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Independence Negotiated, Then Stolen

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Independence Negotiated, Then Stolen SOVIETIZATION OF THE BALTIC STATES Independence Negotiated, Then Stolen WILLIAM SADD THIS ARTICLE EX A MINES THE FORCES AND CI RCU M STANCES OFTHE EARLY 1940s DUR- ING WHICH A UNIQUE CLIMATE WAS CREATED FOR THE SOVIETIZATION OF ESTONIA, LATVIA, AND LITHUANIA. IT ALSO CONSIDERS THE LEGAL ASPECTS OF THE CASE, NAME LY THE INTEGRATION OF THESE THREE INDEPENDENT, SOVEREIGN STATES INTO THE SOVIET UNION WHICH VIOLATED NEARLY ALL MEASURES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW. THIS, HOWEVER, WAS METWITH LITTLE RESISTANCE FROM THE INTERN AT IONAL COMMUNITY, PRIMARILY BECAUSE OF THE RISE OF NAZI GERMANY, THE GENERAL CHAOS IN THE EARLY YEARS OF WORLD WAR II, AND THE SHIFTING ALLIANCES ALONG THE EASTERN FRONT. WITH MANY FORMER SOVIET REPUBLICS IN THE SPOTLIGHT TODAY STRUGGLING TO STAB I LIZE AS INDEPENDENT STATES, AND WITH THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION ST ILL OCCUPYING SEVERAL TERRITORIES OF THE FORMER SOVIET UNION UNDER THE AUSPICES OF PEACEKEEPING MISSIONS, THE RELATIVELY SETTLED CASE OF THE BALTIC STATES SERVES AS EXAMPLE TO ANALYZE PROCESSES OF SOVIETIZA- TION, AND SHOULD AID IN FOSTERING GREATER INTEREST IN THE VARIOUS WAYS BY WHICH DESOVI ETIZATION IS OCCURRING IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD. INTRODUCTION however, were markedly different in several respects. By 1940, the Baltic States were firmly and decidedly 1918 trapped in the doom of their own geo-strategic location. Latvia's emergence as an independent country in was Caught between the dangerous and concurrent rises of a defining national and, in some ways, ethno-national mo- 111 Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the Baltic States had ment for the Latvian peoples. At the conception of the few feasible options outside of cautious, prudent diplo- Latvian state, the Latvians were already well-acknowledged macy. The three Baltic countries, Lithuania, Latvia, and and documented as being an ancient people with a unique, Estonia, while largely unrelated historically, shared the Baltic, Indo-European language. But while the Lithuanians common plight of having been marginalized under the had, at one point in history, established an empire in Russian Empire, and subsequently finding internationally Eastern Europe in conjunction with Poland, the Latvians recognized independence following its collapse. This inde- had never before been united as an independent political 1V 1918 pendence, however important to the Baltic mentality and entity. And thus, the year saw the inception of the First Latvian Republics diplomacy abroad, would last for not even a quarter of a cen- Concurrently, Estonia had come tury. ' from different historical, linguistic, and cultural ties which were largely connected with Finland and thus had different experiences from the other Baltic countries.V1 Estonia The trans-Baltic realization of independence, though prin- emerged following the upheavals of the First World War, cipally a result of the Russian Revolution and the ensuing the collapse of tsarist Russia, and the defeat of Imperial dissolution of the Russian Empire, must also be viewed Germany, as a modern, unicamerally legislated, liberal within the context of the horrors and irrefutable devasta- Estonian nation.vn tion that devoured Eurasia following the First World War. As a result of the war and its ruin, much of Europe and parts of Asia witnessed a total reorganization of their polit- ical geographies, as well as the restructuring of an interna- tional balance. The redrawing of maps was also related to the break-up of the three great land-based empires which had dominated a large portion of greater Eurasia: the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire.1 In examining Baltic national emergence and its correspon- ding defeat, it is important to recognize both the broader FOLLOWING WORLD WAR I, LATVIA WAS AN INDEPENDENT parallels and specific connections among the Baltic States, STAT E WIXH ITS O^X/ N ST A N Dl NG ARMY, as well as the unique differences between the three. With the most obvious observation being modern paternity, it is worth noting that the emergence and re-emergence of sev- eral of the Central and Eastern European independent na- Despite the differences from country to country and from tion-states—especially Finland, Poland, and the three ethnicity to ethnicity, the Baltic experience as a total, indis- solvable focus is certainly contendable to a great extent. To Baltic states: Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania11 —was a direct result of the disintegration of the Eurasian empires, no- be sure, the Baltic States were experiencing a Western type V111 tably the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires. The in- of institutional modernization and renovation. There is dividual experiences and grand narratives of the