International Front of Workers of the Latvian SSR

The activation of supporters of Latvia's secession from the USSR led to the activation of supporters of the preservation of the Latvian SSR as part of the Soviet Union.

The Interfront was founded on January 7, 1989 as a counterweight to the Latvian Popular Front created on October 8, 1988 . The founding congress in the Riga House of Political Education was attended by 657 delegates and more than 200 members of the press. The delegates represented mainly the industrial republic: factories, technical intelligentsia ^[2] .

Representatives of the Interfront and the Communist Party of Latvia won the election of people's deputies of the USSR in March 1989 in only eight out of 42 constituencies. Viktor Alksnis, elected as a deputy, told the Mandate Commission of the congress on fraud during the creation of constituencies: he pointed out that in violation of article 17 of the Law on the Election of People's Deputies of the USSR, requiring the formation of national-territorial constituencies with an equal number of voters, rural areas of the Latvian SSR were created districts, four times different in numbers - from 28.8 thousand people (308th district) to 127.3 thousand people (290th district). Arithmetically, the average number of constituencies in the republic was to be about 62 thousand people. Thus, the rights of citizens and the working class to elect their deputies were artificially limited, and the majority in the Latvian delegation received deputies elected from small rural districts ^[1] : out of 11 members of the Duma of the People’s Front elected by People’s Deputies of the USSR, 10 ran in these districts. However, this Alksnis statement was left without reaction ^[2] .

In the summer of 1989, the Interfront participated in the creation of the United Workers Front of the USSR.

On December 1, 1989, at a city-wide rally of the Interfront, a demand was made to remove the secretaries J. Vagris, I. Kezbers, J. Oherin from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia, guilty of political bankruptcy of the party in the face of nationalist forces ^[1] .

On December 10-11, 1989, with the participation of Interfront activists, the Forum of the Nations of the Latvian SSR was held.

On February 23, 1989, the Interfront held a procession in Riga against the law on the state language, which gives the Latvian language advantages over the Russian language.

On March 18, 1990, the Interfront took part in the elections to the Supreme Council of the Latvian SSR , the best results were obtained in Riga (supporters of the Interfront and the Communist Party of Latvia won in 23 of the 60 districts of the city) ^[3] .

On May 15, 1990, the Riga OMON dispersed a demonstration by supporters of the Interfront, protesting against the Declaration of Independence of Latvia ^[4] .

On December 15, 1990, the Third Congress of the Interfront asked the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR to introduce direct presidential rule in the republic, but there was no reaction.

At the largest meeting of the Interfront on January 15, 1991, about 10 thousand people gathered at the SKA stadium in Riga. On the same day, the Supreme Council of the Latvian SSR adopted a resolution on the restoration of the rights of citizens of the Republic of Latvia who had such a status on June 17, 1941, and their descendants, and the basic rules of naturalization, which laid the foundation for the emergence of the category of non-citizens in Latvia.

At the rally, a resolution was adopted on the transfer of state power in the republic to the hands of the All-Latvian Committee for Public Salvation (EKOS), which was set up on the eve of the country, which was to form a government. Arnold Klautzen in his book suggested that such a scenario for the transfer of power from the Popular Front was developed in Moscow with the knowledge of Mikhail Gorbachev. However, the decision to transfer power to VKOS remained a declaration ^[2] .

The activities of the IFT were suspended on August 24, 1991 ^[5] , and on September 10 the organization was banned ^[6] by a decision of the Latvian Armed Forces on charges of attempted coup .

Activities in the Interfront after January 13, 1991, in accordance with the current laws of Latvia, are grounds for refusal of repatriation ^[7] , naturalization ^[8] , and for citizens it limits the possibility of being elected to the Sejm ^[9] and municipal councils ^[10] . These restrictions were unsuccessfully challenged twice in the Constitutional Court in 2000 ^[11] and 2006 ^[12] , and with partial success in 2018 ^[13] .

Like the Popular Front, the Interfront advocated democratization , support for perestroika , and the growth of the well-being of the people.

