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 PICTURES OF HEAVEN |
The ancestors of modern Latvia, known as Balts, showed up in Eastern Europe, near the border of the Baltic Sea, between Estonia and Lithuania around 2000 BC. In the first few centuries AD the tribes of the region traded with Germanic tribes and the Roman Empire.. Latvia was subject to continuous foreign rule from the 13th to the 20th century. The period of Swedish rule is looked back on fondly as a relatively enlightened episode in the country's long history of oppression. The 17th-century Swedish kings raised Latvian peasants from serfdom and introduced universal education allowing native people to move into trades, professions, commerce and intellectual circles. The first signs that Soviet rule of Latvia was relaxing came in the late 1980s, when Mikhail Gorbachev started to encourage glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). On 21 August, two days after a coup attempt against Gorbachev in Moscow, Latvia declared full independence. This was recognised by the West and by the USSR on 6 September 1991. Latvia joined the United Nations less than 2 weeks later. Border countries:
Belarus 141 km, Estonia 267 km, Lithuania 453 km, Russia 217
km ....Coastline: 531 km ... Population: 2,468,982  |
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