The Soviet–Latvian Mutual Assistance Pact

On 5 October 1939, in the Kremlin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, and the Latvian Foreign Minister, Vilhelms Munters, signed a pact of mutual assistance between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Republic of Latvia. Concluded for ten years, the treaty gave the Soviet Union the right to naval bases in the ports of Liepāja and Ventspils, to airfields, and to coastal artillery batteries on the coast of Courland commanding the Irbe Strait, the entrance to the Gulf of Riga. A confidential protocol allowed up to 25,000 Soviet troops to be kept in Latvia until the end of the war in Europe. In return, Moscow gave assurances that the pact would not infringe Latvian sovereignty or its system of government. Latvia was the second of the three Baltic states forced in the autumn of 1939 to let the Red Army onto its territory. The negotiations lasted four days and were conducted from the start under the threat that if the Latvians refused, the Soviet Union would take the bases by force.

Riga’s turn

Latvia had been placed in the Soviet sphere of interest on 23 August, in the secret protocol to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. True, in June it had signed a non-aggression pact with the Reich, but Berlin had no intention of defending it. After the Soviet invasion of Poland Latvia also lost its only neighbour that was neither Germany nor the Soviet Union: on its south-eastern border, where Polish border posts in the Wilno region had still stood in September, the Red Army now appeared. By Latvian estimates, some 200,000 Soviet troops with tanks and aircraft gathered on the country’s borders in the autumn. The Latvian army, even after calling up reservists in September, numbered about 30,000 men.

Riga followed closely what was happening in Tallinn. On 24 September Molotov demanded from Estonia a pact with bases, and when the Estonian envoy asked Munters what Latvia would do in a similar situation, he was told that there would probably be no alternative. Nor did Latvia intend to support its neighbour: the defensive alliance the two states had concluded in 1923 proved dead at that moment. On 28 September Estonia signed a mutual assistance pact; that same day Soviet aircraft circled over Latvian territory and troops massed on the border. According to Latvian historiography, on 30 September the government in Riga received a similar demand from Moscow and an invitation to talks.

Talks in the Kremlin

Some chronologies place the Latvians’ talks with Stalin and Molotov on 1 October. According to Latvian and Russian studies, Munters flew to Moscow on 2 October, together with the director of the treaty department of the Latvian Foreign Ministry, the Soviet envoy in Riga, Ivan Zotov, and the Soviet trade representative, and the first conversation in the Kremlin took place that evening. Molotov led it, but Stalin was present from the start and spoke openly about what was at stake. What had been settled in 1920 in the Treaty of Riga, in which Soviet Russia recognised Latvia’s independence, “cannot remain for ever”. “Peter the Great already took care to give Russia access to the sea. We are now without an outlet and cannot remain in such a position for long.” The Soviet Union wanted ice-free ports on the open Baltic, and Liepāja and Ventspils were precisely such ports. When Munters defended Latvian neutrality, Stalin replied, according to the Latvian minister’s notes: “I tell you frankly: the division of spheres of interest has already taken place. As far as the Germans are concerned, we could occupy you.”

The first Soviet demands went further than those made of Estonia. Molotov presented a draft pact that would have allowed 50,000 Red Army troops to be stationed in Latvia and, according to Latvian sources, demanded an answer within 48 hours. Munters began to bargain over the number of troops, the location of the bases and their duration. The talks were carried over to the following days, while the minister consulted the government in Riga. On 3 October, at an extraordinary meeting, the cabinet of Kārlis Ulmanis – President and Prime Minister, who had ruled Latvia in authoritarian fashion since his coup d’état of 1934 – gave Munters full powers to sign the pact. Russian studies stress that the ministers agreed unanimously. In their view, the choice was between the treaty and a war that Latvia could neither win nor even start, because no one would come to its aid: Britain and France were far away, and Germany had just sealed its friendship with the USSR in the Boundary Treaty.

The bargaining achieved as much as it had in Estonia. The number of Soviet troops was halved, to 25,000 ground and air force personnel – roughly the size of the entire Latvian army. The bases were to be built in the western part of the country, far from Riga. On the evening of 5 October Molotov and Munters signed the pact and the confidential protocol on Soviet military bases.

