Riga Old Town The main tourist part is a kind of Island comprising a square kilometre of medieval streets .. it looks like other old baltic cities like Copenhagen or even Amsterdam I walked around. Almost all of the sights of Riga are concentrated in this one place so the streets are packed with guided tour groups.
I could have taken a lot more pictures .. you know gothic churches etc. Also most other museums were closed cos it was Monday
The Museum Of the Occupation was interesting. Showing the 50 years of suffering
- Latvia was free from Czarist Russia 1918-41
- occupied by the Soviets for a a couple of years,
- occupied by the German Nazis
- reoccupied by the Soviets after the war, the west was too busy on other things to help it get back it's freedom. Resistance guerrillas hid out in the forest until 1956 .. incredible !
- citizens were persecuted by Stalin, Russian citizens brought in to replace Latvians killed or sent to Gulags.
I know that things are not that simple and a handfull of people probably welcomed the Soviets, but the point is that that though the Nazi oppression against the Jews was more viscious, the opresssion of Latvians lasted 50 years .. punished for being capitalists, punished for cooperating with the Soviets, punished for cooperating with the Nazis, punished for not being Russian and felt to be untrustworthy, suffering terribly in Stalin's purges of people who could endanger him politically etc. before it grabbed it's freedom at the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 ...
Now these days there is another problem : The government operates entirely in Latvian language , but more than 30% of people are ethnic Russian. I have a lot of sympathy for them as it's not their fault they were brought to work in Latvia or born there. Before they were privilaged they didn't need to learn Latvian etc. I would guess most do speak a lot of Latvian, and others will move to Russia when it's economy improves. I would bet that in the last few hundred years some ethnic Russian s have also lived in Latvia.
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