August 11, 1920 – Latvian War of Independence: Latvia and Soviet Russia sign a peace treaty
On August 11, 1920, Latvia and Soviet Russia signed the Latvian-Soviet Peace Treaty, a comprehensive agreement that included recognition of each other’s sovereignty, delineation of a common border, release of prisoners of war, and provisions regarding citizenship, refugees, commercial, postal and navigational, and other civilian matters. Russia also ceased all political and territorial claims to Latvia and recognized Latvian independence “for all future time”.
(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 andenforced measures to suppress them. Thenin January 1905, the social and political unrest that gripped Russia (the Russian Revolution of 1905) producedmajor reverberations in Latvia,starting in January 1905, when mass protests in Riga were met with Russian soldiers openingfire on the demonstrators, killing and wounding scores of people. Local subversive elements took advantage ofthe revolutionary atmosphere to carry out a reign of terror in the countryside,particularly targeting the Baltic German nobility, torching houses and lootingproperties, and inciting peasants to rise up against the ethnic Germanlandowners. In November 1905, Russianauthorities declared martial law and brought in security forces that violentlyquelled the uprising, executing over 1,000 dissidents and sending thousands ofothers into exile in Siberia.
Then in July 1914, World War I broke out in Europe, with Russia allied with other major powers Britain and Franceas the Triple Entente, against Germany,Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire that comprised the major CentralPowers. In 1915, the armies of Germany and Austria-Hungary made military gainsin the northern sector of the Eastern Front; by May of that year, German unitshad seized sections of Latvian Courland and Livonian Governorates. A tenacious defense put up by the newlyformed Latvian Riflemen of the Imperial Russian Army held off the Germanadvance into Rigafor two years, but the capital finally fell in September 1917.
Meanwhile, by 1917, the Russian Empire was verging on amajor political collapse at home after experiencing a number of devastatingmilitary defeats in the Eastern Front of the war,. Two revolutions broke out that year. The first, on March 8 (this day beingFebruary 23 in the Julian calendar that was used in Russia at that time, hencethe historical name, “February Revolution” denoting the event; in January 1918,Russia, by now ruled by the Bolsheviks, adopted the Gregorian calendar that wasalready in use in Western Europe), led to the end of three centuries of Romanovdynastic rule in Russia with the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. A Russian Provisional Government wasinstalled to administer the country which it declared as the “Russian Republic”.
The second revolution of 1917 occurred on November 7(October 25 in the Julian calendar, thus the popular name “October Revolution”denoting this event), where the communist Bolshevik Party came to power byoverthrowing the Russian Provisional Government in Petrograd, Russia’scapital. The two 1917 revolutions, aswell as ongoing events in World War I, catalyzed ethnic minorities across theRussia Empire, resulting in the various regional nationalist movements pushingforward their political objectives of seceding from Russia and forming newnation-states. In the western andnorthern regions of the empire, the subject territories of Poland, Belarus,Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia,Estonia, and Finland moved toward secession from Russia.
The Bolsheviks, on coming to power in the OctoberRevolution, issued the “Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia” (onNovember 15, 1917), which granted all non-Russian peoples of the former RussianEmpire the right to secede from Russia and establish their own separate states.Eventually, the Bolsheviks would renege on this edict and suppress secessionfrom the Russian state (now known as Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic,or RSFSR). The Bolshevik revolution alsohad succeeded partly on the communists promising a war-weary citizenry that Russia wouldwithdraw from World War I; thereafter, the Russian government declared itspacifist intentions to the Central Powers. A ceasefire agreement was signed on December 15, 1917 and peace talksbegan a few days later in Brest-Litovsk (present-day Brest,in Belarus).
However, the Central Powers imposed territorial demands thatthe Russian government deemed excessive. On February 17, 1918, the Central Powers repudiated the ceasefireagreement, and the following day, Germanyand Austria-Hungaryrestarted hostilities, launching a massive offensive with one million troops in53 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” indefeating the socialist militia known as “Red Guards” in the Finnish CivilWar. Eleven days into the offensive, thenorthern front of the German advance was some 85 miles from the Russian capitalof Petrograd.
