23 August - commemoration for the victims of Stalinism and Nazism

On 23 August 1989, 1.5 million people in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia joined hands to form a 660km long human chain – the Baltic Way, to commemorate the criminal Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, known also as the Hitler–Stalin Pact.

Its Non-Aggression Treaty provided not only for mutual neutrality, but also for important economic and cultural ties between the two ideologically hostile states. With the Secret Protocol of the pact, Hitler and Stalin divided Eastern Europe into their spheres of influence from Finland to Bessarabia, and Latvia landed in the Soviet sphere of influence. As a result of the Pact, Latvia and other countries lost their independence, but at the European level it paved the way for the Second World War.

In Latvia, 23 August is a day of commemoration for the victims of Stalinism and Nazism.