Making the invisible seen. The Baltic struggle for independence

Photo courtesy of Una Bergmane

There was a lot of interest about the Baltic push for independence but a lot of confusion as well. The difference I saw was when I talked to people in Latvia, both the general public or people in academia, when I started to tell them that I want to write about French reactions to Baltic claims to independence. People’s reactions were a bit surprising overall. They felt that there was no interest in that cause, that they were on their own and nobody really cared. So that was the starting point when I realized that there was actually interest in the West concerning the question of Baltic independence, as well as a feeling in the Baltic countries that the Baltic question was not so important outside. The intriguing thing was to try and find a strategy, on the French side, American side, or Russian side, of how to deal with the Baltic question.

And what did you find initially?

I saw confusion, uncertainty, a lot of last-minute decisions, improvisation and hesitation. I then realized that this is the question I want to write about, the uncertainty. That is also why my book is called Politics of Uncertainty.

Let’s discuss the central theme of the book then – uncertainty. You explained that small countries sometimes struggle to be visible to other states. I understand that this struggle was also a kind of social emotion, a real social feeling, that people in the Baltic states felt that nobody saw their struggle or was interested in it…

I think there is a strong narrative of a sense of betrayal for just reasons in the Baltic countries and in general, in Central and Eastern Europe. It is this feeling that our interests, our countries have always been seen as less important than relations between Russia and Western Europe and the United States. And there is some truth to this. Yet at the same time, the Baltic question was not something that could be easily hidden from the international agenda. In 1940 the Soviet annexation of the Baltic countries was not recognized as legal by Western Europe or the US. And so, by consequence, in the eyes of the West, legally, the Baltic states were not a part of the Soviet Union. Just like today, we do not recognize the annexation of Crimea or we do not recognize the annexation of eastern Ukrainian regions. They are not, of course, part of the Russian Federation, even though the Russian Federation has proclaimed them as theirs. And because of those dynamics, the Baltic question was still on the international agenda, even though it was an uneasy question about which people didn’t know exactly what to do.

I think there is a common understanding of what were the internal and external factors that ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. A lot of people wrote about it, but you argue that we underestimate the link between these two groups of factors. So could you elaborate a little bit on this? In what way does your approach to analysing the collapse of the Soviet Union show us more than we knew before?

If we want to write a good domestic history of the Soviet collapse or events in the Baltic countries in 1989, 1990 and 1991, we have to contextualize them in a larger regional and international context. This is a question of methodology first and foremost. In this story of Baltic attempts to gain independence, regain independence, and re-establish independence, I think the division between external and internal was blurred. What did it mean to restore the independence of the Baltic countries? It meant domestic mobilization. The building of a domestic consensus that independence is the answer to all problems. It was also a domestic debate in each of these countries. How are we going to restore our independence? Are we going to proclaim new states or are we going to say that these are the same states that existed in the 1920s and 30s? There was this process of internal struggle and internal consensus building between pro-independence forces and the conservative part of the communist party, to convince the Russian-speaking minority in the Baltic countries, especially in Estonia and Latvia, to work with other nationalities who lived at the time in the Baltic countries. This is the domestic aspect, but at the same time, you cannot restore independence on your own. You need to work with the imperial power who holds the power over you. And it was obvious to everybody that we couldn’t break out of the Soviet Union by force. So there had to be negotiations and we had to deal with Moscow. This leads to relations between the Baltic countries and Moscow, but also the relations between the three Baltic states. These are three different countries, three different societies, which all had the same goal.

Was there cooperation between Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from the very beginning or did it come with time?

Even though they were willing to work together there was still a lot of coordination and consensus building that needed to be done. At the same time, when the Baltic countries were restoring their independence, they were also trying to build relations with other states. So as Lennart Meri, the future president and foreign minister of Estonia, said by restoring these contacts with the world, we are restoring Estonia. It was a question of restoring sovereignty and establishing contacts with the West that didn’t go through Moscow, which meant pushing the question of Baltic independence on the international stage.

Among these emerging elites there was also this strong feeling that Moscow would not let the Baltic states go so easily. The idea was that international pressure could be a game-changer in this whole story. There was hope that if the West would recognize the restoration of the independence of the Baltic countries, Moscow would just have to accept this fact. So that’s why this whole story of the restoration of independence can’t be told just as a domestic story, but it can’t be told also as some sort of diplomatic history. It is both at its core.

