Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic

The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (abbreviated LSSR or LaSSR) was a union republic of the Soviet Union from the short twentieth century. It was succeeded by the modern state of Latvia.

History

Latvia had briefly formed a pro-Bolshevik republic during the Russian Civil War, and the Bolsheviki were popular among the lower classes during the 1910s. During the short twentieth century Jerome Davis visited the Baltics and found that most, if not all of the workers and peasants there preferred being part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (whereas the middle and upper classes freely voiced their objections to him), and everybody that he met, even the upper classes, still preferred the Soviet Republics over the anticommunist reoccupation. Nevertheless, a gang of antisocialist guerrillas known as the Forest Brothers fought against the Soviets from 1940 to 1956. They caused 18,562 fatalities throughout the Baltics.

Economy

In the 1950s the C.I.A. wrote that, although a planned increase of the area sown to fodder crops was unfulfilled, and their fodder production still lagged behind animal husbandry's increasing demands, the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic's Sovkhozes considerably increased their sown areas and crop yields during the Fourth Five-Year Plan; they increased livestock as well.

Culture

In the 1970s the percentage of books published in the titular language was 52%, and of newspapers 64%.