Top Quotes: “A History of the Baltic States” — Andres Kasekamp

Intro

“Although often referred to as tiny, the territory of the smallest Baltic state, Estonia, is 45,000 sq. km., slightly larger than many of the old European states such as Denmark, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Compared to these countries, however, the Baltic states are sparsely populated. Estonia is the smallest continental European country to maintain a national system of higher education and state administration in its own indigenous language.”

“As a result of long centuries of common institutions under the German ruling elite, the Latvians and the Estonians are the most similar. Prior to the 20th century, the Lithuanians had more in common with the Poles than with the Latvians.”

“Their shared experience within the Soviet system, and their close cooperation in achieving their independence from it, solidified their common Baltic identity. After the end of the Cold War, a wider Baltic Sea regional identity, including all the Baltic littoral countries (heralded by the establishment of the Council of Baltic Sea States in 1992), began to evolve. This tendency was greatly strengthened by the enlargement of the EU in 2004, after which all of the states around the Baltic Sea, with the exception of Russia, belonged to the EU.”

Pre-19th Century

“As Europe’s last remaining pagan state surrounded by Christian powers, Lithuania was isolated and without reliable allies, and its existence was continually under threat. Algirdas and Kestutis successfully defended and expanded their realm, but they were constantly in the saddle leading military expeditions on several fronts. As a consequent of the incessant warfare and continued adherence to paganism, the modernization or ‘Europeanization’ of the state and society was delayed.”

“Both Jogaila and Vytautas realized that the only viable long-term solution for the security of Europe’s last remaining pagan state was voluntary Christianisation. Three options existed: accepting Christianity from the Order, from Muscovy or from Poland. Jogaila flirted with all three. In 138 he negotiated an alliance with the Order whereby he promised to become baptized, but subsequently reneged. 2 years later, he rebuffed his mother’s plan for him to marry the daughter of Dmitry Donskoi, the Grand Duke of Muscovy. A Polish alliance seemed the best option since it would stem the growing threat from the Teutonic Order whose recent attacks had penetrated deeper into Lithuania’s heartland. A golden opportunity presented itself when Polish lords sought to prevent the marriage of Jadwiga, the heiress to the Polish throne, to her betrothed Austrian Habsburg prince. In 1385 Jogaila concluded the Act of Kreva by which he contracted to marry Jadwiga and convert Lithuania to Catholicism. As a result, in 1386 he was crowned Polish King Wladyslaw II Jagiello, establishing the Jagiellonian dynasty which would rule over much of East Central Europe for the next 2 centuries.”

“A sharp increase in the demand for Baltic grain by the burgeoning population of W. Europe (especially the Low Countries) led landowners to impose ever greater demands on their peasants. Gradually during the 16th century, Baltic peasants lost their remaining rights and generally became enserfed. Manorial estates had already begun to be established by Livonia in the 13th century, but their number grew exponentially during the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Initially peasants were required to work for the estate for only a few days a year and were then supplied with food and drink, but by the mid-16th century they were generally providing labor several days a week in the summer — from April to September — without any provisions being supplied by the manor. The general tax had been increased from 1/10 to 1/4 of the peasant’s produce in the 15th century. Increasingly, peasants fell into debt and therefore landlords sought to restrict their movements. Debt didn’t belong to the individual peasant, but to his household, and thus the burden was transferred to following generations. The Walk Landtag of 1424 introduced the principle that peasants fleeing debt had to be returned. As the manors competed with the towns for labor, escaping peasants could build a new life for themselves in the towns. As a rule, manorial lords couldn’t demand the return of an escaped peasant who had managed to reside in a town for at least 1 year. A well-known saying of the period stated that the city air made one free.”

“The Protestant Reformation against the corrupt practices of the papacy was launched by Martin Luther in Saxony in 1517 and spread quickly to the Livonian cities and provoked a wave of iconoclasm. The German burghers of Riga, Reval [modern-day Tallinn] and other Lithuanian cities shared the same cultural space with the northern German cities which championed Luther’s reforms. By 1524, the Reformation had triumphed in the major Livonian cities, although the Catholic Church hierarchy remained in place, and in the countryside the nobility remained wary of social upheaval. The Reformation also had political and material ramifications: the citizens of Riga seized the opportunity to rid themselves of their feudal overlords, the Order and the archbishop of Riga, and expropriate their property. The monasteries were dissolved.

Protestantism took longer to gain adherents in Lithuania. The key center for the spread of its ideas to Lithuania was Konigsberg University in neighboring Prussia, founded in 1544. Previously, Lithuanian students had studied mainly at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. By the 1550s the Reformation had made a breakthrough in Lithuania.”

“The success of the Protestant Reformation was greatly facilitated by the invention of the printing press and the spread of the written word. A fundamental tenet of Protestantism was that people should be able to read the word of God themselves, a notion that resulted in the first publications in the vernacular.”

“Muscovy had become a direct neighbor of Livonia after conquering Novgorod in 1478. Despite occasional conflicts, the Livonian border with the Rus’ian lands had been stable for 2+ centuries, with mutual trading interests dominating the Livonian relationship with Novgorod and Pskov. After the first Muscovite incursion into Livonia in 1481, Grand Prince Ivan III prepared the ground for future conflict by erecting the strategic Ivangorod fortress directly across the river from the Order’s fortress at Narva in 1492. The first serious Muscovite invasion came in 1501 in response to a Livonian attack in alliance with Lithuania. After Plettenberg’s inconclusive victory at the Battle of Smolino in 1502, Livonia concluded a truce with Muscovy, which enabled Livonia to exist peacefully for another half-century. However, this was only a temporary respite. Livonia’s eastern neighbor, Pskov, one of the last independent Rus’ian principalities, was annexed by Muscovy in 1510. The end for feudal Livonia came with Muscovy’s first full-scale effort to conquer it in 1558. The Order’s troops were badly outnumbered by the Muscovites, and the once-proud Livonian knights were decimated at the Battle of Ermes in 1560.

The invasion by Tsar Ivan the Terrible drew neighboring powers into the competition for Livonian territory. The Livonian bishops and cities desperately scrambled for protection. The Bishop of Osel-Wieck sold W. Estonia to Danish King Frederick II in 1559, who installed his younger brother Duke Magnus of Holstein as a ruler. Magnus purchased the Bisphoric of Courland in 1560 and had greater ambitions. In 1561 the city of Reval [modern-day Tallinn] and the knights of N. Estonia placed themselves under the protection of Swedish King Eric XIV. Thus began the meteoric rise of the Swedish Empire, which would become the dominant power in N. Europe in the 17th century.

The master of the Order, Gotthard Kettler, negotiated a Pacta Subjectionis with Polish King and Lithuanian Grand Duke Sigismund Augustus, and in 1561 Kettler swore allegiance to Sigismund. All of Livonia north of the Daugava river not under Swedish or Muscovite control initially came under direct Lithuanian rule, and as of 1569, under joint Polish-Lithuanian administration as the Duchy of Livonia (Inflanty). The final curtain for the Ordenstaat came in 1562 when Kettler securalized the Order and became the first Duek of Courland and Semigallia, a hereditary fief under Polish suzerainty, consisting of the territory of Livonia south of the Daugava. The only part of medieval Livonia which initially managed to maintain its independence was the city of Riga, which eventually in 1581 also submitted to the Polish-Lithuanian Crown. Thus, almost all of present-day Latvia and the southern half of Estonia came under Polish-Lithuanian sovereignty for nearly 70 years (1561–1629). However, this quadripartite division of Livonia contained the seeds of further conflict. This was just the beginning of a series of ‘northern wars’ which would determine the shape of the region until the 20th century.”

“The period from 1558 to 1721 was one of almost continuous warfare in NE Europe, with a respite only in the latter part of the 17th century. Muscovy, Sweden, and Poland-Lithuania contended for domination of the Baltic region in a series of major conflicts: the First Northern War (the Livonian War), 1558–83; the Second Northern War, 1655–60; and the Great Northern War, 1700–21. In between these wars, there were several bilateral conflicts among these same powers. The era began with the collapse of Livonia under the pressure of Muscovite invasion, and the union between Poland and Lithuania: events which led to Polish-Lithuanian and Swedish ascendancy in the region. It ended with the defeat of Sweden and the advent of the Russian Empire. War was accompanied by devastating famine and plague, but subsequent years of peace in the 18th century enabled demographic recovery. The internal weaknesses of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth left it exposed to manipulation by expansionist neighbors — Russia, Prussia, and Austria — who incrementally partitioned it until the state disappeared altogether in 1795.”

“The Protestant Swedes were unable to maintain control of Poland and rapidly alienated the population. The Lithuanians and Swedes never established a trustworthy relationship, mainly because Lithuanians resisted the burden of Swedish military occupation and taxation. As insurgency against the Swedes was launched in Samogitia in April 1656, Muscovy and the Swedes quarreled over dividing their spoils, and in 1656 Alexis invaded Swedish Livland. The disaster of foreign invasion and war was compounded by a severe plague and famine in 1657–8. This deadly combo of woes resulted in the Grand Duchy losing almost half of its population. The number of inhabitants dropped from an estimated 4.5 million in 1650 to 2.3 million in 1670.”

“Of all the periods of foreign domination, only the Swedish one is referred to in the collective memory of Estonians and Latvians as ‘good.’ The main reasons for this are the intro of schooling and the reforms which improved the position of the peasantry. The fact that Swedish rule was preceded and followed by calamitous times also played a role in later shaping a positive narrative. However, the exaggeratedly positive image of the ‘good Swedish era’ is a reflection rather of the high hopes at the time than of the reality. The Swedish state’s primary objective was to rationalize and make agricultural production more efficient, thus maximizing the tax revenue and food stores it obtained from the Baltic provinces. The increased revenue was needed for the maintenance of military forces necessary to defend the newly expanded empire. The efficient governing of this empire required the centralization and closer integration with Sweden which resulted from Charles XI’s imposition of absolutism. The consequences for the peasantry were ambiguous. On the one hand, the estate owners’ virtually unrestricted arbitrary whims were curbed and the relationship between lord and peasant was regulated. On the other, the police laws of 1645 in Estland and 1668 in Livland, binding peasants to the estates and stipulating the return of runaway peasants, in effect officially endorsed the practice of serfdom which had in reality already taken shape. Major Swedish reforms, such as the abolition of serfdom on Crown estates and the division of Livland into 2 administrative districts, corresponding to the ethnic Estonian and Latvian areas, didn’t have a chance to make an impact since they were announced in the decade before the Great Northern War and didn’t have sufficient time to be implemented.

Sweden’s neighbors sought to curtail her dominance. King Frederick IV of Denmark (reigned 1699–1730), Tsar Peter I of Russia (reigned 1682–1725), and Frederick Augustus, the Elector of Saxony, who also reigned in Poland-Lithuania as Augustus II (1697–1706; 1709–33), hatched an alliance aimed at rolling back the Swedish Empire. They erroneously believed that they could take advantage of Sweden’s perceived weakness after the inexperienced 35-year-old Charles XII ascended the throne in 1697. Unexpectedly, Charles turned out to be a brilliant military commander, who believed that the best defense was a strong offense, and he immediately took the fight to his enemies. He landed in Denmark in April 1700 and within a fornight forced Denmark to sue for peace. Charles then crossed the Baltic, intending to lift the Saxon siege of Riga, only to find that Augustus had already withdrawn his troops. Instead, Charles rapidly marched his troops to Narva, where they defended a much larger Russian army in a blinding November snowstorm.

Rather than following up his victory over the Russians, Charles turned his attention to eliminating Augustus. His successful invasion of Poland failed to deliver the knockout blow to his opponent and alienated many Poles and Lithuanians in the process. In pursuing the dethronement of his enemy, Charles supported Augustus’ Lithuanian opponents, the Sapieha magnate family, who were so despised by the other Lithuanian nobility that they allowed Russian troops into the country to help them resist the Swedes. For the next 7 years, Charles’ army was mired in Poland, thus allowing Peter to rebuild and modernize his forces and launch devastating raids on weakly-defended Estland and Livland. By 1704 only the major cities of Estland and Livland remained under Swedish control.”

