We should not waste time by reminding the Estonian and Latvian anticommunists that we "saved them from Nazism" - this would amount to talking Italian to a German or Serbian to a Frenchman. It is hardly fruitful to oppose demagoguery of others (bad by default) with our own (and therefore good) demagoguery.

We should better use the language that both sides can accept and understand; this means that the "anti-communist/anti-Soviet" arguments should be countered in the same political parlance.

We are still unaware of the wealth of arguments we can put on the table in any disagreement with the "new Europeans" of the Baltics.

We should probably stop resenting our malicious neighbors: they are moving to Europe as best as they can for many reasons: inexperience, numerous complexes, arrogance, etc.

Russia`s Baltic Area

WE SHOULD ALL ACCEPT sine ira et studio I that Russians themselves (pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet) are responsible for what happened to the Russian Empire`s German Ostsee provinces (the former Russian Baltic Maritime Area) now called the Baltics.

The word itself is nothing more than the German Baltenland that replaced the usual Pribaltika as a result of a post-Soviet complex that afflicted the political and journalist communities holding forth about the "Russian speakers" deprived of many rights the "autochthonous" population of Estland and Livland enjoys. Russians have been an autochthonous population of Pribaltika since times immemorial.

Aleksandr Fomenko, writer and political analyst Eastern Slavs, our ancestors were living on these lands one thousand years ago - we should not look at this area as Peter the Great`s territorial acquisition.

The so-called Baltic Question is several centuries old. Russia never retreated into shade in the struggle of the Germans, Scandinavians and Russians for the Baltic eastern coast. Russia`s presence was always tangible. The Empire (The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation), the Hanseatic League, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and the Western maritime powers were all put into motion by the moves of Russians.

Back in 1030, our Kievan Prince Yaroslav the Wise founded there the city of Yuriev; in 1224, the mixed Estonian-Russian garrison under Prince Viachko defended the city during the local uprising against Western crusaders. The uprising failed (the Ests who tried to spread hostilities to the neighboring territories were confronted by not only Germans and Danish but also by the Letts). The captured city soon became completely German, received a new name of Dorpat (Derpt) and acquired a new role as part of the Hanseatic League, which did a lot to develop the city.

Today the city that lost its Russian and German names is known by its Estonian name Tartu. I am convinced that on our maps we should either use its original name Yuriev or, at least Derpt as a symbol of Russian-German reconcile-iation very much in European style. Aachen is Aix-la-Chapelle for the French while the Germans use Genf for Geneve (the French variant).

German Bishop Albrecht who in 1201 founded Riga in direct proximi-ty to an ancient settlement of the Baltic Slavs as a symbol of German presence on the eastern Baltic coast opened a new page in the area`s history. It should be said that since time immemorial it was the Baltic and Eastern Slavs who traded with the West. Back in 1184, on reaching the mouth of the Dvina (Daugava) a momk from Bremen Meyngard had to apply to Prince Vladimir of Polotsk, the local suzerain, for a permission to settle. In 1229, however, because of the rapid German colonization of the Baltic coast Prince Mstislav of Smolensk had to enter into a trade agreement (to restore and confirm the earlier conditions) with Riga and the German-dominated former Slavic towns in the regions` south.

Unrest in Lithuania

THE HISTORY OF RELATIONSHIPS between Russia and Lithuania brings to mind the rivalry between Rus and the Prussian and Lithuanian tribes in the Baltic area in the 1030s and the joint marches of Prince Daniil of Galich and Lithuanians to Poland in 1219-1220.

Nine-tenths of the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was popu-lated by Eastern Slavs (Russians) with the much higher than in Lithuania level of economic and social relations and Culture. Back in the first half of the 14th

century, Prince Gediminas was tided the "king of the Lithuanians and Russians," his descendants were "princes of the Lithuanians and Russians." A Western researcher wrote that thanks to their cultural and numerical superiority the Russians had quickly gained social and political dominance in Lithuania. The princedom borrowed from Russia certain elements of its legal and political order; since the 14th century, official papers were written in Russian. Nearly all documents in the collection Akty Litovsko-Russkogo gosudarstva (Acts of the Lithuanian-Russian State) for the years 1390-1529 (under Vytautas and Sigismond I) are mostly in Russian; some of them are in Latin, no matter how strange this may seem to the "independence-obsessed" politicians of the late 20th century.

