Saturday, May 07, 2005
Baltic Dilemmas
For a brief moment, the Baltic states are in the news. Bush has just visited Riga, Latvia before heading to the Netherlands, Russia, and then Georgia. While in Latvia, he has spoken of both the terrors of the German occupation and the annexation of the Baltic states into the Soviet Union. He has accepted the fundamental point made by the Baltic leaders, notably Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga (as stated in an op-ed piece in today's Post) that 1945 did not bring the liberation of the Baltic States. Instead, it substituted one oppressor for another.
Reviewing what happened to the Baltic states as the Soviet Union moved west - first in 1939-40 and again in 1944-45 - should make that apparent. Mass killings and deportations ensued - this was the Stalin era after all. An ongoing process of Russian settlement in the Baltic states brought the Baltic peoples to cusp of becoming minorities in their own national homelands, while they were crowded out of the professions and their national languages marginalized.
This is an easy point to remember. It's stunning how Russian leaders have been dancing around it. Vladimir Putin recently called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. He has rejected calls to do what the reformist Soviet leadership did in 1989 and denounce the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Instead, he has clung to the Soviet-era lie: that the Red Army was invited into the Baltic states and that their annexation was required by the imperatives of Soviet security. Putin is no Communist - his economic policies are proof enough of that - but he does seem to be actively exhuming Josef Stalin's view of things.
All of this escapes the feckless reporting of the BBC. This article labels Latvia "Russia's most troublesome neighbor," and highlights the Soviet contribution to the Nazi defeat in order to make the claims of the Baltic states seem petty. Seemingly ignoring the fact that the Baltic states are already in NATO, or American displeasure at Putin's continued suppression of the media in Russia, the report stresses America's desire to "play a role in a part of the world which used to be in Moscow's sphere of influence." Ah yes, spheres of influence. It was this kind of thinking that led to the division of Europe in the first place.
Implicit in the article are a few lurking tropes: arrogant American impositions and natural spheres of influence. Bear these in mind. Back in the fall, these same ideas were lurking behind whinging commentary from the British left about the pro-democracy protests in Ukraine. For the irked left, what was happening in Kiev wasn't a democratic revolution but a masked CIA plot to disturb Russia in its natural sphere of influence. Timothy Garton Ash rightfully called this view to account. The fact, back in December and now, is that Ukraine and the Baltic states have chosen a Western alignment and we do not live in an era where countries can be forcibly placed in one sphere or another, no matter how much it might tidy things up for disinterested observers. I'm inclined to hear the ghost of Neville Chamberlain's infamous remark that the dispute over Czechoslovakia represented "a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing."
That's not to say that Russia is the boogeyman of old. Some Russian grievances here are quite justified. One understandable sore is that the Baltic states need to address their own record of collaboration with the Nazi invaders; a significant number of the Baltic peoples acted alongside the Germans, including in the execution of the Final Solution. Another issue is the treatment of ethnic Russians in the Baltic states today. Whatever the circumstances of their arrival, they need to be regarded as citizens; for many of them, citizenship and equal rights have been slow in arriving.
Still, this does not relieve Putin of the obligation of renouncing the Soviet past. Since he has decried the dissolution of the USSR, the onus to recognize what it did to the Baltic peoples falls doubly upon him. It doesn't bode well that finding accord on this issue is so difficult, sixty years after the fact.
Reviewing what happened to the Baltic states as the Soviet Union moved west - first in 1939-40 and again in 1944-45 - should make that apparent. Mass killings and deportations ensued - this was the Stalin era after all. An ongoing process of Russian settlement in the Baltic states brought the Baltic peoples to cusp of becoming minorities in their own national homelands, while they were crowded out of the professions and their national languages marginalized.
This is an easy point to remember. It's stunning how Russian leaders have been dancing around it. Vladimir Putin recently called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. He has rejected calls to do what the reformist Soviet leadership did in 1989 and denounce the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Instead, he has clung to the Soviet-era lie: that the Red Army was invited into the Baltic states and that their annexation was required by the imperatives of Soviet security. Putin is no Communist - his economic policies are proof enough of that - but he does seem to be actively exhuming Josef Stalin's view of things.
All of this escapes the feckless reporting of the BBC. This article labels Latvia "Russia's most troublesome neighbor," and highlights the Soviet contribution to the Nazi defeat in order to make the claims of the Baltic states seem petty. Seemingly ignoring the fact that the Baltic states are already in NATO, or American displeasure at Putin's continued suppression of the media in Russia, the report stresses America's desire to "play a role in a part of the world which used to be in Moscow's sphere of influence." Ah yes, spheres of influence. It was this kind of thinking that led to the division of Europe in the first place.
Implicit in the article are a few lurking tropes: arrogant American impositions and natural spheres of influence. Bear these in mind. Back in the fall, these same ideas were lurking behind whinging commentary from the British left about the pro-democracy protests in Ukraine. For the irked left, what was happening in Kiev wasn't a democratic revolution but a masked CIA plot to disturb Russia in its natural sphere of influence. Timothy Garton Ash rightfully called this view to account. The fact, back in December and now, is that Ukraine and the Baltic states have chosen a Western alignment and we do not live in an era where countries can be forcibly placed in one sphere or another, no matter how much it might tidy things up for disinterested observers. I'm inclined to hear the ghost of Neville Chamberlain's infamous remark that the dispute over Czechoslovakia represented "a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing."
That's not to say that Russia is the boogeyman of old. Some Russian grievances here are quite justified. One understandable sore is that the Baltic states need to address their own record of collaboration with the Nazi invaders; a significant number of the Baltic peoples acted alongside the Germans, including in the execution of the Final Solution. Another issue is the treatment of ethnic Russians in the Baltic states today. Whatever the circumstances of their arrival, they need to be regarded as citizens; for many of them, citizenship and equal rights have been slow in arriving.
Still, this does not relieve Putin of the obligation of renouncing the Soviet past. Since he has decried the dissolution of the USSR, the onus to recognize what it did to the Baltic peoples falls doubly upon him. It doesn't bode well that finding accord on this issue is so difficult, sixty years after the fact.
