But I was mainly asking about Latvia. Why 1940? And why Baltic states
They wanted to expand their empire - it's that simple - more people to oppress, more slaves for the GULAG, more resources to loot and exploit.
Sweden was lucky - if Finland had lost the Winter War, then Soviets would probalby try to invade Sweden too.
They were there during WW2 to fight the Nazis and then I suppose just took advantage of the situation.
Until 1941 Nazis and Communists were allies.
There is definitely another side to that story.
Maybe, but there were ethnic cleansing and ethnic Georgian expulsion from Abkhazia and S-Ossetia. (Yes I know that these two countries want independence from Georgia)
Also Russian forces entered in uncontested areas of Georgia and killed civilians there.

I really do not like that they repeat something like that with Latgale.
Finland did quite well in that war, and got a bit greedy and tried to expand their own territory into Russia
In Continuation war they simply took back territories that USSR stole from them after the end of Winter War - And refused to go further despite the fact that Hitler asked them to.

More about language - I previously showed laws that regulate languages here.
As I said - referendum is the only way (we have democracy not authoritatian regime here).
And this summer/autumn radical ultranationalists Vladimir Linderman and Yevgeni Osipov may be starting one - they just need to collect ~150 000 signatures to initiate this referendum.
But this referendum will certainly fail - because they are using retorics like - "Russians! - do not give up - we will show Latvians their place" - no latvian is going to vote for that.
So basically - russians are partly responsible for current situation - you cannot force someone to love you.