Now the Baltic states include three countries - Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which received sovereignty in the process of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Each of these states positions itself, respectively, as the national states of Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians. Nationalism in the Baltic countries has been elevated to the level of state policy, which explains numerous examples of discrimination against the Russian and Russian-speaking population. Meanwhile, if you look closely, it turns out that the Baltic countries are typical "remake states" with no political history and tradition of their own. No, of course the states in the Baltics existed before, but they were by no means created by Latvians or Estonians.
What was the Baltic region like before its lands were incorporated into the Russian Empire? Until the 13th century, when the Baltic states began to be conquered by German knights - crusaders, it was a continuous "tribal zone". Here lived the Baltic and Finno-Ugric tribes that did not have their own statehood and professed paganism. Thus, modern Latvians as a people appeared as a result of the merger of the Baltic (Latgalians, Semigallians, villages, Curonians) and Finno-Ugric (Livonian) tribes. It should be borne in mind that the Baltic tribes themselves were not the indigenous population of the Baltic States - they migrated from the south and pushed the local Finno-Ugric population to the north of modern Latvia. It was the absence of their own statehood that became one of the main reasons for the conquest of the Baltic and Finno-Ugric peoples of the Baltic by more powerful neighbors.
Starting from the XIII-XIV centuries. the peoples of the Baltics found themselves between two fires - from the south-west they were pressed and subdued by German knightly orders, from the north-east - by the Russian principalities. The “core” of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was also by no means the ancestors of modern Lithuanians, but the Lithuanians - “Western Russians”, Slavs, ancestors of modern Belarusians. The adoption of the Catholic religion and developed cultural ties with neighboring Poland ensured the differences between the Lithuanians and the population of Rus. Both in the German knightly states and in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the position of the Baltic tribes was far from happy. They were subjected to religious, linguistic and social discrimination.
The situation of the Finno-Ugric tribes, which later became the basis for the formation of the Estonian nation, was even worse. In Estland, as in neighboring Livonia and Courland, all the main levers of government and economy were in the hands of the Eastsee Germans. Until the middle of the 19th century, the Russian Empire did not even use such a name as "Estonians" - all immigrants from Finland, the Vyborg province and a number of other Baltic territories were united under the name "Chukhonts", and no special distinctions were made between Estonians, Izhorians, Vepsians, Finns. The living standards of the Chukhonts were even lower than that of the Latvians and Lithuanians. A significant part of the villagers rushed to St. Petersburg, Riga and other large cities in search of work. A large number of Estonians even rushed to other regions of the Russian Empire - this is how Estonian settlements appeared in the North Caucasus,in the Crimea, Siberia and the Far East. Leaving "to the ends of the world" was not at all from a good life. It is interesting that in the Baltic cities there were practically no Estonians and Latvians - they called themselves "villagers", opposing the townspeople - the Germans.
Until the 19th century, the bulk of the population of the Baltic cities were ethnic Germans, as well as Poles, Jews, but not Baltic. In fact, the "old" (pre-revolutionary) Baltic was completely built by the Germans. The Baltic cities were German cities - with German architecture, culture, and a system of municipal government. In the order state formations, in the Duchy of Courland, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Baltic peoples would never have become equal with the titular Germans, Poles or Litvin. For the German nobility, who ruled in the Baltics, Latvians and Estonians were second-class people, almost “barbarians”, and there could be no question of any equal rights. The nobility and merchants of the Duchy of Courland consisted entirely of Eastsee Germans. The German minority ruled over the Latvian peasants for centuries,constituting the bulk of the population of the duchy. The Latvian peasants were enslaved and, according to their social status, were equated by the Courland statute with the ancient Roman slaves.
Freedom came to the Latvian peasants almost half a century earlier than to the Russian serfs - the decree on the abolition of serfdom in Courland was signed by Emperor Alexander I in 1817. On August 30, the liberation of the peasants was solemnly announced in Mitava. Two years later, in 1819, the peasants of Livonia were also liberated. So the Latvians received the long-awaited freedom, from which the gradual formation of a class of free Latvian farmers began. If not for the will of the Russian emperor, then who knows how many more decades the Latvians would have spent in the state of serfs of their German masters. The incredible mercy shown by Alexander I towards the peasants of Courland and Livonia had a tremendous impact on the further economic development of these lands. By the way,It is not by chance that Latgale turned into the most economically backward part of Latvia - liberation from serfdom came to the Latgalian peasants much later, and this circumstance affected the development of agriculture and trade. crafts in the region.
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The liberation of the serfs of Livonia and Courland allowed them to quickly turn into successful farmers, living much better than the peasants of Northern and Central Russia. An impetus was given to the further economic development of Latvia. But even after the liberation of the peasants, the main resources of Livonia and Courland remained in the hands of the Eastsee Germans, who organically fit into the Russian aristocracy and merchants. A large number of prominent military and political figures of the Russian Empire - generals and admirals, diplomats, ministers - emerged from among the Eastsee nobility. On the other hand, the position of Latvians or Estonians proper remained humiliated - and not because of the Russians, who are now accused of occupying the Baltic States, but because of the Eastsee nobility, who exploited the population of the region.
