Quote Originally Posted by nulle View Post
Latvians have very mixed opinions about him. Some view his reign as a golden age for Latvia.
But some think that we should not honor him because he destroyed our democracy and gave our country to Staļin without resistance.
We Lithuanians also have mixed oppinions about our pressident Antanas Smetona because he also left Lithuania one day before Russians illegally occupied Lithuania. Anyway, some historians say that there was actually no other choice for him because if Lithuanians tried to fight back against red army then Russians would have made just a terrible mascare in my country. Back then we wasn;t so strong to fight back against Russia. And when when I think about Latvian president's decision it's really understandable why he behaved so because in 1940 06 15 Russia occupied Lithuania and just when red army was everywhe in Lithuania's teritory, then on 16th of June Russia announced ultimatums both for Latvia and Estonia. This way these countries fell like into some kind of traps which Stalin arranged. And it doesn't matter if Latvia and Estonia would have accepted these ultimatums or not, Russia still would have occupied them because these countries were surrounded by huge russian army. So, overall, these Stalin's ocupation plans worked out just perfectly for Russians and then they reached their aim...