Latvia 20 years after independence: Tearing down a Stučka statue

Pēteris Stučka
1865-1932

After the Soviet takeover of Latvia in 1940, Pēteris Stučka was elevated as The Latvian Communist Hero. He was the leader of the short-lived post-World War I Latvian Soviet Republic.

He ended up in Moscow. Stučka was the first chairman of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union. He died in 1932 of natural causes. Had he not, he almost certainly would have been executed in Josef Stalin's Great Purges of the late 1930s. Such was the fate of other prominent Latvian Bolsheviks and the Red Latvian Riflemen.

From 1958 until 1990, the University of Latvia, which Mrs. Marathon Pundit attended, was known as Pēteris Stučka Latvian State University.

Pictured below is the dismantling of the campus Stučka statue that was across the street from Riga Castle where the president of Latvia now lives, which occurred in 1991.

The dismantling of a Pēteris Stučka statue

The central Latvian town of Aizkraukle, founded in 1967, was originally named for Stučka. It's located 10 miles from Mrs. Marathon Pundit's hometown of Sece.

Related posts:

Twenty years ago: Latvia's Barricade Days

Riga Doms and Latvia's Barricade Days

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