The vector of state development changed when in 1386 Grand Prince of Lithuania Jagiello who sought the Polish crown brought Catholicism to Lithuania and entered into a union with Poland. By the mid-15th century, under his son Casimir the Russian-Lithuanian, Eastern project (to use the political term of our days) of Gediminas-Vytautas was replaced with the Western, PolishLithuanian, one. After a while the Lithuanian princes who had competed, as independent actors, with Moscow as gatherers of the Russian lands lost their independence to Poland to degenerate into the enemies of Rus unified by Moscow. Significantly, princes Gediminas and Vytautas are present, among other historical personages, on the Russian Millennium monument opened in Novgorod the Great in 1868.

The changed vector caused havoc: by the early 15th century, the Grand Duchy of the old times with its predominantly Russian Orthodox population had to cede a quarter of the territory it had controlled during its heyday to Moscow. In 1569, Prince Sigismond incorporated the southern parts of White and Little Russia into the Kingdom of Poland; in the same year, the Union of Lublin buried Lithuanian independence even though the Polish kings continued calling themselves grand princes of Lithuania.

In 1791, the Polish-Lithuanian state discontinued its existence de jure: in an absence of the majority of the opposition deputies the Sejm performed a coup d`Etat: amended the Constitution (of which the Russian Empire was the internationally recognized guarantor) and changed the country`s name into Poland. In 1792, some of the Polish magnates inspired by Stanislaw Felix Potocki and Severin Rzewuski set up a confederation in the small town of Targowica and turned to Catherine the Great for help. Impressed by Russia`s military interference and the wait-and-see policies of Turkey, Austria and Prussia the confederation opponents preferred to make peace with Russia. King Stanislaw August Poniatowski, who had offered Catherine the Great to make Grand prince Konstantin his heir, joined the Targowica Confederation.

In 1793, the great powers (the Security Council of sorts) carried out what is today known as the second division of Poland that involved all democratic procedures including its "ratification" by the Grodno Sejm; the same szlachta Sejm then unanimously voted for the disbandment of the Targowica confederation (!)

In 1794, Jasinski in Lithuania and Lithuanian-born Kosciuszko in Poland rebelled against the internationally recognized Polish government. Having failed to draw peasants (sic!) to their side the rebels collapsed under pressure of troops of the Russian czar and the Polish king. The country was divided for the third, and last, time: Russia got the predominantly Lithuanian and Byelorussian lands, Austria acquired the Ukrainian part while Prussia, Polish lands proper (Warsaw became part of Southern Prussia).

It should be said that the division of Rzeczpospolita in the late 18th century much better suited the historical context than the division of Serbia in our time (even though the Poles would have found the words South Prussian Warsaw no less strange than the Serbs, Albanian Kosovo).

Die Deutsche Ostsee-Provinzen

AS DISTINCT FROM THE LITHUANIANS, the ancestors of the Latvians and Estonians never had their own states. The numerous local tribes (Ests, Lives, Latgals, Zemgals, and Kursis) filled their time with incessant conflicts. The idea of a state and its practical realization became obvious when West European colonizers moved in. Under the Courland Statute of 1617, for example, the local peasants became part of private property, together with cattle and real estate, of Swedish and German landlords.

St. Petersburg preferred to keep away from local self-administration realized by the nobility under the so-called Baltic Constitution after the Baltic parliament of the nobles had sworn an oath of allegiance to Peter the Great and the Romanovs. Their independence spread far and wide: when, for example, in 1765, Count George Brown, of Irish extraction, General en Chef at Russian service and Governor-General of Livland invited the local Landtag to ease the lot of the peasants in full conformity of Catherine the Great`s instructions the local barons flatly refused.

In the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries, the imperial government deemed it necessary to preserve the province`s German image for the sake of stability and to repay the Ostsee Germans` services and loyalty to the Russian Empire. For the same reason St. Petersburg had to reconcile itself to the fact that the local German landlords presented all peasant disturbances caused mainly by social and economic reasons and spearheaded against the same landlords as riots against the Russian state power.

No wonder, the Orthodox Christian living under the power of the Russian czars were subjected to Lutheran propaganda or even pressure.

It should be said here that Orthodox Christians (Russians and other groups) had come to the Eastern Baltic area at the turn of the 12th century, that Is, much earlier than the German Catholics. It was the Germans and Poles who finally established Christianity cm the Baltic shores yet the local church vocabulary bears traces of strong Eastern Orthodox influence.

