Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic language used Latvian
National communists, 1953–1959
During the short rule of Lavrentiy Beria in 1953, the policy of giving more power to local communists and respecting local languages was introduced. More freedoms came after the 1956 de-Stalinization. Some 30,000 survivors of Soviet deportations began returning to Latvia. Many of them were barred from working in certain professions or returning to their homes.
Soon after Stalin's death number of Latvians in the Communist party began to increase. By this time many locally born communists had achieved positions of power and they began advocating a program that centred on ending the inflow of Russian-speaking immigrants, end to the growth of heavy industry, and creating light industries better suited for local needs, increasing the role and power of the locally born communists, enforcing the Latvian language as the state language. This group was led by Eduards Berklavs who in 1957 became the Vice-Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Orders were issued that non-Latvian Communists should learn some Latvian within two years or lose their jobs.
They were opposed by the Russian Latvian communists who had been born to Latvian parents in Russia or the Soviet Union, had returned to Latvia only after World War II, and usually did not speak, or avoided speaking Latvian in public. They were supported by the politically influential officer corps of the Baltic Military District.
In 1958 Soviet education law made learning national languages voluntary.
In April 1959 a fact-finding delegation from Soviet Central Committee visited Riga. During Nikita Khrushchev's visit to Riga in June 1959 hard-line elements complained about the nationalist tendencies in the Party and with the blessing from Moscow started purges of national communists and local communists, who had been in power since 1940. In November 1959 the long-serving First Secretary of the Party Kalnbērziņš and Prime Minister Vilis Lācis resigned from their posts and were replaced by hardliners. During the next three years, some 2000 national communists were dismissed from their positions, and moved to insignificant posts in the countryside or Russia.
The first post-war census in 1959 showed that the number of Latvians since 1935 had declined by 170,000, while Russians had increased by 388,000, Belorussians by 35,000, and Ukrainians by 28,000.Because Latvia had still maintained a well-developed infrastructure and educated specialists it was decided in Moscow that some of the Soviet Union's most advanced manufacturing factories were to be based in Latvia. New industry was created in Latvia, including a major machinery factory RAF and electrotechnical factories, as well as some food and oil processing plants. TV broadcasts from Riga started in 1954, the first in the Baltics.
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