La Lettonie est l’un des derniers pays indépendants à avoir été rattachés à l’Union soviétique. Elle n’est annexée qu’en 1940 – en conséquence de la définition des « sphères d’intérêts » soviétiques issue du Pacte Ribbentrop-Molotov, tout autant que de la menaçante puissante allemande en Europe. Elle connaît une soviétisation originale, contrastée, violente, profondément liée aux circonstances de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. L’invasion, puis l’occupation allemande interviennent un an à peine après l’annexion. La vision d’une collaboration de masse, les potentiels de résistance décuplés par le conflit, l’ampleur de la Shoah aussi sont autant de facteurs bouleversant considérablement le processus d’uniformisation avec le reste de l’URSS. En 1944, l’Armée rouge reconquiert une république qui lui est profondément hostile. Parallèlement, durant la guerre, l’URSS a formé les futurs cadres de la république restaurée.De 1939 à 1949, le processus d’homogénéisation se dissout dans une éternelle guerre et sortie de guerre, marquée notamment par la guérilla antisoviétique, et les mesures d’abord tâtonnantes, puis radicales prises par le régime stalinien. Ma thèse suit un cadre chronologique, afin de cerner les ruptures et les tragédies qui marquent l’espace et ses populations. Mais certaines continuités se dégagent, malgré les immenses fractures temporelles, rapides et incessantes de cette époque. A travers la mobilité institutionnelle et humaine, en croisant histoire politique et histoire sociale, étude de l’administration, de la répression et des mouvements de population, se dégage la singularité d’une république « occidentale » de l’Union. / Latvia was one of the last independent countries to be forcibly become a “Soviet Republic”. It was annexed only in 1940, as a consequence of the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, as well as the growing German threat in Europe. The sovietization that occurred afterwards was uncommon and violent. The German invasion and occupation of Latvia occurred a year after the annexation. During the war, the Soviet leaders elaborated an image of a “rebel” territory (because of the collaboration with the German occupiers, the Holocaust, and the growing anti-Soviet resistance movement). In 1944, the Red Army recovered an hostile and quite illegitimate republic. As the same time, most of the future leaders of the Soviet Latvian republic had been formed in non-occupied Russia.From 1939 to 1949, the homogenization process came along with a never-ending war and “aftermath of war”. This period was particularly characterized by the anti-Soviet guerilla, and by the changing Soviet politics towards “a new territory” (from hesitation to radicalization). The PhD dissertation follows the chronological frames of those changes, in order to insist on the huge breaks and tragedies that reached the territory and its people. Thanks to the analysis of the institutional and human motilities, thanks to the methods of both political and social history, I focus on three main dimensions: the constant turn-over in the “cadres” of the Republic, the specificities of the Stalinist repression, and the population displacements. Those aspects draw the peculiarities of the “Soviet Western borderland”.

From the Wold of Business to the World of Planned Distribution A Look into the Development of Czech Consumer Cooperatives: 1945 - 1956 (Ústí nad Labem Region) The dissertation deals with changes in the content, forms and roles of the Czech consumer co- operatives in the years 1945 - 1956. This issue is a theme in four surveyed areas (territorially - organizational structure, the role of co-operatives in the Czechoslovak economy, relations with the Communist Party, economic activity of co-operatives). These are prerequisites of the transformation of consumer cooperatives from autonomous business entities in the subordinate sections of the state-organized distribution. The dissertation analyzes this transformation in its various stages and puts it into a broader context of Sovietisation, creation of a system of centrally planned economy and the economic, social and political development of Czechoslovakia during the researched period. Keywords: economic history, co-operatives, consumer co-operatives, Sovietisation, centrally planned economy, 1945-1956