The Emergence and Restoration of the State: Latvia in 1918 and 1990

On 18 November 1918, the independent Republic of Latvia was declared in an extremely complicated international and domestic environment—the First World War was still going on, empires were collapsing, and ethnically and ideologically diverse military troops were fighting within the boundaries of Latvian territory. Despite the historical context of a previously tense relationship between Latvians and other ethnic groups, representatives of all minorities fought next to Latvians against the enemies of the Latvian state. Up until 11 August 1920, when the Peace Treaty with the Soviet Russia was signed, the prospects of de jure recognition of the newly established state were blurred; yet, the defeat of the White forces in the Russian Civil War opened the long awaited “window of opportunity”, as a result of which Latvia managed to achieve its international recognition on 26 January 1921. More than seventy years later, on 4 May 1990, when the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Supreme Council of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), the international and domestic situation was no less complicated. Latvia was forcefully incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940 and became part of it, yet the economic and political deterioration of the Soviet Union, the national awakening in the Baltic States and other Soviet republics alongside the fall of the Berlin Wall gave momentum for the regime to change. On 21 August 1991, after the barricades and bloody clashes with the Soviet Special Purpose Police Units (OMON) in Riga on January and the failed coup d’état in Moscow in August, Latvia’s independence once again became a reality.