Baltic states

Map of the countries belonging to the Baltic states.

The Baltic states or the Baltics are three countries in northeastern Europe: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. People in the modern Baltic states generally have a negative attitude towards Russia and the Soviet Union, with only about 15-30% of the populations among them believing the breakup of the Soviet Union was a bad thing — the lower end among post-Soviet countries. However, there was still some benefit to them during their time the USSR.

Pre-Soviet history

Since the 18th century, the Baltics had been territories of the Russian Empire. After the Revolutions of 1917, communist movements sprang up in the Baltics, but the European powers intervened and installed right-wing regimes, and the communist movement was suppressed.

The three [Baltic] States had all gained their independence as a result of the disintegration of the Russian Empire. It was widely held in the Soviet Union that they had been 'snatched' (to use Zinoviev's word) from Russia with German aid, and maintained by the forces of the Entente, which had been active in suppressing the Communist regimes established in the winter of 1918-19 in the wake of German withdrawal. Relations between the Soviet Union and the three republics during the 1920s were cool, but on the whole, correct. There were some attempts at subversion, culminating in the abortive Communist coup in Estonia in 1924, but with the demise of the Comintern as a leading agent of Soviet foreign policy, the Soviet Union posed no immediate or evident threat to the integrity of the Baltic States. The resurgence of Germany in the 1930s altered the political scene in the Baltic area. In the event of conflict with Germany, the Soviet Union could not afford to have its front door opened by the defection of pro-German States on its very doorstep. This was clearly spelled out by Andrei Zhdanov to the VIIIth Congress of Soviets in November 1936. According to the Latvian chargé d'affaires, Zhdanov warned the governments of neighbouring States that if they drifted too far in the direction of Fascism 'they might feel the strength of the Soviet Union, and the window of the Soviet Union might well be widened'.

After the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Baltic states came into the Soviet sphere of influence, allowing the repressed communist movements there to resurge and eventually cooperate with the USSR in overthrowing their governments. These regions then voted to join the Soviet Union as constituent union republics.

Soviet era

The Baltics were set back not by the Soviets, but rather primarily by the Nazi invasion during World War II, wherein invading armies stormed through the entirety of the lands, destroying much of them in the process, and seeking to exterminate the local populace as part of Generalplan Ost; this, in combination with other factors such as the famine caused by the war on top of military casualties incurred by fighting the Nazi forces. As a result of the war, every thirteenth person died in Estonia, every eight in Lithuania, and every seventh in Latvia.

Quality of life

The Baltic states maintained the highest living standards in the Soviet Union, having good housing and healthcare and more luxuries such as clubs and television sets.[[:Category:]] After the dissolution of the Soviet Union the Baltics tried to emulate the rest of the West and develop their economies through neo-imperialism, however have largely failed in this gambit and as a consequence have led to their economies stagnating and their populations falling, as many are leaving for better employment opportunities elsewhere. At first the Baltics, and in particular the wealthiest country among them, Estonia, had a period of rapid economic development which culminated in the implosion of what was in fact a massive debt bubble, and with this the Swedish-owned banks in the region had to be bailed out, with the EU injecting further infrastructure spending to keep the countries afloat.

Secessionism

Problems started to occur when nationalists who believed that the Soviets were illegally occupying the Baltic created a large anti-communist sentiment during the final years of the USSR, often agitating and promoting propaganda provided by Radio Free Europe programming. However, there were legitimate grievances against Soviet rule. For example, to install the kolkhoz system, the USSR had to destroy the functional pre-Soviet farming system, which was already being mechanized during the interwar era. They further reorganized industry to produce for the whole of the Union and kept less than before for the local people, causing a deficit in consumer goods. Some local artists and musicians were unfairly silenced, and in the later years there was plenty of corruption and nepotism. All men from the age of 18 were conscripted into the military for two years where they were often hazed and bullied by soldiers of other nationalities, particularly Russians. This is because Balts were late joiners to the USSR, and many harbored nationalistic sentiments, associating more with Finland and Germany rather than with Slavic countries. The Soviets also had an ecological impact which created an autonomy movement, which developed into an independence movement (the Phosphorite War).