The charter of the organization also included the protection of the social interests of the inhabitants of the republic, the friendship of peoples and the development of all nations and nationalities of Latvia, the development of the economy, “the fight against the manifestations of Stalinism, chauvinism and nationalism, the increase of the political, legal and environmental culture of all residents of Latvia and their national identity, expansion socialist democracy and publicity ” ^[2] .

In a keynote speech at the constituent congress, the head of the organizing committee, vice-rector of the RCIIGA Anatoly Belaichuk also stated the need for intensive study of the Latvian language in the education system from kindergarten to university. He reproached the Latvian Conservatory that education there can be obtained only in the Latvian language, the Union of Composers retorted that students of any nationalities could study there from the moment the university was founded ^[2] , albeit in the Latvian language.

The leaders of the IFT were former plant director, civil engineer Anatoly Georgievich Alekseev and reserve colonel, pilot Igor Valentinovich Lopatin ^[1] . Among the founders of the Interfront was T. A. Zhdanok ^[14] .

Interfront's print media were the Unity newspaper and the Tribuna newsletter in Liepaja . On the Latvian radio, the Interfront once a week on Thursdays released the 15-minute Racurs program, which was censored ^[2] . After the release of the program, negative comments were often aired. So, on December 7, 1989, after the release of Rakurs, a commenter who did not identify himself declared that the Interfront opposed the Latvians and allegedly made a list of Latvians - the leaders of state and party bodies, which should be excluded from the Communist Party. Despite the protests of the authors of Rakursa, the comment was not withdrawn and there was no refutation of the information ^[1] .

Despite the support expressed by the Interfront of the Communist Party of Latvia, its leadership reacted to the creation of the new organization less favorably than to the NFL . At the constituent congress, not the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Latvia, Janis Vagris , but a member of the Central Committee, Chairman of the Supreme Council Anatoly Gorbunov , spoke .

On January 9, 1989, Interfront leaders announced their desire to cooperate with the NFL, to which its chairman, Dainis Ivans, in the Padomju Jaunatne newspaper on January 18 responded with a statement that the activity of opponents was contrary to the interests of the Latvian nation. NFL activists began to represent the Interfront as an enemy, a conservative force that impedes progressive change ^[1] .

The first secretary of the KPL Riga city committee Arnold Klautzen at the plenary meeting on April 13, 1989 linked the activities of the Interfront with such a thing as strikes , which “can only be seen as a manifestation of extreme extremism, alien to our socialist state ... Those who call for a strike will not find support from us ".

In December 1989, a delegation of the Interfront tried to find support in Moscow by meeting with USSR people's deputies by contacting the Central Committee of the CPSU , where it was allowed only to the staff of one of the departments. ^[one]

In 1990, Minister of Culture Raimonds Pauls stated from the rostrum of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Latvia that the cultural inhabitants of Latvia authorized him to demand that the Supreme Council recognize the activities of Interfront leaders Igor Lopatin and Anatoly Alekseev as undesirable for Latvia, and he would ask the Russian Federation to allow them to register in Pytalovsky district of the Pskov region ^[2] .

After the demarcation in the Communist Party of Latvia, when Alfred Rubiks was elected its first secretary in April 1990, her cooperation with Interfront as an ally began ^[1] .

• International Workers' Movement of the Estonian SSR

• "Materials of the forum of the peoples of the Latvian SSR on December 10 and 11, 1989." - Avots, Riga 1989. ISBN 5401004346
• Klautzen A.P. Song revolution. How Latvian nationalists defeated the red Latvian shooters - M .: Svet, 2018, ISBN 978-5-6040-7298-1 - pp. 205—239

• Interview (inaccessible link from 05-24-2013 [2328 days] - history , copy ) of the member of the board of the Popular Front of Latvia, Jānis Škapars, partly about the IFT (Latvian)
• Video from the founding congress of IFT 1989.
• Gubin M. Secrets of the Interfront: a brief history of the terrible organization Sputnik, 01/09/2019
• Kudryavtsev I. “People of the Interfront” - Panorama No. 8, September 1989.
• Kruglov T. “Guilty of defending the Homeland, or Russian” - InfoRos, Moscow 2008. ISBN 9785903675050 580 p.
• Vladimir Arkhangelsky “Voice of the Russian Baltic States” - “Tomorrow” on April 18, 2012.