At all times there were Orthodox churches in Yuriev-Derpt (Tartu); in the 14th century, there was a Russian part in Revel (Tallinn) that bordered on the St. Michael Monastery. It was as early as in 1227 that the monastery acquired the Russian village of Vendefer when the Knights of the Order of Sword-bearers captured the city. There was an Orthodox church in Order-dominated Riga; in 1509, the head of the Order solemnly promised the Grand Prince of Muscovy to preserve the Russian Orthodox churches in Livonia. In 1534, the Order and the Archbishop of Riga confirmed the Germans` obligation "to protect the churches and Russian dwellings in their cities and towns."

According to M. Kharuzin, pre-Revolutionary student of Estonian folk songs, the "Russian faith" was juxtaposed in them to the "faith of the masters" imposed by the German colonists. At all times, the spell of Orthodoxy was strong in Estonia: Russians had lived in great numbers on the shores of Lake Peipus (Chudskoye Ozero) even before the area was united with Russia in the 18th century; after than Russians (mainly peasants) started coming in even greater numbers.

It is a well known fact that in 1738 the local Lutheran consistory asked the Revel Governor General to force the Orthodox Russians of the Ievessi parish to pay duties to the local Lutheran church. The imperial bureaucrat deemed it necessary to agree.

By the 1840s, Estonian and especially Latvian peasants had been joining Christian Orthodoxy in ever greater numbers even under the threat of being deprived of the land they rented. Ideas had little to do with this. According to a Western author, the Right Reverend Irenarchus, the Orthodox Bishop of Riga "treated them much better than the local Lutheran pastors; many Estonians and Latvians turned to the Orthodox Church in a hope of lightening their economic burden."

There Is Nobody to Blame but Ourselves

UNDER THE IMPACT of the European revolutions of the mid-19th century and especially because of the 1863 Polish uprising the imperial government gradually drifted away from its traditional policy of non-interference.

It should be pointed out here that the great-scale Polish uprisings of 1830 and 1863 were aimed against Russia`s power while in case of Prussian and Austrian domination the Polish party was absolutely content with peaceful debates for equality. At that time the Polish lands proper belonged to Prussia, not Russia. The Prussian variant of Germanization was much harsher than the liber-al policies of Alexander I and Alexander II yet Europe (both conservative and revolutionary) closed ranks against Russia.

In the 1860s, having quenched the uprising Governor General Mikhail Muraviev set the task of replacing tile Polish-Lithuanian cultural domination in the Lithuanian lands of the Western Area with Russian. It was at that time that the Lithuanian language became part of school curriculum.

A similar "Russification" process was launched in the German Ostsee provinces (Latvia and Estonia) much later, at the end of the 19th century, when the Baltic Constitution had been annulled.

The new developments were mainly suggested by St. Petersburg`s concern over Bismarck`s newly formed German Empire, an obviously mono-ethnic state (as distinct from the poly-ethnic Austrian Empire) in Europe caught by the revolutionary frenzy of ethnic nationalism.

The situation differed greatly from that of Northern Italy of Risorgimento, Mazzini and Garibaldi when the local liberal and nationalistminded Italian cultural elite fought for the minds against Austrian imperial culture.

The Germans dominated the cultural elite of the Russian Empire`s Baltic area, which means that struggle of two high cultures for domination was impossible. An attempt at alienating the Baltic German civilization meant an opposition between high European culture and folklore, Goethe`s Faust and the folk legends about Doctor Faustus, the castles of knights and estates of the nobles and the "hovels... where wretched Finns for shelter crowded."

The czarist government obviously lost heart: this alone can explain why it decided, unwisely, to rely on the alien elements among the local intelligentsia (Ests and Letts) and to encourage their desire of cultural, political and economic "equality with the Germans." What happened next fully confirmed the truth that these allies were better suited for a revolution rather than for cementing the empire.

In 1882, when the imperial Rules of self-administration were applied to the Baltic gubernias Estonians acquired much more votes in all self-administration structures. Revel (Tallinn) with its fairly large German population was no exception.

The nobility no longer dominated the courts of justice and the police which meant that the Germans had lost their influence; from that time on they were supervised by the crown and were guided by the Criminal Code applicable throughout the empire: the courts and city dumas used the Russian tongue (the empire`s official language); for the same reason it replaced the German as a compulsory language in the secondary schools. Before that German was taught throughout the area even though the Germans themselves comprised 7 percent of the total population (from one-third to the half of the urban population).

The Estonian language was limited to the first year of primary school. This should amaze nobody: E. Arens codified the tongue only by the mid-19th century that marked the beginning of Estonian literature ; the Ministry of Education meanwhile was not concerned with the development of the local tongues: it wanted to give a chance to the local people to receive education in the official language. The local tongues, however, were not banned: according to the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary by the early 20th century there appeared 200-250 books in Estonian every year; by late 1903, there were 14 periodicals (2 dailies) in Estonian.

