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Latvia: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Latvia
The ancient Latgalians, one of four Indo-European Baltic tribes, gave their name to a nation that would eventually stretch from the shores of the Baltic Sea to the deep forests of the east. Before the first stone was laid for a castle, the Proto-Baltic ancestors of the Latvian people had already established trade routes to Rome and Byzantium, trading local amber for precious metals. This amber, fossilized tree resin found along the coast, became a cultural symbol sought by Vikings, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, creating the ancient Amber Road. By 900 AD, four distinct Baltic tribes inhabited the region: the Curonians, Latgalians, Selonians, and Semigallians, alongside the Finnic tribe of Livonians. These groups lived in lands with their own rulers, including Bandava, Piemare, Koknese, Jersika, and Tālava, long before the first missionaries arrived. The first missionaries, sent by the pope, sailed up the Daugava River in the late 12th century seeking converts, but the local people did not convert as readily as the church had hoped. Saint Meinhard of Segeberg arrived in Ikšķile in 1184, traveling with merchants on a Catholic mission to convert the population from their original pagan beliefs. When peaceful means failed, Pope Celestine III called for a crusade against pagans in northern Europe in 1193, and German crusaders arrived to convert Livonians by force of arms. By the beginning of the 13th century, Germans ruled large parts of what is currently Latvia, forming the crusader state known as Terra Mariana or Livonia. The influx of German crusaders increased in the second half of the 13th century following the decline and fall of the Crusader States in the Middle East. Riga, and later the cities of Cēsis, Limbaži, Koknese, and Valmiera, became part of the Hanseatic League in 1282, making Riga an important point of east, west trading and forming close cultural links with western Europe. The first German settlers were knights from northern Germany and citizens of northern German towns who brought their Low German language to the region, which shaped many loanwords in the Latvian language.
The Good Swedish Times and the Russian Empire
After the Livonian War ended between 1558 and 1583, Livonia fell under the hegemony of the Polish, Lithuanian Commonwealth, with the lands ceded to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to form the Duchy of Livonia. Gotthard Kettler, the last master of the Order of Livonia, formed the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, which retained a considerable degree of autonomy and experienced a golden age in the 16th century. In the 17th and early 18th centuries, the Polish, Lithuanian Commonwealth, Sweden, and Russia struggled for supremacy in the eastern Baltic. After the Polish, Swedish War, northern Livonia came under Swedish rule, and Riga became the capital of Swedish Livonia and the largest city in the entire Swedish Empire. The Swedish period is generally remembered as positive, as serfdom was eased, a network of schools was established for the peasantry, and the power of the regional barons was diminished. Under Swedish and largely German rule, western Latvia adopted Lutheranism as its main religion, while the ancient tribes of the Couronians, Semigallians, Selonians, Livs, and northern Latgallians assimilated to form the Latvian people. Meanwhile, largely isolated from the rest of Latvia, southern Latgallians adopted Catholicism under Polish and Jesuit influence. During the Great Northern War from 1700 to 1721, up to 40 percent of Latvians died from famine and plague, and half the residents of Riga were killed by plague in 1710 and 1711. The capitulation of Estonia and Livonia in 1710 and the Treaty of Nystad, ending the Great Northern War in 1721, gave Vidzeme to Russia. The Latgale region remained part of the Polish, Lithuanian Commonwealth as Inflanty Voivodeship until 1772, when it was incorporated into Russia. The Duchy of Courland and Semigallia was annexed by Russia in 1795 in the Third Partition of Poland, bringing all of what is now Latvia into the Russian Empire. All three Baltic provinces preserved local laws, German as the local official language, and their own parliament, the Landtag. The emancipation of the serfs took place in Courland in 1817 and in Vidzeme in 1819, though in practice, it was advantageous to the landowners and nobility, as it dispossessed peasants of their land without compensation. During these two centuries, Latvia experienced an economic and construction boom, with ports expanded, railways built, new factories and banks established, and many residential, public, and school buildings erected. Riga's boulevards and some streets outside the Old Town date from this period, and numeracy was higher in the Livonian and Courlandian parts of the Russian Empire.
When did Latvia gain independence from the Soviet Union?
Latvia declared the end of the transitional period and restored full independence on the 21st of August 1991. This declaration occurred in the aftermath of the failed Soviet coup attempt in Moscow.
Who was the first openly gay head of state in the European Union from Latvia?
Edgars Rinkēvičs was elected President of Latvia in May 2023, making him the European Union's first openly gay head of state. He assumed office following parliamentary elections in that month.
What percentage of Latvia's land area is covered by forests?
