a city in the east of the Latvian SSR. Large railroad and highway junction. A landing on the Daugava River (Zapadnaia Dvina). Population, 102,000 (1970; 52,000 in 1939). The second largest city in Latvia after Riga by population.

Daugavpils was founded in 1275 by the Livonian Order as the fortress of Dinaburg (19 km from the present-day city). In 1577 it was destroyed during the Livonian War by Ivan IV. who built a castle on the site of the present-day Daugavpils. Russia, Poland, and Sweden fought each other for control of the city. In 1656 it was taken by the Russian Army and renamed Borisoglebov (Borisoglebsk). In 1667 it fell to Poland, and in 1772 it was retaken by Russia. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was important as a fortress. Since the second half of the 19th century it was one of the commercial centers of western Russia. In 1893 the city was named Dvinsk and in 1920, Daugavpils. In 1920 it became part of bourgeois Latvia and in 1940 it became part of the Latvian SSR. During the Great Patriotic War (1941–45) it was occupied from June 16, 1941, until July 27, 1944, by fascist German troops.

The city has chemical, metalworking, food, and light industries. It is the site of a locomotive-repair factory, the Elektroinstrument and the Motovelotsep’ plants, and an automobile repair factory. At the end of 1963 a large factory producing synthetic fibers went into operation. There are also furniture, shoe, meat, and milk plants, a brewery and a cannery, a flax factory, and a factory producing building materials. Daugavpils has a pedagogic institute, the general engineering department of the Riga Polytechnic Institute, a railroad transport technicum, an evening technicum for mechanics, a medical school, and a music school. A theater, a museum of local lore, and an art museum are located in the city.

The regular planning of Daugavpils dates from the 19th century. The fortress was planned in 1810 by the engineer E. F. Gekel. (It was built between 1820 and 1830 following the plans of the architect A. E. Ŝtaubert.) The postwar years saw large-scale residential construction. There is a monument to the victims of fascism in the Mežciemsk Forest (lime tuff, 1960, by the sculptor H. Sprincis and the architect Z. Abelite). Other monuments in Daugavpils are the stela Dvintsy in the square in front of the railroad station (die stamping on copper, 1967, by the sculptor I. Folkmanis) and the monument to V. I. Lenin (granite, 1970, by the sculptor A. N. Chernitskij and the architect V. Kalnin).