The process was not free from blunders: Revel lost two oldest German schools Baltische Landesgymnasia and Ritter-und-Domschule (the latter was older than Eton). In fact, linguistic studies of the local tongues and publishing activities were initiated by the German enthusiasts of the folk culture of the Baltic tribes.

Emperor Alexander III went as far as transforming the Derpt University that used German (founded by his ancestor Alexander I) into a Russian-language academy. Our starry-eyed liberals probably resented the usual blunt Teutonic or Old European manner with which the Ostsee Germans demonstrated their cultural superiority over the Estonians and Latvians; this was very different from the rosy Russian love for mankind a la Dostoyevsky.

Not quite satisfied with the obvious loyalty of the local Germans to the Romanovs as their suzerain (that was too Austrian or too Western European for their tastes) they wanted loyalty to the country and the nation. They wanted the Baltic Germans to be loyal not only to the Russian emperor personally but also to Mother Russia.

Only those who had fallen under the spell of liberal (or revolutionary) European ethno-nationalism in its both variants (Western and Slavophilic) would hail the idea of separating the emperor from his empire. Who else indeed could have preferred Estonian and Latvian patriots gripped by revolutionary enthusiasm to the loyal Ostsee Germans with the revolution at Russia`s door-step`?

All those who favored the Russification of the Russian empire`s German Ostsee provinces in the 1880s-1890s believed that they were true Russians and loyal subjects. Their wide-scale cultural reforms would have succeeded if the country was consistently and peacefully moving ahead. But the revolution and the war were just around the corner.

They Loved Us so Much

UNTIL 1917, the local patriots went no further in their dreams than autonomy within Russia with the local Germans gradually pushed to the administrative and economic margins. The Population of the Baltic gubernias (with the exception of a handful of revolutionaries headed by Karlis Ulmanis in Latvia and Konstantin Pats in Estonia who later headed the local revolutionary authoritarian regimes) readily obeyed the laws and remained loyal to the Russian crown until World War I, during the war and up to fateful February.

There were no ill feelings between the local Baltic people and the Russians (including the Russian population of Riga and Tallinn).

In July 1914, having listened to the royal manifesto about the beginning of the fateful Great War the State Duma resounded with patriotic speeches of representatives of Russia`s Baltic provinces. Janis Goldmanis, future minister of agriculture in the first government of independent Latvia) who spoke in the name of the Latvian and Estonian deputies said:

"There is not a single person among the Latvians and Estonian unaware that everything what we have achieved was gained under the protection of the Russian eagle and that everything that the Latvians should gain is possible only if in future the Baltic area remains an inalienable part of great Russia.

"This is why we are inspired and are prepared to defend the Fatherland we love so much.

"The great days confirm that neither nationality, nor language, nor religion would prevent us, Latvians and Estonians from being the most ardent patriots of Russia prepared to close ranks with the Russians against the brazen enemy... Not only our sons, brothers and fathers will fight in the army - the enemy will be confronted with their bitterest adversaries in each hut and at every step, who at their last minute will say `Long live Russia!`”

No wonder the inspiring speech of the Baltic deputy was accompanied by stormy applause and crowned with ovation.

Another deputy spoke "in the name of Lithuanians without party distinctions" and declared, in particular, that the Lithuanians were "going to the war as a holy war. They pushed aside their grudges in a hope to see Russia a great and a happy country after this war and being absolutely convinced that the divided Lithuanians will reunite under the Russian banner."

The dignified and laconic speech of Baron Felkersam on behalf of the Ostsee Germans offered a striking contrast to the verbose and fiery statements by the representatives of Latvians and Estonians: "In the name of my closest political friends I have the honor to say that the ever loyal population of the Baltic area is ready, very much as usual, to defend the Throne and the Fatherland. As our ancestors before us we are ready to sacrifice out lives and property for Russia`s unity and greatness."

Speaking at the meeting of the State Council of the Russian Empire another representative of the Baltic gubernias Baron A. Pilar von Pilchau was as explicit: "In the past two centuries and at this very minute the Baltic province that always supported the Russian statehood will support it today. All our thoughts, all our feelings, all our best wishes are for our heroic army and its Crowned Leader."

The notorious Latvian Rifle Units was one of the results of the warinduced imperial patriotism in the Baltic area. In 1915, Janis Goldmanis and Janis Zalitis (future minister of war in independent Latvia) found the following words to explain why Latvian voluntary units should be formed to help the imperial army: "The Latvian regiments will liberate and defend Latvia so that it could flourish as an inalienable part of powerful Russia."