three, surely a unified, common Baltic identity which, to a large ELEMENTS SPRING 09 extent, emerges as a Baltic factor in times of confusion—as Lithuania—independent states and symbols for perhaps it did during this period of 'independence'.155 Moreover, the last strand of inter-war attempts at general international from this perspective, it is important to appreciate that the bipartisanship and neutrality in Central and Eastern three Baltic States were increasingly inundated with bipo- Europe—were irrefutably victimized and robbed of their lar manipulations from their two evermore powerful neigh- independence by way of imperial design. bors, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, which truly bound and connected such a 'Baltic factor'. The mark of the THE MOLOTOV-RIBBENTROP PACT demise of the Baltic States lay entirely in these inter-war In order to best comprehend the complexities of the Soviet years, which were concomitantly their inter-empire years of infiltration of the Baltic States from 1940-41, the span of a independence. single year, it is first worth examining how Soviet foreign policy and its main players prefaced the summer of 1940. During the innumerable contrived and natural shifts of this There was a vast degree of political calculation and interna- inter-war period the major surviving powers of the First tional presupposition on the part of Moscow in order to fa- World War succeeded and progressed as per their own po- cilitate such an easy annexation of three independent coun- litical and military calculations. The United States, for ex- tries. Concurrently, in the post-World War I years there ample, was riding a wave of mostly inter-war inaction, were immeasurable apprehensions, anxieties, fears, and while Great Britain, France, and the rest of Western Europe ultimate inadequacies and shortcomings regarding trans- were largely utilizing any and every possible avenue of European and trans-national affairs.5511 Even still, decon- preclusion, coming in the form of subservience and acqui- structing the road to what became the hegemonic rumina- escence toward the increasingly international dictatorship tion, systematic annexation, and eventual Sovietization of of Hitler, all in an attempt to avoid a follow-up to World War the Baltic States, leads to a foundation of events being I.x Ironically, the failures of Western Europe's attempts to rooted most closely in the late 1930s agreements between appease Hitler ran straight into Nazi Germany's consump- the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. tive actions in the late 1930s, thereby leading to the Second World War. Soviet-German rivalries began to really flourish with Germany's rise in the early 1930s.55111 As Germany contin- Toward the end of the 1930s, the Baltic States could not sup- ued to strengthen itself and precipitously weaken its neigh- port any hopes of preserving their independence through bors throughout the 1930s, the Baltic States focused much balancing the dichotomy of the aforementioned growing of their attention and interest on pursuing neutrality as Nazi and Soviet hegemonies. In conjunction with their ac- much as possible, while at the same time attempting to cording policies with said neighbors, this balance was what achieve a very difficult balance between German and Soviet unified the Baltic States to a great extent in those precarious regional interests.xlv All of these attempts, however, were pre-1940 years. But it was the irrevocable and ineradicable ultimately doomed by the negotiations between the Soviet memory, however, of Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian Union and Germany, culminating in the August 23, 1939 consumption, in toto, into the Union of Soviet Social signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement.5^ Republics (USSR) by way of "voluntary incorporation,"551 as well as the forcible, unmitigated, and systematic The agreement, also referred to as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Sovietization of the predominantly unwilling Baltic peo- Pact or the Nazi-Soviet Pact of Non-Aggression, in some ples, that unified the three countries in those perilous post- preliminary ways, solidified what was already a long-stand- annexation years. By the summer of 1940, the independ- ing Baltic fear of the imperial aims of its neighbors. To a ent Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and certain extent, the pact superficially and temporarily disen- SOVI ETIZATION OF THE BALTIC STATES tangled some of the increasing tensions and complexities Unsurprisingly, shortly after the pact, Hitler proceeded to surrounding the Nazi-Soviet balance of power. While not invade Poland on September 1,1939, and saw not a glance expressly mentioned in the text of the pact, Eastern Europe from the Soviet side, as promised; Stalin subsequently and its constituent space between the Soviets and Nazis was moved in from the east on September 17. And while the de- divided
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