After the Bolsheviks were driven from what is now Latvia and Soviet Russia recognized Latvia's independence, in August 1920, the border was not drawn alongside ethnographic lines: once the frontier was negotiated (the border was not finalized until April 7, 1923) large Russian and Belarusian communities were left on the Latvian side. Strategic concerns also played a part, because of an important railway junction within the Abrene region. The historian Edgars Andersons explains (in "Latvijas vēsture 1914–1920" Daugava, 1976): "Especially in the north, the Russians had agreed to the Latvians' strategic demands, not complaining about the ethnographic principle having been disregarded. Several civil parishes were completely Russian."