There were many good things brought to the Baltics however, such as an exemption from rent for apartments and guaranteed employment (which countered the 6-day workweek), and prices were much more affordable than before. The Soviet Union funded the Baltic film industry quite generously, which produced many high quality movies that have become a centerpiece of Baltic culture.

Soviet conduct

Estonia, along with Latvia and Lithuania, voted to join the Soviet Union in 1940, and the idea that the Soviets "occupied" or "terrorized" them is anti-Soviet propaganda that emanated from the bourgeoisie of these countries who ruled them with an iron fist in the interwar period. The communist takeover began as grassroots movements that actively agitated against the unstable and highly repressive nationalist governments. This activity correlated to Soviet efforts in seeking to conclude mutual defense pacts with the Baltic states amid the growing Nazi threat, to prevent them from allying with Hitler and attacking the USSR. Initially the Soviets had little interest in replacing the existing governments and simply wanted them to agree to treaties safeguarding the security of the USSR. Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov privately warned against talk of "Sovietizing" the Baltic states. However, as the months went by, reports from Soviet embassies of anti-Soviet intrigues by the Baltic governments accumulated, as well as incidents against the Red Army. The USSR accused the Baltic governments of reneging on the treaties and demanded their resignation in favor of cabinets that would honor said treaties. Taking advantage of the presence of Red Army troops in the Baltic states, communists and other progressive forces rose up in protests calling for the downfall of the semi-fascist regimes, who were in no position to resist. Elections were held in which coalitions of communists and non-communists emerged victorious. These democratic governments ended up voting to join the USSR.

Stalin quote

A common issue that modern communists tend to take up with Stalin is that he supposedly announced that the Baltics did not have "real communists" and that he gave them no support, encouraging the reactionary governments of the time to take any measures necessary against them. This is a misinterpretation of a quote by Stalin in relation to the communist activity mentioned before.

In October 1939, [Stalin] told the Lithuanian Foreign Minister that it was no concern of the Soviet Union how the Lithuanian government dealt with its Communists; and, even more bluntly, he informed the Latvian Foreign Minister: 'There are no Communists outside Russia. What you have in Latvia are Trotsk[y]ists: if they cause you trouble, shoot them.

The quote is taken out of context however, as the USSR sought to conclude mutual defense pacts with the Baltic states amid the growing Nazi threat, and naturally, as these countries were run by right-wing regimes, they were worried about whether these pacts would result in the "communization" of their countries. Stalin did not actually think there were no communists outside the USSR; he just wanted to assauge the fears of the bourgeois governments. Stalin likewise told the Latvian foreign minister that "as far as Germany is concerned we could occupy you", as Hitler was more concerned about Lithuania than Latvia and Estonia.

Martin McCauley expands on this:

Lacking instructions from Moscow, the local Communist Parties seemed to have played safe and followed the prevalent popular front line. The Lithuanian Communist Party programme of 1939 urged the mobilisation of all democratic forces to overthrow the Černius government, and the Party sought alliance with the Social Democrats. In common with the Parties of Latvia and Estonia, its programme issued in 1940 was democratic in tone rather than Communist. The governments which were established in June 1940 seemed to offer a genuine opportunity for a reintroduction of democratic liberties, and as such they gained the passive and even active support of many democrats and Socialists who had suffered under the old regimes. The authoritarian regimes which had been set up in the early 1930s in Latvia and Estonia and in 1926 in Lithuania had all shown signs of collapse before the outbreak of war in 1939. They had suppressed political liberties and had failed to replace them with anything other than poor imitations of Austrian Fascism. The percipient comment of the British Minister to Riga on the state of affairs in Latvia is equally applicable to Estonia and Lithuania. The Collapse of the Ulmanis regime, “literally overnight” left a political vacuum which, as the result of M. Ulmanis' totalitarianism, could be filled by no alternative middle-class organisation, and the swing to the left was therefore unduly abrupt, partly no doubt owing to the influence exercised by the USSR but also owing to the absence of any mobilisable political forces to challenge or correct those of the town workers. The evidence available would suggest that considerable sections of the urban proletariat, including the Jewish and Russian minorities, supported the new order, whilst many democratic and left-wing intellectuals were prepared to give the new regimes a chance to fulfil their promises. The new governments, composed of left-wing democrats rather than Communists, did indeed appear to represent a fresh wind of change in an atmosphere which had become stagnant during the last years of the dictatorships. All-round wage increases were decreed in June, laws against hoarding and speculation were passed, whilst assurances were given to peasant landholders that their land would not be touched. The bastions of the old order were speedily demolished and replaced by new organisations. In Latvia, for example, the law of 26 June provided for the creation of workers' committees in factories employing more than twenty persons, whilst on 8 July a law establishing the politruk [i.e. political commissar] system in the army was passed. The Estonian trade unions, which had managed to preserve much of their independence during the Päts' regime, were taken over by the Communists on 20 June. The Kaitseliit guards were dissolved on 27 June, and replaced by a workers' militia under the direct control of the Communist-dominated Ministry of the Interior. Widespread purges of local government and the bureaucracy occurred in the last days of June and early July, with Communists installed in vital positions. Nevertheless, the lack of Party members in all three countries—and, quite possibly, Soviet mistrust of local Communists—meant that 'progressive elements' willing to serve the regime were used.

