The June Deportations

In 1939 the Soviet Union entered into a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. In addition to the agreement to not attack each over the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact included the Secret Protocol. In this protocol Germany and the Soviet Union effectively divided up Europe among themselves, deciding which countries they would allow the other to invade.

Soon after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact both Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland and the Soviet Union annexed Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and parts of Romania. A year after the occupation and annexation of the Baltic states the Soviet Union began deporting on mass people deemed 'anti-Soviet' from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, occupied Poland and Moldavia. The 'June Deportation' saw tens of thousands of citizens arrested and deported from the Baltic States to the Gulag or to other inhospitable Soviet regions. 

 

The interactive map Deportēto karte shows the home addresses of the thousands of Latvians deported by the Soviet Union on 14 June 1941 and in March 1949. Zooming in on a city, such as the capital Riga, on the map reveals the horrendous scale of the Soviet deportations, with hardly a street or neighborhood block unaffected by the deportations.

If you live in Latvia you can see which of the homes in your street had people forcibly removed and deported. You can even click on the individual map markers to reveal the names and ages of the people deported in your street. In total around 60,000 inhabitants of Latvia were deported by the Soviet Union.

A Short History of Industry in Latvia

Industrial Heritage for Tourism is an interactive map of historical industrial sites in Estonia and Latvia. The map provides a guide to early industrial factories, mills and other industrial sites which are now open to visitors in both countries.

You can filter the locations featured on the interactive map simply be selecting an icon from the map menu. The categories of industrial heritage centers shown on the map are mills, water towers, factories, lighthouses and railways. I really like the categorized map markers on the map which make it easy to select an industrial heritage site by type of center. I also like the 360 degree panoramic images which allow you to take a virtual tour of each location.

What I don't like about the map is that it seems designed to deter you from visiting any of the sites in person. Strangely for an interactive map designed to promote tourism Industrial Heritage for Tourism doesn't seem to want to help you physically visit any of the locations. The map doesn't provide addresses, driving directions or opening hours for any of the historical sites. The calendar section does have contact numbers for a very few of the industrial heritage sites. However, if you do want to visit any of the featured locations, it looks like you will have to do a bit of Googling first to find the site's official website (if there is one).

Mapping Migration Flow

Migration in Latvia is a wonderfully designed interactive map which visualizes the country's internal migration flow. The map was developed by Latvia's Central Statistics Bureau.

The overall choropleth view of Latvia visualizes the number of people who have left each town and region in Latvia since the year 2000. You can also toggle this choropleth view to show the number of people who have moved into each town and region since the turn of the century.

Select a town or region on the map and flow lines are added to the map showing where people from that area moved to between 2000-2018. You can also switch this to view instead the inward migration flow of people into the selected town or region. You can also switch to view the migration flow between three different periods of time; during the last 18 years, the last 7 years or just the migration flow in the last year.

The map sidebar also breaks down some of the migration flow data for the selected town or region. This analysis includes a list of the top 30 locations where people moved to or from. It also includes a breakdown of the number of people who moved into the area during the selected time period and the number of residents who moved out of the area.

Also See

American Migration - visualizing migration flow to and from American cities
US Migration Flow Map - a map showing migration flow between US states
Population Explorer - visualizing the migration flow of towns & regions in New South Wales, Australia

The Drone Alphabet

Latvian mobile phone company Tele2 has created a Latvian Alphabet using letters discovered in the shapes of the buildings, roads and rivers of Latvia. You can use this Latvian Alphabet to send a message to your friends entirely written in aerial images of Latvia.

Tele2 has searched aerial imagery captured by drones looking for shapes that resemble letters of the alphabet. They have been able to complete the whole alphabet using these aerial images of the Latvian landscape. Latvian Alphabet includes a fun application which you can use to type and view your own messages written in this new drone alphabet.

Of course there is nothing new in searching for the shapes of letters in aerial imagery. Rhett Dashwood's - Google Maps Typography, is a few years old now. Rhett's alphabet is made up of letter shapes discovered in geographical features in Google Maps aerial view. There is also Earth Clock, a digital clock assembled from numbers found in aerial views of the Earth (although like my old digital clocks it seems to be struggling to display properly now).

The Riga Ghetto Street View Tour

The Riga Ghetto and Holocaust in Latvia Museum has created a harrowing virtual tour of the Riga Ghetto using Google Maps Street View. This guided narrated tour allows you to explore the modern day streets of Riga while learning about life in the Riga ghetto under Nazi rule.

The Walk Among Memories tour is narrated by Holocaust survivor Yakob Basner and includes survivor testimonies provided by the USC Shoah Foundation. You can navigate through the tour by using the arrows on the Street View images, alternatively you can use the inset map, the 'next' button or the links in the map side-panel to jump to locations in the tour.

Street View Arrives in Estonia and Latvia

Raekoja Plats, Tallinn

Street View has arrived in Estonia and Latvia. Both countries seem to now have almost blanket Street View coverage on Google Maps.


House of Blackheads, Riga


Tartu Townhall

Latvian Taxi Fare Calculator

eTaxi.lv

eTaxi.lv is a great Google Maps based taxi fare calculator for Latvia.

To use the taxi fare calculator just enter your starting address and your destination. eTaxi.lv will then display the optimum route for your journey on Google Maps and display predicted fares of all the Latvian taxi companies based on their normal charges.

eTaxi.ly even gives you the phone numbers for each of the listed taxi companies.

Via: NeoGeo.lv

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Latvian Google Maps Mashups

NeoGeo.lv

NeoGeo.lv is a great website for any Latvian map fans. The site has produced a number of Google Maps mashups related to Latvia, including:

• Map of Latvian Actors Birthplaces
• Sea Level Rise Prediction Map
• Funny Latvian Place Names
• What Would Happen if a Meteor Fell to Earth?

As well as producing a large number of Google Maps about Latvia the site also includes a number of Google Maps tools useful for Latvian Google Maps developers. In particular the Co-ordinates Finder Map should prove invaluable to any Latvian Google Maps developers as it allows you to find the latitude and longitude co-ordinates for any location (an English language version will be available soon).

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