Forests account for 56 percent of the total land area in Latvia. This figure makes Latvia the country with the fifth highest proportion of land covered by forests in the European Union.
When did Latvia join the Eurozone and adopt the euro as its currency?
Latvia joined the Eurozone on the 1st of January 2014. The euro became the country's currency on that date, superseding the previous currency known as the Lats.
Which treaty divided Latvia into a Soviet sphere of influence in 1939?
The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov, Ribbentrop Pact on the 24th of August 1939. This 10-year non-aggression pact contained a secret protocol that assigned Latvia to the Soviet sphere of influence.
World War I devastated the territory and other western parts of the Russian Empire, creating a power vacuum by the Russian Revolution in 1917. The People's Council of Latvia proclaimed the independence, and Kārlis Ulmanis was entrusted to set up a government, taking the position of prime minister. The general representative of Germany, August Winnig, formally handed over political power to the Latvian provisional government on the 26th of November 1918. The war of independence that followed was part of a general chaotic period of civil and new border wars in eastern Europe. By the spring of 1919, there were actually three governments: the provisional government headed by Ulmanis, the Latvian Soviet government led by Pēteris Stučka, and the provisional government headed by Andrievs Niedra. Estonian and Latvian forces defeated the Germans at the Battle of Wenden in June 1919, and a massive attack by a predominantly German force under Pavel Bermondt-Avalov was repelled in November. A freely elected constituent assembly convened on the 1st of May 1920 and adopted a liberal constitution, the Satversme, in February 1922. On the 15th of May 1934, Ulmanis staged a bloodless coup, establishing a nationalist dictatorship that lasted until 1940. After 1934, Ulmanis established government corporations to buy up private firms with the aim of Latvianising the economy. The constitution was partly suspended by Ulmanis after his coup in 1934 but reaffirmed in 1990. Early in the morning of the 24th of August 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a 10-year non-aggression pact, called the Molotov, Ribbentrop Pact, which contained a secret protocol dividing the states of Northern and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Latvia, Finland, and Estonia were assigned to the Soviet sphere. After the conclusion of the pact, most of the Baltic Germans left Latvia by agreement between Ulmanis's government and Nazi Germany under the Heim ins Reich programme. On the 5th of October 1939, Latvia was forced to accept a mutual assistance pact with the Soviet Union, granting the Soviets the right to station between 25,000 and 30,000 troops on Latvian territory. State administrators were murdered and replaced by Soviet cadres. Elections were held with single pro-Soviet candidates listed for many positions, and the resulting people's assembly immediately requested admission into the USSR. The Soviet Union incorporated Latvia on the 5th of August 1940, as the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Soviets dealt harshly with their perceived opponents, and prior to Operation Barbarossa, in less than a year, at least 34,250 Latvians were deported or killed. Most were deported to Siberia where deaths were estimated at 40 percent.
The Holocaust and the Soviet Reoccupation
On the 22nd of June 1941, German troops attacked Soviet forces in Operation Barbarossa, and there were some spontaneous uprisings by Latvians against the Red Army which helped the Germans. By the 29th of June Riga was reached, and with Soviet troops killed, captured, or retreating, Latvia was left under the control of German forces by early July. Under German occupation, Latvia was administered as part of Reichskommissariat Ostland. Latvian paramilitary and Auxiliary Police units established by the occupation authority participated in the Holocaust and other atrocities. 30,000 Jews were shot in Latvia in the autumn of 1941, and another 30,000 Jews from the Riga ghetto were killed in the Rumbula Forest in November and December 1941. There was a pause in fighting, apart from partisan activity, until after the siege of Leningrad ended in January 1944, and the Soviet troops advanced, entering Latvia in July and eventually capturing Riga on the 13th of October 1944. The Soviets reoccupied the country in 1944 and 1945, and further deportations followed as the country was collectivised and Sovietised. In the post-war period, Latvia was made to adopt Soviet farming methods, and rural areas were forced into collectivization. An extensive program to impose bilingualism was initiated in Latvia, limiting the use of the Latvian language in official uses in favor of using Russian as the main language. All of the minority schools, including Jewish, Polish, Belarusian, Estonian, and Lithuanian schools, were closed down, leaving only two media of instructions in the schools: Latvian and Russian. An influx of new colonists, including laborers, administrators, military personnel, and their dependents from Russia and other Soviet republics started. By 1959, about 400,000 Russian settlers arrived, and the ethnic Latvian population had fallen to 62 percent. Since Latvia had maintained a well-developed infrastructure and educated specialists, Moscow decided to base some of the Soviet Union's most advanced manufacturing in Latvia. New industry was created in Latvia, including a major machinery factory RAF in Jelgava, electrotechnical factories in Riga, chemical factories in Daugavpils, Valmiera, and Olaine, and some food and oil processing plants. Latvia manufactured trains, ships, minibuses, mopeds, telephones, radios, and hi-fi systems, electrical and diesel engines, textiles, furniture, clothing, bags, luggage, shoes, musical instruments, home appliances, watches, tools, and equipment. However, there were not enough people to operate the newly built factories, so skilled workers were migrating from all over the Soviet Union, decreasing the proportion of ethnic Latvians in the republic. The population of Latvia reached its peak in 1990 at just under 2.7 million people.
