Abstract. The article analyzes the changing the situation of the Russian population of Latvia during the formation of its state independence and the creation of the bourgeois republic of the 1920s. The following concepts are explored: “Russian and Russian-speaking minority” of Latvia, citizens and non-citizens of the republic, “foreigners”, refugees, emigrants. It covers issues of the size and composition of the Russian population of Latvia, its percentage in the Russian-speaking part of the republic’s inhabitants, the level of education, the degree of cultural institutionalization, the nature of professional employment, the role and place in the new democratic state, organizational and political cohesion, attitude to the Latvian government, to the white movement and the Bolshevik regime of the RSFSR. The change in the position of the Russian minority in Latvia in the course of its ethnonationalization is considered. It is concluded that the process of turning the Republic of Latvia into a mono-national state of Latvians and for Latvians was accompanied by active de-Russification, as a result of which there was a significant reduction of the Russian presence in this Baltic country.