between 1925 and 1927. He was executed during the Great Purge and posthumously rehabilitated in 1956.
The Latvian Operation was a national operation of the NKVD against ethnic Latvians, Latvian nationals and persons otherwise affiliated with Latvia and/or Latvians in the Soviet Union from 1937 to 1938 during the period of the Great Purge.
The Constitution of the Latvian Socialist Soviet Republic was adopted by the 1st Congress of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers, Soldiers, and the Landless in Latvia (Iskolat) on January 15, 1919. The constitution was the first constitution of the modern Latvia, prior to the adoption of the Constitution of Latvia on 7 November 1922.
Jūlijs Kārlis Daniševskis, alias Hermanis, was a Latvian Marxist and professional revolutionary.
The leaders of the Russian Civil War listed below include the important political and military figures of the Russian Civil War. The conflict, fought largely from 7 November 1917 to 25 October 1922, was fought between numerous factions, the two largest being the Bolsheviks and the White Movement. While the Bolsheviks were centralized under the administration of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), led by Vladimir Lenin, along with their various satellite and buffer states, the White Movement was more decentralized, functioning as a loose confederation of anti-Bolshevik forces united only in opposition to their common enemy - though from September 1918 to April 1920, the White Armies were nominally united under the administration of the Russian State, when, for nearly two years, Admiral Alexander Kolchak served as the overall head of the White Movement and as the internationally recognized Head of State of Russia. In addition to the two primary factions, the war also involved a number of third parties, including the anarchists of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, and the non-ideological Green Armies.
Prometejs was an organisation of the Latvian diaspora in the interwar Soviet Union. Its members were former Red Latvian riflemen and other Latvian communists and their family members who settled in the USSR after the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War. The organisation was disbanded in the early period of the Great Purge, many of its activists were murdered during the Latvian Operation of the NKVD.
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