After the first victory of the Latvian volunteers at Mitava (Jelgava) in May 1915 the city saw a huge patriotic rally: Latvians who carried portraits of the czar and Supreme Commander Grand Prince Nikolai Nikolaevich and displayed Latvian patriotic slogans formed a chorus singing the state and truly popular hymn "God save the Czar!" Janis Cakste, future first president of the Latvian Republic, was among those who organized the rally.

It should be said that the Ostsee Germans` skepticism with which they treated the Latvian rifle units proved to be justified: the Red Latvians` involvement in the Civil War on Lenin`s side developed into a bloodbath.

Even after the February nightmare when the imperial statehood began to crumble the Baltic nations continued to associate the political future with Russia; together with Russia they elected deputies to the Constituent Assembly. Some of them who later became prominent figures in the new Baltic states sat in the commission convened to draft the Constitution of Federative Russia.

The only sitting of the Constituent Assembly after which it was disbanded by the Bolsheviks (revolutionary sailors and Latvian riflemen, to be more exact) discussed a formula of a federative democratic republic that would unite peoples and territories enjoying sovereignty within the federal Constitution.

The First Independence

WHEN THE BOLSHEVIKS had finally captured power in the empire`s capital and began pushing to the fringes some of the formerly loyal subjects no longer able to stand opposed to the revolutionary pressure on the countrywide scale sought shelter at the country`s outlaying areas. It was absolutely clear that the majority of the Baltic peoples were seeking independence because they feared the Bolsheviks.

The local revolutionaries of all hues seized the opportunity to plunge their nations into the frenzy of "independence struggle" that finally developed into a belt of "people`s democracies" of sorts around Soviet Russia openly described as cordon sanitaire. They were neither independent nor really important for their future sponsors. In April 1922, Young, who represented the United States in Riga, offered the following argument in favor of diplomatic recognition of the "new territorial-state units": by encouraging, to a certain extent, these socalled sates we could finally rescue this part of Russia (emphasis mine. - A.F.) from plundering by the present Moscow regime.

The National Council declared Lithuanian independence on 16 February 1918 in the territory occupied by Germany. The Germans were the first to recognize this "independence." After its defeat at the Western front the Lithuanian "independence-driven politicians" went begging first to the Bolsheviks and only then sought recognition by the new victors - the Entente countries.

Unable to forget many centuries of disagreements with the Germans the Latvians and Estonians selected the foggy Albion as their next patron yet never severed the more or less secret and Close ties with tile Bolsheviks the fathers of their independence.

In 1920, Soviet Russia recognized independence of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia thus making it easier for them to gain international recognition. The new countries, however, preferred not to restore the close economic ties with Russia disrupted by World War I, its markets and raw materials - they opted for a purely agrarian economy, which in foreign policy meant orientation at those great powers who bought agricultural products in great quantities, namely Britain and Germany. This also meant that the Baltic countries had no hard currency reserves and depended on foreign banks. Soon the negative results, in the economic sphere in the first place, became obvious.

As parts of the Russian Empire the Baltic provinces exported much of their produce - by 1937, independent Latvia (with its very specific parliament-tarism could barely export a quarter of the prewar export of machines and products of metallurgy and chemical industry. (On the eve of World War I metalworking and rubber plants, ship-building yards, textile factories, and canneries were mushrooming around Riga, Tallinn and Liepaja. Between 1874 and 1914, the number of industrial enterprises in Latvia increased from 150 to

810.)

Between 1913 and 1939, the population of Riga dropped from 560 thousand to 385 thousand; of Liepaja, from 95 thousand to 57 thousand. In the same period, the number of workers at the metalworking and chemical plants of Estonia dropped from 22 thousand to 10 thousand; in Latvia, from 45 thousand to 25 thousand.

The Joy of a Revival

SOON AFTER WORLD WAR II and the hiatus caused by the Baltic republic`s development outside Russia between the wars the area entered the period of repeated industrialization due to reincorporation of the Baltic republics into the Soviet Union (now described by the legally incorrect term "occupa-tion").

The Baltic infrastructure was developing at a fast pace on the federal budget money, that is, at the expense of the Russian territories. Till the very end of the Soviet Union, on the eve of its "second independence," the Baltic republics were still getting money from the Center.

