ABSTRACT
In the last months of Nazi rule, the morale of the German administration suffered repeated body blows as draft avoidance and desertion deprived it of the Latvian collaborators on which it had once relied. Without this support the partisans, both pro-Soviet and nationalist, became increasingly successful, while Soviet air raids inflicted increasing damage on the region. Riecken had no choice but to evacuate, as the Red Army and the Sovietoperative group entered Daugavpils. Although the Communist Party had been planning its return for several months, it had had great difficulty finding the cadres it needed, scouring the Soviet Union for those with even the most tenuous connection with Latvia. The result was that in Daugavpils city the new administration was predominantly Russian and showed little continuity with the 1940-1 regime. This was less pronounced in the case of Daugavpils district, but all analyses of key personnel showed clearly the degree of Russian dominance. This caused some bitterness among Latvian communists, and prompted some half-hearted measures to redress the balance, but propaganda about the Latvian nature of the new regime could not hide the fact that even Latvian communists had been excluded from the key security posts they once dominated.
