Latvian Provisional National Council calls for independence

On 30 January 1918 (17 January Old Style) the Latvian Provisional National Council, meeting secretly in Petrograd, adopted by 23 votes to one a resolution stating that “Latvia must be an independent, democratic republic, uniting Courland, Livonia and Latgale”. The Council invoked the right of nations to self-determination, “recognised and proclaimed by the democracy of the whole world”. It protested against any attempt to partition Latvia and against any peace that would violate that right. It also condemned the “falsification of the will of the nation” under the pressure of occupation and war. It was an answer to the negotiations at Brest, where the Germans claimed that the lands they occupied had separated themselves from Russia, while in occupied Courland the German military authorities and activists of the Baltic Germans were preparing to bind the country closely to the Reich.

Chronologies of the war sometimes state that Latvia declared independence on 12 January 1918. We have found no Latvian act of that date. Latvian studies link the first call for full independence precisely to the second session of the Council, which met from 28 to 31 January. Most sources date the resolution to 30 January. Materials of the Latvian State Chancellery give 31 January, the last day of the session.

The Council had been formed two months earlier. From 29 November to 2 December 1917 representatives of Latvian parties, the land councils of Livonia and Latgale, and refugee and soldiers’ organisations met at Valka, a small town on the border with Estonia. The Bolsheviks and the left-wing Social Democrats refused to take part. The first session proclaimed the unification of all lands inhabited by Latvians and the autonomy of Latvia, whose constitution was to be determined by a future Constituent Assembly. Some delegates wanted to proclaim independence at once, but the Latvian Farmers’ Union opposed this. Voldemārs Zāmuēls was elected chairman of the Council. On 1 January 1918 the Bolshevik executive committee of soviets that ruled the unoccupied part of Latvia, the Iskolat, which also had its seat in Valka, banned the Council’s activity. Its board went on meeting secretly in Zāmuēls’s flat, and for the second session the delegates went to Petrograd, where it was easier to hide.

A few days earlier the Russian Constituent Assembly had met in Petrograd. The Latvian deputy Jānis Goldmanis (PL) managed, during its only sitting, to say that the Latvian question had become an international one and that Latvia’s future could no longer be decided by Russia alone. The dispersal of the assembly by the Bolsheviks, in which Red Latvian Riflemen also took part, convinced the wavering Latvian democrats that they had nothing more to hope for in Russia. At the session, chaired in turn by Arveds Bergs, Zigfrīds Meierovics and the priest Jāzeps Rancāns (PL), the foreign affairs department reported on its talks with foreign missions. France showed goodwill towards the Latvians, Sweden indifference. Meierovics, the future foreign minister, argued that independence had to be demanded, but that proclaiming the state immediately would be unwise. “A state needs territory, a people and power. We lack power,” he said. The Bolsheviks would arrest any Latvian government, and the Latvians did not even have the forces at the disposal of the Finns and the Ukrainians. The Council therefore confined itself to a declaration of its aim and decided to seek support from the Entente powers.

The resolution did not change the situation on the ground. In February, after the breakdown of the negotiations at Brest, the Germans occupied the whole of Livonia and Latgale, and the Bolsheviks, as they withdrew, carried Zāmuēls off to Pskov as a hostage. In March the Baltic Germans proclaimed in Courland a duchy under the sceptre of Kaiser Wilhelm II. The Council continued to work underground, and in July sent Meierovics to London. On 11 November 1918 Britain recognised it de facto, and on 18 November the new People’s Council proclaimed the independent Republic of Latvia in Riga. Some Latvian politicians and historians nevertheless consider that the true declaration of Latvian independence was adopted in Petrograd on 30 January 1918.