If this division between internal and external is blurred but you still want to tell a story of the Baltic States’ restoration of independence to a newcomer to the region, how would you approach that? How would you distil the essence of the process in a way so that we could better understand the three Baltic republics’ road to independence?

I think there are three elements to answer this question. The first is, and it sounds a bit poetic, but at the same time it is the truth, the will of the people in the Baltic countries. Without the strong desire for independence, nothing would have happened. There would be no Baltic question. There would be no Baltic independence movements. There would be no reason to have the independence of the Baltic countries. The second factor is the confusion and hesitation in Moscow. The fact that Mikhail Gorbachev was not sure what to do with the Baltic countries and that for him, this Baltic question was also a question that kind of revealed strong tensions at the heart of the perestroika project. He wanted to democratize Soviet society. But he also wanted to maintain the Soviet empire. But empire and democratization don’t go together. As soon as there was democratization, the democratic process allowed people to express their will, and the will was independence.

The third element was the international community, including the crucial non-recognition policy. Baltic countries were never recognized as part of the Soviet Union officially. Thus, their claims for independence were very difficult to dismiss. The attention that the international community paid to the Baltic situation made it harder for Soviet conservatives to convince Gorbachev that force should be used against the Baltic countries. When force was used in January 1991, there was international outrage along with outrage among Soviet liberal and Russian democrats, which made Gorbachev very reluctant to continue with the use of force. Of course, there is an argument that would say that the Soviet Union collapsed anyway. But I do think that the Baltic agency contributed to the destabilization of the Soviet Union. It also showed what was possible for other Soviet republics. There was a time both in the West and in Moscow, for Boris Yeltsin and for Gorbachev, that saw people believe in the possibility of the Baltic countries becoming independent while the rest of the Soviet Union would manage to continue to coexist in some sort of reformed federation.

Gorbachev did not want the Soviet Union to come to an end and in theory, he had a simple and good plan – let’s give people a little bit more freedom. But all of a sudden, everything occurred very quickly. There were already structures in place which enabled the agency you described and utilized the window of opportunity which opened. In Poland, it was Solidarność (Solidarity). In the Baltic states there were civil movements called popular fronts. What was their role in this story?

So these movements, the popular fronts, became pro-independence movements in the Baltic countries. They emerged from pre-existing networks in the Baltic societies such as groups which were interested in folk music, heritage preservation and, most importantly, environmental protection.

Those networks were there for more or less the entire period of the communist era?

No, they emerged later and the connections started to be made in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Stalinist period had cut horizontal ties in society in an attempt to destroy these networks. But with the death of Stalin and the Soviet regime becoming softer, also with a new generation, societal life in the Baltic countries began fostering intellectual, folk and environmental connections, especially after Chernobyl. These mobilizations are the origins of these popular fronts. The popular fronts were then established by reform-minded communists, also people who were a part of the so-called intelligentsia. Yet to be in the intelligentsia at that time you needed to be a part of the Communist Party, be a member of the writers’ union, etc. So these were not hardcore dissidents but rather people who supported Gorbachev’s reforms. Some of them maybe already thought we could go further. But officially the popular fronts were established to support Gorbachev and his reforms. Thus, there was this combination with the bottom-up processes of people becoming involved in a common goal, which was not political. 

The level of coordination for pursuing independence between Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania was quite unusual. Did it have anything to do with the Baltic exceptionalism that you also introduced in your book?

I use the idea of Baltic exceptionalism in a bit different way. For me it is this idea in the Soviet Union and also in the West that the Baltic countries were not entirely Soviet. Even in the Soviet Union they were perceived as the most western, most European and a little bit different. Later this idea that the Baltic countries could become independent while the Soviet Union continued to exist was hoped for in Washington and Moscow. But this question of coordination between the Baltic countries is a question with many layers.

It seems to me that there should be more research in the history of emotions in this process. My book is not on the history of emotions, but I think there could be a very good book written about the history of emotions at that time – in the late 1980s, early 90s, in light of what was understood as a common struggle and this feeling of understanding, of knowing that Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians understand each other because they had the same history and same goal. This very idea of solidarity was rooted in emotions. But there are also more rational and systemic explanations. History and geography always pushed the three Baltic states to cooperate. So there was geography, history, emotions and also the external pressure, because the Baltic countries were perceived as one question. For Moscow, it wasn’t a question of whether one of the Baltic countries would become independent. There was always an understanding that what happens in Lithuania relates also to the future of Estonia and Latvia. Washington had the same approach. If one Baltic country becomes independent, all three of them will and vice versa. This sentiment was shared by the political decision makers in the Baltic states, that independence will happen for them together or it will not happen.

