Museum of the Occupation of Latvia 

  
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A private museum in Riga about the occupation of Latvia by the USSR in 1940/41 and 1944 to 1991 as well as the Nazi German occupation during WWII in between the two Soviet occupations.
 
The original museum building has been undergoing refurbishment for many years; at one point it was scheduled to reopen in 2018, but by 2020 this still hasn't happened. In the meantime the temporary stand-in that I visited in April 2014 remains open. It might be that I'll return to Riga in the summer of 2021, and if so I'll try to find out what the current situation is. UPDATE: at that time it was still housed at the temporary location, but now, as of November 2021, the exhibition is finally moving back to its refurbished permanent location, to re-open in spring 2022. 
 
The official full name of the museum is “Museum of the Occupation of Latvia 1940-1991”, but I often refer to it simply as Occupation Museum for short. It has to be noted, however, that it is indeed about both the Soviet and the Nazi German occupations and thus more balanced than its counterpart in Vilnius, the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights, which was formerly misleadingly named “Genocide Victims Museum”, and also somewhat more so than its sister institution in Tallinn.
 
The Riga version is run as a private, independent institution that relies on donations alone (i.e. no admission fee is charged – again in contrast to the other two Baltic museums on this theme). It was started in 1993 in the former Riflemen museum in the Old Town. Initially it covered only the first Soviet occupation of 1940-41, but was gradually expanded to cover the whole period up to Latvia's regaining independence in 1991.
 
The original location of the museum is currently undergoing a complete overhaul and an extension is being built. For the last few years, the museum was thus moved into temporary premises at the former US embassy. UPDATE: after the refurbishment of the original building had dragged on and on far beyond schedule, it has finally been completed and the exhibition in November 2021 started being moved there; it is now set to re-open at some point in spring 2022. 
 
So what I saw in April 2014 was still the interim stand-in version of the museum exhibition, and in some ways it showed. It can be expected that the new museum will be substantially more state of the art in the commodification of its topic, including things like a gulag barrack mock-up and plenty more multimedia elements and such like.  
 
In the meantime you can already explore a 'virtual' version of the museum online (linked from the museum's official website – external link, opens in a new window). But this electronic version cannot replace a visit to the real thing that is in the making. I will therefore have to go back and check out the new museum once it's actually finally opened its doors.
 
 
What there is to see: NOTE that the following text is about the temporary stand-in version of the museum exhibition that was set up at a different location while the original location is undergoing refurbishment. UPDATE: this has now finally been completed; the new permanent exhibition is scheduled to open some time in spring 2022.
 
When I went to Riga in April 2014, what I saw was a somewhat dry, mainly text-and-photo-panel-based exhibition with only few artefacts or multimedia elements.
 
The old-fashioned text-heavy approach was, however, counterbalanced by the fact that the texts were not overwhelmingly long or complex, and the translations into English were generally very good too, so it was all quite digestible.
   
Content-wise the exhibition kicked off with the obvious bit of “prehistory” that led to the first Soviet occupation, namely the brief inter-war period of independence that was ended by the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, by which Hitler and Stalin divided up the lands between their two empires amongst each other. So once Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west, starting WWII, the USSR moved in from the other side to take over the Baltic States and eastern parts of Poland.
 
The Soviet take-over wasn't so much a full-on military invasion, but rather a powerful bullying into submission. Officially, Latvia actually joined the Soviet Union “voluntarily”. In practice, though, it constituted an act of cultural imperialism. And not only that. Some 15,000 Latvians were deported to Siberia in 1941.
 
A second wave of even more massive deportations then followed in 1949 during the second Soviet occupation, still during the Stalin era. Naturally, the topic of the deportations and the fate of the deported in gulags in Russia thus forms a main focus of the museum exhibition.
 
However, it also leaves substantial room for the coverage of the occupation by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944, including its worst aspect: the Holocaust. In just three years, the Nazis wiped out over 90% of the Latvian Jewish population.
 
While the participation of Latvians in these atrocities is acknowledged, the exhibition does still try to play this aspect down a little e.g. by eagerly contrasting it with the good deeds of those who helped Jews (cf. Janis Lipke memorial). But at least some degree of Latvian involvement is covered.
 
Understandably, the 46 years of the second Soviet occupation are given more space. Sub-topics covered here, other than deportations and gulags, are forced collectivization and general Sovietization, both economic and cultural.
 
