The history of Latvia

Latvian history stretches over more than 9 centuries since the city of Riga was founded in 1201, although the ancient Baltic tribes left their mark on this land far earlier. The countryLatviahas passed through several periods under the rule of major empires such as the German Teutonic Knights, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Swedish Empire, the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.

The country declared independence twice — in 1918 and in 1991 — becoming an emblem of enduring national spirit in the Baltic region. This article sketches the flow of Latvian history from prehistory to full integration into the European Union and NATO, through the most important milestones of Latvian history.

Latvian history in prehistory and the Middle Ages

Latvian prehistory begins with the settlement of the area now Latvia from around 9,000 BC, immediately after the ice melted at the end of the last ice age. The ancient Baltic and Finno-Ugric tribes settled here over several millennia, forming 4 main population groups before Christianisation began.

The four ancient Baltic tribes comprised the Latgalians (the Latgale region in the east), the Selonians (the Sēlija region in the south), the Curonians (the Kurzeme region in the west) and the Semigallians (the Zemgale region in the south-centre). Alongside them, the Livonians of the Finno-Ugric group lived along the shore of the Gulf of Riga, leaving a linguistic and place-name imprint to this day. The name Livonia in medieval texts derives from this very people.

Over the following centuries, the Daugava served as the trade artery connecting the Baltic with the upper Volga and Constantinople through the Byzantine Empire. The ancient Amber Road carried Baltic amber — the region’s precious speciality — as far as Rome and the Mediterranean. This trade brought prosperity to the local inhabitants before the foreign powers appeared, laying the economic foundation of medieval Latvian history.

A major turning point in Latvian history came at the end of the 12th century when German merchants and missionaries began arriving in the region. In 1201, Bishop Albert von Buxhoeveden founded the city of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava, marking the beginning of Christianisation and urbanisation. Riga quickly grew into one of the most important cities of the Hanseatic League and served as the Baltic trading centre for centuries afterwards.

Latvian history under the Livonian Order, Poland-Lithuania and Sweden

An important chapter in Latvian history began in 1202, when Bishop Albert founded the Livonian Brothers of the Sword to conquer and Christianise the indigenous tribes. After defeat at the Battle of Saule in 1236, the order merged into the Teutonic Knights as its Livonian branch. From then, the lands now Latvia and Estonia formed the Livonian Confederation (Terra Mariana), governed jointly by bishops, knights and the Hanseatic cities.

This political order lasted nearly 350 years until the Livonian War (1558–1583) broke out, when Tsar Ivan IV attacked the Baltic lands seeking access to the sea. The Livonian Confederation fell apart and the territory was divided among new powers: Vidzeme in the north went to Poland-Lithuania, Kurzeme and Zemgale became the Duchy of Courland as a Polish vassal, and part of the north went to Sweden under the Truce of Altmark in 1629.

Sweden controlled Vidzeme and Riga from 1621 to 1721 — a period native Latvians call “the good old Swedish times” (Labie zviedru laiki). Under the Swedish King Karl XI, education reforms established a system of Latvian-language schools, the first Bible in Latvian was printed in 1689 (translated by the pastor Johann Ernst Glück) and the power of the Baltic German landowners was curbed. This was one of the rare periods in which the local language and culture were systematically preserved.

The next turning point in Latvian history came with the Great Northern War (1700–1721) between Sweden and the coalition led by Peter the Great’s Russian Empire. The Treaty of Nystad in 1721 transferred the whole of Vidzeme and Riga to Russian control. By the end of the 18th century, after the three partitions of Poland, the remaining parts of present-day Latvia — Latgale (1772), Courland and Zemgale (1795) — were also annexed to the Russian Empire in turn, completing the unification of the Latvian lands under a single sovereignty.

Latvian history under the Russian Empire and the National Awakening

Over nearly 200 years in the chapter of Latvian history known as “the Russian Empire period”, the region went through several important social and economic changes. Serfdom was abolished very early in Vidzeme (1819) and Courland (1817), before the Russian mainland (1861). This reform, although it did not grant land immediately, freed Latvian peasants from personal bondage to the Baltic German landowners and opened the way to a wave of migration from countryside to town.

The Industrial Revolution in the second half of the 19th century — an important stage in modern Latvian history — turned Riga into one of the largest industrial centres of the Russian Empire. Factories making railway carriages, rubber, textiles and food drew tens of thousands of Latvian peasants to work, forming a native working class and intelligentsia. For the first time in history, Latvians became the majority of the population in the major cities around the 1890s.

