Rezekne
"The Heart of Latgale": destroyed 2/3 in WWII bombing, rebuilt by Soviet dairy industry. 63 km from Russia, half Russian-speaking, largest eastern EU border town.
Rēzekne calls itself "The Heart of Latgale"—and the heart nearly stopped beating in 1944. Soviet air bombing destroyed two-thirds of the city. Of 13,300 pre-war residents, only 5,000 remained by war's end. Among the dead: 5,000 Jews killed in a single day in 1941, erasing what had been over half the population.
The city sits on seven hills, 63 km from the Russian border, at the crossing of two strategic railways: Moscow-Ventspils and Warsaw-St. Petersburg. The Livonian Order built a castle here in 1285 (Rositten). In 1772, the first partition of Poland delivered Rēzekne to the Russian Empire.
Soviet industrialization rebuilt what bombing destroyed. A canned milk plant (1957) and milking equipment factory (1962) drew thousands of Russian workers. Today, roughly half of Rēzekne's 30,000 residents speak Russian. It's the second-densest city in Latvia after Riga, the seventh-largest overall.
By 2026, Rēzekne's strategic position—railway junction, EU-Russia border, Latgalian cultural center—will matter more as Baltic security dynamics intensify.