“Urban areas were the worst affected: perhaps as much as 9/10 of the population of Reval [modern-day Tallinn] died in the 1710 bubonic plague. The plague was almost as devastating further south, where it took the lives of more than 1/3 of the population of the Grand Duchy, striking its Lithuanian areas particularly hard. This demographic catastrophe, made especially devastating by the combined scourges of famine, war, and epidemics striking one after the other, had begun with the great famine of 1969–7 which carried off 1/5 of the peasant population of Estland and Livland. By the second decade of the 18th century, the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian populations had been reduced to their lowest levels in several centuries. The number of people in the Estonian areas fell to 175,000, in the Latvian areas to 225,000 and in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania 1,850,000. More than half of the population of Estland and Livland perished during this period, with Courland suffering slightly less.”

“Peter sought to create a ‘window to the west.’ He permanently altered the physical geography of the Baltic region by boldly founding his new capital, Sankt Petersburg, in 1703 on the swampland where the Neva river flows into the Gulf of Finland. This was accomplished at a fantastic pace during wartime on disputed territory at the cost of the lives of tens of thousands of laborers.”

“In the 18th century the position of the peasantry sank to its low point. The infamous declaration written by Livland land councillor Otto von Rosen (1683–1764) in 1739 asserted that not only did the peasants belong entirely to their lords but so did their property. Peasants could be (and in fact were) bought and sold, occasionally even men and women from the same family separately. One contemporary observer pointedly noted in 1777 that Baltic serfs were cheaper than African slaves in the American colonies. Nevertheless, their situation was better than that of serfs in Russia: those in Estland and Livland could sell their surplus produce freely, had recourse to the courts and, until the end of the 18th century, weren’t subject to conscription.”

“In the hopeless years following the devastation of the Great Northern War, people found solace in a new spiritual message spread by the Moravian Brethren or Herrnhuter movement, which established a seminary in Wolmar in the Latvian part of Livland in 1738. Some landowners saw positive benefits in the movement since it noticeably reduced drunkenness and criminality among the peasantry, thus increasing productivity; others, however, were anxious about the consequences for the social order since the Herrnhuters preached equality between classes and ethnic groups. The Lutheran church hierarchy was alarmed that the Herrnhuters recruited their preachers from among the peasantry, and persuaded Empress Elizabeth (1741–62) to ban the Brethren in 1743. Although the ban was lifted in 1764, the Herrnhuters gained new momentum only in the early 19th century, after the abolition of serfdom. Moravian Brethren had a significant impact on the Latvian and Estonian peasantry, particularly in Livland. Most important was their emphasis on reading, which led to a rapid growth of literacy, and, subsequently, to an increase in the number of books published in native languages, one of the first being the complete Estonian-language Bible, published in 1739. The Hernnhuters also taught Latvian and Estonian peasants how to self-organize. In some respects, this religious ‘awakening,’ particularly its second wave in the 1820s, presaged the national ‘awakening’ of the 1860s.

The Hernnhuters brought a personal understanding of the spiritual essence of Chrisianity to the people for the first time. Conversion by the crusaders had been merely a formal collective political act; the new faith had simply been grafted onto the existing worldview, and heathen customs had endured. For example, Midsummer’s Eve or the summer solstice, still today the greatest celebration of the year in Estonia and Latvia, took on a nominal Christian sheen as St. John’s Day. A negative consequence of the Brethren’s activities was that they aggressively routed out surviving old folk customs. Traditional cultural practices, which had survived centuries of foreign domination, were swept were aside as remnants of paganism.”

“The Commonwealth had been the home of the majority of the world’s Jews, with almost 200k living in the Grand Duchy (more than 5% of its population),, although less than 1/3 of these lived in the (ethnically) Lithuanian lands. The Grand Duchy’s Jews referred to themselves as Litvaks and mostly resided in self-governing communities known as kahals, which served as their own judicial, educational, and taxation bodies. From the late 16th century until 1764, the kahals were united under a supreme governing organ, the Lithuanian Jewish Council — one of the ‘most formidable autonomous institutions’ in Europe. The Jews mainly lived in small towns and were valued for providing essential services as shopkeepers, artisans, innkeepers, commercial agents, and pedlars. Jewish merchants had made a living through lending money for interest to the nobles and the Crown (which was forbidden for Christian subjects) and tax farming.”

The 19th Century

“Legislation abolishing serfdom was abolished in Estland in 1816, then in the following year in Courland and finally, grudgingly, by the Livland Landtag in 1819. The actual emancipation of the peasantry was implemented over more than a decade. Since the reforms introduced contractual relations, there was a need for peasants to have surnames. Peasants had previously been known only by their Christian name and the name of their farmstead. Surnames were assigned by the estate owners or by the parish pastors, who frequently gave German surnames to the Estonian and Latvian peasants. While the peasants gained their personal freedom, the landowners were released from the responsibility of supporting their tenants in the case of crop failure or other disasters. The manorial lords could no longer directly interfere in the family life of their peasants, but they could still mete out corporal punishment, and personal freedom didn’t yet include leaving the estate without the landowner’s permission. The legislation confirmed the nobility’s ownership of the land; peasants were not given the right to purchase the land that they’d farmed for generations, but were now expected to pay rent to the landowners. In practice, this meant that the peasants had to continue to perform labor duties for the manors. In this sense, the situation of the peasants actually worsened.”

“By the mid-19th century, such a rigidly stratified society based entirely on status was unknown elsewhere in Europe. The Baltic Germans constituted less than 7% of the population of the Baltic provinces but dominated all aspects of their political, social, cultural and economic life, both in the countryside and the towns.”

“A greater impact on lives was the onerous duty, instituted in the Baltic provinces in 1797, of peasant households to provide conscripts for the tsarist army. Service was for a period of 25 years (later reduced), which was almost a life sentence. Few of these young men returned to their homeland. In 1874 Alexander II abolished the conscription of peasants and instead introduced obligatory military service for all classes: 4 years for those with an elementary education and 2 years for those with secondary.”

“The development of national movements in the Baltic region can fruitfully be viewed using Hroch’s 3-stage framework of the national movements among small European nations. The first stage sees the appearance of individual enlighteners for whom the study of the local language and culture is primarily of scholastic interest or simply a pastime. The second phase is the emergence of dedicated activists who enthusiastically propagate the idea of the existence of a common nation and, in the final phase, the idea spawns a national movement and gains acceptance among the nations.

The first Enlightenment figures to take an interest in the Estonian and Latvian languages and cultures were Baltic German men of letters in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They recorded for posterity languages and customs which they believed would soon be extinct. It was assumed that the only future trajectory for the Estonian and Latvian peasantry was eventually to assimilate into the German cultural world.”

“Under the more liberal Alexander II, new newspapers appeared which achieved regular publication and wide circulation: the Latvian Majas Viesis (Home Guest) in 1856 and the Estonian weekly Perno Postimeees (Parnu Courier) in 1857. The latter was the first to address its readers as the ‘Estonian people’, rather than ‘country folk,’ as Estonians referred to themselves. The same year, Juris Alunans, writing in Majas Viesis, proposed the neologism ‘Latvia’ for the territory inhabited by Latvian speakers to replace identification according to province — Courland or Livland. This initial poetic fancy began to acquire political connotations in the 1880s, by which time the term ‘Latvia’ had been extended to encompass the Latgalians in Vitebsk province, whose identity was still based primarily on their Catholic faith, rather than Latvian ethnicity. This gradual development during the latter half of the 19th century was part of the reconceptualization of the fundamental components of society in the Baltic provinces, as in other parts of Europe, whereby the standard category determining one’s belonging shifted from social estate to ethnicity.”

“In 1862, rural Estonian activists launched a drive to collect funds for the establishment of an Estonian-language secondary school, the Alexander School (named after the tsar who freed the Baltic serfs). Although the goal was modest, the process itself — the creation of a nationwide network of fundraising committees — spread the ideas of the national movement to all corners of the land, thus involving people far and wide in the first genuinely national undertaking. Voluntary endeavors such as these also gave Latvian and Estonian activists experience in organizational activity and rudimentary self-governance beyond the tutelage of the Baltic Germans.

The best-known symbol of the convergence of the associations and the national movements were the song festivals. The Vaneumuine choral society, established in 1865, organized the first Estonian national song festival in Dorpat [Tartu] in 1869. The first Latvian song festival took place in Riga 4 years later. These choral song festivals, inspired by the activities of Baltic German choral societies established in the 1830s and 1840s, for the first time brought together large masses of Estonians and Latvians from across the Baltic provinces and united them with a common purpose and sense of identity. The song festivals rapidly grew in popularity and size. The development of a similar tradition in Lithuania, where the first national song festival was not held until 1924, was impeded by restrictions on secular associations and the print ban.”

“Secular nationalists (as opposed to the conservatives associated with the Catholic Church) formed a circle around Varpus (The Bell) which was founded in 1889 and published in E. Prussia, and was the first journal to deal with political and socioeconomic issues. It encouraged self-improvement and urged Lithuanians to transform themselves from peasants into a modern nation by entering urban trades and professions. In the urban areas of the Lithuanian lands in 1897, the mother tongue of the population was 42% Yiddish, 24% Polish, 22% Belarusian or Russian, and just 8% Lithuanian. As these figures illustrate, Lithuanian and Jewish social structures were rather dissimilar. Jews dominated the Lithuanian economy: they owned most of the enterprises but also comprised the majority of the fledgling industrial proletariat, while few Lithuanians could be found in either category. The 2 ethnic groups had the potential to complement each other, since both struggled against the restriction of their rights under the tsarist regime and were suspicious of the Poles. However, the fact that their national movements evolved in parallel militated against their having a common cause. Jewish Zionism, which propagated emigration to Palestine, was indifferent to the Lithuanians, and so were the other strands of Jewish political activism which advocated for Jewish rights and social egalitarianism in an area wider than just the Lithuanian lands. The appeal by Lithuanian leaders for Lithuanians to break out of the peasant mold and take up vocations in the towns traditionally in the hands of the Jews (commerce, crafts, the free professions and industry) led to competition and tension between the groups.”

“Both the Baltic Germans and the Russian authorities believed that the Estonians and Latvians had no future potential as nations and would surely be assimilated. The question was only whether Estonians and Latvians would eventually became Germanized or Russified.

The Russification campaign was in part an effort to ensure that the Estonians and Latvians wouldn’t be absorbed into the German cultural space, a concern which arose after the unification of Germany. However, these measures were imposed 2 generations too late to succeed in their goal of assimilating Estonians and Latvians, because they’d already experienced a national awakening and reached a level of maturity and self-confidence which resulted in the creation of their own public sphere resistant to the pressure of Russian culture. If anything, cultural Russification only served to heighten the Estonian and Latvian sense of national identity. Russification, however, did diminish the real danger of Germanization by emancipating Estonians and Latvians from Baltic German tutelage. Learning Russian opened up professional opportunities for them in the wider empire, especially in the agricultural sector.”

“Following the new internal passport regulations of 1863, allowing peasants to move within and outside of the Baltic provinces and the famine of 1867–8, there was substantial emigration by Estonian and Latvian peasants eager to find land and freedom (from Baltic German domination) in the east, mostly to the adjacent Russian provinces and C. Russia, but also much further to Siberia, Crimea, and the Caucasus. The imperial capital of St. Petersburg also attracted huge numbers of migrants of all social strata from the Baltic provinces who sought better employment opportunities. By the outbreak of WWI, 200k+ Latvians and a slightly smaller number of Estonians lived in the Russian Empire outside of their homeland.

Since Lutheran migration into Russia was encouraged but Catholic and Jewish migration was hindered, the pattern of emigration from the Lithuanian lands differed from that of the Baltic provinces. Unlike the Estonians and Latvians, but similar to the Poles, large numbers of Lithuanians moved to the US. Lithuanian emigration started in the wake of the 1867–8 famine and the introduction of obligatory military service in 1874. It was easier for Lithuanians to leave the Russian Empire illegally because they could slip across the border into German East Prussia. In the USA, Lithuanians worked in the coal mines of PA, the slaughterhouses of Chicago, and the steelworks of Pittsburgh. The first Lithuanian-language newspaper was published in the USA in 1879, 4 years before Ausra, and the first original Lithuanian theatre play was performed there in 1889, 10 years earlier than in Lithuania. Almost 1/4 of Lithuanians migrated, proportionally one of the largest European emigrations. Between 1889 and 1914, the most intense period of emigration, 250k Lithuanians arrived in the USA.”

