The Latvian Riflemen received orders to arrest the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. Their preliminary duty was to liberate Dzierżyński from the hands of Left Socialist-Revolutionaries who had taken him hostage. The Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic was clearly not yet a properly-functioning police state if this could happen to the Cheka’s chairman.
—Robert Service, The Penguin History of Modern Russia, (Great Britain: Penguin Books, 2020), 103.
This statue is not far from the river, in front of the Occupation museum, and is surrounded by tourists taking photos of the statue, photos of each other in front of the „Riga“ statue. I very much doubt many visitors have much of an inkling what part the Riflemen played in consolidating Bolshevik power in the early Soviet state.