On February 23, 1918, or five days into the offensive, peacetalks were restarted at Brest-Litovsk, with the Central Powers demanding evengreater territorial and military concessions on Russia than in the December1917 negotiations. After heated debatesamong members of the Council of People’s Commissars (the highest Russiangovernmental body) who were undecided whether to continue or end the war, atthe urging of its Chairman, Vladimir Lenin, the Russian government acquiescedto the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. On March3, 1918, Russian and Central Powers representatives signed the treaty, whosemajor stipulations included the following: peace was restored between Russiaand the Central Powers; Russia relinquished possession of Finland (which wasengaged in a civil war), Belarus, Ukraine, and the Baltic territories ofEstonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – Germany and Austria-Hungary were to determine thefuture of these territories; and Russia also agreed on some territorialconcessions to the Ottoman Empire.
German forces occupied Estonia,Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus,Ukraine, and Poland,establishing semi-autonomous governments in these territories that weresubordinate to the authority of the German monarch, Kaiser Wilhelm II. The German occupation of the region allowedthe realization of the Germanic vision of “Mitteleuropa”, an expansionistambition aimed at unifying all Germanic and non-Germanic peoples of Central Europe into a greatly enlarged and powerfulGerman Empire. In support ofMitteleuropa, in the Baltic region, the Baltic German nobility proposed to setup the United Baltic Duchy, a semi-autonomous political entity consisting ofpresent-day Latvia and Estonia thatwould be voluntarily integrated into the German Empire. The proposal was not implemented, but Germanmilitary authorities set up local civil governments under the authority of theBaltic German nobility or ethnic Germans.
Although the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 ended Russia’sparticipation in World War I, the war was still ongoing in other fronts – mostnotably on the Western Front, where for four years, German forces were boggeddown in inconclusive warfare against the British, French and other AlliedArmies. After transferring substantialnumbers of now freed troops from the Russian front to the Western Front, inMarch 1918, Germany launchedthe Spring Offensive, a major attack into Franceand Belgiumin an effort to bring the war to an end. After four months of fighting, by July 1918, despite achieving someterritorial gains, the German offensive had ground to a halt.
The Allied Powers then counterattacked with newly developedbattle tactics and weapons and gradually pushed back the now spent anddemoralized German Army all across the line into German territory. The entry of the United States into the war on the Allied side was decisive, asincreasing numbers of arriving American troops with the backing of the U.S. weapons-producingindustrial power contrasted sharply with the greatly depleted war resources ofboth the Entente and Central Powers. Theimminent collapse of the German Army was greatly exacerbated by the outbreak ofpolitical and social unrest at the home front (the German Revolution of1918-1919), leading to the sudden end of the German monarchy with theabdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II on November 9, 1918 and the establishment of aninterim government (under moderate socialist Friedrich Ebert), which quicklysigned an armistice with the Allied Powers on November 11, 1918 that ended thecombat phase of World War I.
As the armistice agreement required that Germany demobilizethe bulk of its armed forces as well as withdraw the same to the confines ofthe German borders within 30 days, the German government ordered its forces toabandon the occupied territories that had been won in the Eastern Front. After Germany’scapitulation, Russiarepudiated the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and made plans to seize back the Europeanterritories it previously had lost to the Central Powers. An even far more reaching objective was forthe Bolshevik government to spread the communist revolution to Europe, first bylinking up with German communists who were at the forefront of the unrest thatcurrently was gripping Germany. Russian military planners intended theoffensive to merely follow in the heels of the German withdrawal from Eastern Europe (i.e. to not directly engage the Germansin combat) and then seize as much territory before the various local ethnicnationalist groups in these territories could establish a civilian government.
Germany’sdefeat in World War I and the subsequent withdrawal of German forces from theBaltic region produced a political void that local nationalist leaders rapidlyfilled. 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 formeda provisional government under Prime Minister Kārlis Ulmanis. The next day, November 18, the Latviangovernment declared independence as the Republic of Latvia.
Starting on November 28, 1918, in the action known as theSoviet westward offensive of 1918-1919, Soviet forces consisting of hundreds ofthousands of troops advanced in a multi-pronged offensive with the objective ofrecapturing the Baltic region, Belarus,Poland, and Ukraine.
