The size is continental standard 6" x 4", with a pre-printed government postal stamp. The obverse has a postal cancel with the date too faint to read, and a much more legible stamp of the military censor. The letter on the verso describes the hardships of a woman exiled from Latvia to Komi ASSR and forced to do manual labor at a farm despite her heart condition. She wrote that even 70-year-olds were forced to work in the fields and vegetable gardens, and that she had to walk 8 km (5 miles) to her work location. Reading the letter makes you think that the woman was rather elderly and had lost all hope to ever be freed and go back to Latvia. She wrote, "my life would probably have to end in the forest here."

In very good to excellent condition, showing only minimal corner bumps. The handwriting is clear and legible; the letter was written in lead pencil which is bright and not faded.

The State Emblem of the USSR on the obverse features 11 scrolls for the number of republics in the Soviet Union at the time. This version was in use from 1937 to 1946. Of the two mass deportations in Latvia ordered by Stalin and executed by NKVD, the woman who wrote this postcard had to be a victim of either the first one that took place in June 1941, mere days before the German occupation, or a smaller-scale one in 1944-45 as soon as Latvia had been "liberated" by the Red Army. In 1941, over fifteen thousand Latvians were arrested and transported by railway to GULAG camps in Siberia, carefully selected to strip the country of its intellectuals and the social, economic and political elite. The second mass deportation was executed in March 1949 under the codename "Operation Priboi" ("surf"). The wave of that "surf" took away 43,000 people, mostly farmers together with their families who refused to join the newly established collective farms. Deportations also took place in 1944, as soon as Latvia had been re-annexed by the USSR, and at other times during the period of accepting Latvia back into the happy family of Soviet republics. The total number of the deported was at least over 60,000; by some estimates around 100,000. Of them, 5,000 people died in exile.