Daugavpils

Daugavpils (Russian, Dvinsk; German, Dünaburg), city in Latvia, a rail junction on the Daugava River. Goods manufactured include building materials, processed food, leather goods, textiles, and electrical equipment. Daugavpils grew up around a fort established in the 1270s by the religious military order of the Livonian Knights of the Sword. The city became part of Poland in 1561 and was ceded to Russia as a result of the first partition of Poland in 1772. It was a provincial capital in independent Latvia from 1918 to 1940, when Latvia was annexed by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). During World War II the Germans held the city from 1941 to 1944. Population 111,231 (2004 estimate).