Political Culture in the Baltic States

Between National and European Integration

Kjetil Duvold, Sten Berglund, Joakim Ekman

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030218430
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030218447
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Offers a comparative case study of the small Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, 

Revolves around the Baltic Barometers from 1993 and onwards and presents new data from 2014 and 2015 for the first time

Analyzes one of the geographical hotspots in the current conflict between Russia and the West 

© The Author(s) 2020

K. Duvold et al.Political Culture in the Baltic Stateshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21844-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Kjetil Duvold¹ , Sten Berglund² and Joakim Ekman³

(1)

Dalarna University, Falun, Sweden

(2)

Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden

(3)

Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden

Kjetil Duvold (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Sten Berglund

Email: [email protected]

Joakim Ekman

End Abstract

Situated on the Baltic Eastern Seaboard, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania share the same geopolitical fate. They have been caught in the middle of the tug of war between Russia and Western great powers—whether Swedes, Danes, Poles or Germans—for centuries, but have been within the Russian sphere of interest most of the time. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had been part of the Tsarist Empire since 1795 when it collapsed in 1917; they were literally forced into the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1940 and they remained trapped as Soviet republics until 1991 when the pending breakdown of the Soviet Union opened up a window of opportunity for the Baltic countries to regain the independence that they had enjoyed between the two world wars (1918–1940). Their return to Europe as independent states in the early 1990s was accompanied by the restoration of competitive political pluralism and market economy. Close ties with the West were generally seen as the best way to make the region safe for democracy; and European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership soon emerged as the top foreign policy priorities of the governments in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius. In the spring of 2004, less than a decade and a half later, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had become full-fledged EU and NATO member states along with a number of post-communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are not the only new arrivals to NATO and the EU to have completed a triple transition,¹ but they stand out as the only members of the West European system of alliances grappling with a Soviet past.

The Soviet Union was the dominant power in Eastern Europe after the Second World War. Its allies within the Warsaw Pact had limited leeway for independent action, sometimes none at all. Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania were frequently reduced to mere puppet states, but they were formally independent, and their leaders free to promote national agendas to the extent that they were not perceived as politically disruptive. This is what separates the Soviet past of the Baltic countries from the communist legacy of Eastern Europe. We devote the first of the three following sections to the Soviet legacy; and the second section to the drastic demographic shift to the detriment of the majority population that accompanied the flow of migrant workers from Russia and other Soviet republics into the region, particularly into Latvia and Estonia.

The focus of this book is on political culture, and the third and final section of this introductory chapter provides a preview of what is to come. We do not expect the three Baltic countries to have a common political culture. The ties between the three small neighbouring countries are close; they share the same geopolitical fate and face similar internal and external problems. They have roughly the same standard of living and all the attributes of modern European societies. But Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians do not constitute a culturally homogeneous group. When Swedes, Danes and Norwegians meet, they can communicate using their respective mother tongues. Neither of the Baltic state languages has this inter-regional bridging potential. Estonian is a Finno-Ugric language related to Finnish and Hungarian; and though both part of the Eastern Baltic group of languages, Latvian and Lithuanian are not mutually intelligible. When Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians meet, they therefore have to resort to the past or current lingua franca in the region, that is, to Russian or English. Nor do they share the same religious heritage. Orthodox Christianity is dominant in Russian settlements throughout the region, while the Baltic peoples divide their loyalties between Lutheranism and Catholicism. Lithuanians have embraced Catholicism since the Lithuanian Grand Duchy and the Polish–Lithuanian Kingdom (1386–1795). Latvians have traditionally been divided between Catholicism and Lutheranism, while Estonians have a long record of Lutheranism that dates back to the period of Swedish rule (1561–1710). More recently, secularism has gained momentum throughout the region, particularly in Estonia, which has earned the reputation as one of the most secularised countries in contemporary Europe. The problems facing the Baltic countries are indeed similar and, in most cases, related to the shared Soviet past, but they are not always of the same magnitude throughout the region, and the policies designed to deal with them also differ from one country to the other. There is thus plenty of room for variations on the same underlying theme.

The Soviet Experience

The treaty of non-aggression between Germany and the USSR of 23 August 1939, also known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, opened up for German and Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe based on mutual consent. In a secret protocol to the pact, the two big powers divided Eastern Europe between themselves. Estonia, Latvia and eventually Lithuania were defined as part of the Soviet sphere of interest; and the Soviet government was quick to take advantage of this opportunity and put pressure on all three Baltic countries to accept Soviet military bases on their soil. The Baltic leaders had little choice but to comply with this request. The arrival of the Soviet Red Army initiated a process that was to lead to the full-scale Soviet occupation of the Baltic countries. The parliamentary elections in the occupied countries of July 1940 and the petitions by the newly elected Baltic parliaments for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to be accepted as Soviet republics were designed to give the annexation an air of legitimacy. But the elections were held under duress and clearly rigged. By way of example, the official Soviet news agency announced the results of the elections 12 hours prior to the closing of the polling stations (Küng 2008). Most Western countries therefore maintained the position that the Soviet occupation of the Baltic countries was illegal and refused to recognise it de jure.

The transition from independence to Soviet rule was harsh. It involved a radical transformation of political and economic life. Communist one-party rule replaced the political pluralism that had co-existed with Baltic interwar parliamentarism and, eventually, strongman rule; and the once burgeoning market economies were squeezed into the Soviet five-year plan of state-owned companies and collective farming. The communist parties had little support in the Baltic countries, and Soviet rule was generally perceived as imposed by an occupying power (Miljan 2015: 151). The Soviet authorities compensated for their lack of popular support by promoting a climate of fear and terror throughout the region. The terror campaign had all the attributes of the great purges in Russia and other Soviet republics of the late 1930s—nightly raids by the security forces, mock trials, summary executions and disposal of the dead in unmarked mass graves, and last but not least, deportation to prison and labour camps in Siberia. The first year of Soviet occupation (from June 1940 to June 1941) counted no less than 130,000 Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian victims of deportation (Buttar 2013). The Soviet authorities were about to embark on yet another wave of deportations, when Germany broke the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 (Courtois et al. 1999).

The soldiers of the German Wehrmacht were hailed as liberators when marching into the Baltic countries in the summer of 1941; and many Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians were to join forces with the Germans in their military campaign against the Soviet Union. But life under the German swastika was not without hardship for the Baltic peoples; and for the Baltic Jews it turned out to be an existential threat. Yet, fear of Soviet rule was so deeply ingrained that hundreds of thousands of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians opted for exile in the autumn of 1944 as they were about to be locked into the Soviet empire once again (Küng 2008: 11). Their fears were well founded. The deportations of actual and potential dissidents resumed in 1944 and went on for a decade. The total number of deported in 1944–1955 has been estimated at over half a million, almost half of them from Lithuania, known for its armed resistance movement—the so-called Forest Brothers—operating under the radar of Soviet authorities until the mid-1950s (Kasekamp 2010: 140–146).

The gradual defeat of the Forest Brothe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. When Nation and State Are at Odds
• 3. Between Identities and Interests
• 4. Performance and Political Support
• 5. Living Next to Russia
• 6. European Values Under Attack?
• 7. Conclusions
• Back Matter