The negotiating table in Moscow on October 5, 1939, brought Latvia not “assistance” but bases. Foreign Minister Vilhelms Munters and Soviet People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov signed the Latvian–Soviet Mutual Assistance Pact, allowing the Soviet Union to station up to 25,000 troops in Latvia. The treaty still spoke of respecting Latvian sovereignty, yet in the language of ports, airfields, and military bases it had already shifted the country’s borders from the map to the fences of garrisons.
The pact was imposed after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the outbreak of the Second World War, when Latvia was caught between two aggressive great powers. It became the first prelude to occupation: Soviet military presence in Latvia was legalized before the 1940 ultimatum and full occupation.
Related events
- 1972On October 5, 1972, Inga Ābele was born in Riga – a writer and playwright whose novels High Tide, Klūgu mūks, and Duna became major works of 21st-century Latvian prose.
- 1989On October 5, 1989, Arvīds Grigulis died in Riga – a poet, playwright, and literary scholar, one of the most visible yet controversial figures in Soviet Latvian literature.
- 2023On October 5, 2023, during the centenary season of Valmiera Drama Theatre, a new production of Rainis’s tragedy Joseph and His Brothers premiered, directed by Inese Mičule.