People's Parliament

This article is about the 1940 occupation by the Soviet Union puppet legislatures. For the Channel 4 deliberative democracy TV program, see The People's Parliament.

People's Parliament

Latvian: Tautas Saeima
Lithuanian: Liaudies Seimas
History
Preceded byRiigikogu (Estonia)
4th Saeima (Latvia)
Fourth Seimas (Lithuania)
Succeeded bySupreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR
Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR
Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR
Elections
First election
14–15 July 1940

The People's Parliaments or People's Assemblies (Latvian: Tautas Saeima; Lithuanian: Liaudies Seimas) were puppet legislatures put together after the show elections in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to legitimize the occupation by the Soviet Union in July 1940.[1] In all three countries, the elections to the parliaments followed the same script, dictated by functionaries in Moscow and borrowed from the examples of the incorporation of the Belarusian and Ukrainian lands into Soviet Union in the aftermath of the invasion of Poland in 1939.[2]

  1. ^ International Political Science Association. Research Committee of Legislative Specialists; Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (1998). World encyclopedia of parliaments and legislatures. Congressional Quarterly. p. 409. ISBN 1-56802-365-0. In July Soviet authorities held a rigged election for a puppet legislature, the People's Parliament
  2. ^ Senn, Alfred Erich (2007). Lithuania 1940: Revolution from Above. On the Boundary of Two Worlds. Identity, Freedom, and Moral Imagination of the Baltics. Rodopi. p. 205. ISBN 978-90-420-2225-6.