The Baltic States

Of the ten independent nation-states that currently line the shores of the Baltic Sea, four -- Estonia, Karelia, Latvia, Lithuania, the first two of Finnish ethnolinguistic stock, the latter speakers of Baltic languages -- came to national consciousness at a relatively late date. Unlike Finland, which enjoyed self-government since its incorporation into Russia in 1809 and developed a Fennophone bourgoisie by the beginning of the 20th century, the four smallest peoples of the Russian shore were administered directly by the Imperial Russian government. Under said regime, the Baltic peoples suffered under an oppressive Imperial regime, with the ultimate aim of russifying the Baltic lands of the Tsarist empire. Despite this, the Baltic peoples were able to retain their distinct identities, thanks to the vigorous activities of nationalist intellectuals and writers, and their support by the broader Baltic populations. Following the collapse of the Russian Empire in the First World War, the Baltic States successfully fought and won their independence, with international recognition from the League of Nations, its member states, and the Soviet Union coming by 1922.

The interwar histories of the four Baltic States were troubled. Lithuania, by far the largest of the Baltic States with a population of two million, was engaged in continual hostilities with Poland due to Lithuania's control over the disputed city of Vilnius. The small and ethnically homogenous Latvian and Estonian republics were wrenched by disputes between proto-fascists, communists, and a dwindling contingent of democrats. Karelia suffered the worst internal dissension of all, with religious disputes between Protestants and Orthodox, between Karelian nationalists and supporters of Karelian annexation into Finland, and between ethnic Karelians and the ethnic Russian minority in the centre and east of the country. Estonia and Latvia barely maintained themselves as democracies on the model of Finland, while Karelian democracy fell to a military coup in 1934 and Lithuania became a nationalistic dictatorship in the early 1930's. By the Second World War, though, all four Baltic States had fallen under dictatorships of varying severity whose only aims were to prevent either Nazi Germany or Soviet Union from conquering their territories. In this, they failed, as all of the Baltic States were drafted into the war against the Soviet Union by Germany from 1942. Lithuania's annexation to the German Reich in 1943 marked the beginning of what was to be the conversion of the Baltic States into German colonies of settlement and the enslavement or extermination of the indigenous populations. Lithuania's quarter-million Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust by the end of 1943.

In the course of the Soviet invasion of the Baltics in 1944, the German occupation forces were destroyed or driven into East Prussia. In all, a half-million Balts fled to Sweden and Finland ahead of the Soviet advance. Although pressure from the League of Nations was enough to prevent the annexation of the Baltic States, by the end of 1944 all four countries had become satellites. Only Estonia and Karelia were forced to cede certain small border territories to the Soviet Union -- the city of Pechory in the case of Estonia, the shore of the White Sea (connecting the "mainland" Soviet Union to the new Murmansk ASSR to the rest of the Soviet Union) in the case of Karelia -- but all of the Baltic States were devastated by the Stalinist purges of 1946-48. Almost one hundred thousand Balts were killed outright, while another quarter-million were deported to the Soviet Union, including sixty thousand ethnic Karelians moved to the Komi autonomous republic in the northern Urals. Following these initial purges, the Baltic States were put under the nominal authority of indigenous Communist parties under the close supervision of the Soviet Union.

As in Poland and the more liberal districts and republics of the Soviet Union itself, Stalinist terror in the Baltic States declined throughout the 1950's. As the purges stopped, most of the Soviet occupation forces were transferred back to the Soviet Union, Balts gradually came to enjoy some amount of autonomy. With the outbreak of the Soviet Civil War in 1960, the Soviet Union withdrew completely from the Baltic States, allowing these countries to join the European Confederation as full member states in 1962 on the condition of their perpetual neutrality.

Somewhat surprisingly, despite their exposed positions the Baltic States came to enjoy an immense economic boom in the course of the 1960's and 1970's. The populations of all of the Baltic States were small by European standards, though that did not prevent the high Lithuanian birth rate from worsening that country's unemployment. By necessity, the Baltic States were multilingual and highly sensitive to the currents of European commerce. This multilingual sensitivity allowed the Baltic States to emerge as entrepôts par excellence, as the main corridor for European-Soviet trade and as an increasingly important centre for high-valued-added manufacturing and communications in its own right. Although Lithuania retained its large agrarian population, and Karelia depended disproportionately upon the exploitation of its vast forests, by the early 1980's both countries had effectively caught up. Estonia and Latvia, in particular, managed to evolve into two of the wealthiest countries in the entire world, thanks in no small degree to their highly profitable export of communications equipment under joint agreements with France and Sweden.

By necessity, all of the Baltic States quickly came to identify themselves as Europeans and as happy members of the European Confederation. The Baltic diasporas in Scandinavia and France helped to cement this bond, as did the near-total dependence of Baltic prosperity upon European trade. At the same time, Balts came to link themselves with various regional identities inside Europe. For instance, the growth of friendly Polish-Lithuanian relations helped Lithuanians to identify their nation as central European, while Karelia and Estonia were quickly integrated into the Nordic community. Latvia remained on the borderline -- although, like Karelia and Estonia, Latvia was historically a Protestant Lutheran nation influenced by Sweden and Germany, its large immigrant population of Lithuanians and Russians created countervailing ties with Catholic Lithuania and even the Soviet Union. The progressive assimilation of Latvian immigrants eventually created a more united nation, and one that eventually joined the Nordic Council a decade after its northern neighbours. The Fenno-Karelian State Treaty of 1976, in establishing a joint administration on the model of the Franco-German Combine, further strengthened the bonds of the Balts with their Nordic neighbours.

Then came the Third World War. Though the Baltic States were not attacked, the general economic collapse along with the destruction of neighbouring Russia almost destroyed the regional economy and the influx of more than two million ethnic Russian refugees. A potentially disastrous increase in ethnic tensions between the Balts and the Russian refugees was halted by the 1985 admission of the Federated Russian Republics to the European Confederation and the emigration of Russian refugees, either to their homeland or to destinations in western Europe. As a condition for their support for the enlargement of the Commonwealth into Russia, though, Estonia and Karelia -- supported by their Nordic allies -- demanded Russia's return to Karelia and Estonia of the territories annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945. Although the Russians accepted that stipulation as the price for European aid, that did not diminish Russian bitterness and poisoned Russian-Baltic relations to this day.

By the beginning of the 21st century, despite the recent Deccan Traps and Holy Alliance invasions of Russia, the Baltic States have regained their leading positions in Europe. The Baltic States continue to enjoy warm relationships with their western neighbours, and have lately profited from the immigration of hundreds of thousands of their Deccan Traps Earth co-ethnics. The collapse of the Russian federation and Russia's division into at least three independent states has aggravated Baltic Russophobia, though, while Russian resentment of its western neighbours remains a substantial force. The immigration of hundreds of thousands of Baltic co-ethnics from the Soviet Union of Deccan Traps has transformed the Baltic's demography and economics -- Baltic populations seem likely to grow at least 75% over their 1999 populations by 2002 -- , while the rapid growth of Baltic foreign trade ensures the four states' prosperity. Aside from their conflictual relationships with the Russias, nothing indicates that all four Baltic States will not have bright futures.