Latvia

Ancient Latvia and the Livonian Confederation

Latvia's ancient Baltic peoples — the Livonians (Finno-Ugric), Latgalians, Selonians, Semigallians, and Couronians (all Baltic) — inhabited the region for millennia before the German crusading orders arrived in 1201 and established the Livonian Confederation, a patchwork of bishop-states and Teutonic knight territories that shaped Latvia until the 16th century.

Swedish, Polish, and Russian Latvia — three empires, one nation

Latvia's early modern history (1561–1918 CE) was a succession of competing empires — Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Courland and Semigallia), Sweden (Livonia), and Russia (from 1710) — none of which allowed the Latvian-speaking peasantry any political existence, until the 19th-century National Awakening produced the first generation of educated Latvians who imagined a Latvian nation.

The Latvian Song and Dance Festival — a nation preserved in music

The Latvian Song and Dance Festival (Dziesmu un deju svētki), first held in 1873 and held every five years since (except under occupation), is UNESCO-inscribed as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity — a gathering of up to 40,000 singers and 16,000 dancers that kept Latvian identity alive through occupation and is now the world's largest amateur choral event.

Latvian independence — the first republic and Soviet annexation

Latvia's first period of independence (1918–1940 CE) — declared amid WWI's chaos, secured through the War of Independence against both Bolshevik Russia and German Freikorps units, and sustained for 22 years — ended with Soviet ultimatum and occupation in June 1940, followed by a year of German occupation (1941–44), and then 47 years of Soviet rule until 1991.

The Baltic Way — 675 kilometres of human solidarity

The Baltic Way (23 August 1989 CE) — a 675-kilometre human chain from Tallinn through Riga to Vilnius, formed by approximately 2 million people from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania exactly 50 years after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact — was the most powerful peaceful political demonstration in Soviet history, visible from space and impossible for Moscow to suppress without a massacre.

Latvia in the EU and NATO — the post-Soviet transformation

Latvia's accession to both the EU and NATO (2004 CE) — achieved 13 years after independence — completed the most consequential geopolitical pivot in the country's modern history: from Soviet republic to Western alliance member, accompanied by the fastest economic growth in Europe (until the 2008 crash) and the painful question of integration for the large Russian-speaking minority.