[5] In response, local voices such as Johann Georg Eisen von Schwarzenberg[6] and Garlieb Merkel[7] began to advocate for the abolition of serfdom.
In the 1880s, the New Current movement emerged from the national awakening, taking a more explicitly political approach, inspired by the socialist ideas of the time.
When these uprisings were repressed by the landowners, many peasants fled into the woods where they formed partisan detachments known as the "Forest Brothers" and organized to attack wealthy estates and local police.
[12][13] In the wake of Bloody Sunday, a general strike was called in Riga, beginning the 1905 Revolution in Latvia, as Latvian workers began to revolt against both the Russian authorities and German nobility.
[12] By the autumn of 1905, armed conflict between the German nobility and the Latvian peasants began in the rural areas of Vidzeme and Courland.
[12] In response, the Russian Empire declared martial law and began to violently suppress the Latvian revolutionary movement, which anarchists led armed resistance against.
Latvian anarchists that had fled to London continued their revolutionary activities, taking part in a number of bank robberies that culminated in the events of the Tottenham Outrage and the Siege of Sidney Street.
After committing some expropriations, the group established the Latvian Anarchists' Club in a small house, which held reading circles and lectures.
The country eventually regained its independence during the Singing Revolution, which restored liberal democracy after over 50 years of authoritarian rule.