Under the 1986 and 1987 budget laws of the U.S.S.R., Lithuania received money from the federal budget: 48,052 thousand rubles in 1986, and 230,225 thousand rubles in 1987. In 1988, the republic got no money yet the republican budget retained 98.2 percent of sales tax (the main tax proceeds) and 100 percent of income tax. The R.S.F.S.R. could count only on 50 percent.

The railway network was built on the money of two investors - the Russian I Empire and the Soviet Union The Same is true of the Baltic ports that were used only by Russia and the Soviet Union - otherwise they were useless. No wonder during the period of first independence cargo turnover dropped by a third; revival started under Soviet power. The Baltic highways were the best in the Soviet Union, including the Moscow Region.

Fast industrialization and development of science in the three republics carried out by the Soviet communists demanded more workforce. This explains how the demographic composition of the local population was changing. The birthrate among the local nations was very low even though the standard of living in the famous fishing collective farms and in the Baltic republics in general was much higher than in Russia.

The central government followed in the footsteps of Europe: workers were brought from outside the republics - not from Tajikistan or Azerbaijan where the birthrate was very high, but from the R.S.F.S.R. where the birthrate was not much higher than in the Baltic. As distinct from Germany or France that accepted Turks and Algerians for manual and low-skilled jobs the State Planning Committee brought to the Baltic region highly qualified workforce employed by the best equipped plants and high-tech research institutes.

It has slipped from out memory that it was generally believed in the Soviet Union that the workers in the Baltic republics were relatively better than was never funded on a great scale from the Center. Which, indeed, workforce was meant since the workforce in Latvia and Estonia was mainly "Russian speakers" from the R.S.F.S.R.?

Significantly, the rapidly dying-out Europe still believes it politically incorrect to discuss demography and the problem of cultural incompatibility of the local population and the immigrants. Afraid of being accused of racism and intolerance (while there is no reason for this) the liberal Europeans pretend not to see the obvious: positive population growth is observed only among the nonEuropean immigrants.

The same liberal Europe, however, willingly admitted the Baltic states into its ranks, even though their state mythology is rooted in the struggle of the "autochthonous population" for its cultural survival against the immigrants and the alien values they represent. The gap between the cultural and everyday preferences of the moderately Sovietized Baltic peoples and excessively Sovietized Russian in the Soviet Union is hardly wider than the gap between the liberal former Christians and not quite liberal Muslims, between the Europeans and Africans in the European Union.

There is an impression that either the ruling Europeans still think about the Baltic nations as alien (and therefore allow them to be naughty) or they hope to invigorate the flabby European body, to restore its former cultural and political muscles by inoculating it with the Baltic virus of the "friend-foe" vigilance.

We shall live and we shall see.

Dialectics of the Myth

ONE COULD HAVE TRUSTED the present Baltic "anticommunism" had the monument to the Latvian riflemen been removed from Riga and had the Latvian government officially apologized for the bloodshed caused by the interference of the Latvian "internationalists" on the side of Lenin-Trotsky-Stalin "into Russia`s internal affairs."

The same applies to the Estonian government that should have apologized for its predecessors who in 1919 did not let the Russian White Guard capture Petrograd; later they tried to extort money from General Yudenich they had arrested (he would have been transferred to the Bolsheviks but for French and British diplomats).

Riga and Tallinn preferred to forget that in 1918-1919 German and Russian White volunteers had defended the territories of the former imperial provinces Livland, Courland and Estland against the Red onslaught. Less than a year later the Russian volunteers were disarmed and deported; the Baltic Germans lost their lands and all the means of subsistence in the course of what was described as an agrarian reform. This reform carried out in the Baltic countries in the 1920s was in fact a large-scale "ethnic purge" in the sphere of economy that deprived German landowners of their property redistributed in favor of the "titular nations."

The EU "equal members" insist that after the second independence in 1991 Lithuania and Estonia carried out so-called restitution, that is, they restored the lost property to the former owners. In fact, the property was returned to those who lost it after 1940. There are no plans to restore property to those from whom it had been requisitioned by the revolutionary Baltic governments long before the Stalinist heirs to the cause of the Red Latvian Riflemen entered the Baltic area.

No wonder, in 1939 free Lithuania did not hesitate to accept from Stalin the city of Vilno and surrounding areas shortly before that taken away from the Poles. The latter, very much as usual, lost at the end of the round: because of the Munich deal between London and Paris with Berlin and the division of Czechoslovakia they first acquired a chunk of Czechoslovakia`s territory; later, however, under the Pact of Molotov- Ribbentrop, the diplomatic masterpiece of the time, the Red Army became very much concerned with the fates of the nonPolish population of the eastern part of Rzeczpospolita.

