On 2 June 1988, journalist and political thinker Mavriks Vulfsons told the Latvian SSR Plenum of Creative Unions what had been almost unsayable in Soviet public life: the events of 1940 in Latvia were not a “socialist revolution” but a violent occupation and annexation. He openly referred to the secret protocols of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, turning historical truth into a political force of the Awakening and establishing Vulfsons as one of the voices of restored independence.

The Plenum of Creative Unions took place during perestroika and glasnost, when the limits of public speech were rapidly widening. Vulfsons’s speech helped break the Soviet-era taboo around the history of the occupation and prepared the public sphere for the creation of the Popular Front of Latvia.