The 1905–6 Revolution

“Socioeconomic inequities and long-standing grievances against the tsarist regime exploded into revolutionary upheaval in the midst of the disastrous Russo-Japanese war. Following ‘bloody Sunday’ in St. Petersburg in 1905, when the imperial guard moved down peaceful demonstrators, solidarity strikes broke out in the larger Baltic cities, and a few days later 56 demonstrators in Riga were killed in a similar tragedy. During the following months, Latvian towns and rural areas witnessed more strike activity than any other part of the empire. In October, a general strike paralyzed the empire, including the Baltic region. Troops killed 94 peaceful demonstrators in Reval [Tallinn] as well as 5 strikers in Vilnius. In an effort to quell the unrest within the empire, Tsar Nicholas II (1894–1917) hesitantly promised political liberalization. However, the tsar’s October Manifesto fueled further demands. Political fermentation gripped the major centers of the empire as the authorities lost control over the situation.”

“The violent climax of the revolution, initiated by radicalized Riga workers, unleashed an orgy of pent-up class hatred — the torching of manor houses in the countryside and the lynching of Baltic German clergymen. Latvian peasant bands overwhelmed the forces of authority and even seized control of some provincial towns. Encouraged by the Latvian example, Estonians went on a week-long rampage of looting and burning manors in December. By the end of 1905, the tsarist regime recovered its nerve and imposed harsh retribution. Military punitive expeditions were dispatched to the Baltic provinces and 1,315 individuals were summarily executed. More executions were carried out in the Baltic provinces than in any other region of the Russian Empire. Several thousand Latvians and Estonians who were suspected of involvement in the disturbances were subjected to corporal punishment, arrested, and/or exiled to Siberia, while a similar number fled to Europe or the USA. Subsequent years witnessed the increased emigration of Estonians and Latvians to the open spaces of Russia. Martial law remained in force in the Baltic provinces until 1908. The vehemence of revolutionary activity among the Latvians, and the corresponding lack of it among the Lithuanians, is mainly explained by the high level of industrialization and the emergence of a large urban proletariat.

The events of 1905–6 were a watershed for the Baltic provinces and left a bitter legacy and an insurmountable divide between the ruling Baltic German elite and the Latvians and Estonians. Any remaining illusions among progressive Baltic Germans and moderate Estonians and Latvians about the visibility of a compromise reform program were shattered. The gap between them was too wide to be bridged; suspicion, mistrust and resentment were simply too strong. The Baltic Germans entrenched themselves further while Estonians and Latvians increasingly looked to revolutionary means to achieve social justice. The failed revolution witnessed unprecedented political mobilization and raised expectations. Class and national interest had previously been intertwined, but from this point forward 2 ideological currents diverged: one prioritizing the interests of the working class, the other emphasizing national goals.”

WWI

“The assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 precipitated a chain of events which led to the outbreak of WWI. On the Eastern Front, the fighting began when the Russian army advanced across the German border toward Konigsberg in August 1914. The Baltic nations experienced the impact of the war differently: Lithuanian territory was occupied by Germany for the duration of most of the war, while Estonian soil was untouched by military action until almost the final year of the war. Latvians suffered most grievously since the frontline ran through the middle of their land during most of the conflict.”

“The frontline settled among the Daugava River, south of Riga. Although German military occupation was harsh, it probably spared the lives of thousands of Lithuanian young men who would otherwise have been conscripted into the tsarist army.

Ahead of the German advance, the tsarist government dismantled and evacuated factories and their workers to the Russian interior. 30,000 railway cars full of industrial equipment, machinery, and materials made of valuable metals, such as copper roofs, departed from Riga in 1915. Even the Riga Polytechnical Institute was evacuated to Moscow in 1915, along with Tallinn-born architecture student Alfred Rosenberg, the future chief ideologue of the Third Reich. 1/3 of the entire Latvian population (800k), the bulk of whom were from Courland, abandoned their homes. Among those forcibly uprooted were the Jews of Courland and Kovno provinces, whom the tsarist authorities suspected of sympathizing with Germany. 300,000 people fled or were evacuated from Lithuania to the interior of Russia.”

Independence #1

“In the wake of revolution in 1917, Russia’s descent into civil war after the Bolshevik seizure of power and Germany’s WWI defeat, Lithuanian, Estonian, and Latvian national leaders proclaimed independent states. After fending off external aggressors and obtaining international recognition, these new republics created progressive democracies and egalitarian societies, with remarkable achievements in land redistribution, education, and cultural autonomy for minorities. Liberal democracy eventually succumbed to authoritarian rule, which had considerable popular support. While the Smetona, Pats, and Ulmanis regimes successfully promoted economic and cultural development, they were unable to find a durable solution for their nations’ security.”

“Lenin was willing to trade large swaths of Russian territory in the west in exchange for halting the war with Germany. He calculated that consolidating the power of the Bolsheviks in the Russian heartland against all challengers was the greatest priority. Germany and the Bolsheviks signed the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty in March 1918 whereby Russia ceded most of its territory occupied by Germany, including Lithuania, Courland, Riga, and the Estonian islands. Germany undertook to determine the final status of these areas in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants. In August, in a supplementary accord, Russia also renounced its sovereignty over Estonia and Livland. Lenin saw the territorial concessions to Germany as temporary since he fully expected the revolution soon to spread into Germany itself.

The Entente powers sought to thwart German claims to the region as well as to counter the Bolsheviks. Thus the petitions for de facto recognition, forwarded by delegates sent by the Estonian Provincial Assembly in early 1918, found a favorable reception in London and Paris. The British and French governments recognized the Estonian Assembly in May 1918 as the provisional de facto government, and in October the British accorded similar recognition to the Latvian Provisional National Council.”

“Ulmanis simply merged the offices of prime minister and president in his own person after President Alberts Kviesis’ term expired in 1936. Smetona, Pats, and Ulmanis justified their continued dictatorship by claiming that the parliamentary system had failed and that the political parties weren’t mature enough for democracy.

Apologists for the 3 regimes later observed that all of C. and E. Europe, with the exception of Finland and Czechoslovakia, succumbed to dictatorships. By the end of the 1930s, parliamentarism seemed destined for the dustbin of history and new authoritarian models of rule of the fascist or communist type appeared to be the trend of the future. Furthermore, it was claimed that since the Baltic states were located between the 2 most brutal and aggressive totalitarian states, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, they required strong leadership and national unity. Although government instability was indeed endemic during the parliamentary era, these retroactive justifications overlook the remarkable achievements of state-building made during the 1920s. Had it not been for the personal ambitions of Smetona, Pats, and Ulmanis, democracy could probably have survived.

The typical pattern in C. and E. Europe after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany in 1933 was for the conservative elites to form an authoritarian regime to neutralize the challenge from the populist radical right of the younger generation.”

“There was little opposition to the authoritarian regimes because Smetona, Pats, and Ulmanis were widely respected as the fathers of their nations’ statehoods. Pats and Ulmanis had been the leaders of the agrarian parties which represented the largest segment of the population and they were also fortunate in their timing, seizing power just when the economy was beginning to recover from the depression. Their policies of state intervention — extending credit to farmers, encouraging industrial development and building public works — promoted economic growth. Few yearned for the return of what was perceived to be fractious, inefficient parliamentary democracy, and the desire for firm leadership remained strong. The authoritarian regimes appropriated many of the popular ideas of the radical right, championed affirmative action for the titular ethnic group, and were ardent promoters of the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian national cultures. The only notable opposition to the authoritarian regimes came from the underground radical right, who plotted against the government. These young nationalists were impatient with Smetona, Pats and Ulmanis, whom they saw as too tolerant of the national minorities and corruption and not strident enough in their authoritarianism. The most serious opposition to Smetona came from the younger members of his own Nationalist Union who, along with Voldemarists and the radical right from Iron Wolf, regarded Smetona as too soft. Criticism of the authoritarian regime also originated from Catholic and Christian Democratic circles in Lithuania (the membership of various Catholic civil society associations outnumbered those of state-sponsored nationalists), left-wing socialists in Latvia and liberal intellectuals in the Estonian university town of Tartu. The only use of violent force by any of the 3 regimes occurred in Lithuania in 1935 when the suppression of a farmers’ strike resulted in several deaths.”

“The most pressing question for the newly created states, resulting in the most far-reaching legislation, was land reform. The constituent assemblies all enacted land reform even before they adopted the constitution, and the Estonian Constituent Assembly had already adopted the land reform act in October 1919 while the war of independence still raged. Land reform legislation was adopted in Latvia a year later (1920) and in Lithuania in 1922. The Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian provisional governments had promised land to those who fought for the national cause. Ownership of their own farm was the dream for most Estonian and Latvian peasants, who harbored centuries-old resentment of the Baltic Germans whose ancestors had ‘stolen’ their land. The redistribution of land also served the purpose of undermining support for the Bolsheviks.

In the pre-war Baltic provinces, manors possessed almost half of the land, and the average size of an estate was 2,000+ hectares, a vastly larger area than the average peasant farm of less than 30 hectares. The disparities were not as great in Lithuania where manors possessed about 1/4 of the land and their average size was only 1/5 of that in the Baltic provinces. The republics expropriated the lands of the estate owners and the Church, and established a state land fund for its redistribution among the peasantry. The Estonian and Latvian land reforms allowed estate owners to retain only 50 hectares, while the Lithuanian reform was less radical, allowing estate owners to retain up to 150 hectares of land. In Estonia 94% of estate land was confiscated, in Latvia it was 84% and in Lithuania it was 77%. The compensation provided to the former owners was a fraction of the real value of their property, and the Latvians decided not to grant any compensation at all. The national governments awarded choice properties to those who were decorated for bravery in the independence wars or for outstanding services to the state, although the vast majority of peasants who wanted land received a plot. As a result of the land reform, the total increase of peasant-owned land in Estonia was 69%, in Latvia it was 54% and in Lithuania 17%. The peasants were given the land at well below the market value and allowed several decades to repay the state loan.

The redistribution of land had major socioeconomic consequences: overnight an Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian agrarian middle class came into being. Prior to the reform, the majority of the rural population had been landless. In Latvia, 61% of them were landless in 1920; by the end of the reform in 1937 only 18% were. The plots of redistributed land were relatively small: the average size of the 54k new farms created in Latvia was 17 hectares. The land reform in the Baltic states was more radical, equitable and successful than in the other new states of E. Europe who faced similar problems. As a result, the Baltic states became among the most egalitarian societies in Europe. After the reforms, large holdings of 100+ hectares accounted for only 1% of the total landholdings.”

“The long years of war left physical devastation in their wake; only Belgium suffered greater destruction than Latvia in WWI. Factories evacuated to Russia weren’t returned after the war. The rapid industrialization of the Baltic provinces prior to 1914 had been geared to the Russian imperial market. IN the early 1920s there was hope that the Baltic states could serve as an economic bridge between Russia and Europe, but by the mid-20s these hopes had evacuated. Soviet policy frustrated the desire of the Balts to resume export to their primary market. Latvia, the most industrialized of the Baltic states, was the hardest hit. The Baltic states were thus forced to reorientate their exports from Russia to W. Europe, where their chief markets were Germany and the UK. These exports no longer consisted of industrial goods; they were largely agricultural products such as bacon and butter. Flax and timber also remained important. The new focus was on developing efficient, modern agriculture on the Danish model. The Baltic states remained rural societies: 77% of the population in Lithuania and 60% in Estonia were engaged in the agricultural sector. Latvia suffered a remarkable reversal in its industrialization and urbanization trajectory because of the devastation visited upon it during the war: the percentage of the population working in the agricultural sector actually increased from 59 to 66%.

The worldwide economic depression of the early 30s was a significant factor in the advent of authoritarian regimes in Estonia and Latvia. The UK’s decision to abandon the gold standard in 1931 had a negative effect on the Estonian and Latvian currencies and on the value of exports. This resulted in a rise in unemployment, a drop in public revenues, and a growth in farmers’ indebtedness. The authoritarian regimes supported more state intervention in the economy, particularly investment in industry.”

“It was a remarkable achievement for these overwhelmingly peasant nations to establish institutions of higher education in their own native languages which, at the time, were lacking scientific terminology. The thirst for higher ed was great — by the 30s Latvia and Estonia had among the highest number of students per capita in Europe enrolled at university.

