Soviet troops freeing Riga from Nazis and the arrest of a leading intellectual are remembered in tonight’s Historama.
Soviet Union army pushes Nazis out of Baltic countries
On this day in 1944, the Soviet army liberated Riga from fascist occupation.
The capital of Latvia severely suffered from the Nazis.
In total, over 300,000 civilians were slaughtered. Almost all of its Jewish population was killed.
More than 150,000 Soviet soldiers lost their lives in order to free the Baltic states.
Read more on this event in Russian history
Russia’s most outstanding and complex poet gets arrested
Today in 1938, Osip Mandelstam arrived in a labor camp in the Far East.
This was the second time the great Russian poet was arrested.
Mandelstam was accused of counter-revolutionary activities. Actually, all he had done was write a poem condemning Stalin.
Two months later, Mandelstam died in the Vladivostok camp from typhus. He was 47.
Read more about Osip Mandelstam on Russiapedia