LATVIA, Our Dream is Coming Trueby Vilis Lācis

Socialist economy is being developed in order to satisfy to the maximum the growing material and cultural requirements of the Soviet people.

Over the past seven years the purchasing power of the Latvian population has increased two-and-a-half times.

Higher wages for certain categories of workers, abolition of a number of taxes and of secondary and higher school tuition fees, and price reductions in the state-owned shops and at the collective farm markets have all contributed substantially to an increase in real wages.

As in other parts of the Soviet Union plants and factories in Latvia are gradually introducing a seven-hour day. By 1965 the working week in Latvia will be 30-35 hours. This year thirty enterprises in Riga, employ-ing thousands of workers, will have a shorter workday.

Living and housing conditions will show marked improvement during the next seven years. The state is investing over 1,500 million roubles in housing construction. This is almost twice as much as was spent for the same purpose in the previous seven years.

Including privately-built houses, the urban population will receive an additional 3 million square metres or so of living space by the end of the seven-year period, while from 50,000 to 55,000 new homes will have been put up in the rural areas.

Before the Soviet system was established in Latvia allocations for the health services never amounted to more than 1.8 per cent of the state budget. Medical institutions were as a rule private establishments or were supported by some institution or charitable organisation and charged fees.

Today the health services are in the hands of the state, which provides all members of the population with skilled medical aid free of charge. Hundreds of hospitals and scores of sanatoria and other medical establishments have been built since the war.

Latvia had eighty-nine hospitals in 1940; by 1957 there were 275, as well as a large number of health centres.

With its mild climate, picturesque landscape, pine forests, mineral waters, mud baths and sea bathing Latvia makes a wonderful health resort. Kemeri and Baldone on the Gulf of Riga are famous Latvian resorts extremely popular today. More than 70,000 people spend their holidays at the Riga seaside every year.