In exchange of its agreement to cede a large part of its sovereignty Lithuania was offered Vilno and surrounding areas with the population of about 450 thousand; Lithuanians comprised about one-fifth of the total population: there were 75 thousand of them against 100 thousand Poles, 275-300 thousand Russians and Jews (the latter predominated). The Lithuanians proud with their independence were overjoyed; nobody asked the non-Lithuanians.

On 11 October 1939, American Minister to Lithuania Owen J. Norem informed tile Secretary of State that the rallies interrupted with speeches had taken the whole day. The Freedom Bell tolled; the return of Vilno was greeted with enthusiasm; more rallies were scheduled for the evening.

Two days later the same diplomat informed his superior that without justifying what the Russian were doing in the Baltic states and without forgiving them for the infamy of communism he wanted to point out that American would have to deal with strong national Russia intended to strengthen its positions in Europe and Asia.

He went on to say that he had heard numerous "awful stories" that brought to mind one of those told about German invasion of Belgium in 1914 - the Germans were accused of chopping off children`s arms, etc. The diplomat confessed that some of the stories about German atrocities had been pure inventions yet much of what had been said was probably true. He was convinced that Russia`s invasion of Poland was much less cruel than what the Germans had done. He even wrote that because of their bad upbringing and uncontrollable temper Germans and Poles were capable of more cruelty than the Russians.

After World War II Lithuania, still part of the Soviet Union, received Memel (Klaipeda) and part of Eastern Prussia liberated from Germans by the "bloodthirsty Stalin`s satraps."

After 1945, Poland not only received from Stalin (with Roosevelt`s agreement) Silesia and Pomerania (two German regions) paid for by Russian blood, it drove away the German population that had lived there for centuries. In the 1990s, the ethnic nationalists of Central and Southern Europe used the Baltic experience of enlisting "big boys" to pull chestnuts out of the fire.

What is Baltic Independence?

IN HIS THE FORMATION of the Baltic States: A Study of the Effects of Great Power Politics upon the Emergence of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia American researcher Stanley W. Page wrote that the past had clearly demonstrated that because of their strategic locations Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia could not preserve their independence because of their powerful neighbor. They had emerged in 1919-1920 when both Germany and Russia were exhausted. In fact, it was not only a short period of exhaustion of the two great nations but also a period of very active British, French and even American interference in the Eastern Baltic affairs. They acted together against Germany and Bolshevist Russia, which brought about a historically distorted state of affairs.

Stanley W. Page also wrote that this had not been done with the purpose of setting up the Baltic states. This had been rather the historically unexpected balance of forces in the postwar Baltic whirlpool of revolutions and interventions that resulted (within the structure of the great powers` interests normal for this region) in temporal lull that, in turn, allowed the Baltic nations to gain a short period of independence with little effort on their part. As soon as Britain, France and America move(] out and Russia and Germany revived neither the fragile balance nor the Baltic states could be preserved.

By the early 1990s, the time the Soviet Union left the international scene, the still occupied Germany kept within Mitteleuropa; the United States then on an upsurge (still not bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and still unaware that China was catching up with it) was enthusiastically mastering the Russian-Soviet geopolitical expanse. This was the context in which the new "Baltic Europeans" appeared.

It was long ago that the Russian conservatives and retrogrades warned especially zealous liberals that if the Baltic provinces acquired independence during times of troubles this would end not in equality of all groups of the local population but in privileges for the so-called titular tribes at the expense of Germans and Russians (of the White Guard during the first independence and the Reds at the beginning of the second independence).

As a result the complex of cultural superiority typical of the Ostsee Germans over the Estonians and Latvians, their former hired hands and domestic servants, was borrowed by the latter`s children and grandchildren who became lawyers and engineers with the help of the Russian imperial and then Soviet government and were educated in the Russian language.

There was not enough time, though, to achieve cultural superiority: the Empire fell apart too early leaving the vacuum in which the worst human qualities surfaced.

Time cannot change human nature: the Romans knew that it was much easier for the freedman to become a slave owner himself rather than a free citizen.

P.S. There Is Hope

THE ABOVE RELATES, first and foremost, to the strange mixture of dissidents of the 1960s and Komsomol members of the 1980s now in power in the postSoviet state entities in the Baltics, but not to the national intelligentsia per se.

Those who were talented or lucky enough (the formula of success is the same everywhere) to become the true cultural elite of the Soviet empire (the Baltic cinema stars, composers, writers, musicians, singers, and artists) demon-strated a splendid absence of ethnic complexes under Soviet power and during the second independence.

