December 17, 1918 – Latvian War of Independence: Latvian Socialist Soviet Republic is formed
Under the patronage of Soviet Russia, on December 17, 1918, the Latvian Socialist Soviet Republic led by Latvian communist Pēteris Stučka, was set up as a regime to rival the Latvian nationalist provisional government of Kārlis Ulmanis that had been formed one month earlier. Two Latvian governments now vied for legitimacy during the Latvian War of Independence.
Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania form the Baltic States.(Taken from Latvian War of Independence – Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 4)
Background By the
mid-19th century, as a result of the French Revolution (1789-1799), a wave of
nationalism swept across Europe, a phenomenon that touched into Latvia
as well. The Latvian nationalist
movement was led by the “Young Latvians”, a nationalist movement of the 1850s
to 1880s that promoted Latvian identity and consciousness (as opposed to the
prevailing Germanic viewpoint that predominated society) expressed in Latvian
art, culture, language, and writing. The
Baltic German nobility used its political and economic domination of society to
suppress this emerging Latvian nationalistic sentiment. The Russian government’s attempt at
“Russification” (cultural and linguistic assimilation into the Russian state)
was rejected by Latvians. The Latvian
national identity also was accelerated by other factors: the abolition of
serfdom in Courland in 1817 and Livonia
in 1819, the growth of industrialization and workers’ organizations, increasing
prosperity among Latvians who had acquired lands, and the formation of Latvian
political movements.
The Russian Empire opposed these nationalist sentiments and
enforced measures to suppress them. Then
in January 1905, the social and political unrest that gripped Russia (the Russian Revolution of 1905) produced
major reverberations in Latvia,
starting in January 1905, when mass protests in Riga were met with Russian soldiers opening
fire on the demonstrators, killing and wounding scores of people. Local subversive elements took advantage of
the revolutionary atmosphere to carry out a reign of terror in the countryside,
particularly targeting the Baltic German nobility, torching houses and looting
properties, and inciting peasants to rise up against the ethnic German
landowners. In November 1905, Russian
authorities declared martial law and brought in security forces that violently
quelled the uprising, executing over 1,000 dissidents and sending thousands of
others into exile in Siberia.
Then in July 1914, World War I broke out in Europe, with Russia allied with other major powers Britain and France
as the Triple Entente, against Germany,
Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire that comprised the major Central
Powers. In 1915, the armies of Germany and Austria-Hungary made military gains
in the northern sector of the Eastern Front; by May of that year, German units
had seized sections of Latvian Courland and Livonian Governorates. A tenacious defense put up by the newly
formed Latvian Riflemen of the Imperial Russian Army held off the German
advance into Riga
for two years, but the capital finally fell in September 1917.
The Bolsheviks, on coming to power in the October
Revolution, issued the “Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia” (on
November 15, 1917), which granted all non-Russian peoples of the former Russian
Empire the right to secede from Russia and establish their own separate states.
Eventually, the Bolsheviks would renege on this edict and suppress secession
from the Russian state (now known as Russian
Soviet Federative
Socialist Republic,
or RSFSR). The Bolshevik revolution also
had succeeded partly on the communists promising a war-weary citizenry that Russia would
withdraw from World War I; thereafter, the Russian government declared its
pacifist intentions to the Central Powers.
A ceasefire agreement was signed on December 15, 1917 and peace talks
began a few days later in Brest-Litovsk (present-day Brest,
in Belarus).
However, the Central Powers imposed territorial demands that
the Russian government deemed excessive.
On February 17, 1918, the Central Powers repudiated the ceasefire
agreement, and the following day, Germany
and Austria-Hungary
restarted hostilities, launching a massive offensive with one million troops in
53 divisions along three fronts that swept through western Russia and captured Ukraine Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia,
and Estonia. German forces also entered Finland,
assisting the non-socialist paramilitary group known as the “White Guards” in
defeating the socialist militia known as “Red Guards” in the Finnish Civil
War. Eleven days into the offensive, the
northern front of the German advance was some 85 miles from the Russian capital
of Petrograd.
On February 23, 1918, or five days into the offensive, peace
talks were restarted at Brest-Litovsk, with the Central Powers demanding even
greater territorial and military concessions on Russia than in the December
1917 negotiations. After heated debates
among members of the Council of People’s Commissars (the highest Russian
governmental body) who were undecided whether to continue or end the war, at
the urging of its Chairman, Vladimir Lenin, the Russian government acquiesced
to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. On March
3, 1918, Russian and Central Powers representatives signed the treaty, whose
major stipulations included the following: peace was restored between Russia
and the Central Powers; Russia relinquished possession of Finland (which was
engaged in a civil war), Belarus, Ukraine, and the Baltic territories of
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – Germany and Austria-Hungary were to determine
the future of these territories; and Russia also agreed on some territorial
concessions to the Ottoman Empire.