Against this background of urbanisation, a cultural and political movement called the Latvian National Awakening (Atmoda) broke out. Leading thinkers such as Krišjānis Barons collected more than 1.2 million Dainas folk songs; Krišjānis Valdemārs promoted native education and the economy; and Atis Kronvalds advanced the Latvian language in scholarship. The “Young Latvians” (Jaunlatvieši) movement asserted national identity and laid the spiritual foundation for the aspiration to independence.

The Russian Revolution of 1905 spread to the Baltic provinces and became a major uprising of Latvian peasants and workers, opening a key chapter in modern Latvian history. Hundreds of Baltic German landowners’ estates were burned and thousands took part in armed resistance. The Tsarist army and its “punitive expeditions” (Strafexpedition) put it down bloodily, executing more than 2,000 people and forcing many revolutionaries into exile. Although a military defeat, the events of 1905 forged a generation of Latvian political leaders who came of age just in time for 1918.

At the end of the First World War, Courland was occupied by Germany in 1915 while Vidzeme and Latgale remained Russian until the October Revolution of 1917. The simultaneous collapse of the German and Russian empires created the historic power vacuum Latvia’s leaders had awaited for 200 years.

Latvian history in the First Republic and the two world wars

One of the brightest milestones in Latvian history is 18/11/1918, when the People’s Council of Latvia in Riga proclaimed the independent Republic of Latvia, under the leadership of Kārlis Ulmanis, who became its first Prime Minister. This event marked the end of 7 centuries of foreign rule, although the young independence immediately faced 3 military threats at once.

The Latvian War of Independence (1918–1920) was fought on 3 fronts: against the Soviet Red Army advancing from the east, against former German units (the Bermontians) in the south, and against pro-Soviet Latvian Bolshevik forces. With the support of the British navy in the Baltic and Estonian troops in the north, the young Latvian army successfully defended its independence. The Latvian-Soviet Peace Treaty signed in Riga on 11/08/1920 formally recognised Latvian sovereignty. The country was admitted to the League of Nations in 1921 and received international recognition de iure on 26/01/1921.

The Satversme Constitution adopted on 15/02/1922 established a multi-party parliamentary republic — an important institutional milestone in Latvian history. However, proportional representation without a minimum vote threshold led to serious fragmentation — 13 coalition governments formed in 12 years.

The Great Depression of 1929 and political instability created the conditions for Kārlis Ulmanis’s peaceful coup of 15/05/1934. Ulmanis suspended Parliament, banned the parties and established a relatively mild dictatorship, remembered by many Latvians for economic stability and agricultural growth.

The darkest turning point in 20th-century Latvian history came with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed on 23/08/1939 between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union — the document that secretly placed Latvia within the Soviet sphere of influence. On 17/06/1940, the Red Army entered Riga; a pro-Soviet government was installed through a sham election and Latvia was annexed to the Soviet Union in August 1940. The first mass deportation on the night of 13–14/06/1941 sent more than 15,000 Latvians — officials, officers, intellectuals, businesspeople and their families — to Siberia. Most of the victims never returned.

Nazi Germany occupied Latvia from July 1941 to October 1944 during Operation Barbarossa. More than 70,000 Latvian Jews — almost the entire community — were murdered in the Holocaust, most notably in the Rumbula massacre of November-December 1941. Some Latvian units served in the Waffen-SS under German conscription, while many others fled to Sweden or joined the resistance against both Germany and the Soviet Union. When the Red Army retook Latvia in late 1944 and early 1945, the armed resistance of the “Forest Brothers” (Meža brāļi) continued into the mid-1950s.

Latvian history under the Soviet Union and the Singing Revolution

Over nearly 50 years within the Soviet Union, Latvian history records many policies imposed to erase national identity. The second mass deportation on the night of 25/03/1949 sent more than 42,000 people — mainly peasants resisting collectivisation — to Siberia and Central Asia. Across the two deportations, more than 60,000 Latvians were exiled, an enormous number against a population of only around 2 million at the time.

Another painful aspect of 20th-century Latvian history is the policy of Russification under Stalin and Brezhnev, encouraging mass migration of Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians to work in Latvia’s military factories and ports. From 75% of the population in 1935, Latvians fell to only 52% by 1989. Russian became the dominant language in administration, industry, higher education and the military.

The United States, Britain and many Western countries never recognised the Soviet annexation — this “non-recognition policy” had important legal significance when Latvia later restored its independence.