In creating their own distinct national cultures, the Estonians and Latvians aimed to reduce the dominance of German influence, and the Lithuanians tried to diminish Polish influence. They deliberately reoriented themselves to French and English cultures. The building up of national cultural identities also inspired large numbers of Estonians and Latvians to change their German surnames to native ones. As elsewhere in Europe, nationalizing states encouraged the standardization of national languages and the molding of peasants into Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians. The use of peripheral languages or dialects — that of the Ingrians, Voros, and the Lithuanians who’d lived for centuries under Prussian rule in the Klaipeda area — were discouraged.”

“The treatment of minorities in the Baltic states was in stark contrast to the fate of Estonian and Latvian communities in Soviet Russia who were the target of ethnic cleansing during the Great Terror. Although the precise figure will probably never be known, at least 35k ethnic Estonians and Latvians were killed in the 1938 secret police operation against ‘enemy nations.’”

WWII

“The rise of Stalin in the USSR and Hitler in Germany resulted in the destruction of Baltic independence. In the 40s, the Baltic states suffered catastrophic population losses, during both war and peace, under 3 successive foreign occupation regimes: that of the Soviets in 1940–1, Nazi Germany during 1941–4 and the USSR again from 1944. Although the Baltic countries were non-belligerents in WWII, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian men had to fight and die in the military uniforms of their 2 enemies. The heaviest losses were borne by the civilian population, who were targeted on ideological grounds: the Soviet regime eliminated ‘class enemies’; the Nazis exterminated the Jews on the basis of race. After the war ended, armed resistance to the Soviet regime continued in the forests, but was dealt a fatal blow with the mass deportations of 1949, part of the campaign to collective farming.”

“Germany attacked Poland in Sept 1939, triggering WWII. Hitler urged the Lithuanians to seize Vilnius from Poland, but they didn’t succumb to the temptation. Instead, Lithuania accepted an influx of 30k Polish refugees.”

“On 18 October, the same day as the Red Army entered Estonia, the first ship to transport Baltic Germans, who were answering Hitler’s call to ‘return home’ tot he German Reich, departed from Tallinn harbor. The resettlement of 14k Germans from Estonia and 52k from Latvia was hurriedly accomplished by spring 1940, although most were actually resettled on conquered Polish territory. A second, smaller round of resettlement took place in early 1941 after which only a few hundred, mainly elderly, people remained. Thus ended the history of the proud community which had been the ruling elite for 700 years.”

“There’s some truth in the assertion that regime type explains the difference between the Baltic states and Finland. In the Baltic authoritarian regimes a small circle of individuals made decisions, whereas in Finland the views of the democratically-elected parliament couldn’t be ignored. In any case, the authoritarian regimes enabled a smooth transition to Soviet rule by keeping their own people uninformed or intentionally misinformed of the gravity of the threat to their independence. The Germans advised Baltic governments to agree to the Soviet demands, but intimated that they viewed Soviet control as temporary. Baltic leaders hoped that they could break free of the Soviet grip when Germany eventually turned her arms against the USSR. They calculated that by fulfilling Soviet demands and avoiding any potential provocations in the meantime, they might be able to hold their nations and institutions intact.”

“Sovietization had already begun before the annexation and proceeded rapidly: in July 1940 banks and large industrial enterprises were nationalized. Private homes larger than 170 meters squared (or 220 meters squared in the big cities) were nationalized. The max amount of land which could be retained by an individual farmer was restricted to 30 hectares. Confiscated land was redistributed in plots no larger than 10 hectares to landless peasants. These plots, however, were too small to be economically viable and served only to stoke up resentment and class conflict in the countryside, helping to pave the way for later collectivization. The wages of workers and civil servants were raised, but the standard of living plummeted precipitously, particularly after November when absurdly low exchange rates with the Soviet rouble were set for the Baltic currencies, effectively destroying the people’s savings.”

“Voluntary orgs, such as the YMCA, Salvation Army and Girl Guides, were forcibly disbanded. In most respects, the former civil society was destroyed. The press, radio, lit, and the arts were heavily censored and inundated with the Stalinist cult of personality, ceaselessly praising Stalin as the ‘great teacher,’ ‘brilliant genius of humanity’ and so forth.

The predominant characteristic of the Stalinist system was terror. Its main instrument was the NKVD (Peoples’ Commissariat of Internal Affairs) which included the regime’s dreaded secret police with its vast powers of surveillance, arrest, and detention. While initial arrests and deportations targeted political leaders, senior civil servants, police and military officers, entrepreneurs, clergy and Russian emigres, the terror spread to include all walks of life — anyone could be accused of being an ‘enemy of the people.’ Terror climaxed in the early hours of 14 June 1941 when simultaneous mass deportations were carried out in all 3 countries. Those on the NKVD list were woken in the middle of the night and given a couple of hours to pack a suitcase. The families were then taken to the railway station where the men were separated from the women and children. The transit to Sibera lasted weeks. The freight cars were crowded, there was little food or water and many didn’t survive the long journey. In this operation, 10k people from Estonia, 15k from Latvia and 18k from Lithuania were deported. Most of the men were sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment for ‘counterrevolutionary activity’ according to the notorious all-encompassing Article 58 of the Soviet Penal Code, which also applied retroactively to those who'd fought for liberty and opposed the Bolsheviks in 1918. Few survived more than a year or 2 in the inhumane conditions of the Soviet Gulag (forced labor camps).”

“Initial goodwill toward the Germans as ‘liberators’ quickly dissipated as the Baltic states were treated as occupied Soviet territory and the Third Reich retained the property nationalized by the USSR. The main aim of German policy was to exploit the resources of the Baltic nations for the benefit of their war effort. Although having no intention of respecting native culture in the long term, the Germans nevertheless compared favorably to the communists in the eyes of most of the population because they allowed national symbols to be used, religious instruction to be reinstated and many of the local orgs and institutions dissolved by the Soviet regime to be re-established. At least Nazi repression and violence was predictable, whereas Soviet terror appeared random — individuals could suddenly find themselves classified as ‘enemies of the people.’

The Baltic experience of WWII differed from that of the rest of Europe because the Baltic peoples endured 3 brutal occupations by the 2 totalitarian powers. They had little opportunity to make morally untainted choices between 2 evils. The term ‘collaborator,’ implying ‘traitor,’ is, therefore, inaccurate for those individuals who collaborated with the Nazis in the Baltics, since the state to whom they owed allegiance had already been destroyed by the USSR.

There was practically no armed resistance to the Germans, with the exception of partisans trained by the Soviet forces to commit sabotage behind German lines. However, these found little support among the people and had some impact only in the Lithuanian-Belarusian border areas. The national opposition desisted from undermining the German war effort as it would have hastened the return of the dreaded Red Army. It viewed the USSR as ‘enemy #1,’ whereas Germany was seen as the immediately less dangerous ‘enemy #2.’”

“The Nazis ordered the Jews to be confined to gehttos, from where they were taken in groups to secluded locations to be shot and buried in large, open pits. The largest single such ‘action’ was conducted in Riga in 1941. On 30 November and 8 December, 25k Jews from the Riga ghetto were marched to the sandy pine forest at Rumbula and executed. By the end of 1941, most of the Baltic Jews had been killed. The first to be completely eliminated were the Estonian Jews: the Nazis declared Estonia free of Jews in December 1941 after having executed 950 Jews. Nevertheless, 3/4 of the tiny Estonian Jewish community survived by evacuating with the Red Army. The much more numerous Latvian and Lithuanian Jews had less time to escape the German advance in June 1941 and thus most were trapped.

After the initial massacres, the second phase, 1942 to spring 1943, was comparatively stable. The surviving Jews were confined to ghettos in Vilnius, Kaunas, Siauliai, Riga, Liepaja, and Daugavpils, where the Germans exploited their labor. During this period the Nazis transported tens of thousands of Jews, primarily from Germany but also from Austria, Czechoslovakia, and France, to Ostland. Many were executed immediately upon arrival, but most were sent to work in the ghettos or to camps supplying labor to Estonian oil-shale mines. The final phase of the Holocaust occurred after the Warsaw ghetto uprising. In June 1943 Himmerl ordered the liquidation of the ghettos in Ostland and the placement of Jews under SS authority. The inmates of the Riga ghetto were resettled to the nearby Kaiserwald concentration camp, and the Kaunas and Siauliai ghettos were compressed and turned into camps. The Vilnius ghetto was liquidated in September: its able-bodied inmates were transferred to camps in Latvia and Estonia, and those unfit for work — the elderly and the children — were sent to be killed in Auschwitz. As the Red Army reached the Baltic in summer 1944, the Nazis evacuated the surviving Jews to concentration camps in the Reich, although some, such as the 2,000 mainly Lithuanian Jews at the Klooga camp in Estonia, were hastily massacred on the spot. Altogether, almost 95% of Lithuania’s Jews, almost 200k people were killed between 1941 and 1945. Likewise, of the 70k Jews who remained in German-occupied Lativa, only a couple thousand survived.”

“The Nazis also exterminated the Roma, but their numbers were much smaller: 2000 in Latvia and about 500 in Lithuania and Estonia. In addition to the Jews and the Roma, 18k Latvian, 7k Estonian and 5k Lithuanian civilians, some of whom were Russian or Polish, were killed during Nazi occupation. Most of these were accused of collaboration with the Soviet regime. A group of victims who have received little attention are the Soviet POWs who died of starvation or disease or were killed in the inhumane conditions of German POW camps hastily erected in Ostland. The larger number of Soviet POWs, 170k, perished on Lithuanian soil. The Germans ignored international conventions and acted according to their racial ideology, which deemed the Slavs to be an inferior race.”

“While there was little love for the Germans, the imminent return of the Red Army gave rise to intense fear. No German propaganda was necessary to warn people of the new horrors which awaited them under renewed Soviet rule. Escape was difficult because of lack of transport and the rapidly moving front line. The German authorities only sanctioned movement to Germany, where the refugees were put to work in the war industry. Nevertheless, substantial numbers of Estonians and Latvians were able to flee to Sweden, in overcrowded fishing boats, although an unknown number perished in stormy seas. Several German ships transporting Estonian and Latvian refugees were sunk by Soviet planes or subs. Those who lived near the coast and the intellectual elite were overrepresented among the refugees. A large number of scientists, artists, writers, musicians, teachers and clergymen left their homelands for an uncertain future. Approximately 140k Latvians, 75k Estonians and 65k Lithuanians fled their homeland during the war.”

“With the end of WWII, the eastern Baltic littoral changed dramatically once again, in terms of both borders and populations. The boundaries of Poland were shifted westwards at the expense of Germany and to the benefit of the USSR. On the ashes of Konigsberg, Stalin created a completely new entity in 1946: the Russian oblast of Kaliningrad, which formed a wedge between Lithuania and Poland along the Baltic sea. The German inhabitants of East Prussia fled or were driven out, and an entirely new Slavic population was brought in. In the North, Finland managed to preserve its sovereignty and democracy, but lost Karelia and was made partly dependent on the Soviet Union. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were the only countries eliminated from the map of Europe, becoming constituent republics of the USSR. Furthermore, Stalin transferred the Petseri and trans-Narva regions (5% of Estonia’s territory) and the Abrene regions (2% of Latvia’s territory) to the Russian SFSR. Lithuania recovered Klaipeda from Germany and Vilnius from Poland (although most of the territory south and east of Vilnius that Soviet Russia had recognized as Lithuanian in the 1920 peace treaty became part of the Belarusian SSR).

Few other countries (Poland, the USSR and Yugoslavia) suffered greater population losses than the Baltic states. Latvia lost close to 1/3 of its population and Estonia nearly as much. Lithuania would suffer greater losses in the post-war years than the other 2 countries. The war destroyed 4 historic ethnic-minority communities: the Baltic Germans, the Jews, the Roma and the Swedes. In 1945 the Baltic countries were ethnically more homogeneous than at any point in their modern history.

The population was partially replaced in the post-war years by newcomers, who originated mainly from Russian areas adjacent to Estonia and Latvia, and who were directed voluntarily or non-voluntarily to participate in the reconstruction effort after the devastation of the war. German POWs were also used for reconstruction work. The Baltic republics were attractive since their standard of living and their level of development were significantly higher than those of other parts of the USSR. The immediate post-war years witnessed a crime wave which was amplified by scavenging malnourished Russians.

