The party originated as the electoral allianceFor Human Rights in a United Latvia that was established in May 1998 by three political parties: the National Harmony Party, Equal Rights and the Socialist Party of Latvia, all of which were mainly supported by Russophone voters. The alliance won 16 out of 100 seats in the 1998 parliamentary election and 25 seats in the 2002 parliamentary election, as well as 13 out of 60 seats on Riga City Council in the 2001 municipal elections. After the municipal elections, ForHRUL became part of Riga's city government and National HarmonyParty memberSergey Dolgopolov became the deputy mayor of Riga City Council. During this period, ForHRUL's most prominent leaders were Jānis Jurkāns, Alfrēds Rubiks and Tatjana Ždanoka. Jurkāns was a leader of the Popular Front of Latvia and founder of the National Harmony Party; Rubiks and Ždanoka were prominent as leaders of the Interfront movement, the Latvian branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the federalist movement in Latvia in the early 1990s. They are fairly popular in the Russian community but very unpopular among ethnic Latvians. ForHRUL therefore remained in opposition, because other parties would have faced a backlash from ethnic Latvian voters if they entered into a coalition with Rubiks or Ždanoka. ForHRUL partially broke up in 2003. The National Harmony Party was the first to leave the alliance and the Socialist Party followed half a year later. The remnant of ForHRUL consisted of Equal Rights and Free Choice in Peoples' Europe. The latter was composed of dissident Socialist Party and National Harmony Party members, like Yakov Pliner, who opposed the decision to quit the alliance. This reduced grouping had only 6 members of the Saeima. ForHRUL was the main force supporting Russian School Defense Staff activities from 2003-2005. At the first Latvian election to the European Parliament in 2004, ForHRUL gained one seat, held by Tatjana Ždanoka, who sat with the Greens–European Free Alliance group in the European Parliament. It also proposed the idea of a Europe-wide party of ethnic Russians. ForHRUL supported a federal Europe, with a "common economic and political space from Lisbon to Vladivostok". In 2007, ForHRUL was transformed into a single party that retained the name and identity of the old electoral alliance. In recent years the party's support has declined as ethnic Russian voters have switched allegiance to the Harmony party, successor to the National Harmony Party. At the 2010 parliamentary election, the party lost its representation in the Latvian Parliament. In 2011, the party launched an unsuccessful popular initiative on amending the law governing Latvian nationality. The Central Electoral Commission considered the proposed amendment to be incompatible with the Constitution of Latvia and the process of collecting signatures for a referendum on the proposals was suspended. This decision was eventually upheld by the Constitutional Court of Latvia and the Supreme Court of Latvia. It also supported the 2012 initiative to make Russian a co-official language in Latvia. In January 2014, ForHRUL changed its name to the Latvian Russian Union. At the 2014 European Parliament election, it retained its single seat in the European Parliament. The party supported the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 and has taken a pro-Russian stance in the subsequent War in Donbass. In August 2014 the party signed a cooperation agreement with the Crimean branch of Russian Unity to "strengthen the unity of Russian world". In July 2018, Ždanoka resigned her mandate in the European Parliament to focus on the 2018 Latvian parliamentary election and was succeeded by Miroslav Mitrofanov. With Andrejs Mamikins as their prime minister candidate Latvian Russian Union gained 3.2% votes, failing to win any seats in Saeima, but qualifying for state funding of almost 20 000 euros a year that the party will not be receiving since it does not possess an account in a credit institution registered in Latvia as required by the Law on Financing of Political Organizations. Ždanoka blamed the poorelection results on the party's "very modest" budget, but said self-liquidating is not on their agenda, assuring that the Latvian Russian Union "will continue working as usual".