It would be strange to expect vulgar anti-British invectives from Irishmen Yeats or Joyce who wrote in English like those in which Vytautas Landsbergis, Vaira Vike-Freiberga or premiers of Estonia Mart Laar and Andrus Ansip recently indulged themselves.

Unlike unsuccessful musical critics, party functionaries and doctors, Lithuanian actor Donatas Banionis or Estonian writer Enn Vetemaa never tried in the early 1990s to assert themselves at the expense of criticizing Moscow. All of them are loved by their fins all over the country and never needed "ideological crutches" - they stood firmly on their own legs.

They knew better than the others that together with the disappeared fe-deral budget funding there will be no money - very much in line with the market principles - for the cultural phenomena (Lithuanian national cinematography among other things). And that together with the ideologically boring Soviet statehood there will be no longer the stunningly varied and united (e pluribus unum!) cultural community of the intellectuals that existed in this state.

It disappeared... We can only regret this.

NOTES

Without anger and fondness.

Walther Kirchner, The Rise of the Baltic Question, Newark, 1954, p. 254.

Jackson J.Hampden, Estonia, London, 1948, pp. 39, 43.

G Grewingk, "Bemerkungen zum Reisebericht des Ibrahim ibn Jacub über die Altpreussen und westlichen Slaven," Sitzungsberichte der Gelehrten estnischen Gesellschaft zu Dorpat. 1881, Dorpat, 1882, S. 151.

N. Kharuzin, Obzor doistoricheskoy khronologii v Baltiyskikh guberniakh po trudam mestnykh issledovateley (k X arkheologicheskomu s`ezdu v Rige), Revel, 1894, pp. 149, 150; Pr. Bienemann, Aus Baltischer Vorzeit, Leipzig, 1870, S. 12.

Clarence A. Manning, The Forgotten Republics, N.Y., 1952, p.13; L. Arbusow, Grundriss der Geschichte Liv-, Est- und Kurlands, Riga, 1908, S. 11.

F.M. Shabul`do, Zemli yugo-zapadnoy Rusi v sostave Velikogo Kniazhestva Litovskogo, Kiev, 1987.
Stanley W. Page, The Formation of the Baltic States!. A Study of the Effects of Great Power Politics upon the Emergence of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, Cambridge Mass., 1959, p. 1.

E. Gudavichus, Istoria Litvy, Vol. 1: S drevneishikh vremen do 1569 goda, Moscow, 2005, pp. 449, 454-457, 464-466. (The author insists that this language could not be described as Russian proper but as "Ruthenian" because it sounded as a dialect of the language spoken in Muscovite Rus. According to the same logic the French used in Quebec, the German spoken in Austria and Switzerland and the Venetian and Napolitano dialects of the Italian are languages on their own right.)

Iz chteniy v lmperatorskom Obshchestve /storii i Drevnostey pri Moskovskom Universitete za 1899 g.: Akty Litovsko-Russkogo Gosudarstva, izdannye M. DovnarZapol`skim, Vypusk I (1390-1529 gg.), Moscow, 1900.

Stanley W. Page, Op. cit., p. 14.

Clarence A. Manning, Op. cit., p. 9.

N. Kharuzin, Op. cit., p. 148.

Sbornik materialov po istorii Pribaltiyskogo kraia, Vol. III, Riga, 1880, p. 493.

This eloquent case as well as the process of proliferation of Orthodoxy in the Baltic area is described in M. Kharuzin`s Bogoroditskaia gora v Estlandii (Drevniy Pamiatnik Pravoslavia na Baltiiskom Pomorie), Moscow, 1890.

Hampden .I. Jackson, Op. cit., p. 111.

See article by K.N. Leontiev, "Nashi rozovye khristiane: Dostoevsky i Tolstoy."

Quoted from: Rossiysky ezhegodnik, Issue 2, Moscow, 1990, pp. 136-137.

Ibid., p. 142.

The Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1922, Vol. II,

pp.871-872.

Gregory Meiksins, The Baltic Riddle, N. Y., 1943, pp. 59, 62.

Ibidem, p. 58.

Ibidem, p. 60.

See: Vedomosti Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR, 1985, No. 48, p. 915; 1986, No. 47, p. 61.

Ibid., 1987, No. 42, p. 690.

The Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1939, pp. 964-965.

Ibidem, p. 969.

Stanley W. Page, Op. cit., p. 184.

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05.12.2008

Док. 529849
Опублик.: 05.12.08
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