Baltic cities were devastated by the war. Narva, Paldiski, Siauliai, Klaipeda, Daugavpils, and Jelgava suffered the worst physical damage. Typically, the cities were rebuilt in the standard style of a Soviet modern urban landscape; they didn’t have their historic architecture restored. Narva was an extreme example, particularly since its population was also almost entirely new — Russians from across the border, as former residents were not allowed to return. Of the Baltic cities, Vilnius underwent the greatest transformation: it saw a change of regime 5 times during the war: Polish to Soviet to Lithuanian to Soviet to Nazi and back to Soviet. Most of its original inhabitants perished in the Holocaust or were relocated after the war. Between 1945 and 1947 Vilnius was Lithuanianized as 170k Poles were ‘repatriated’ from Lithuania to Poland. Ironically, the communists accomplished what pre-war Lithuanians could’ve only dreamed of.”

“Armed conflict didn’t cease in the Baltic states with the end of WWII. Fighting against the Soviet occupation forces continued in the forests. Estonian and Latvian ‘forest brothers’ organized themselves in small autonomous bands, whereas the Lithuanian resistance managed in 1949 to establish a central command, the Council of the Lithuanian Freedom Fighters. In Lithuania, an estimated 50k men and women participated in the fight against the Soviet regime, 20k of whom were killed; 13k were killed on the Soviet side. The scope and intensity of the conflict wasn’t as great in Estonia and Latvia, where the number of forest brethren killed in each country was approximately 2k.

Lithuanian resistance was stronger partly because there were more young Lithuanian men available. Compared to Estonians and Latvians, fewer Lithuanians had been mobilized to serve in the Soviet and German armed forces. Only in Lithuania had there been any notable resistance during the Nazi occupation, and it was relatively easy for the partisans to reorient themselves in fighting the other occupier. Furthermore, the tight-knit Catholic rural communities of Lithuania provided a greater support network for the guerrillas.”

Soviet Occupation in the Cold War

“The resistance persevered in the hope that the Cold War which had developed between the erstwhile allies of the West and the Soviet Union would flare into a hot war, resulting in the liberation of the Batlic states. This illusion was finally extinguished after the USA stood by while the Red Army crushed the Hungarian uprising in 1946. The Hungarian uprising was also a watershed moment for the Baltic people’s relationship with the Soviet regime. They begun to accommodate themselves to the permanence of the Soviet regime and no longer viewed it as one in a series of temporary military occupations. After Stalin’s 1953 death most remaining resistance fighters accepted the amnesties offered by the Soviet authorities. Lithuanian resistance leader Zemaitis was captured in 1953 and taken to Moscow, where he was tortured and personally interrogated by the Soviet security chief, before being executed. Nevertheless, a few forest brethren continued living beyond the reach of the authorities — the last known Lithuanian resister died as late as 1986.

Upon their 1944 return, the Soviet security organs immediately arrested and deported those whom they deemed opponents and German collaborators. Despite this new wave of political mass arrests, the Soviet authorities were temporarily somewhat tolerant of local norms and customs in the Baltics during the immediate post-war years of 1944–7 because it took time to build up the party and security apparatus and suppress the partisans. However, the years 1947–53 saw renewed repression, as the goal of the Soviet regime wasn’t simply military occupation but permanent incorporation of all aspects of Baltic societies within Soviet institutions. Terror was the chosen method to enforce compliance with the new order. The Stalinist regime’s paranoia was boundless, targeting not only ‘bourgeois nationalism’ but also ‘formalism’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’: for example a group of Latvian intellectuals who met informally to discuss contemporary French lit were imprisoned in 1951. The Communist Party maintained tight control over ideology in all aspects of life in the USSR. In the final years of the Stalin era, the ‘cult of personality’ was a constant presence; praising the genius of Stalin, the great leader and teacher, was a public duty. Art, lit, and theatre were heavily censored, with ‘socialist realism’ being the party’s preferred mode of expression. Paeans to heroic collective-farm tractor drivers and factory workers were ubiquitous. Books on the proscribed list were destroyed on a massive scale: for example 12 million books and 750,000 periodicals had been removed from circulation in Latvia by 1950. For the Baltic nations, there were constant reminders of their ‘eternal friendship’ with their ‘big brother,’ the Russian nation. History texts were rewritten to emphasize the ‘progressive’ role of Russia in the pasts of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Monuments and memorials from the independence era were demolished and new statues and plaques honoring communist figures and the Red Army were erected.

Throughout the Soviet era, ideological indoctrination was relentless, particularly in education. Young people were expected to participate in communist orgs, children in the Pioneers and youths in the Komsomol. To combat religion and to propagate atheism, the Soviet authorities introduced the subject of ‘scientific communism’ into school curricula. The Soviet regime permitted only registered churches to function and this was under strict state supervision. A number of churches were taken from their congregations and turned into museums, concert halls or simply warehouses.”

“The Baltic republics were rapidly integrated into the highly centralized Soviet planned economy. While large and medium-size commercial enterprises in the Baltic republics had been nationalized in 1940, the remaining small businesses were eradicated by 1947. Private ownership of any means of production was forbidden. All production in the Soviet command economy was determined according to a 5-Year-Plan produced by the State Planning Committee in Moscow. The Communist Party ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ was based on the state ownership of all means of production, both industrial and agricultural.

The final measure in irreversibly sovietizing the Baltic society was the destruction of family farms through the establishment of collective farms. The first steps had already been taken during the earlier Soviet occupation when farmers were stripped of landholdings greater than 30 hectares, and small 10-hectare plots were created for previously landless peasants. This land reform was rescinded during the German occupation but was immediately reintroduced by the Soviet authorities after the war. From the Soviet viewpoint, this measure was also useful in smoothing the way for collectivization because it created new tensions and stoked up class conflict in the countryside between those whose land was taken away and those who received it. The first collective farms were established in 1947. Simultaneously, drastic tax increases were imposed on farmers in order to render private farming unviable and to force peasants to join the new collective farms. Nevertheless, very few farmers were willing voluntarily to surrender their livestock and property to the state. As in Russia and Ukraine in the early 30s, Stalin’s instrument of choice was terror.

Operation Surf was meticulously planned in Moscow and carried out without any warning in all 3 Baltic republics simultaneously during the night of 24–25 March 1949. It was officially aimed at ‘kulaks,’ ‘bandits,’ and ‘nationalists’ and their families. The Russian term kulak originally referred to better-off peasants, but in Soviet parlance it meant anyone whose farm managed to provide more than a bare subsistence for its owner. After the 1940 Soviet land reform, there were hardly any farmers who could be considered wealthy. The term was sufficiently elastic that almost anyone out of favor with the local Communist Party bosses could end up being branded a kulak. Stalin aimed physically to ‘liquidate’ the kulaks as a class. The central authorities provided a quota of 30k families to be ‘resettled’ from the Baltic republics. All in all, 95k people (21k Estonians, 42k Latvians, and 32k Lithuanians), nearly 3/4 of whom were women and children, received a nighttime knock on their door and were given an hour to pack their belongings. They were placed in cattle cars for a journey of several weeks in cold, cramped, inhumane conditions before reaching their final destinations in Irkutsk, Omsk, Tomsk, and other oblasts of Siberia; it was a huge logistical operation, involving 76 trains to transport the deportees.

After the deportations, the remaining farmers hurried ‘voluntarily’ to join the new collective farms. Although the deportations initially resulted in more men fleeing to the forests, collectivization succeeded in eliminating the bases of support for the resistance. By 1952 almost all farmers had joined the collective farms. Compared to the earlier 1941 mass deportation, most of the deportees survived and were able to return after the amnesties of the mid-50s. Unlike 1941, most weren’t placed in prison camps but had to suffer resettlement in the harsh conditions of Siberia.

Although the March 1949 deportation represented the greatest of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Soviet regime in the Baltic countries, they weren’t the only such operation. The post-war deportation of those resisting collectivization was most massive in Lithuania, with the first wave having already occurred in May 1948 when 11k families (40k people) were deported. After Operation Surf there was a third mass deportation in October 1951 of 4000 families (16k people). Between 1944 and 1953 there were 34 deportations of various magnitudes in Lithuania. Altogether, 128k people were deported from Lithuania (5% of the population) during the post-war period.”

“After Stalin’s death, terror subsided and Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians gradually accommodated themselves to the Soviet regime. Baltic Communist Party leaders maneuvered, with various degrees of success, within the strict dictates of Moscow, while intellectuals sought to defend their cultures in the face of rapid demographic change and Russification. Baltic societies were transformed from mainly agricultural to predominantly urban societies. Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians seized the opportunity created by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s late 80s reforms to end the Communist Party’s monopoly of power through the Singing Revolution. Weathering extreme pressure from Moscow, the Balts worked together through peaceful means to restore their independence and gain international recognition in 1991.”

“Overt terror was no longer a necessary political tool for the Soviet regime after Stalin’s 1953 death, since Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian societies had been psychologically plummeted into submission and a permanent state of fear. Imprisonment on political grounds continued until the 80s, but the number of arrests was on a much diminished scale: tens, rather than thousands, of individuals annually in each Baltic republic. Amnesties were declared for various categories of political prisoners in the gulag. The surviving deportees began to return home in the mid-50s, although many weren’t allowed to return to their former place of residence. Many had trouble reintegrating into society and were often viewed with suspicion. The new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971), denounced Stalin’s Great Purge at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party in 1956, signaling a relaxation of centralized authoritarian control, referred to as the Thaw. Local authorities in the Baltic Soviet Socialist Republics gingerly began to test the limits of autonomy, and cultural figures probed the boundaries of censorship.”

“The post-Stalinist thaw brought about efforts to rationalize and decentralize economic production. The most important step was the 1957 establishment of the Regional Economic Council, which transferred much of the operational decision-making to the republics, although they still had to adhere to the guidelines of the Moscow 5-Year-Plan. This reform helped the Baltic republics to equal their pre-war level of production and standard of living in the 60s.”

“The immediate results of collectivization had been disastrous: agricultural production fell precipitously in the early 50s. The situation improved in 1958 when collective farms began to pay money wages and were allowed to purchase their own tractors and farming machinery. Previously these had only been available on loan from state-owned machine tractor stations, which had now been dissolved. However, the continuing inefficiency of the collective farms is illustrated by the fact that the farmers’ own small garden plots — constituting a fraction of the arable land — produced a substantial part of the national produce crop. These allotments weren’t only important for their survival but also enabled farmers to carve out a small autonomous space for themselves within the Soviet system.

The Thaw enabled cultural production cautiously to free itself of the strait-jacket of turgid ‘socialist realism.’ The 60s witnessed a cultural flowering of a new generation of writers and artists who pushed the boundaries of Soviet censorship and broke taboos. Within the USSR, the Baltic republics gained the reputation of being the ‘Soviet West.’ Certainly, from the perspective of the rest of the Soviet Union, they looked and felt more European, with a more liberal atmosphere and greater contact with Western trends. Tallinn and Vilnius were hotspots of the jazz music scene in the USSR. Many authors hitherto banned in the USSR were first published in one of the Baltic republics.”

“An important breakthrough in the move away from isolation was the opening of a passenger ferry service from Helsinki to Tallinn in 1965. This remained the only direct transport link — air, sea, or rail — from the Baltic republics to outside of the Soviet bloc until the end of the 80s. Proximity to Finland also gave the Estonians access to objective info about the outside world and a glimpse of consumer society via Finnish TV broadcasts.”

“After Stalin’s death, people rarely joined the Communist Party for ideological reasons or for survival, for primarily for career advancement. Individuals who were offered a promotion to a senior management position in their field were expected to join the party. Few declined to do so. Party membership gave some material benefits, such as priority in the queue for obtaining valued consumer goods such as phones. The most desirable privilege enjoyed by party members was foreign travel. The profile of the party membership in the 60s and 70s changed, therefore, to that of an org dominated by uni grads rather than representing the earlier ideal of the working class. This gradual shift increased professional competence within the party and increased the proportion of native-born Balts in the party, but weakened its ideological commitment. Party membership among the republic’s titular ethnic group was always highest in Lithuania. During the last 25 years of Soviet rule, more than 2/3 of the members of the Communist party were ethnic Lithuanians, whereas the corresponding proportion in Estonia was approximately half, and in Latvia less than half.”

“Dissent against the Soviet regime was demonstrated by attempts to leave or defect from the Soviet Union. In 1970, Lithuanian sailor Simas Kudirka jumped ship in US waters, becoming a cause celebre when the US coast guard returned him to the Soviet authorities who sentenced him to a 10-year prison term. As a rule, in order to ensure that a traveler returned home, the authorities didn’t permit family members to travel abroad together. When Estonian Valdo Randpere and his wife sought asylum in Sweden in 1984, the Soviet authorities wouldn’t permit reunification with their 13-month-old daughter.

