The Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—were occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 and remained under its control until its dissolution in 1991. For a period of several years durin
A protest sign from the 1980s calling on the United Nations to abolish Soviet colonialism in the Baltic states
Soldiers of the Red Army enter the territory of Lithuania during the first Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1940.
Schematics of the Soviet military blockade and invasion of Estonia in 1940 (Russian State Naval Archives)
A cross commemorating the victims of the Rainiai massacre, committed by the Soviet NKVD on 24–25 June 1941
The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic was a de facto constituent republic of the Soviet Union covering the occupied and annexed territory of Latvia from 1940 to 1941, and then from 1944 until 1990.
Joseph Stalin and Joachim von Ribbentrop
The National Theater housed the People's Parliament in 1940
Demonstration in Riga on 7 November 1940
Poster of the Latvian SSR Supreme Soviet Election on 12 January 1941