Forest Brothers and fascism

Like in all countries during World War 2, the Baltics had their own partisans fighting for freedom from fascism. However, some partisan groups of the Baltics spent more time hunting down Jews escaped from concentration camps and fighting the Red Army than they did tangling with the Germans, if at all. These National Partisans, better known as Forest Brothers, reflected in a nationalist attitude among many Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians of the time that associated them with Germany rather than the Slavic sphere of influence. This is not true to all partisan groups however, with several thousand of them being heroes of the war. The USSR never declared all Baltic partisans as enemies and in fact they actually covered for those partisans that did do such crimes so as not to cast doubt over the others who truly did fight for their country against the Nazis; in 1955 the USSR issued an amnesty to the members. This extended to media, as is seen in films such as the 1966 Lithuanian film Nobody Wanted to Die where the fight between the Communists and National Partisans is shown, not as a clash of caricaturized good and evil, but as a national tragedy - when society is split and brothers are forced to fight brothers. The efforts of the KGB infiltrated and eliminated the last organized squads of Forest Brothers in 1969, leaving a few inactive groups remaining. In 1986 the last known member, Stasys Guiga, was found and arrested.

The victims of the Forest Brothers, from 1944 to 1953:

• Estonia: 887 people killed, of which 56% were civilians and 33% fighters and activists (non-Forest Brother partisans and other paramilitary groups), 6% Members of the Militiamen and 5% Soldiers and Officers of the Soviet/Red Army.
• Latvia: 2208 people killed; 41.6% through armed robbery and assault of people, 33.7% through armed robbery and assault of public/state properties, 22.7% through Terrorism, 1.2% in attacks on Soviets and kolkhoz councils and 0.8% as diversions/subterfuge/spying.
• Lithuania: 25,108 people killed, 84.6% Lithuanians and 15.6% other nationalities. Among those Lithuanians killed by Forest Brothers 1002 were children older than 2 years old and 52 were children 2 years and younger.

Forest Brothers today

Following the fall of the USSR, the nationalist movements that revived during Gorbachev, swiftly rewrote history to heroize the fascists and demonize the USSR, while simultaneously contradicting themselves, by calling the USSR the same as the Nazis. These fascists posthumously receive monuments, high awards and musicals to honor them.

• In 2012, in Bauska, in the presence of schoolchildren, a monument was unveiled to the soldiers of the 23rd, 319th and 322nd SD police battalions that operated on the territory of the republic during the war as Polizai.
• In May 2019 a monument in the form of a Marble Sword was placed at Kurzeme to honor a group there. The opening of the monument was attended by ~300 people, among whom were representatives of the armed forces of the Republic of Latvia. The group of 'Brothers' operating in Kurzeme mainly consisted of former members of the Latvian Waffen SS legion and were guilty in the deaths of - according to various sources - 1.5 to 3 thousand people, including civilians.