The most dramatic change for Latvia and Estonia during the Soviet era was demographic. Both republics saw a massive influx from the East during the post-war years. While Estonia was nearly 95% ethnically Estonian at the end of the war, by 1989 the percentage of Estonians in the population had dropped to 62%. During the same period, the percentage of ethnic Latvians dropped from over 3/4 of the population to barely half. The disheartening prospect of becoming a minority in their own homeland appeared to be on the horizon.”

“Most of the newcomers were Russians directed for work assignments, but people came from all regions of the USSR. In the 50s, the influx temporarily waned as many returned to Russia and the surviving deportees came home. The subsequent waves of settlers in the 60s and 70s were often industrial workers assigned for employment in large new plants or in the military-industrial complex. The locals particularly resented the fact that the newcomers were often given priority in the queue for sparse housing. The new residential districts consisted mainly of prefabricated apartment blocks which were identical to those elsewhere in the USSR. Since this workforce was highly mobile, relocating from 1 region of the USSR to another as more attractive opportunities appeared, most didn’t bother to learn the local language and integrate into the local community and they therefore lived separate lives. In addition, the massive Soviet military presence was an alien body. The larger cities of the Baltic republics, particularly Riga, HQ of the Soviet Baltic Military District, were popular locations for Soviet military officers to retire to.

Demographic change in Lithuania was far more limited. Lithuania avoided the fate of its northern neighbors for 4 reasons: the country remained more agricultural in character; the guerrilla warfare during the first decade of Soviet rule discouraged the arrival of setters; the native leadership of the Lithuanian Communist Party was able to exert some, albeit quite limited, influence over the influx of migrants; and the Lithuanian fertility rate remained higher and family size larger.

During the Soviet era, all 3 republics shifted from a predominantly agricultural economy to one that was largely industrial and urban.”

“The Baltic republics were the first in the USSR to introduce legislation on nature protection in the 50s, and conservation societies created by local activists in the 60s gained huge memberships. The Soviet authorities often looked at conservation projects askance, considering them as a disguised form of nationalism, which, to some extent, they were. The first national park in the USSR was a local initiative established in 1971 on the Estonian northern coast to preserve the area from further industrial encroachment. Although initially viewed with suspicion in Moscow, the Estonian promoters of the park were able to secure approval by buttressing their arguments with quotes from Lenin.

Despite the emphasis on industrial production, agriculture remained an important sector of the Baltic republics’ economies. In the 60s and 70s, the Baltic republics became the leading dairy and pig-farming area of the USSR. Most of this production supplied the Russian market, primarily Leningrad. This period also saw the conversion of many collective farms into relatively more efficiently managed state farms. By the 80s, the salaries of collective and state farm workers surpassed average urban wages. The Kirov collective fishery farm in Viimsi near Tallinn was reputedly one of the wealthiest in the USSR, engaging in various auxiliary economic production activities and providing its members with a high standard of living. The more successful and dedicated farm managers built cultural centers and supported rec activities for the local community. The Soviet authorities intended to provide farmers with modern conveniences, such as central heating, which led to the construction of large apartment blocks in small rural villages that had been converted to collective-farm centers — a ludicrous centralization of the rural landscape.

The rigidly centralized control of the Soviet economy resulted in shortages of consumer goods, as well as products of shoddy quality. For consumers, this meant long queues and the use of bribery or ‘gifts’ to obtain scarce goods and services. For major purchases, such as a car, one first needed a purchase permit and then had to suffer a waiting period, often several years. A similarly long waiting period had to be endured to obtain an apartment or a phone. In an economy of scarcity, a network of contacts was the key to success. Those who had control over access to some goods or services, such as restaurant doormen, enjoyed a privileged status. Genuine Western consumer products not available in the local market, such as nylons, jeans, quality coffee, pop records and chewing gum, were highly prized by Soviet consumers. Plastic shopping bags bearing the logo of a Western company became status symbols in the 70s.

The 60s and 70s saw a loosening of social norms, with high numbers of abortions, a decrease in the number of marriages and an increase in the number of divorces and common-law unions. After Stalin’s death, legislation allowed easy access to abortion (one of the main methods of birth control), and both marriage and divorce were easily available, since there was no longer any religious aspect to these social covenants and rituals. Alcoholism became a major problem, contributing to poor work discipline, low productivity and serious social and health problems, resulting in low life expectancies, especially for men. Alcohol was cheap and was the socially acceptable way to relax.

The state provided free universal healthcare and social insurance, including pensions. These services were centrally allocated and weren’t based on employees’ contributions. There was also genuine progress toward making education universally accessible. Secondary education was made compulsory and by the 70s nearly all young people completed 11 grades of schooling. Several new institutions of higher ed, functioning in the titular language, were established. This expansion of education facilitated greater social mobility, though grads were usually assigned employment not according to their own choice, but to where they were needed.”

“An onerous burden for young men was the obligatory 2-year military service, which as a rule meant being sent outside one’s republic. This also meant occasionally fighting and dying in the USSR’s foreign wars, such as that in Afghanistan in the 80s. Thousands of young men from the Baltic republics were among those drafted for the clean-up of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 without being provided sufficient protection from radiation.

Although the Soviet constitution in theory guaranteed national self-determination for the republics, the guiding principle of Soviet cultural policy as defined by Stalin was the development of cultures ‘national’ in form and socialist in content’ which would ultimately be merged into ‘one General Culture.’ The Soviet concept of the fusion of nationalities with Russian as the language of ‘inter-national communication’ was expressed explicitly. The end product would be a person without any specific national roots or identity, who would work in whatever part of the USSR that the authorities assigned them to, exemplified by the chorus of a Russian pop song of the Brezhnev era, ‘My address isn’t a house or street, my address is the Soviet Union.’

A vital part of the shaping of a new identity was the ideological indoctrination of children and youths in the Communist Party’s Pioneer and Komsomol orgs, respectively. Political lectures expounding the Party’s position on current affairs were regularly organized at the workplace. The replacement of official holidays with new ones was also part of this process. In the USSR, Christmas wasn’t a holiday and the regime attempted to displace it with the celebration of the New Year. In Latvia, the atheism campaign even involved the banning of the traditional Midsummer’s Eve festivities, not only during the Stalinist era but also again during the 60s after the purge of ‘nationalists’ in the Communist Party.

In practice, the sovietization of the Baltic republics entailed linguistic Russification.”

“The Balts, however, clung tenaciously to their cultural traditions. The open-air summer festivals of song and folk dance, which were held every 5 years and involved massed choirs of up to 20k singers and audiences of sometimes more than 100k people, were the most prominent manifestation. The content of the programs was carefully vetted by the authorities, but some songs escaped the censors’ notice. The song festivals often culminated in a powerful emotional outpouring as the massed choirs and the audience spontaneously sang unofficial patriotic encores together. As the totalitarian system maintained control over the population by the atomization of society, these occasions provided rare moments confirming national identity and solidarity.

The ‘creative intelligentsia,’ organized in writers’ and artists’ unions, was relatively well supported by the state, provided that their artistic output remained within accepted boundaries. Writers and artists were held in high esteem by society and many were well-known, even to people on the street. Since there was limited public entertainment, people were voracious readers and provided the authors with a huge readership. Theatre attendance was popular and plays were considered important. Writers and artists who collaborated with the regime lived well. Nevertheless, there were poets and novelists who pushed the boundaries of Soviet acceptance, and were regarded as the conscience of their nation. Poetry became the most influential art form because it could express ideas which would otherwise have been censored.”

“Being denied free access to other European cultures, the Balts began interacting more intensively with each other. For example, triannual Baltic art exhibits in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius were opportunities to experiment and to thest the limits of official tolerance. A Baltic regional identity solidified during the Soviet period when there were intensive cultural, scientific and athletic exchanges.”

Toward Independence

“By 1985 it appeared that Soviet rule was firmly entrenched in the Baltic states. However, the appointment that year of Mikhail Gorbachev as the general secretary of the CPSU provided the opportunity for dramatic change. The USSR had devoted huge resources to an arms race with the USA during the ideological Cold War between the 2 superpowers but had neglected the production of consumer goods. Gorbachev realized that the arms race wasn’t sustainable, particularly after Reagan’s Star Wars initiative in 1983. Gorbachev sought to make the USSR more efficient in order to compete with the West. In an attempt to achieve these goals, in 1986 he introduced the policies of openness and restructuring.

Unwittingly, Gorbachev unleashed forces he couldn’t control. Balts eagerly grasped the opportunity provided by openness to fill in the ‘blank spots’ of history. At first they proceeded cautiously, recalling that Khruschev’s Thaw was soon followed by renewed repression. They begin commemorating the victims of Stalin’s mass deportations. Dissidents organized ‘calendar demonstrations’ which marked officially unacknowledged historical events. Latvian human rights activists, under the banner of Helsinki-86, organized the first of these in Riga in June 1987 to commemorate the victims of the 1941 mass deportations. The first anti-regime demonstrations occurring simultaneously in all 3 republics were organized by dissidents on 23 August 1987, the anniversary of the Molotov-Ribentrop Pact. Several of the organizers of these meetings were sent into exile abroad, but the willingness of the authorities to use force was crumbling: the last use of force to break up political demonstrations was in September 1988 in Vilnius. The last remaining Baltic political prisoners were released from the gulag in 1988.

The first mass protests, in 1986 and 1987, were about environmental issues: the proposed building of a hydroelectric dam on the Daugava River, the expansion of open-pit phosphate mining in NE Estonia and the construction of a third reactor at the Ignalina nuclear power plant in Lithuania. These ostensibly apolitical environmental issues offered the first opportunity for the expression of public discontent. The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 gave a strong impetus to public discussion of ecological concerns. Baltic activists were also deeply concerned about the demographic effect of the proposed large-scale projects, since they would bring about a substantial influx of labor from the rest of the USSR, further tilting the negative demographic trend.

The first challenge to the Communist Party’s monopoly of power came with the establishment of the ‘Estonian Popular Front in Support of Perestroika,’ announced on a TV show in April 1988 by its founding leader, economic planner and Communist Party member Edgar Savisaar. This initiative received Gorbachev’s blessing: he saw it as a means of applying pressure on the republican Communist Party leaderships who were dragging their feet in implementing his reforms. The Popular Front rapidly gained tens of thousands of members and supporters across the republic, and its example was quickly emulated in Latvia and Lithuania.

In spite of slogans of demonstration, in May the Estonian Communist Party leadership handpicked the delegates for the 19th Party Conference in Moscow as usual. In response, the Estonian Popular Front organized political protests. Unsanctioned all-night gatherings took place in June at the grounds of the Tallinn song festival, where the people demanded the removal of the old-guard Estonian Communist Party leadership and waved the banned national colors. Gorbachev rejected pleas to bring tanks onto the streets and instead appointed Vaino Valjas, the first native-born Estonian Communist Party leader since 1950. Valjas immediately signaled his willingness to work with the Popular Front, and participated in the culmination of the Singing Revolution — a mammoth rally organized by the Popular Front in September at the grounds of the song festival, where 250k people, 1/4 of all Estonians, sang in unison. The only word to describe the intense feelings of this time is euphoria.

Latvians and Lithuanians experienced their own ‘new awakening,’ although this wasn’t initially accompanied by political change. The long, hot summer of 1988 was full of feverish patriotic activity and new unheard-of democratic initiatives. The banned national flags appeared everywhere. Huge protest rallies were held on 23 August in Riga and Vilnius; the latter was attended by 200k Lithuanians.”

“In the first multicandidate elections held in the USSR in March 1989 — the elections to the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies — candidates supported by the Popular Fronts won overwhelmingly in all 3 republics. These deputies were to play an important role in explaining Baltic aspirations and forming alliances with Russian democrats.”

“In May 1989 the Baltic Assembly met in Tallinn for the first time on the initiative of Popular Front deputies, and a Baltic council was initiated later as a format for Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian cooperation on the ministerial level. These bodies held regular meetings to coordinate activities and adopt resolutions explaining Baltic positions to the outside world. The Baltic Assembly organized a 600-km human chain (‘the Baltic Way’) from Tallinn to Vilnius via Riga, nearly 2 million people joined hands on 23 August 1989, the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This unprecedented demonstration put the Balts’ aspirations on the front page of international papers and demonstrated the strength of Baltic cooperation and unity of purpose.

