The Latvian Orphans Released from the Siberian Special Settlements (1946–1947)
Year: 2025

In the aftermath of the Second World War, around 1,300 Latvian ‘orphans and semi-orphans’ came back to Latvia from the remote Siberian regions to which they and their parents had been deported on 14 June 1941. 1 Their liberation from the ‘special settlements’ remains an unusual episode of the overall history of the Stalinist repression and rehabilitation, and a Latvian historical myth. To understand the singular story of the ‘Latvian children from Siberia’, one should look back into the history