The Singing Revolution and the Restoration
In the second half of the 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev started to introduce political and economic reforms in the Soviet Union that were called glasnost and perestroika. In the summer of 1987, the first large demonstrations were held in Riga at the Freedom Monument, a symbol of independence. In the summer of 1988, a national movement, coalescing in the Popular Front of Latvia, was opposed by the Interfront. The Latvian SSR, along with the other Baltic Republics, was allowed greater autonomy, and in 1988, the old pre-war Flag of Latvia flew again, replacing the Soviet Latvian flag as the official flag in 1990. In 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a resolution on the Occupation of the Baltic states, in which it declared the occupation not in accordance with law and not the will of the Soviet people. Pro-independence Popular Front of Latvia candidates gained a two-thirds majority in the Supreme Council in the March 1990 democratic elections. On the 4th of May 1990, the Supreme Council adopted the Declaration on the Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Latvia, and the Latvian SSR was renamed Republic of Latvia. However, the central power in Moscow continued to regard Latvia as a Soviet republic in 1990 and 1991. In January 1991, Soviet political and military forces unsuccessfully tried to overthrow the Republic of Latvia authorities by occupying the central publishing house in Riga and establishing a Committee of National Salvation to usurp governmental functions. The Popular Front of Latvia advocated that all permanent residents be eligible for Latvian citizenship, however, universal citizenship for all permanent residents was not adopted. Instead, citizenship was granted to persons who had been citizens of Latvia on the day of loss of independence in 1940 as well as their descendants. As a consequence, the majority of ethnic non-Latvians did not receive Latvian citizenship, becoming non-citizens or citizens of other former Soviet republics. By 2011, more than half of non-citizens had taken naturalization exams and received Latvian citizenship, but in 2015 there were still 290,660 non-citizens in Latvia, which represented 14.1 percent of the population. They have no citizenship of any country and cannot participate in the parliamentary elections. The Republic of Latvia declared the end of the transitional period and restored full independence on the 21st of August 1991, in the aftermath of the failed Soviet coup attempt. Latvia resumed diplomatic relations with Western states, including Sweden. The Saeima, Latvia's parliament, was again elected in 1993. Russia ended its military presence by completing its troop withdrawal in 1994 and shutting down the Skrunda-1 radar station in 1998. The major goals of Latvia in the 1990s, to join NATO and the European Union, were achieved in 2004. The NATO Summit 2006 was held in Riga. Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga was President of Latvia from 1999 until 2007, and she was the first female head of state in the former Soviet bloc state. Latvia signed the Schengen agreement on the 16th of April 2003 and started its implementation on the 21st of December 2007.
The Amber Economy and the Green Forest
Latvia has the fifth highest proportion of land covered by forests in the European Union, after Sweden, Finland, Estonia, and Slovenia. Forests account for 56 percent of the total land area, and Latvia has over 12,500 rivers, which stretch for thousands of kilometers. Major rivers include the Daugava River, Lielupe, Gauja, Venta, and Salaca, the largest spawning ground for salmon in the eastern Baltic states. There are 2,256 lakes that are bigger than 10 hectares, with a collective area of 1,000 square kilometers. Mires occupy 9.9 percent of Latvia's territory, and 70 percent of the mires are untouched by civilization, serving as a refuge for many rare species of plants and animals. Agricultural areas account for 29 percent of the total land area, and with the dismantling of collective farms, the area devoted to farming decreased dramatically. Approximately 200 farms, occupying 100,000 hectares, are engaged in ecologically pure farming, using no artificial fertilizers or pesticides. Latvia's national parks are Gauja National Park in Vidzeme, established in 1973, and others including Kemeri, Slītere, and Rāzna. Latvia has a long tradition of conservation, with the first laws and regulations promulgated in the 16th and 17th centuries. There are 706 specially state-level protected natural areas in Latvia, and nationally protected areas account for around 20 percent of Latvia's total land area. The 2012 Environmental Performance Index ranks Latvia second, after Switzerland, based on the environmental performance of the country's policies. Access to biocapacity in Latvia is much higher than the world average, with 8.5 global hectares of biocapacity per person within its territory in 2016, much more than the world average of 1.6 global hectares per person. Latvia used 6.4 global hectares of biocapacity per person, meaning they use less biocapacity than Latvia contains, and the country is running a biocapacity reserve. Approximately 30,000 species of flora and fauna have been registered in Latvia, including deer, wild boar, moose, lynx, bear, fox, beaver, and wolves. Species that are endangered in other European countries but common in Latvia include the black stork, corncrake, lesser spotted eagle, white-backed woodpecker, Eurasian crane, Eurasian beaver, Eurasian otter, European wolf, and European lynx. Oak and linden are Latvia's national trees, the daisy is its national flower, the white wagtail is its national bird, and the two-spot ladybird is its national insect. Amber, fossilized tree resin, is one of Latvia's most important cultural symbols, and at Pape Nature Reserve, European bison, wild horses, and recreated aurochs have been reintroduced.
