TOL STORE BY COUNTRY "Latvia"

Valdis Lumans provides an authoritative, balanced, and comprehensive account of one of the most complex, and conflicted, arenas of the Second World War.
Struggling against both Germany and the Soviet Union, Latvia emerged as an independent nation state after the First World War. In 1940, the Soviets occupied neutral Latvia, deporting or executing more than 30,000 Latvians before the Nazis invaded in 1941 and installed a puppet regime. The Red Army expelled the Germans in 1944 and reincorporated Latvia as a Soviet Republic. By the end of the war, an estimated 180,000 Latvians fled to the West. The Soviets would deport at least another 100,000.

Drawing on a wide range of sources—many brought together here for the first time—Lumans synthesizes political, military, social, economic, diplomatic, and cultural history. He moves carefully through traditional sources, many of them partisan, to scholarship emerging since the end of the Cold War, to confront such issues as political loyalties, military collaboration, resistance, capitulation, the Soviet occupation, anti-Semitism, and the Latvian role in the Holocaust.

The Rings of My Tree: A Latvian Woman's Journey

A young Latvian woman is caught up in a whirlwind of war forcing her into an unnatural migration for life. Her life is saved by good timing, acts of kindness, her own passivity, and a stranger in uniform. A story of extraordinary strength and honesty. An insight into daily living inside Nazi Germany for those forced to fly before they had wings of courage.

The EU's Transformative Power: Europeanization through Conditionality in Central and Eastern Europe

Between 1989 and 2004, the EU's conditionality for membership transformed Central and East Europe. The EU had enormous potential power over the whole range of domestic politics in the candidate countries. However, the EU was able to use that power at a few key points in the process leading to their accession. The EU's long-term influence worked primarily through soft power and through voluntary rather than coercive means. During the membership preparations, the EU built many different routes of influence into the candidate countries' domestic policy-making through 'Europeanization'. The Central and East Europeans voluntarily took on the Union's norms and methods, guided by the European Commission, in a massive transfer of policies and institutions. However, the EU missed important opportunities to effect change as well. The EU's Transformative Power explores in detail how the EU used its influence to control the movement of people across Europe, through both coercive use of conditionality and voluntary methods of Europeanization.

Minority rights is an important issue in all modern states, but for those countries hoping to join the European Union the protection of minorities is a key condition for success in the accession process.This book provides a comprehensive assessment of minority rights in Central and Eastern Europe, covering all the countries of the region that have joined the EU since 2004, including Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. For each country it outlines the major developments since 1989, highlights the salient issues in minority rights politics, assesses the actual implementation of policies and legislation, explores the roles that domestic and international factors have played - including the impact of the EU succession process - and discusses whether there have been any major changes once EU accession was secured. Overall, this book is important for all those interested in European integration and minority rights politics, as well as for specialists on Central and Eastern Europe.

This interdisciplinary volume explores the discursive construction of post-1989 social change in Central and Eastern Europe. Encompassing a set of national case studies on countries such as Czech Republic, former East-Germany, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia or other Balkan states, the volume explores processes of post-communist transformation from the point of view of accelerating and unique dynamics of linguistic and discursive practices. Highlighting the micro-macro link, those practices are examined within – as well as at the cross-section of – the public domain (in politics, media, religion or civil society) and the private sphere (within individual experiences of post-communism). Providing in-depth, systematic analysis of discourse in different situations, contributions to the volume analyse diverse forms of social, political, cultural, economic or institutional transformation in post-communist contexts. The analysis points to several differences and similarities between ways in which discourse influences the unprecedented social change across Central and Eastern Europe.

Eu Labour Migration Since Enlargement: Trends, Impacts and Policies

Focusing on labour movements in Latvia, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom, this book examines the experiences and characteristics of these countries in the run up to, and particularly since, EU accession in May 2004 when full access to the labour market was suspended at the discretion of the new member states. A team of national labour economists and migration experts provide an overview of the economic and labour market dynamics faced by EU member states. They also analyze and present data on the numbers of workers that have moved, along with their characteristics and the effects on the labour markets they have joined - as well as those they have left. Separate contributions by policy experts detail the responses by governments, employers and trade unions in the countries of origin and destination, examining whether or not the challenges raised by the movement of labour have been met.