Kārlis Augusts Vilhelms Ulmanis was a Latvian politician and a dictator. He was one of the most prominent Latvian politicians of pre-World War II Latvia during the Interwar period of independence from November 1918 to June 1940 and served as the country's first prime minister.
Kārlis Ulmanis
Kārlis Ulmanis as a student at the University of Nebraska
Ulmanis in 1934
50 lati banknote with the portrait of Ulmanis
Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east, Belarus to the southeast, and shares a maritime border with Sweden to the west. Latvia covers an area of 64,589 km2 (24,938 sq mi), with a population of 1.9 million. The country has a temperate seasonal climate. Its capital and largest city is Riga. Latvians belong to the ethnolinguistic group of the Balts and speak Latvian, one of the only two surviving Baltic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family. Russians are the most prominent minority in the country, at almost a quarter of the population.
Turaida Castle near Sigulda, built in 1214 under Albert of Riga
Latvians national rally in Dundaga in 1905
Jānis Čakste (1859–1927), the first president of Latvia
Red Army troops enter Riga (1940).