Order to execute 78 political prisoneers in Riga Central prison, arrested right before German invasion in USSR

The Soviet authorities, having gained control over Latvia, immediately imposed a regime of terror. Hundreds of men were arrested, including many leaders of the Republic of Latvia. Tribunals were set up to punish "traitors to the people."

June 13 and June 14, 1941, the June deportation took place on estimated at 15,600 men, women, and children, and including 20% of Latvia's last legal government. Approximately 35,000 total (1.8% of Latvia's population) were deported during the first Soviet occupation. Stalin's deportations also included thousands of Latvian Jews. (The mass deportation totalled 131,500 across the Baltics.)

The Soviet-German war cut short this first year of Soviet occupation. The Nazi offensive, launched June 22, 1941, just over a week after the mass deportations were executed, entered Riga on July 1, 1941. This disrupted documented NKVD plans to deport several hundred thousand more from the Baltic states on June 27 and 28, 1941.

With memories of the mass deportations of a week before still fresh, the German troops were widely greeted at their arrival by the Latvians as liberators. The Latvian national anthem played on the radio, and, as Chris Bellamy wrote: "the [anti-Soviet] rebellion broke out immediately after the news of Barbarossa".

Right before retreat Soviet occupation forces & NKVD actively started arrests of any suspects and executed them. Bodies were exhumed some weeks later, after German army changed Red Army

79 political prisoneers, arrested in the first days of operation Barbarossa were executed and burried in Riga Central Prison.

113 bodies were found in the forest besides NKVD "dacha" in Baltezers forest near Riga

30 bodies were found in Rezekne prison yard

11 exhumed in Babite parish near Riga

39 Katlakalna parish near Riga

8 in Balvi

11 in Daugavpils

19 in Ludza

etc.

The majority of ethnic Latvians who had been forced to serve in the Red Army deserted from their units, and soon afterwards attacked the NKVD. On July 2, 1941, a unit of Latvian deserters captured the town of Sigulda, and three days later, Latvian rebels took control over another town, Smiltene, also blocking the strategic road to Pskov. Latvians did not only desert en masse from regular Red Army units, they also escaped from military training camps, which were part of Soviet mobilization plan. Among other battles with retreating Soviet units, Bellamy mentions Limbaži (July 4), Olaine (July 5), and Alūksne (July 9).

All these locations were recaptured from Russian occupiers by Latvian rebels before the first Wehrmacht units appeared in the area.

***

Occupation, 1940.

On May 28, 1940, the Lithuanian Minister in Moscow received a note from Molotov which dealt with the alleged kidnapping of two Soviet soldiers in Vilna. The Lithuanian government sought to clear up this matter by a Soviet-Lithuanian commission under the terms of the mutual assistance pact. Moscow rejected this proposal and cut off further discussion, soon showing and rapidly playing their hand:

• On June 12, 1940, the order for a total military blockade on Estonia to the Soviet Baltic Fleet is given: according to the director of the Russian State Archive of the Naval Department Pavel Petrov (C.Phil.) referring to the records in the archive[37][38]
• June 14, 1940 – While world attention is focused on the fall of Paris to Nazi Germany a day earlier, Molotov accuses the Baltic countries of conspiracy against the Soviet Union and delivers an ultimatum to Lithuania for the establishment of a government the Soviets approve of. On the same day, the Soviet blockade of Estonia went into effect. According to eyewitness accounts pieced together by Estonian and Finnish investigators, two Soviet bombers downed Finnish passenger airplane Kaleva flying from Tallinn to Helsinki carrying three diplomatic pouches from the U.S. legations in Tallinn, Riga and Helsinki. The US Foreign Service employee Henry W. Antheil Jr. was killed in the crash.
• June 15, 1940 – Soviet troops invade Lithuania and position troops to invade Latvia.
• June 15, 1940 – Soviet troops attack the Latvian border guards at Maslenki, killing three border guards and two civilians, as well as taking 10 border guards and 27 civilians as hostages to the Soviet Union.
• June 16, 1940 – the Soviet Union invades Latvia and Estonia. Soviets delivered ultimatums to Estonia and Latvia, to be answered within 6 hours, demanding:
  • (1) the establishment of pro-Soviet Governments which, under the protection of the Red Army, would be better capable of carrying out the Pacts of Mutual Assistance;
  • (2) the free passage of Soviet troops into Estonia and Latvia in order to place them in the most important centers and to avoid possible provocative acts against Soviet garrisons. Unable to resist on their own, with no external assistance available, under threat of the bombing of cities and heavily outnumbered, Latvia and Estonia capitulated.
• June 17, 1940 – Soviet troops invade Latvia and occupied bridges, post/telephone, telegraph, and broadcasting offices.
• June 17, 1940 – Andrey Vyshinsky, Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union (and prosecutor of Joseph Stalin's show trials in 1937–1938), introduces himself to President Kārlis Ulmanis as Soviet special envoy.

Soviet orchestration of events continued following the invasion, complete with protestors, who had arrived with the Red Army troops, organizing mass marches and meetings in order to create the impression of popular unrest:

• June 19, 1940 – Vishinski visits Ulmanis again, this time, to deliver the list, pre-approved by Moscow, of the new members of the cabinet of the Latvian government.
• June 20, 1940 – Ulmanis forced to approve pro-Soviet government which takes office. Jailed members of the formerly illegal communist party released. Public "processions of thanksgiving" organized in honour of Stalin.
• June 30, 1940 – The Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Vincas Kreve-Mickevicius, meets with Molotov. Molotov is blunt in communicating the Soviet intent to occupy the entire region: "You must take a good look at reality and understand that in the future small nations will have to disappear. Your Lithuania along with the other Baltic nations, including Finland, will have to join the glorious family of the Soviet Union. Therefore you should begin now to initiate your people into the Soviet system, which in the future shall reign everywhere, throughout all Europe; put into practice earlier in some places, as in the Baltic nations, later in others."
• July 5, 1940 – Decree issued announcing new elections; the Latvian democratic parties organize under the National Committee and attempt to participate.