Latvia's first foreign minister, who won international recognition for its independence
One of the most influential statesmen and diplomats of the early Latvian Republic. As its first foreign minister he drove the 1920 peace treaty with Soviet Russia, de jure recognition and League of Nations admission; he died in a car crash in 1925.
Latvia's first foreign minister, he won de facto British recognition in 1918, the Riga peace of 1920, and de jure Allied recognition and League membership in 1921. He also served as prime minister and died in a road accident in 1925 at thirty-eight.
Career timeline
1917Co-founder of the Latvian Farmers' Union; head of the Vidzeme Land Council's financial division
1918Appointed Latvia's first foreign minister
1920Concluded the Riga peace treaty with Soviet Russia
1921Secured de jure Allied recognition and League of Nations membership
Architect of Comintern propaganda and party history compiler
"We believe that Byelorussians are not a nation, and the ethnographic specifics that differentiate them from Russians must be erased" — in Zvyazda, the newspaper he edited, 6 October 1918.
A Latvian Bolshevik who built party organizations in Belarus and Latvia and twice served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Byelorussia in the 1920s. As head of the Comintern Information-Propaganda Department he coordinated the ideological line of foreign communist parties, and as director of the Institute of Red Professorship (Party History) he authored the 1935 Short History of the CPSU, the direct precursor to the 1938 Short Course. Arrested in 1937, executed the following year, and rehabilitated in 1955.
Career timeline
1910Joined RSDLP(b)
1917Secretary of Minsk Soviet, editor of Zvyazda
1920–1922Secretary, Central Bureau of CP(b) of Byelorussia
1926–1927Head of Agitprop, CC VKP(b)
1927–1928First Secretary, CC CP(b) of Byelorussia
1928–1937Head of Information-Propaganda Dept., ECCI
1932–1935Director, Institute of Red Professorship (Party History)
1935–1937Deputy Head, Dept. of Party Propaganda & Agitation, CC VKP(b)
Latvian foreign minister who signed the Soviet–Latvian Mutual Assistance Treaty in 1939 and was deported to the Soviet Union in 1940
Born in Riga to an Estonian trader and a Baltic German mother, he served in the Estonian Army during the Latvian War of Independence. He joined the Latvian foreign ministry in 1920, became its general secretary in 1933, ran the ministry de facto after Kārlis Ulmanis’s coup of 1934 and was foreign minister from 1936 to 1940; he was also active on the Council of the League of Nations. In June 1939 he signed the German–Latvian Non-Aggression Pact and on 5 October 1939 the Soviet–Latvian Mutual Assistance Treaty. After the Soviet occupation he and his family were deported to Voronezh in July 1940 in the presence of the interior minister Vilis Lācis; he was arrested in June 1941 and in 1952 sentenced to 25 years. Released in 1954, he returned to Latvia in 1958, wrote against the Latvian diaspora organisations and died in Riga in 1967.
Career timeline
1920Joined the Latvian foreign ministry
1933General secretary of the foreign ministry
1936–1940Minister of foreign affairs
1939Signed the Soviet–Latvian Mutual Assistance Treaty