What the pact laid down

The pact was an almost word-for-word repetition of the Estonian treaty. In Article I the parties undertook to give each other assistance, including military assistance, in the event of a direct attack or threat of attack by any great European power on their maritime frontiers on the Baltic, on their land frontiers through the territory of Estonia or Lithuania, or on the Soviet bases. Article II obliged the Soviet Union to help the Latvian army purchase armaments. Article III gave the USSR the right to naval bases at Liepāja and Ventspils, to several airfields leased “at a reasonable price”, and to a coastal artillery base on the coast between Ventspils and the village of Pitrags. This last location was no accident: guns placed on the northern tip of Courland could close the Irbe Strait and with it the approach to Riga. The exact sites of the airfields and bases were to be settled by a separate agreement. Article IV prohibited alliances directed against the other party. Article V stated that implementation of the pact must in no way affect the sovereign rights of the parties, in particular their state system, economic and social system and military measures, and that the areas of the bases remained Latvian territory. Latvian politicians later cited this provision to assure their compatriots that Stalin had promised to respect the country’s independence. The pact was to remain in force for ten years and to be extended automatically for another ten unless denounced.

The confidential protocol gave the Soviet Union the right to keep on the airfields and in the bases, as separate garrisons, up to 25,000 ground and air force troops for the entire duration of the war in Europe. Later agreements added warships: five Soviet submarines each were to be stationed at Liepāja and Ventspils. Some of the literature, including Western works, states that Latvia agreed to 30,000 troops. The text of the protocol speaks of 25,000.

Implementing the treaty

The instruments of ratification were exchanged in Riga on 11 October, and the pact came into force that day. The day before, Munters had explained to journalists that in wartime conditions the Soviet Union’s desire to strengthen its position on the eastern shore of the Baltic had to be understood, and that the main aim of Latvian policy was not to be drawn into the war. On 12 October Ulmanis declared in a speech: “Our state is self-governing, independent and free in its domestic and foreign policy, and so it shall remain.” The press presented the treaty as proof of a wise and far-sighted foreign policy. In private few had any illusions, and rumours circulated in the country of Latvia’s imminent incorporation into the USSR, which the government called groundless. On 18 October a trade agreement was signed that was meant to quadruple Latvian–Soviet trade.

The details of troop deployment were agreed by a military commission led by the Latvian General Mārtiņš Hartmanis and the Soviet Komkor Ivan Boldin. The Latvians managed to negotiate that Soviet troops would not be stationed east of the Venta river, except on the coast by the Irbe Strait, and that they would travel to the bases by rail only. The protocol was signed in Riga on 23 October. That same day the cruiser Kirov sailed into Liepāja with two destroyers. On 29 October the first train carrying Soviet soldiers passed through the border station at Zilupe. A guard of honour with a band waited on the platform, and the Soviet commanders were greeted by the commander of the Latvian Latgale Division. Units of the 2nd Special Rifle Corps, with headquarters at Liepāja, and air force units were deployed in western Courland: at Liepāja, Ventspils, Priekule, Durbe, Vaiņode and by the Irbe Strait.

In the same weeks, at Hitler’s summons, the Baltic Germans began to leave Latvia for the Reich. Latvia signed the agreement on their resettlement with Germany on 30 October, and by the spring of 1940 – most of them by mid-December – some 50,000 people had left the country. For many Latvians their hasty departure was yet another sign that Berlin had written the Baltic states off.

Place in the war

For Moscow, the Latvian pact was the next step in the plan Stalin had announced to the German ambassador on 25 September: “the solution of the problem of the Baltic states”. Five days later Lithuania had to conclude a similar treaty, receiving Wilno in return. On that same 5 October, as Munters was signing the pact, Molotov invited a Finnish delegation to Moscow. Unlike the Baltic states, the Finns refused to hand over bases, and on 30 November they were attacked. Liepāja proved invaluable to the Soviet fleet: as early as 1 December 1939 the cruiser Kirov, sent from this base, shelled the Finnish fortifications on the island of Russarö at the entrance to the bay off Hanko, and the airfields in Courland and Estonia were used for air raids on Finland during the Winter War.

Latvian independence, which the pact was not supposed to infringe, lasted eight months. At dawn on 15 June 1940 an NKVD detachment attacked the Latvian border posts at Masļenki, killing five people, border guards among them, and abducting 37 hostages to the USSR. On 16 June, while the world’s attention was focused on the fall of France, Molotov accused Latvia and Estonia of violating the pacts by taking part in a “Baltic military alliance” and demanded the formation of new governments and the admission of an unlimited number of troops. Ulmanis accepted the ultimatum, and on 17 June the Red Army occupied the country. Under the supervision of Moscow’s emissaries a compliant government was set up, single-list elections were held in mid-July, and on 5 August 1940 Latvia was incorporated into the USSR as the Latvian SSR. Ulmanis was deported into the interior of the Soviet Union and died in 1942 in prison in Krasnovodsk. Munters, deported with his family in July 1940, spent the years until 1954 in Soviet prisons and, after returning to Soviet Latvia, wrote articles attacking the Latvian emigration. The mutual assistance pact, presented in October 1939 as a guarantee of security, was the first stage of the occupation of the Baltic states, which, with an interval of German occupation in 1941–1944/1945, lasted until 1991.