ABSTRACT

The first May days went by—the fifth month of Soviet rule had begun! The White Army was still lying in Mitau and the East Prussian frontier was much farther from the Reds than at the beginning of their invasion. Riga and Latvia were now more securely than ever in Moscow's hands. In the immediate neighbourhood of the town, in the middle of the River Dvina, there were two completely uninhabited islands, or rather large sandbanks, on which stood barely half a dozen dilapidated wooden sheds and poor fishermen's huts. When the new regulation of The Revolutionary Soviet of the Riga War Area became known, the citizens who were affected by it were seized with despair. The Soviet chiefs invented yet other ways and means to achieve the "complete physical destruction of the bourgeoisie", which was their "ideal and ultimate goal". Comrade Danishevsky, the People's Commissary for War, came forward with various fresh proposals.