The descriptions of these Soviet policies are contrasted by an in-depth coverage of resistance, ranging from partisan warfare, especially up to the mid-1950s, to cultural dissidents who rather used the pen to lend force to their protests.
 
The following section of the museum focuses on the rebirth of national identity in Latvia in the 1980s, in the wake of glasnost and perestroika, and the formation of the Popular Front. The equivalent developments in the other two Baltic countries, Lithuania and Estonia, are also covered, in particular of course the moment when on 23 August 1989 the three peoples joined hands to form the human chain all the way from Vilnius to Tallinn that's become known as the Baltic Way.
 
Next comes the critical phase of the early 1990s when Latvia actively tried to break away from the USSR, triggering a military response in January and August 1991. A documentary film shows footage of the Riga Barricades (see Barricades Museum) of that time. The violence of 13 January at the Vilnius TV Tower is covered too in this context.
 
The exhibition naturally leads to the climax of Latvia finally achieving independence in 1991 but also briefly comments on the aftermath and complications in the initial post-Soviet phase, including the immense economic difficulties as well as the demographic impact the Soviet era had made on Latvia. By 1989 only just about half of the population was actually Latvian. To this day, the presence and integration of the large ethnic Russian population in the country remains a delicate issue.
 
At the end of the exhibition an interactive screen allowed visitors a kind of preview of the new exhibition in the making at the original location of the museum.
 
All in all, I found the Riga version of a museum covering the occupation history of the Baltics on the one hand to benefit by a somewhat more balanced and comprehensive approach in its narrative, but on the other hand suffering from a distinct dearth of original artefacts and a general dryness of the presentation.
 
However, it is to be expected that the all-new exhibition (see above) will aim to rectify such shortcomings. Once I've seen this new incarnation of the Riga Museum of Occupation I will report back in detail here.  
 
 
Location: currently in a temporary home in the former US embassy at 7 Raiņa bulvāris, which skirts the former bastions to the east of Riga's Old Town.
 
The original (and future) museum building is inside the Old Town between the House of the Blackheads and the Riflemen monument (see under Riga). Address: 1 Latviešu strēlnieku laukums.  
 
Google maps locators:
 
temporary museum: [56.95305, 24.11155]
 
original and future location: [56.9471, 24.1063]
 
 
Access and costs: easy to get to, free/by voluntary donation.
 
Details: Both locations of the museum are very central and thus easy to get to. The temporary exhibition on Raiņa boulevard is just a few steps to the north-west of the Freedom Monument, which itself forms a kind of centre point of Riga's city centre.
 
The future permanent exhibition in the museum's refurbished original location will again be right in the middle of the Old Town, just behind one of its prime landmark sights, the House of the Blackheads.
 
As long as you are staying in a halfway central place in Riga, either location will be walkable.   
 
To get to the temporary museum by public transport you can use a wide range of buses or trolleybuses that go down Raiņa boulevard, or else get one of the trams (5-7, 9) that stop at the National Theatre round the corner.  
 
The permanent exhibition's original location can be reached by one of the trams (2, 4, 5, 10) that go along the river boulevard and stop at Rātslaukums.
 
Opening times: daily from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. between May and September; in the winter months the museum is open only to 5 p.m. and remains closed altogether on Mondays. UPDATE November 2021: the museum is currently CLOSED while it is being moved to its permanant location in the Old Town; scheduled to re-open in spring 2022.
 
Admission free – or rather; “by voluntary donation”, as a guideline you could take the admission fees at the other two museums of its type in Estonia and Lithuania, which charge 5 EUR and and 2 EUR, respectively.
 
A small fee for photography is levied, nominally at least, going by the sign on the door, though I was somehow let off without paying extra for bringing a camera. Maybe they simply forgot.
 
Guided tours are offered as well (and are apparently popular – during my visit there were at least three groups being guided through the museum at the same time). Rates vary according to group size, from 2.25 EUR per person (in groups over 11 pax), 3 EUR (4-10 pax) to 10 EUR (for small groups of 3 or couples and individual visitors).
 
 
Time required: I spent just under two hours in the temporary exhibition (when the visit was slowed down a bit by the large number of visitors inside the exhibition, including several guided tours, so there was some waiting time involved). How long the new permanent exhibition will require remains to be seen, but I would estimate also about two hours or maybe slightly more.   
 
 
Combinations with other dark destinations: see under Riga.
 
 
Combinations with non-dark destinations: see under Riga.