In comparison with 1939 the Latvian population had diminished by about 300,000.

Subsequently, the Soviet Union conducted large-scale and systematic actions including murder and mass deportations against the Latvian population.

Ethnic Russians make up less than a fifth of the Latvian population that is eligible to vote.

The Germans were welcomed by the non-Jewish majority portion of the Latvian population of Riga.

"In general, the lifestyle of the Latvian population is unhealthy," says the World Health Organisation.

By the end of the 19th century, there was a considerably large Latvian Russian population.

By 1959 about 400,000 persons arrived from other Soviet republics and the ethnic Latvian population had fallen to 62%.

As a result, the proportion of the ethnic Latvian population within the total population was reduced from 80% in 1935 to 52% in 1989.

Orthodoxy predominates among the Latvian Russian population.

The Latvian population was then subjected to imprisonment, deportations and executions.