1989 – the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR adopted a decree “On the rehabilitation of citizens deported from the territory of the Latvian SSR in the 1940s and 1950s.” It recognized administrative deportations carried out without court decisions as unfounded and opened the way to rehabilitation certificates, claims for restitution or compensation, and public commemoration of the deportations. In the context of perestroika, this June 8 decision was one of the first official steps toward acknowledging Soviet crimes in Latvia.

This decision emerged during Latvia’s Third Awakening, when society was increasingly openly discussing the deportations of 1941 and 1949. It was not yet a full reckoning with the occupation regime, but legally and symbolically it began to break the Soviet system of silence.