The turn began in the mid-1980s as Mikhail Gorbachev introduced glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The Helsinki ’86 human rights group was founded in Liepāja and began organising public commemorations. On 14/06/1987, thousands of Latvians laid flowers at the Freedom Monument in Riga in memory of the victims of the 1941 deportation — an act regarded as the start of the Latvian Singing Revolution (on UNESCO documentation and Baltic historical research).

The Singing Revolution ran from 1987 to 1991 and is known as a non-violent revolution through culture and music — a distinctive chapter in modern Latvian history. The Popular Front of Latvia (Tautas fronte) was founded on 08/10/1988 under Dainis Īvāns and quickly reached more than 200,000 members. Banned patriotic songs such as “Pūt, vējiņi!”, “Gaismas pils” and “Saule, Pērkons, Daugava” were sung publicly at large-scale demonstrations.

The high point of the Singing Revolution was the Baltic Way on 23/08/1989, on the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Around 2 million Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians joined hands to form a human chain 670 km long from Tallinn through Riga to Vilnius, lasting 15 minutes in a symbol of Baltic unity that shook international opinion. Seven months later, Lithuania became the first Soviet republic to declare independence (11/03/1990).

In Latvia, the Supreme Council passed the Declaration on the Restoration of Independence on 04/05/1990 but provided for a transitional period. In January 1991, Soviet OMON special units attacked the Latvian Ministry of the Interior in Riga; people built the “January Barricades” (Janvāra barikādes) from farm machinery and lorries to protect Parliament and the television station.

After the failed coup by Soviet hardliners in Moscow on 19/08/1991, the Latvian Supreme Council declared the transitional period at an end on 21/08/1991. The Soviet Union recognised Latvian sovereignty on 06/09/1991, closing a bloody chapter in Latvian history.

Modern Latvian history from 1991

After restoring independence, Latvian history entered a period of economic challenge in the transition from a planned to a market economy. The lats was reissued in 1993 to replace the Soviet rouble, and the old Soviet industries closed en masse. GDP fell by more than 50% over 1990–1995 before beginning to recover in the late 1990s.

In foreign affairs, Latvia quickly re-established relations with the West. The country joined the United Nations in September 1991, the Council of Europe in 1995 and the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1999. Soviet (later Russian) troops finally withdrew entirely from Latvian territory on 31/08/1994 after complex negotiations.

2004 marked a major turning point in Latvian history when the country joined both NATO on 29/03/2004 and the European Union on 01/05/2004. This was followed by accession to the Schengen area (21/12/2007), the eurozone (01/01/2014) and the OECD (01/07/2016). Over 2005–2008, the Latvian economy overheated with double-digit growth, laying the ground for the serious financial crisis of 2008–2009.

GDP fell 17.9% in 2009 — the deepest recession in the EU. Latvia had to accept a EUR 7.5 billion bailout from the IMF, the European Union and the Nordic countries, together with a harsh austerity policy.

Politically and socially, Latvia has carried out several reforms to assert national identity. The Citizenship Law of 1994 required naturalisation through Latvian language and history examinations, leading to a considerable proportion of Russians becoming “non-citizens” (nepilsoņi). The education reform of 2018–2025 moved all state secondary schools to teaching in Latvian, replacing the previous bilingual system. According to theLatvian Ministry of Culture, these reforms aim to strengthen the role of Latvian as the sole official language.

Relations with Russia became seriously strained after the Ukraine conflict broke out in February 2022 — a challenging new chapter in contemporary Latvian history. In January 2023, Latvia withdrew its Ambassador from Moscow and expelled the Russian Ambassador in Riga, while imposing several visa restrictions on Russian citizens. According toNATO, Latvia is one of the few members with defence spending above 2% of GDP — nearly 3% in 2024. In 2024, Latvia restored compulsory military service (the State Defence Service) after nearly 2 decades of an entirely volunteer army.

A summary of Latvian history

Latvian history is a story of cultural and political persistence over 9 centuries. From the land of the ancient Baltic tribes, through periods of rule by the German knights, Sweden, Russia and the Soviet Union, Latvians always maintained their own language and identity. Both declarations of independence — in 1918 and 1991 — came as neighbouring empires collapsed, showing the strategic role of historical timing in shaping the fate of small nations.

The Singing Revolution of 1987–1991 is one of the distinctive contributions of Latvian and Baltic history to world history, proving that non-violent resistance through culture can successfully confront a military superpower. Full accession to the EU and NATO in 2004, together with deep integration into the Western institutional system, has put Latvia on a new trajectory of development, although geopolitical tension with Russia remains a major challenge of the 21st century.