"Russification"

A common claim by modern Baltic propaganda is that the USSR attempted breed out and 'Russify' the local population by settling in Russian worker families, all because they supposedly hated their spirit and because "Stalin was Red Czar". The reality is that people settled in there because, they were displaced across the USSR after the war, with many of the evacuated having no homes to go back to. The USSR therefore sent willing people to wherever there was homes until proper housing could be constructed.

Secession from the USSR

The way Glasnost and Perestroika were implemented was mainly responsible for the growth of nationalist sentiment in the Baltics. In fact in Lithuania, the group that spearheaded nationalism in that republic, Sajudis, initially operated under the cover of promoting Perestroika before adopting an openly secessionist course. In this sense Gorbachev bore some responsibility for the secession of these states.

At the time the Baltics were seceding, not much could have been done to stop them. Gorbachev did oppose the move, calling it illegal in the way that it was being carried out. He tried to exert economic pressure on the republic, but that just stiffened support for independence. And in fact, precisely because Lithuania's independence was being put forward in an illegal manner, this created consequences. As Gorbachev wrote later in On My Country and the World:

At the end of 1990 the authorities in Vilnius continued to function according to the letter and spirit of their declaration of independence, and this led to a significant internal struggle within that republic. Those opposed to secession from the Soviet Union created their own organizations. The Communist Party of Lithuania broke apart at that time, and its fragments scattered in different directions. One element supported independence; another opposed it and acted, moreover, in an extremely radical way, sometimes in violation of the law. This segment of the former Communist Party of Lithuania began systematically to request that the central government impose a state of emergency, place Lithuania under rule by presidential decree, and so on. These demands, in fact, were met with sympathy and support on the part of certain forces in Moscow, forces exerting similar pressures (for example, as mentioned above, General Varennikov’s statement in the Politburo meeting). In December 1990 and January 1991 these forces in Vilnius and Moscow were in fact coordinating their actions.

Even so, I felt, as before, that I did not have the right to take extreme measures. On January 10, 1991, I appealed to the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian republic and called for full and immediate restoration of the Soviet Constitution since the situation was becoming explosive. The Lithuanian authorities did not respond. As a result, those who demanded that Lithuania remain within the framework of the USSR sharply increased their activities and created a Committee for National Salvation. Anticonstitutional activities by some had called forth anti-constitutional activities by others. The struggle had passed from the channel of constitutional procedures and was flowing into the path of direct confrontation.

And sure enough, violence broke out. The aforementioned National Salvation Committee tried to restore Soviet authority in Lithuania, calling on the Soviet army for help, though the attempt failed and Soviet troops ended up withdrawing from Lithuania. It was precisely Gorbachev who was blamed for this incident, however Gorbachev himself claimed that the attempt was made without his knowledge or authorization. In any case, all it did was strengthen pro-independence sentiment still further.

While pro-independence sentiment was very real, the process itself was carried out in an underhanded manner. To quote Philip Bonosky in Devils in Amber: The Baltics:

This session of the parliament had been hurriedly called together and, in just a few hours with practically no debate, "voted" (if that is the word) 91-38, not to secede, which would have involved them in a long, law-prescribed process, taking at least five years, but simply to restore the status quo ante [i.e. proclaim the reestablishment of the pre-1940 independent Republic of Lithuania]. . .

On the same day, March 11, 1990, the knocked-together parliament elected Landsbergis "President" with less than 133 delegates voting, and also voted for a new Constitution, which expressly annulled its socialist character. . .

By no stretch of the imagination could the Congress, presumably voted into power in March, be considered democratic. Not only did it come to power on a wave of unparalleled demagogy, but, even statistically, it could not honestly claim to be representative of the will of the people. The Supreme Soviet was elected by only 41.2 percent of the votes, of which only 30.4 percent went to Sajudis. Nor could one claim that even all those who voted for Sajudis, or who represented Sajudis, shared its political aims—indeed, could not, since those aims were kept secret.

