Klaipėdos universitetas

In early 1919, Courland, which had already been semi-abandoned during the First World War, turned into an area of the Baltic region where at least four political agendas, and, in many cases, the military forces that supported them, clashed. The Bolsheviks exported their world revolution and acted through the Army of Soviet Latvia. The German armed forces had withdrawn from parts of Estonia and Latvia, and were still under the command of Berlin. Volunteer units formed with the help of the German army, many of which included local Baltic Germans. The Latvian Provisional Government and the units loyal to it was under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Oskars Kalpaks. All these forces needed motivated soldiers and loyal civilians who might become engaged in military activities. The article discusses the political, economic and social backgrounds that contributed to the motivation of soldiers and the public support for the warring parties, with a particular focus on how important the sense of belonging and identity was in these circumstances.

When the People’s Council of Latvia gathered in Riga on 18 November 1918 to proclaim Latvia’s independence, the Latvian Provisional Government did not yet have an army capable of defending it, and the entire territory claimed for the future Latvia was still under the control of German troops. In late 1918 and early 1919, the subsequent building up of the first army formations of the Republic of Latvia took place under extremely challenging circumstances. The government lacked financial resources, weapons, equipment and ammunition, while the Red Army advanced rapidly from the east. Initially, the armed forces were formed based on a compromise reached with Germany and according to the principle of ethnic division. After the loss of Rīga and the withdrawal to Liepāja in January 1919, a new line of division emerged: Latvian military units loyal to the Provisional Government were simultaneously formed in two distant regions, in the Liepāja area and in Estonia. The article aims to analyse the impact of both these factors on the development of the Latvian armed forces and the course of the Latvian War of Independence.