The Parliament and the Baltic Air Policing
A unicameral parliament, called the Saeima, is the legislature of the Republic of Latvia, and it is responsible for adopting the state's budgets, approving the state's accounts, appointing and exercising control of the Government, and taking part in international co-operation. Latvia is a representative democracy with universal suffrage and is referred to as an ethnocracy. Membership of the Saeima is based on proportional representation of political parties, with a 5 percent electoral threshold. Latvia elects 100 members to the Saeima, and parliamentary elections are held at least every four years. The president is elected by the Saeima in a separate election, also held every four years, and the president appoints a prime minister who, together with his cabinet, forms the executive branch of the government. The most senior civil servants are the thirteen Secretaries of State. Following the October 2022 Latvian parliamentary election, Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš formed the Second Kariņš cabinet in December 2022, a coalition of New Unity, National Alliance, and United List. On the 14th of August 2023, Kariņš resigned, citing National Alliance's opposition to expanding the coalition to include The Progressives and the Union of Greens and Farmers. The Siliņa cabinet, comprising New Unity, Union of Greens and Farmers, and The Progressives, was sworn in on the 15th of September 2023. Latvia is a member of the United Nations, European Union, Council of Europe, NATO, OECD, OSCE, IMF, and WTO. It was a member of the League of Nations from 1921 to 1946. Latvia is part of the Schengen Area and joined the Eurozone on the 1st of January 2014. Latvia has established diplomatic relations with 158 countries and has 44 diplomatic and consular missions. Latvia hosts one European Union institution, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications. Since the early 1990s, Latvia has been involved in active trilateral Baltic states co-operation with its neighbours Estonia and Lithuania, and Nordic-Baltic co-operation with the Nordic countries. Latvia is a member of the interparliamentary Baltic Assembly, the intergovernmental Baltic Council of Ministers, and the Council of the Baltic Sea States. The Nordic-Baltic Eight is the joint co-operation of the governments of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden. Latvia participated in the Northern Dimension and Baltic Sea Region Programme, and in 2013, Riga hosted the annual Northern Future Forum. Latvia hosted the 2006 NATO Summit, and since then, the annual Riga Conference has become a leading foreign and security policy forum in Northern Europe. Latvia held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the first half of 2015. Since February 2022, Latvia's relations with Russia have deteriorated to the extent that Latvia withdrew its ambassador from Russia and expelled Russia's ambassador to Latvia in January 2023. The National Armed Forces of Latvia consist of the Land Forces, Naval Forces, Air Force, National Guard, Special Tasks Unit, Military Police, NAF staff Battalion, Training and Doctrine Command, and Logistics Command. From the 1st of January 2007, Latvia switched to a professional fully contract-based army. Since March 2004, when the Baltic states joined NATO, fighter jets of NATO members have been deployed on a rotational basis for the Baltic Air Policing mission at Šiauliai Airport in Lithuania to guard the Baltic airspace. Latvia participates in several NATO Centres of Excellence, including Civil-Military Co-operation in the Netherlands, Cooperative Cyber Defence in Estonia, and Energy Security in Lithuania. It plans to establish the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Riga. In January 2011, the Baltic states were invited to join Nordic Defence Cooperation, and in November 2012, the three countries agreed to create a joint military staff in 2013. On the 21st of April 2022, the Latvian Saeima passed amendments for the legislative draft Amendments to the Law on Financing of National Defence, which provide for a gradual increase in the defence budget to 2.5 percent of the country's GDP over the course of the next three years.
