Latvia is a small country on the coast of the Baltic Sea and belongs to one of the three Baltic states. Three countries were ruled by Tsarist Russia for two hundred years, and we talked about lithuania's independence above, but today we focus on how Latvia achieved independence step by step.
Speaking of which, Latvians began settling along the Baltic coast as early as 2500 BC. But Latvians' dream of a state has waited too long.
Originally, an early feudal principality was established in Latvia around the 10th century, but then the Germans controlled most of present-day Latvia and the southern part of Estonia, and the Germans gave it a name, Livonia, and joined the Hanseatic League.
By the 16th century, a great power, Sweden, had emerged in Northern Europe. After the 30-year war, sweden occupied an area that included Latvia on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea.
However, after the rise of Tsarist Russia, it began to challenge Sweden, and the result was that Sweden was a small country, especially after the end of the Northern War, Livonia became a Russian territory.
It can be said that Latvia was part of another country most of the time, and although it formed its own nation, it did not establish its own state.
Until the First World War, the October Revolution broke out in Tsarist Russia, and many countries in Eastern Europe that were originally occupied took the opportunity to become independent. Countries like Poland and Finland, including the Baltic States, including, of course, Latvia.
In the face of Latvia's independence, Soviet Russia agreed that Latvia would establish Soviet power, but with the support of international imperialism, Latvia overthrew the Soviets, established a bourgeois government, and joined the League of Nations.
In 1939, Germany launched operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union, with Latvia, one of the three Baltic states, bearing the brunt. In the face of the Soviet invasion, the Latvians did not resist, but let the Soviet Red Army take over peacefully, and the Latvian leader himself was a dictator, but he did not even resist and directly fell. Latvia re-established itself as a Soviet Socialist Republic and joined the Soviet Union.
But Latvia's entry into the Soviet Union in this way gave birth to a movement against Soviet rule that, although suppressed, did not disappear. In order to maintain its rule, the Soviet Union adopted various policies, and even exiled a large number of Latvians to Siberia and beyond.
Fast forward to the end of the 20th century, the Soviet Union began to collapse after internal and external troubles, especially after the drastic changes in Eastern Europe. On 15 February 1990, Latvia adopted the Declaration on the Restoration of National Independence and restored its former flag, coat of arms and national anthem.
Years of dreams of independence finally became a reality.