Office of the Historian

860P.00/298: Telegram

The Minister in Latvia (Wiley) to the Secretary of State

Riga, July 19, 1940—3 p.m.
[Received 3:29 p.m.]

207. Yesterday the population was turned out en masse to celebrate the “victory” of the Toilers.85 The proceedings were most orderly and well-organized with strategically placed groups of cheer leaders. The majority of the placards carried slogans demanding the incorporation of Latvia as the fourteenth Republic of the Union. Following a speech by the Prime Minister attacking the previous regime and praising that of the Soviets, a Communist speaker harangued the crowd, proclaiming the “unanimous demand of the Latvian workers, peasants, and intellectual toilers to incorporate Latvia into the great Fatherland”. Vyshinski86 also spoke calling on Latvians to turn their faces eastward.

The new Parliament is to meet at noon on Sunday. I have been officially invited to attend but shall be indisposed.

A Communist source believed reliable states that the new emphasis on Anschluss with the Soviet Union is the result of orders based on a decision reached in Moscow 2 days ago. Previously, local Communists did not believe that Anschluss would take place. They attribute this new development to an “international agreement”, meaning, I suppose, Germany.

Wiley
  1. Name of the political bloc which had put up the unopposed list of candidates in the election.↩
  2. Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky, in Latvia on special mission.↩