Latvia
sovereign state in northeastern Europe
Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to the southeast and shares a maritime border with Sweden to the west. Latvia covers an area of 64,573 km2 (24,932 sq mi), with a population of 1.83 million. The country has a temperate seasonal climate. Its capital and largest city is Riga. Latvians, who are the titular nation and comprise 65.5% of the country's population, belong to the ethnolinguistic group of the Balts and speak Latvian. Russians are the most prominent minority in the country, at almost a quarter of the population; 37.7% of the population speak Russian as their native tongue.
After centuries of Teutonic, Swedish, Polish-Lithuanian, and Russian rule, the independent Republic of Latvia was established on 18 November 1918 after breaking away from the Russian Empire in the aftermath of World War I. The country became increasingly autocratic after the coup in 1934 established the dictatorship of Kārlis Ulmanis. Latvia's de facto independence was interrupted at the outset of World War II, beginning with forcible incorporation into the Soviet Union, followed by the invasion and occupation by Nazi Germany in 1941 and the re-occupation by the Soviets in 1944, which formed the Latvian SSR for the next 45 years.
The public source identifies “Latvia” as sovereign state in northeastern Europe. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Latvia, sovereign and state.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Latvia”, the useful work is to connect “sovereign state in northeastern Europe” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q211. VIAF identifies the subject as 237710820. The Library of Congress control number is n80150219. Authority coordinates are 57.000, 25.000. 1 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1918, 1934, 1941 and 1944.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Latvia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.