Latvia is a small Baltic Republic that was freed from the "Iron Curtain" in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. Although Latvians have their own language, and consider themselves a separate ethnic group from the surrounding Russians and Poles, Latvia itself has seldom enjoyed independence. The region came under the control of the crusading Germanic Livonian Brothers of the Sword in the eleventh century, and for centuries was dominated by German land owners and merchants. Control over the nation and its people have been exchanged between competing Germans, Swedes, Poles, and Russians numerous times through peace treaties and acts of...

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