The Constitution was not offered to the people for discussion and adoption. No referendum was held. It was "adopted" by a show of hands of less than 200 men (and some women) in the new parliament! . . . But the main referendum, held on a Union-wide basis on March 17, 1991, Landsbergis was afraid to hold. He ordered it boycotted and, advisedly, for over 80 percent of the Soviet people voted to remain a Union.

To forestall the March 17th nationwide referendum, whose results could be catastrophic to secessionists, Landsbergis ordered a referendum of his own on February 9th. The Lithuanians were asked the "Do you like ice cream question?" That is: "Are you in favor of an independent democratic republic?" Is there anyone on earth who is in favor of a dependent, undemocratic republic?

In any case, asserting that the Lithuanians had spoken—for 90 percent of the 80 percent who voted of course voted affirmatively—Landsbergis refused to allow Lithuanians to vote in the March 17th referendum, which asked whether they wished to preserve the Union as a renovated "federation of equal sovereign republics."

Nevertheless, though forbidden to vote, and often having to run a gauntlet of jeering, threatening Nationalists, over 600,000 Lithuanians braved the dangers, present and future, and voted in booths set up and administered by the army and other Soviet safe quarters exactly the way elections were handled by the Union Army in the defeated South: soldiers ensured the right of Blacks to vote in America in 1865 and in Lithuania in 1991.

In Latvia, 125,000 voted against secession. In Estonia, a bit more.

For every citizen who came to the polls, several others dared not. And who knows how many who had voted for an "independent democratic republic" found any contradiction in voting for a Union of "equal sovereign republics" at the second referendum?

Post-Soviet era

The fact that their SSRs had the highest qualities of life was ironically used as an argument for separation - we do not need the union after all, we can do well on our own - then they tried to emulate Europe and failed, losing all their major industry and self-sufficiency, becoming a base for US military forces instead of Soviet forces and making a living off fishing for herring and sardines. The population is rapidly dropping because many people are leaving; engineers and scientists can only find work in other countries, the youth have no real future there either, all that keeps the countries together is hysterical cries about Russian aggression.

Politics

The party currently in power in Lithuania is the Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union. The party is pretty much just the personal clique of Ramūnas Karbauskis. He is one of the biggest oligarchs in the country, making his fortunes in the "wild capitalism" period by buying up land from struggling farmers and conducting fertiliser import scams. The party started rising about a year before the 2016 election as a populist centre-left party, trying to rally the people from the impoverished regions (aka everything else apart the 2 main cities of Vilnius and Kaunas). They wouldn't have been so successful if not for 2 factors: 1, the liberal party imploded right before the elections (more on this later) and 2, our current PM Saulius Skvernelis joining them, who is a colourful character, who was incredibly popular at the time. With all of this they managed to barely win the elections, getting slightly more votes than the conservatives. Now they are an extremely disliked party (for their anti-alcohol laws, shitty restructuring of bureaucracy and light austerity measures, leading them to get absolutely fucked in the recent regional/mayoral elections and lose the bid to the presidency for Skvernelis). Their government coalition is highly unstable, which shows with how they created what can only be described as a "league of evil" together with the "Order and Justice" (UKIP tier right-wingers), "Polish electoral interest and christian family alliance" (supposedly pro-Polish party that lost Poland's support, now is most likely sponsored by Russia, and are christcucks to the core) and the pathetic excuse for a party that is the LSDDP (the additional "D" stands for labour) (aka old red apparatchiks who got kicked out from the LSDP proper by their based new chairman and now complain how LSDP are radical leftist extremists because they used the word "neoliberalism" in their kind of good new manifesto). This coalition is incredibly pathetic, since it is quite likely that apart from T&T and Poles (who have a dedicated enough base) both the Farmer Greens and the LSDDP will desolve as political parties after the next elections, since the former are so unpopular, and the only reason the later exist is because they split from LSDP after the last elections. Most likely this means that one of the parties from the opposition will take charge next (that is either conservatives, liberals or socdems). Also there have been multiple scandals surrounding Karbauskis, both with investigations into his highly criminal business practices (which did not go anywhere) and a love affair between him and some secretary, all of which certainly did not help the popularity of the party.