The collapse of the communist regimes in the USSR’s E. European satellites during fall 1989, particularly the fall of the Berlin Wall in November, emboldened the Balts by demonstrating that their dreams weren’t utopian. In the common narrative of the collapse of communism, the achievement of liberty in the Warsaw Pact countries opened the way for the captive nations of the USSR. However, it should be noted that the breakthrough in the Baltic republics had occurred already 1 year earlier. The Singing Revolution in 1988 had already brought a degree of freedom, although not yet democracy and independence.”

“An unprecedented grassroots movement — Citizens’ Committees — emerged in Estonia in April 1989. The idea was to register the citizens of the pre-1950 republic and their descendants (including exiles) and to restore independent statehood on the basis of the popular will of the citizenry without any reference to Soviet institutions. By February 1950, most Estonians — 800k people — had registered themselves as citizens. The movement culminated in elections organized by the Citizens’ Committees where 90% of registered citizens voted on 24 February 1990 for an assembly called the Congress of Estonia. The voluntary organization of elections despite the opposition of the Soviet Union was a remarkable achievement. Participation in the process was a psychological and moral breakthrough.”

“The old guard sought to bring the Balts back into line by imposing direct presidential rule on the rebellious republics. The hardliners clearly hoped to act while the world’s attention was diverted to the looming Gulf War. In December 1990 a series of mysterious low-yield bombs detonated outside various Soviet military installations and Communist Party buildings in Latvia. Moscow quickly put the blame on ‘extreme nationalists.’ The explosions resulted in no casualties, but the simultaneous formation by Soviet hardliners of a Latvian National Salvation Committee and the bringing in of additional Soviet military units, ostensibly to hunt draft-dodgers, indicated that the ground was being prepared for the restoration of Soviet order by direct ‘presidential rule.’ However, when the Lithuanian government unexpectedly collapse as a result of economic difficulties on 7 January 1991, the conspirators shifted their focus to Lithuania, mistakenly believing that the moment had come to capitalize on the perceived disunity in Lithuanian ranks. On 12 January 1991 a shadowy Lithuanian National Salvation Committee declared that it was assuming power. Soviet military units were brought into the republic with instructions to seize control of strategic sites. Lithuanians heroically formed a human shield around the Supreme Council building, and that night 14 unarmed people died defending the Vilnius TV Tower. The vivid and unforgettable image, which was seen around the world, was of Lithuanians attempting to push a Soviet tank off the body of one of their fellows.”

“The resort to violence by the Kremlin only strengthened the resolve of the Balts in their aim of self-determination. Gorbachev’s remaining strategy was to make separation as difficult as possible. To this end, he proposed a new union treaty to transform the USSR into a looser federation of republics. The Baltic governments boycotted his all-Union referendum scheduled for 17 March 1991 and pre-empted it with their own referends on independence. On 9 February, Lithuanians voted 91% in favor of independence. On 3 March, 78% approved Estonian independence, and even in Latvia, with its large Russian-speaking minority, 74% of voters approved independence.

The situation in spring 1991 resembled a stalemate. The Balts sought fruitlessly to engage the Kremlin in negotiations about independence. The Baltic governments exercised almost all the functions of a state, but didn’t control their own territory. The Kremlin continued to label democratically elected Baltic leaders as ‘extremists’ and attempted to destabilize the republics in order to discredit their drive for independence. OMON units perpetrated multiple attacks in the first half of 1991 and seized buildings claimed for the pro-Moscow Communist Party. The most brutal incident was the cold-blooded execution of 7 Lithuanian border guards on 31 July. Part of this strategy was to intimidate the Balts, but the main goal was to provoke them into some kind of violent response so that the Soviet authorities could then implement direct presidential rule in the name of maintaining order. International sympathy for the Balts depended on their peaceful and democratic behavior. Remarkably, they succeeded in keeping their cool during months of extreme pressure.

During this time, the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian Popular Front governments pursued international recognition. Some high-level unofficial meetings with Western governments took place, but the international community’s priority was to support Gorbachev’s reforms and end the Cold War. There was a tactit agreement that nothing should be done which might conceivably undermine or weaken Gorbachev’s position. While most Western states adhered to the principle of non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, their message to the Balts was to be patient and not to rock the boat too much.

Although Gorbachev’s Union Treaty was rejected by the Balts, it also went too far for the Communist Party hardliners who organized a putsch in Moscow on 19 August 1991, the day before the scheduled signing of it. A State Emergency Committee (consisting mainly of members of Gorbachev’s own government) took control, claiming implausibly that Gorbachev was too ill to carry out his duties. The commander of the Soviet Baltic Military District, General Fyodor Kuzmin, announced the implementation of martial law to the Baltic governments, who refused to comply. Soviet troop columns and OMON units were dispatched to the Baltic states. They managed to take control of some key buildings such as the TV studios in Kaunas and the central telephone exchange in Riga, but were thwarted at other strategic sties, notably the TV Tower in Tallinn. As in January, the Balts quickly erected barricades and people rushed out to protect important government buildings. Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians acted resolutely and in union.

The putsch removed remaining doubts about the prudence of going forward with full independence. On 20 August Lithuania reaffirmed its independence and the Estonian Supreme Council voted to restore Estonian independence immediately, with Latvia following suit the next day. The decisive events occurred in Moscow, where the conspirators didn’t count on the heroic defense of the Russian Supreme Soviet by Yeltsin. By 22 August the coup attempt collapsed and the troops returned to their barracks. Gorbachev returned to office but power was now in Yeltsin’s hands.

Nordic and E. European countries and the Russian SFSR led the wave of international recognition for Baltic independence which followed in the final week of August and culminated with the USSR’s grudging acceptance of the fact on 6 September. on 17 September the Baltic states were admitted to the UN. 3 months later, Yeltsin dissolved the Soviet Union. Although the achievement of Baltic independence is usually attributed to the collapse of the USSR, the opposite is closer to the truth. The Baltic popular movements hastened the pace of democratization within the USSR and undermined the foundation of the Soviet empire.”

Post-Independence

“After the euphoria of the restoration of their independence, the Balts had to overcome many new challenges. They faced several years of a desperate economic situation which was the inevitable outcome of the transition from a command economy to a market one. They also confronted the difficult tasks of state-building and dealing with the legacies of the Soviet era, including coming to terms with a radically altered demographic situation. The Baltic states set ambitious goals: a reorientation of their trade toward the West, integration into the European community, and attainment of the standards and conditions necessary for memership of the EU and NATO.”

“As in their prior period of independence, the 3 Baltic states chose similar frameworks for their new political system. They were reacting against their common previous regime and restoring their pre-war institutions. Just as in the 1920s, one of their main models for constitutional design was Germany.”

“Estonia made the cleanest break with the Soviet past in its founding elections in Sept 1992 with the victory of Pro Patria, led by youthful historian Mart Laar. The new government had few links with the pat: several ministers, including Laar, were under 35, and 3 were emigres. Laar’s government immediately embarked on radical free-market reforms, liberalization of the economy and privatization. The election of polyglot Lennart Meri as president emphasized the rupture. Mari, a writer and ethnographic filmmaker, known for his erudition and whimsical humor, had established the Estonian Foreign Ministry in 1990.

In contrast, Lithuania stunned the world by being the first post-Soviet country to return the former communists (renamed as the Democratic Labor Party) to power in the October 1992 elections and their leader Algridas Brazauskas as president in Feb 1993. The ex-communists’ victory could be ascribed to the plummeting economy and dissatisfaction with Landsbergis’ confrontational style, but also to the fact that, unlike the Communist Parties in Estonia and Latvia, the Lithuanian Party had deeper roots in local society. The Estonian and Latvian Communist Parties were strongly identified with foreign occupation and ethnic Russian dominance. Furthermore, Brazauskas, as the final first secretary of the Communist Party, had played a leading role in Lithuania’s break from the USSR.”

“After living for 5 decades in a 1-party state, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians were eager, but not well-prepared, to participate fully in a free and open civil society. The connection between the new political parties and society was weak: the parties were formed mainly around personalities rather than socioeconomic cleavages. This resulted in a volatile political party system, with frequent changes in party allegiances by the elected reps, particularly in Estonia and Latvia during the 90s. The second and third post-independence elections in all 3 Baltic states rejected the incumbent governments. Nevertheless, broad outlines of policy — free-market reforms and integration with W. Europe — remained consistent.”

“The political landscape in post-Soviet Latvia has been chaotic and the political party system hadn’t yet consolidated. Until 2006, every government was won by a new party which hadn’t even existed at the time of the previous election. The 1995 general election was won with a mere 15% of the vote by a new populist left-wing party, followed closely by a new populist right-wing party. The right-wing party was kept out of office by a 17-party coalition headed by Andris Skele, a prominent entrepreneur without political affiliation. After being forced out of office in 1997, Skele launched his own party, the People’s Party, which won the 1998 elections.

After Ulmanis’ second term ended in July 1999, the election of the new president was a cliffhanger. The favored candidate was famous pop composer Raimonds Pauls but, after 7 rounds of deadlock, the parliament voted for a compromise candidate, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, a psych professor from Montreal. She became the first female president in E. Europe and her perfect command of English and French enabled her to make a mark internationally. While Estonian President Meri was the international spokesman of the Baltic states in the 90s, Vike-Freiberga played that role with aplomb at the beginning of the 21st century.”

“Compared to Estonia and Latvia, the political party system in Lithuania was more consolidated but also more polarized, with 2 large parties representing the left and right alternately in power. The pendulum swung back to the right in the second general election in 1996, when the Homeland Union-Lithuanian Conservatives won an absolute majority. At the end of his first term as president in 1998, Brazauskas announced his retirement. His surprise successor was Valdas Adamkus, a retired US EPA official. As president, Adamkus did much to enhance Lithuania’s bid for EU and NATO membership.”

“In Latvia, the new populist wave was initiated by the respected governor of the Central Bank, Einars Repse, who resigned in 2001 to form his own party, New Era. Campaigning on an anti-corruption platform, New Era triumphed in the ’02 elections. Prime minister Reple’s drive for transparency and accountability led to a row with his coalition partner, which resulted in the government’s collapse in February 2004. Indulis Emais of the Greens and Farmers’ Union formed a new minority government — notable as the first government in the world headed by a Green prime minister. However, his administration lasted only until December when Algars Kalvitis of the People's Party formed a new center-right coalition.”

“After the euphoria of achieving independence, the Balts faced several years of a desperate economic situation and the transition from a command economy to a market one. Their economies were still closely connected to that of the former USSR, which was rapidly descending into hyperinflation and chaos. In June 1992, while the IMF and the World Bank were advising the Balts to remain in the rouble zone since the great majority of theit rade was with the former USSR, the interim Estonian government, headed by Vahi, took the courageous step of being the first ex-Soviet country to introduce its own currency, the kroon. The reform succeeded in curbing runaway inflation, bringing goods which hadn’t been seen for years back on to shop shelves and putting an end to the black market. Being pegged to the German mark through a currency board system, the kroon provided Estonia with the necessary financial stability to plough ahead with radical free-market reforms and laid the basis for economic recovery. Latvia and Lithuania introduced temporary currencies parallel to the rouble, the Latvian rubelis and the Lithuanian talona, before establishing their own currencies, the lats and the litas (also both pegged to international currencies) in 1993.

In the early 90s, the Baltic economies contracted severely and experienced hyperinflation. After reaching bottom in 1993, they began to recover and grow robustly in the mid-90s. Estonia launched the most rapid free-market reforms. The economic philosophy of the first government headed by Mart Laar was inspired by Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher and was coined ‘shock therapy.’ Laar’s bold approach won plaudits from the IMF but angered farmers and pensioners, whose situation deteriorated markedly. Latvia followed Estonia’s path with some delay, while Lithuania in the first half of the 90s attempted to pursue a more gradualist approach, which some have ascribed to Lithuanian society’s more collectivist instincts as opposed to Estonian individualism.

Inefficient manufacturing enterprises, often relatively small units, couldn't compete successfully and were closed, resulting in substantial unemployment, particularly outside the major cities. Individual production which was geared for the Soviet market, particularly for military use, was rendered redundant. The economic reforms brought substantial social costs, including a drop in the already low life-expectancy rate, particularly of men. The rapid transition to a private market economy left various groups, notably pensioners, at a disadvantage. The new republics couldn’t afford to pay simple pensions, yet the cost of living rose perceptibly as a result of market forces. After the straitjacket of communism, the new liberal regime seemed chaotic. Public order deteriorated and crime surged, particularly organized crime. Corruption, a characteristic of the Soviet system, continued.

