Latvian Operation of the NKVD
The Latvian Operation was a national operation of the NKVD against ethnic Latvians, Latvian nationals and persons otherwise affiliated with Latvia and/or Latvians in the Soviet Union from 1937 to 1938 during the period of the Great Purge.
A 31 January 1938 resolution by Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to extend the National operations of the NKVD until 15 April for the destruction of Polish, Latvian, German, Estonian, Finnish, Greek, Iranian, Harbinian, Chinese and Romanian "spy-saboteur contingent" signed by Josif Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Kliment Voroshilov, Anastas Mikoyan and Vlas Chubar
A memorial stone to all the Latvian victims of the Great Purge buried at Levashovo Memorial Cemetery
Latvian, also known as Lettish, is an East Baltic language belonging to the Indo-European language family. It belongs to the Baltic subbranch of the Balto-Slavic branch of the family and it is spoken in the Baltic region. It is the language of Latvians and the official language of Latvia as well as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 1.2 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and 100,000 abroad. Altogether, 2 million, or 80% of the population of Latvia, spoke Latvian in the 2000s, before the total number of inhabitants of Latvia slipped to 1.8 million in 2022. Of those, around 1.16 million or 62% of Latvia's population used it as their primary language at home, though excluding the Latgale and Riga regions it is spoken as a native language in villages and towns by over 90% of the population.
Dictionary of the Polish-Latin-Latvian languages by Georgs Elgers, published in Vilnius, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, 1683
Languages and dialects in Latvia around 1860. 1: Middle dialect, or Latvian written language, 2: the "purest" Latvian language, 3: Courlanders variant (Nordwestkurisch oder Tamisch), 4: the real estimater's variant (eigentliches Tamisch), 5: the northern variant of Livonian-Latvian (nordliches Live-Lettisch), 6: Highland dialect (Oberländischer Dialekt oder Hochlettisch), 7: "True" Highland dialect (eigentliches Oberländisch), 9: Livonian language (Livisch)
Latvian Lutheran hymnbook in old orthography.