During World War II, six eastern civil parishes – Purvmalas (Bakovo), Linavas (Linovo), Kacēnu (Kachanovo), Upmalas (Upmala), Gauru (Gavry) and Augšpils (Vyshgorodok), as well as the town of Abrene (a total area of 1293.6 square kilometers with 35,524 inhabitants) – were annexed to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1944.

"Abrene region" in current usage very often treats the area joined to Russia as though it had comprised the entire district, which can be misleading since nearly three quarters of the former district are in Latvia, but many treatments of the transfer of the eastern pagasti by citing interbellum demographic statistics for the whole region, rather than by civil parish.

The Abrene region was long a point of contact and friction between the Finno-Ugric, Baltic, and Slavic languages, cultures, tribes, and countries.

The Balts east of a slight ridge at Viļaka were gradually russified from the 15–16th centuries, but the philologists August Johann Gottfried Bielenstein and Kārlis Mīlenbahs, conducting linguistic field research in the area in the late 19th and early 20th century, found that many people, called "Russian Latvians" by the local Russians, still spoke the High Latvian dialect.

The historian Edgars Andersons explains (in Latvijas vēsture 1914–1920 [Stockholm: Daugava, 1976]):"Especially in the north, the Russians had agreed to the Latvians' strategic demands, not complaining about the ethnographic principle having been disregarded.

The territory was subjected to forcible collectivization, accompanied by rampant robbery and destruction, including the demolition of farmsteads and mass mortality among livestock.

[citation needed] Officials from Russia proper replaced local administrators even at the village level, and even some who had fought for the Soviets were mistreated.

The 4 May 1990 declaration of independence (reinstating the 1920 constitution subject to a transitional period) by the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR affirmed that the restored Republic of Latvia would base its relations with the Russian Federation on the treaty principle.

Key players in post-war politics in the West never recognised or at least questioned the legality of the incorporation of Latvia into the USSR, but there is pressure on both countries to resolve the issue.

The former residents also complain of the difficulty of visiting their family graves, asking that the Latvian and Russian governments facilitate border procedures.