Now in all the Baltic countries they like to talk about the "horrors of the Soviet occupation", but they prefer to keep quiet about the fact that it was Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians who supported the revolution that gave them the long-awaited deliverance from the domination of the Eastsee Germans. If the German aristocracy of the Baltic for the most part supported the White movement, then on the side of the Reds, whole divisions of Latvian riflemen fought. Ethnic Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians played a very large role in the establishment of Soviet power in Russia, with the highest percentage being in the Red Army and state security agencies.
When modern Baltic politicians talk about the "Soviet occupation", they forget that tens of thousands of "Latvian riflemen" fought throughout Russia for the establishment of this very Soviet power, and then continued to serve in the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD, in the Red Army, and not at the lowest positions. As you can see, no one in Soviet Russia oppressed Latvians or Estonians on an ethnic basis, moreover, in the first post-revolutionary years, Latvian formations were considered privileged, it was they who carried the protection of the Soviet leadership and performed the most important tasks, including suppressing numerous anti-Soviet protests in the Russian province … I must say that not feeling ethnic kinship and cultural closeness with the Russian peasants, the arrows dealt with the rebels quite harshly,for which they were valued by the Soviet leadership.
In the interwar period (from 1920 to 1940) there were several worlds in Latvia - Latvian, German, Russian and Jewish, which tried to overlap with each other to a minimum. It is clear that the position of the Germans in independent Latvia was better than the position of Russians or Jews, but certain nuances still took place. So, in spite of the fact that the Germans and Latvians were Lutherans or Catholics, there were separate German and Latvian Catholic and Protestant churches, separate schools. That is, two peoples with seemingly similar cultural values tried to distance themselves as much as possible from each other. For Latvians, Germans were occupiers and descendants of exploiters - feudal lords; for Germans, Latvians were almost “forest barbarians”. Moreover, as a result of the agrarian reform, the Ostsee landowners lost their lands, which were transferred to the Latvian farmers.
At first, pro-monarchist sentiments prevailed among the Eastsee Germans - they hoped for the restoration of the Russian Empire and the return of Latvia to it, and then, in the 1930s, German Nazism began to spread very quickly - suffice it to recall that Alfred Rosenberg himself was from the Baltic States - one of the key Nazi ideologues. With the extension of German power to the Baltic states, the Eastsee Germans associated the restoration of their political and economic domination. They considered it extremely unfair that the cities of Estonia and Latvia, built by the Germans, were in the hands of the "villagers" - Estonians and Latvians.
In fact, if it were not for the "Soviet occupation", the Baltic states would have been under the rule of the Nazis, would have been annexed to Germany, and the local Latvian, Estonian, Lithuanian population would have expected the position of second-class people with subsequent rapid assimilation. Although in 1939 the repatriation of Germans from Latvia to Germany began and by 1940 practically all Eastsee Germans living in the country had left, in any case they would have returned again if Latvia had been part of the Third Reich.
Adolf Hitler himself treated the population of the "Ostland" very dismissively and for a long time hindered the implementation of the plans of a number of German military leaders to form Latvian, Estonian and Lithuanian formations as part of the SS troops. On the territory of the Baltic States, the German administration was ordered to prohibit any inclinations of the local population towards autonomy and self-determination, and the creation of higher educational institutions with training in Lithuanian, Latvian or Estonian was strictly prohibited. At the same time, it was allowed to create vocational and technical schools for the local population, which testified only to one thing - in the German Baltic, Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians were only waiting for the fate of the service personnel.
That is, in fact, it was the Soviet troops that saved the Latvians from returning to the position of a powerless majority under the German masters. However, given the number of immigrants from the Baltic republics who served in the Nazi police and the SS, you can be sure that for many of them serving the invaders as collaborators was not a significant problem.
Now in the Baltic countries, policemen who served Hitler are being whitewashed, while the merits of those Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians who, with arms in their hands, embarked on the path of fighting Nazism, served in the Red Army, and fought in partisan detachments, are hushed up and denied. The modern Baltic politicians also forget about the enormous contribution Russia, and then the Soviet Union, made to the development of culture, writing, science in the Baltic republics. In the USSR, many books were translated into Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian; writers from the Baltic republics got the opportunity to publish their works, which were then also translated into other languages of the Soviet Union and printed in huge editions.
It was during the Soviet period that a powerful and developed education system was created in the Baltic republics - both secondary and higher, and all Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians were educated in their native language, used their own writing, without experiencing any discrimination in subsequent employment. Needless to say, immigrants from the Baltic republics in the Soviet Union received an opportunity for career growth not only within their native regions, but within the entire vast country as a whole - they became high-ranking party leaders, military leaders and naval commanders, made a career from science, culture, sports, etc. All this became possible thanks to the enormous contribution of the Russian people to the development of the Baltics. Sane Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians never forget how much the Russians have done for the Baltics. It is no coincidence that one of the main tasks of the modern Baltic regimes has become the eradication of any adequate information about the life of the Baltic republics in Soviet times. After all, the main task is to forever tear the Baltics away from Russia and Russian influence, to educate the growing generations of Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians in the spirit of total Russophobia and admiration for the West.
Author: Ilya Polonsky
