ABSTRACT
In the year 1919, the Red plague, with its inseparable attendants–terror, hunger, sickness and death–ravaged, tormented and devastated the city of Riga. And after a Red rule lasting hardly more than ten weeks Riga literally presented the picture of a place which had been visited by some all-destroying natural catastrophe or malignant epidemic. The Red Army having requisitioned every horse that had not been slaughtered and eaten, the coffins even of prominent citizens could no longer be transported in hearses, but had to be drawn in carts by members of the family or by paid cemetery attendants. The Reds and their followers had installed themselves in the finest houses in the town. They took up their abode in the ancient castle, in the noble Ritterhaus, the headquarters of the Livonian nobility, in the historic club of the Black Heads, and in the best hotels.