What role did the Baltic diaspora play in these processes, especially in the United States? Did they have influence over US foreign policy?

Let’s remember that the official policy of the US was that they did not recognize the annexation of the Baltic states. So there was already a legal tradition that was continued over the decades. The diaspora played a key role in that it kept the Baltic question on the political agenda in Washington. Both President George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, who was the national security advisor, wrote in their memoirs about the pressure they felt from the Baltic diaspora and from the US Congress to take a stronger stand on the Baltic issue. Throughout the Cold War period, the Baltic diaspora had slowly managed to build good relations with certain members of both the House of Representatives and the US Senate. Those were mostly people who were elected from states like Michigan, Illinois, New York, or Connecticut, which had a high number of people with Baltic ancestry.

Was it a large diaspora in the US at that time?

There were not that many, around one million people claimed to have Baltic origins in the early 1990s. But it was a very well-organized and active diaspora. It was a very well-off diaspora. Most of these people were the descendants of Second World War refugees or they had spent time in displaced person camps in Germany themselves. And for them, the restoration of Baltic independence was a huge part of their diaspora identity. Diasporas are often built around this myth of return. And for them, this myth of return was basically the return of Baltic statehood and independence. So they worked with the Congress, they managed to build this pressure, which did play a role in making Bush more active on the Baltic question.

How is the Soviet past currently discussed in the Baltic states? What changes have taken place in the process of remembrance of the collective past?

The first observation is that Russia’s full-scale invasion against Ukraine has changed the way we relate to our history, or maybe increased some of the specificities in how we see it. For a long time, the only way we thought about the Soviet period and about history was thinking about it in terms of totalitarian, authoritarian rule and occupation. Occupation was the main framework through which we had viewed that period. The full-scale invasion has certainly accelerated the academic debate about the Soviet Union as a colonial power and Russian imperialism. In Latvia, applying post-colonial theory in analysing these dynamics was more popular among literary scholars and less among historians. Now there is this process of starting to see this aspect of the Soviet experience in the Baltic countries. I think that the full-scale invasion has also brought this history back for a lot of people, and for some it can be quite painful, triggering trauma and memories from their own family stories from 1940, 1945 or 1949. I see more interest among the younger generation in the commemoration of deportations which happened in the Baltic countries in 1941 and 1949 because we see deportations happening in Ukraine and the occupied territories. So the Russian crimes in Ukraine currently have made the memories of Soviet crimes in the Baltic countries more painful and more alive again. There is now a strong push for removing whatever vestiges of Soviet power is left from the public space.

Could you give an example of this?

Up until recently, an important street in Riga was called Moscow Street. It has now been renamed after one of the regions of Latvia. So I think that the manifestation of Russian imperialism in Ukraine has made references to Russia in the public space somewhat unbearable, as a reminder of Russian imperialism today. The question of Moscow Street exemplifies this. Is it just a street? Is it just a historical fact that historically we were part of the Russian Empire, or is it still some sort of manifestation? The most popular case was of course the removal of the Soviet-era monument which was built in 1985 in Riga to officially commemorate the victory over Nazi Germany by the Soviet Union. Over time, this monument had become a monument which was associated with Russian imperialism because it was used for the May 9th celebrations. It was never clearly understood by Latvians whether these celebrations were of the Soviet victory over Nazism, or if they were celebrations of Stalinism, celebrations of the Russian imperial might. They could also be seen as a celebration of the onset of the occupation of the Baltic states; or maybe a celebration of the current Putin regime.

What about the perspective of Latvia’s Russian-speaking minority?

Even among the Russian-speaking part of the population who participated in these celebrations, there would be different answers to those questions. What are we celebrating? The liberation from Nazi Germany has  always been used by Moscow to legitimize the occupation, and then later repressions. So that is why after the full-scale invasion there was really a very strong consensus in society. People who previously did not care so much about the monument, began to have very strong opinions about it.

Una Bergmane is a research fellow at the Aleksanteri Institute at the Finnish Centre for Russian and East European Studies, and the author of Politics of Uncertainty: The United States, the Baltic Question, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union.

Maciej Makulski is a contributing editor with New Eastern Europe.

Baltics, Estonia, history, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Soviet occupation