A Chronicle of Events

25.03.1968
The CPSU Central Committee Politburo accepts the informative document titled “Regarding the events in Czechoslovakia”. The Central Committee of the Latvian Communist Party (LCP) begins to organize party and work collective meetings about the situation in Czechoslovakia.

26.03.1968
The LCP Central Committee bureau meets and discusses ways of preventing breezes from the Prague Spring from influencing culture. As a result, several theater performances and films are canceled.

18.04.1968
A meeting of LCP employees in which the positions of the CPSU Central Committee general meeting in April are discussed. Yuri Andropov, the head of the USSR Committee for State Security (KGB) presents a lecture. Like the participants of the April CPSU Central Committee meeting, the LCP is also worried about the events in Czechoslovakia and the dissemination of “bourgeois ideology” in Latvia.

19.08.1968
The CPSU Central Committee Politburo confirms an announcement regarding the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The LCP Central Committee bureau also becomes acquainted with it.

21.08.1968
The occupation of Czechoslovakia begins. In its meetings the LCP justifies the occupation. Some opposing voices are heard, too.

09.12.1968
At a meeting of LCP employees and littérateurs the author Alberts Bels proposes the lifting of censorship in Latvia.

28.02.1969
In a joint declaration the dissidents Piotr Grigorenko (Moscow) and Ivan Yahimovich (Latvia) protest the occupation of Czechoslovakia.

13.04.1969
As a protest against the occupation of Czechoslovakia Ilya Rips, a student at the State University of Latvia, sets himself on fire in front of the Freedom Monument in Riga.