Baltic States – CIS, Financial Services, History, Latvia, Legislation

The committee will be working for about five years, Pazdere explained. This year, the government has allocated about EUR 35,000, while the amount of funding for the next year could be about EUR 50,000. The money will be spent on preparation of legal documents, development of the necessary databases and methodologies, Pazdere and chairman of the committee, Edvins Snore (All for Latvia! – For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK) indicated. The committee's members are not remunerated for their work on the committee.

Pazdere said that during the Soviet rule, Latvian residents lost about 10 million years of human life, thus it is necessary to create a methodology to convert man-hours into economic units. Snore said that it is also necessary to calculate losses caused by draft into the Soviet military service where a large number of residents were mutilated or killed. Russia is responsible for this as the legal heir to the Soviet Union.

When asked whether the committee is doing a pointless job in trying to receive compensations, Snore said – if a criminal denies his or her wrongdoings, it does not mean that society should accept it. Pazdere, on the other hand, said that calculations are needed so that both Latvian residents and international society would know the exact amount of losses.