German forces occupied Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus,
Ukraine, and Poland,
establishing semi-autonomous governments in these territories that were
subordinate to the authority of the German monarch, Kaiser Wilhelm II. The German occupation of the region allowed
the realization of the Germanic vision of “Mitteleuropa”, an expansionist
ambition aimed at unifying all Germanic and non-Germanic peoples of Central Europe into a greatly enlarged and powerful
German Empire. In support of
Mitteleuropa, in the Baltic region, the Baltic German nobility proposed to set
up the United Baltic Duchy, a semi-autonomous political entity consisting of
present-day Latvia and Estonia that
would be voluntarily integrated into the German Empire. The proposal was not implemented, but German
military authorities set up local civil governments under the authority of the
Baltic German nobility or ethnic Germans.
Although the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 ended Russia’s
participation in World War I, the war was still ongoing in other fronts – most
notably on the Western Front, where for four years, German forces were bogged
down in inconclusive warfare against the British, French and other Allied
Armies. After transferring substantial
numbers of now freed troops from the Russian front to the Western Front, in
March 1918, Germany launched
the Spring Offensive, a major attack into France
and Belgium
in an effort to bring the war to an end.
After four months of fighting, by July 1918, despite achieving some
territorial gains, the German offensive had ground to a halt.
The Allied Powers then counterattacked with newly developed
battle tactics and weapons and gradually pushed back the now spent and
demoralized German Army all across the line into German territory. The entry of the United
States into the war on the Allied side was decisive, as
increasing numbers of arriving American troops with the backing of the U.S.
weapons-producing industrial power contrasted sharply with the greatly depleted
war resources of both the Entente and Central Powers. The imminent collapse of the German Army was
greatly exacerbated by the outbreak of political and social unrest at the home
front (the German Revolution of 1918-1919), leading to the sudden end of the
German monarchy with the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II on November 9, 1918
and the establishment of an interim government (under moderate socialist
Friedrich Ebert), which quickly signed an armistice with the Allied Powers on
November 11, 1918 that ended the combat phase of World War I.
As the armistice agreement required that Germany demobilize
the bulk of its armed forces as well as withdraw the same to the confines of
the German borders within 30 days, the German government ordered its forces to
abandon the occupied territories that had been won in the Eastern Front. After Germany’s
capitulation, Russia
repudiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and made plans to seize back the
European territories it previously had lost to the Central Powers. An even far more reaching objective was for
the Bolshevik government to spread the communist revolution to Europe, first by
linking up with German communists who were at the forefront of the unrest that
currently was gripping Germany. Russian military planners intended the offensive
to merely follow in the heels of the German withdrawal from Eastern
Europe (i.e. to not directly engage the Germans in combat) and
then seize as much territory before the various local ethnic nationalist groups
in these territories could establish a civilian government.
Germany’s
defeat in World War I and the subsequent withdrawal of German forces from the
Baltic region produced a political void that local nationalist leaders rapidly
filled. In Latvia, on November 17, 1918,
independence-seeking political leaders established a “People’s Council”
(Latvian: Tautas padome), an interim legislative assembly, which in turn formed
a provisional government under Prime Minister Kārlis Ulmanis. The next day, November 18, the Latvian
government declared independence as the Republic of Latvia.
Starting on November 28, 1918, in the action known as the
Soviet westward offensive of 1918-1919, Soviet forces consisting of hundreds of
thousands of troops advanced in a multi-pronged offensive with the objective of
recapturing the Baltic region, Belarus,
Poland, and Ukraine.
The northern front of the Soviet offensive was directed at Latvia and Estonia. In Latvia, the Red Army, as Soviet forces
were called and which included the Red Latvian Riflemen (formerly the Latvian
Riflemen of the Imperial Russian Army who had shifted their allegiance to
Bolshevik Russia), made rapid progress and easily gained control of most of
Latvian territory, including Valka, Valmiera, Rēzekne, Daugavpils, and the
capital Riga, which was taken in April 1919.
The newly formed Latvian Army and pro-Latvia German militias retreated
in disarray. Under the sponsorship of
Soviet Russia, on December 17, 1918, the Latvian Socialist
Soviet Republic
led by Latvian communist Pēteris Stučka, was set up as a regime to rival the
Ulmanis Latvian nationalist provisional government that had been formed one
month earlier.
