The end of the First World War in Latvia saw a series of new wars that would decimate the country, losing almost half of its population between 1914 and 1920. Proclaimed on December 17, 1918 the Latvian Socialist Soviet Republic lasted until Riga was captured by Latvian Whites with German Freikorps troops on May 22nd, 1919. Acting under the ‘Social-Democratic’ government of Ebert-Scheidemann, workers and Communists were massacred six months after the putting down the Berlin Sparticists. A war then followed between the German ‘liberators’ and the Baltic states, with Poland and the Allies also intervening. On top of the ravages of war, the new reactionary regime attempted to base their economy not on industry, they massacred all the workers, but on an ‘independent’ peasantry, creating a situation in which farmers had no reason to produce surpluses because there were no products to exchange for them. So they emigrated. A look at the astonishing numbers of a depleted nation.

‘Latvia in Ruins’ by O. Preedin from Soviet Russia (New York). Vol. 4 No. 4. January 22, 1921.

“LATVIA, area 64,299 square kilometers with 2,552,000 inhabitants in 1914.” This you may read on the maps of the new state, and these data are repeated time and time again by Latvian nationalists in their efforts to persuade the Great Powers to recognize their state, chiefly on the ground that it is a large country with a large population. We pointed out long ago in Soviet Russia that these figures, based on 1914 statistics, are much exaggerated as a statement of the present conditions. We are now able to present definite data on the subject. The 1920 figures are at hand. As compared with the 2,552,000 in 1914, Latvia now counts only 1,503,196 inhabitants.

Latvia presents to the observer a strip of land that has lost by war and invasion, by revolution and counter-revolution, about 40 per cent of its population. Many privations and much misery have been brought about in the wake of this loss. Let us not for the present take up the question of the causes for these results, the manner in which the imperialistic forces reached out to annex this territory which they considered “a gateway to Russia”, aiming to hold it firmly in their hands, and finally squeezing out almost half of its population. We shall try simply to record the resulting condition. The 1920 figures, supplemented by special investigations made by various agencies of the present Latvian Government provide us with very much rich material on the subject.

The official journal of the Ministries of Finance, Trade, Industry, Agriculture, of the present government, Ekonomist, from which these statistics are taken, permits us to glance more in detail at the present condition of the remaining half of the population of Latvia.

We learn that more than 87,000 people of Latvia are at present citizens of other countries. Even 8,332 Letts, now domiciled in Latvia, have declined to affirm their alliance to the new state. They make up only a portion of the six per cent of Latvia’s population which has foreign allegiance. The number of Letts who are citizens of the country is given as 1,138,333. This includes all the so-called Letgallians, about 400,000, whose language, customs, and traditions afford a favorable basis for increasing conflicts on nationalistic lines, both with the Letts as well as eventually with other nationalities. Not more than half, therefore, of the present population of Latvia may be considered as Letts. The number of German citizens of Latvia is 45,725, or only about one-third their number before the war.

From the above we may judge to what extent the creation of Latvia as a state may be considered as a result of a separatist national tendency. None of the new states was erected more as a result of the attempts of the Great Powers to expand than was the case with Latvia. This little country, which began as a creation of German imperialism, and which ended as an outpost of imperialistic England and the other Allies, attained its present form through the interaction of foreign influences. Latvia is not a natural birth. It was born as a result of extraneous forces. It is an abortive offspring.

No less than its birth, the “independent” existence of Latvia is a great tragedy in world history. Before the war, Latvia was one of the most highly developed industrial provinces of Russia. At present the city of Riga, its great factory center, has not the 85,000 workers it had before the war, but only 4,268, and all of Latvia has 10,650 worker instead of the 130,000 who were engaged in industrial occupations before the war. Does that not look like a complete destruction of the country? To be sure a new state was produced, but it is a state that has no production.

In the October 1 issue of Ekonomists (page 437) we read: “It is estimated by specialists that we shall have about 120,000 unemployed during the coming winter.” For Latvia this number of unemployed is equivalent to 10,000,000 in the United States.

On another page of the same journal (442) we read of the growth of other classes of the Latvian population, of the “traders”, for instance, i.e., speculators: “at present there are about 5,000 traders in Riga to 4,000 before the war, when the population was three times what it is now.” The complete picture then is as follows: industry destroyed entirely; unemployment growing; speculation flourishing in cities without population. Only one process is rapidly going on in the Latvian cities—and a long drawn out process—that of death. How about the villages? Latvia is considered to be an agricultural state. Its future is prognosticated by the Lettish nationalists on the assumption that the soil will be productive. The prosperous Latvian idyll is that of a well-fed peasant reposing in the shade of a leafy oak tree by the door of his big farmhouse surrounded by rich fields. All the political parties in Latvia share this idyllic view of the future of their state—a paradise of “independent” peasants. Even the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party altered its previous agrarian platform in order to bring it into full harmony with this peasant idyll.