The Gender Gap and the Golden Visa
The total fertility rate in 2023 was estimated to be 1.36 children born per woman, which is lower than the replacement rate of 2.1. In 2012, 45.0 percent of births were to unmarried women, and the life expectancy in 2013 was estimated at 73.2 years, with 68.1 years for males and 78.5 years for females. As of 2015, Latvia is estimated to have the lowest male-to-female ratio in the world, at 0.85 males per female. In 2017, there were 1,054,433 females and 895,683 males living in Latvian territory. Every year, more boys are born than girls, and up to the age of 39, there are more males than females, but above the age of 70, there are 2.3 times as many females as males. In 2025, Latvians formed about 65.5 percent of the population, while Russians were 24.1 percent, Belarusians 2.9 percent, Ukrainians 2.9 percent, Poles 1.9 percent, Lithuanians 1.1 percent, and other ethnic groups 1.6 percent. In some cities, including Daugavpils and Rēzekne, ethnic Latvians constitute a minority of the total population. The share of ethnic Latvians declined from 77 percent in 1935 to 52 percent in 1989, and in the context of a decreasing overall population, there were fewer Latvians in 2011 than in 1989, but their share of the population was larger. The sole official language of Latvia is Latvian, which belongs to the Baltic language sub-group of the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. Another notable language of Latvia is the nearly extinct Livonian language of the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family, which enjoys protection by law. Russian, which was widely spoken during the Soviet period, is still the most widely used minority language by far, with 37.7 percent speaking it as their mother tongue and 34.6 percent speaking it at home. While it is now required that all school students learn Latvian, schools also include English, German, French, and Russian in their curricula. There were 109 schools for minorities that use Russian as the language of instruction for 40 percent of subjects. On the 18th of February 2012, Latvia held a constitutional referendum on whether to adopt Russian as a second official language, and 74.8 percent voted against it. From 2019, instruction in the Russian language was gradually discontinued in private colleges and universities in Latvia, as well as general instruction in Latvian public high schools. The largest religion in Latvia is Christianity, with 79 percent of the population, and the largest groups were the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia, the Catholic Church, and the Russian Orthodox Church. Lutheranism was more prominent before the Soviet occupation, when it was adhered to by about 60 percent of the population, and since then, it has declined to a slightly greater extent than Catholicism. The country's Orthodox Christians belong to the Latvian Orthodox Church, a semi-autonomous body within the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2011, there were 416 religious Jews in Latvia and 319 Muslims in Latvia. As of 2004, there were more than 600 Latvian neopagans, Dievturi, whose religion is based on Latvian mythology. About 21 percent of the total population is not affiliated with a specific religion. Latvia has been seeking for a number of years to separate the Latvian Orthodox Church from Moscow, and this was achieved in September 2022 with a law removing all influence or power over the Orthodox Church from non-Latvians. In 2010, Latvia launched a Residence by Investment program, known as the Golden Visa, in order to attract foreign investors and make the local economy benefit from it. This program allows investors to get a Latvian residence permit by investing at least 250,000 euros in property or in an enterprise with at least 50 employees and an annual turnover of at least 10 million euros. Latvia is a member of the World Trade Organization and the European Union, and on the 1st of January 2014, the euro became the country's currency, superseding the Lats. Since the year 2000, Latvia has had one of the highest GDP growth rates in Europe, but the chiefly consumption-driven growth resulted in the collapse of Latvian GDP in late 2008 and early 2009, exacerbated by the global economic crisis, shortage of credit, and huge money resources used for the bailout of Parex Bank. The Latvian economy fell 18 percent in the first three months of 2009, the biggest fall in the European Union. However, by 2010, commentators noted signs of stabilisation in the Latvian economy, and the IMF concluded the First Post-Program Monitoring Discussions with the Republic of Latvia in July 2012, announcing that Latvia's economy has been recovering strongly since 2010. Real GDP growth of 5.5 percent in 2011 was underpinned by export growth and a recovery in domestic demand. The growth momentum has continued into 2012 and 2013, and the economy is expected to expand by 4.1 percent in 2014. The unemployment rate has receded from its peak of more than 20 percent in 2010 to around 9.3 percent in 2014. Economic recovery GDP at current prices rose from 23.7 billion euros in 2014 to 30.5 billion euros in 2019. The employment rate rose in the same period from 59.1 percent to 65 percent, with unemployment falling from 10.8 percent to 6.5 percent. More than 56 percent of leading positions are held by women in Latvia, which ranks first in Europe, and Latvia ranks first in the world in women's rights, sharing the position with five other European countries. In May 2023, the parliament elected Edgars Rinkēvičs as new President of Latvia, making him the European Union's first openly gay head of state. After years of debates, Latvia ratified the EU Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, otherwise known as the Istanbul Convention, in November 2023.