A foundation for the creation of a market economy was the privatization of property. Differing schemes were utilized by the 3 states. Housing and enterprises were most commonly purchased using privatization vouchers which were issued according to individuals’ employment record. Privatization also involved returning land and buildings which had been forcibly nationalized by the Soviet regime to the original owners or their descendants. Restitution of property was a difficult, complex and socially divisive process. Many disputes continued well into the second decade of independence.

Overstaffed Soviet-era state and collective farms couldn’t compete in a market economy and were dissolved. In order to function efficiently, many farms required modernization — this in return required capital investment. In a number of cases, attempts were made to run former state farms as cooperatives, but few of these succeeded. With the restitution of property to the original owners, or their heirs, much of the farmland was parceled into smaller units, comparable to pre-war family farms. An outcome of these transitional processes was that there were many underemployed, as well as unemployed, people in the countryside. Like pensioners, these people were the casualties of the economic transition, and they lacked the initiative and capital to do much about it. Gradually, some enterprising farmers began to assemble larger, more economically viable tracts of farmland. They were able to do this because much of the land which had been returned to the original owners lay fallow, unused, since many owners lacked either the interest or ability to exploit the land. These parcels of farmland were either sold to, or rented by, the entrepreneurs, who were willing to undertake farming as a modern agribusiness. The transition to a market economy dragged on longer in Lithuania because, unlike in Estonia, the government didn’t immediately end subsidies for farmers. The percentage of the population employed in the agricultural sector remained highest, and productivity lowest, in Lithuania.”

“The Asian and Russian financial crises of 1998 hit the Baltic states hard. The Baltic stock-market bubble burst and many companies whose main export market was Russia went bankrupt. This temporary setback had the salutary effect of weaning Baltic companies from the post-Soviet market and forcing them to reorient to the EU. Economic growth quickly picked up again, especially after EU accession. The Baltic states were among the world’s fastest expanding economies during 2005–7 when the annual increase in their GDP even soared to over 10%.”

“Unemployment didn’t become a long-term problem primarily because the first decade of EU membership saw an outflow of hundreds of thousands of people who sought higher wages, especially Estonians to Finland and Latvians and Lithuanians to the UK, but also to Ireland, Norway, and Germany. Within the Baltic countries, migration from the countryside and small towns to the larger cities left some peripheral municipalities sparsely inhabited with aging residents. Coupled with the longer-term trend of negative birth rates, mass emigration caused a sharp decline in population. During the quarter century since the restoration of independence, the Lithuanian population population shrink from 3.7 to 2.9 million and the Latvian population declined from 2.6 to 1.9 million. The Estonian population decrease was less precipitous, from 1.5 to 1.3 million.”

“Tens of thousands of Russians and people of other nationalities departed immediately after Baltic independence. However, most considered the Baltic states to be their homeland and enjoyed a noticeably higher standard of living than in some other parts of the former Soviet Union.

Since Estonia and Latvia were restored on the basis of the principle of legal continuity, those who were citizens prior to the Soviet takeover in 1940 and their descendants were recognized as citizens; others had to apply for naturalization. In practice, this meant that a large part of the Russian-speaking population was left disenfranchised. According to the citizenship laws introduced in Estonia in 1993 and in Latvia in 1994, the key requirement for naturalization was a language exam. The Russian-speaking minority in Estonia and Latvia was split into 3 categories: citizens, stateless persons and those who opted for Russian citizenship. The Latvian citizenship law attracted international condemnation for stipulating an annual quota for naturalization. Latvia held a referendum in 1998 which abolished the quota system.

By the end of the millennium a shift in thinking had occurred, brought about partly by a more realistic assessment of the situation but chiefly by the need to meet EU membership requirements. Whereas in the first years after the re-establishment of independence many Estonians and Latvians hoped that most of the Soviet-era settlers would simply return home, by the end of the millennium the governments had begun to realize that time alone wouldn’t solve the problem and that a more proactive approach was needed. Consequently, Estonia and Latvia adopted State Integration Programs in 2000 with the aim of integrating Russian-speakers into society. A key goal was to foster the linguistic skills necessary to successfully compete in the job market. Although having lived in the country for decades, many ethnic Russians had little knowledge of the Estonian or Latvian language and little need or desire to learn. As during the Soviet era, separate Russian, Estonian, and Latvian language schools continued to exist.

The implementation of the state integration programs faced apathy and opposition. In 2004, Latvian Russians demonstrated against changes to school curricula whereby 60% of subjects in Russian-language schools would be taught in Latvian. Estonia moved more cautiously and launched the same process in Russian-language schools only in 2007. The transition hasn’t yet been fully completed mainly due to passive resistance and inability on the part of some teachers. The EU has pushed for the faster naturalization of non-citizens, but paradoxically the extension of the Schengen regime to the Baltic states in 2007 reduced the incentives since those with Estonian and Latvian Aliens’ passports could now move and be employed nearly as freely within the EU as citizens. Stateless persons could also travel or work in Russia without a visa, a significant practical advantage. The integration of Estonian society suffered a setback in 2007 when the government’s relocation of a Red Army monument in Tallinn caused a riot by Russophone youths. The statue was resented as a marker of occupation by most Estonians but cherished as a memorial for fallen Soviet troops by most Russophones. A breakthrough for the empowerment of the Russian minority in Latvia occurred in 2009 when 33-year-old Russian journalist Nils Usakovs, the leader of the Harmony Center Party, was elected mayor of Riga. He’s since been re-elected and Harmony has retained its dominance in the capital. In 2012 Russian activists in Latvia succeeded through popular initiative to put the question of making Russian the second official language to a national referendu, but 3/4 of voters rejected the proposal.

Lithuania remained a more homogeneous society which didn’t face the same problems and thus could afford to grant citizenship automatically to all residents.”

“Party members tended to justify their actions as having been purely pragmatic, often claiming that they joined to help their nation from within the Soviet system. Typically, they claimed that had they not occupied the position they did, then it would’ve been someone worse — a Russian with no sympathies toward the native culture. The Soviet era entailed moral and ethical compromises and it’s therefore not possible to view it purely in black and white. By and large, a societal consensus emerged whereby only those who had worked for the repressive organs (the KGB) faced lustration. Occasionally, public figures were discredited when the media revealed their past role as a KGB informer. Most of the high-ranking communists in Estonia and Latvia didn’t continue in politics; they generally went into business (and often were quite successful because they were well-connected) and thus didn’t present a political problem. An exception was Rubiks, the last leader of the Latvian Communist Party, who was briefly imprisoned for supporting the 1991 putsch, but was elected to the European Parliament in 2009. It was more of an issue in Lithuania since the successor to the Communist Party continued to govern. One reason why there were no ‘witch-hunts’ of former communists was that Baltic nations are small societies where most people know each other through various social networks and where the limited pool of human resources would’ve been diminished by political retribution.”

“ In 2007, Estonia became the first country in the world to use internet voting in a national election and, in 2014, the first to create e-residency, a transnational digital identity.”

“The Balts strove to surmount doubts by proving that small countries could contribute to the Atlantic Alliance, particularly through the efforts of their peacekeeping troops, beginning with their service in the former Yugoslavia in the late 90s. The Balts have sent personnel to almost every NATO mission. A key component in demonstrating their preparedness for membership of the alliance was Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian cooperation in forming a joint infantry battalion, naval squadron, air surveillance system, and staff college in the late 90s. Furthermore, Baltic governments promised to increase their defense expenditures to reach 2% of GDP to conform with NATO’s standard.

The 9/11 attacks changed global security perceptions and helped to remove the remaining obstacles to Baltic membership of NATO. Baltic reform efforts were rewarded when they became members in March 2004, a few weeks before entering the EU. Their desire to preserve strong ties to the USA resulted in the dispatch of troops and civilian experts to Iraq and Afghanistan. The number of military personnel participating in these missions may’ve been small, but in proportional terms the Baltic contribution was significant. In line with NATO’s prioritization of ‘out-of-area’ operations and rapid deployment, Latvia and Lithuania transformed their militaries into fully professional forces. Estonia, however, following the Finnish model, cautiously retained conscription and an emphasis on its own territorial defense. Supplementing the armed forces, all 3 countries maintain a sizeable citizens’ volunteer militia.”

“An obstacle to improved relations was the difficulty in ratifying border treaties. Russia first ratified its border treaty with Lithuania in 2002 as part of a package deal with the EU to resolve the issues of Kaliningrad transit. Lithuania is the only Baltic country to have Russia as its western neighbor, in the Kaliningrad oblast, the most highly militarized area of Europe. The regulation of the transit of Russian military personnel and equipment from the exclave across Lithuania to Russia proper was a source of disagreement in the 90s. Kaliningrad became the main bone of contention between Russia and the EU prior to Lithuanian and Polish accession. Russia demanded visa-free transit rights for its citizens, while the EU opposed the creation of a corridor in its future Schengen space. A compromise was reached in 2002 whereby Kaliningraders would be issued ‘facilitated transit documents.’ After the collapse of the USSR, Kaliningrad oscillated between an optimistic vision of becoming a ‘Hong Kong on the Baltic’ and the pessimistic perception of being a ‘black hole.’ Despite being granted duty-free zone status, Kaliningrad has languished since the federal government has restricted the scope for regional initiatives.”

“It’s commonly assumed that there’s a correlation between the situation of the Russian minority and the atmosphere of bilateral relations. However, experience demonstrates the opposite. In recent years, relations with Lithuania have been the most confrontational, while Latvia, the country with the largest number of Russian non-citizens, has in fact had the strongest economic links and political contacts with Russia.

The Baltic states are wary of Russia’s use of its vast energy resources as a tool to reassert its status as a great power and to divide the EU, particularly since they’re dependent on Russian gas. The issue rose to the top of the political agenda after Germany and Russia struck a deal in 2005 to construct the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline (completed in 2011) underneath the Baltic Sea, purposely bypassing the new EU member states. The Baltic states responded by vigorously pressing for an EU common energy policy. In the 90s the Baltic states enjoyed a lucrative oil transit trade with Russia, but this sector has been subject to political risks. Russia stopped the flow of its oil to Ventspils in 2003; in 2006 the pipeline to Lithuania was closed when the Mazeikiai oil refinery was sold to a Polish company, not a rival Russian bidder. Rail transit through Estonia shriveled after a Red Army monument was moved in 2007. Russia has redirected the export of its strategic resources to its own newly constructed ports on the Gulf of Finland.

Questions of energy supply loom large since the Baltic states are still synchronized with former Soviet grids and not yet connected to EU networks. Estonia’s only significant natural energy resource, oil shale, is heavily polluting and will eventually have to be phased out. The Ignalina nuclear power plant, which generated most of Lithuania’s electricity, was decommissioned in 2009, as the EU had demanded. Failing to reach an accord on constructing a joint Baltic liquefied natural gas terminal, Lithuania boldly commissioned a floating storage and regasification terminal in Klaipeda in 2014. The Baltic states have used European Commission funding to build interconnectors, such as the Estlink underwater electricity cable between Estonia and Finland, and NordBalt between Lithuania and Sweden, which has enabled the Baltic states to become part of the Nordic electricity market. The largest potential joint Baltic infrastructure project using EU funding will be Rail Baltic, a high-speed railway connecting Tallinn, Riga and Kaunas with the heart of Europe via Warsaw.”

“Russia reacted with fury to the relocation of the Soviet war memorial in Tallinn: the Estonian embassy in Moscow was blockaded by a Kremlin-sponsored youth group. Estonian sites were hit by massive cyberattacks, and Estonian goods were boycotted. Russia displayed great annoyance at the decision of the Lithuanian parliament to ban the public display of both Nazi and Soviet symbols. Neither the Balts nor the Russians are likely to be able to convince the other to accept their narrative, but the real objective is to sway international opinion.”

“International journalists and analysts have raised alarm over whether the Baltic states, especially the Russian-speaking border towns of Narva and Daugavpils, could be the next target of Russia’s ‘hybrid’ aggression. Such concerns are sensationalist and based on specious parallels with events in Ukraine, though the ‘info war’ and ‘fake news.’ which the West has recently awoken to, have been a central feature of Russian policy toward the Baltic states for nearly 3 decades.”