All the spokesmen of Latvia, standing on the debris of a once flourishing industry, and profiting by the labor of only one-twelfth of the former number of industrial workers, observing that the productivity of their labor had decreased from 30 to 50 per cent, could think of only one source of economic wealth for the state, namely peasant labor. The farms, it was hoped, would create products to be exchanged with foreign countries for the necessary manufactured goods. The farm products were to furnish the firm basis for reestablishing the financial system of the new state, for stabilizing the exchange rate of the Lettish ruble in foreign countries, etc. All hopes were placed in the farm products.

The harvest came, and then it was expected that long lines of peasant carts would move along the roads to the cities and to the seaports to be exported. But—as we read in the first paragraphs of the leading article of the above cited official journal: “Not only did we fail to obtain a sufficient quantity of bread last year, but we are now well aware that we shall not have enough this year either. And the shortage this year will be a great one.” The italics are those of the official organ.

Instead of the goddess of abundance, hunger and rags appeared on all the highways.

How did this happen? Whence this terrible disillusionment? The hopes placed in the Latvian peasantry were entirely unfounded. Already before the war the peasantry of the present Latvian state could not supply enough food for that country alone. About 10,000,000 more poods of grain were annually imported from other parts of Russia than were exported to other parts of Russia. And the rural population then was about 1,700,000 in Latvia, as compared with 1,065,000 at present. The urban population has not decreased in the same degree in Latvia as yet. Before the war there were more than three peasants to every city dweller; at present there are only 2 ½.

The worst symptom, however, is the enormous decrease in the area of cultivated land, amounting to from 50 to 70 per cent.

The able statesmen of present-day Latvia try to explain this by stating that much of the live stock has been destroyed and many farms have been deserted. To be sure this is true in some cases, but it cannot explain everything. To be sure the absolute number of horses, cows, and other live-stock has decreased, but the village holding of each peasant, owing to the more rapid rate of decrease of the rural population itself, includes more live stock now than was the case before the war.

The main reasons for the entirely disproportionate decrease in farm products are as follows: The Latvian Government is trying to accomplish the economic reconstruction on the basis of individual or private ownership, which presupposes that goods will be bartered for goods. But the government and the city population have nothing other to offer to the peasants for their products than worthless paper money. Having no other source of income the government must impose very heavy taxes on the farms. These taxes the government very cleverly imposes chiefly on the area of cultivated land. Last year the peasants had to pay in land taxes alone from 195 to 324 pounds of grain on every acre under cultivation. But the peasant, as a capitalistic agriculture entrepreneur, is a very practical man. He knows what pays; it certainly would not pay “to cultivate as much land as possible” if he must pay so heavily.

The Government of Latvia may correct its fiscal policy, but it cannot escape starvation and the economic destruction of the country. The economic life of Latvia is closely bound up with that of Russia, and cut off from Russia, Latvia must die.

It may interest readers of Soviet Russia to go through the following statistics of the population of Latvia, which indicate the races of the population of the country as shown by the 1920 figures:

Citizens of Citizens of Latvia–Other Countries

Germans 45,725–12,200
Great Russians 71,793–11,167
White Russians 53,773–4,932
Hebrews 60,844—17,357
Poles 31,012–11,064
Lithuanians 7,401–16,258
Esthonians 3,633–2,467
All Others 1,922—1,852
Nationality Unknown 1,657—974
Letts 1,138,333—8,332

Soviet Russia began in the summer of 1919, published by the Bureau of Information of Soviet Russia and replaced The Weekly Bulletin of the Bureau of Information of Soviet Russia. In lieu of an Embassy the Russian Soviet Government Bureau was the official voice of the Soviets in the US. Soviet Russia was published as the official organ of the RSGB until February 1922 when Soviet Russia became to the official organ of The Friends of Soviet Russia, becoming Soviet Russia Pictorial in 1923. There is no better US-published source for information on the Soviet state at this time, and includes official statements, articles by prominent Bolsheviks, data on the Soviet economy, weekly reports on the wars for survival the Soviets were engaged in, as well as efforts to in the US to lift the blockade and begin trade with the emerging Soviet Union.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/srp/v4-5-soviet-russia%20Jan-Dec%201921.pdf