The Baltic states or the Baltic countries, also known as the Baltic nations, and less often as the "Baltic republics", the "Baltic lands", or simply the Baltics, is a modern unofficial geopolitical term, typically used to group three sovereign states on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The term is not used in the context of cultural areas, national identity, or language, because while the majority of people in Latvia and Lithuania are Baltic people, the majority in Estonia are Finnic. The three governments engage in intergovernmental and parliamentary cooperation. There is frequent cooperation in foreign and security policy, defence, energy, and transportation.
The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Latvia or Latvia, was a republic of the Soviet Union with equal rights from 5 August 1940.
The Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Lithuania or Lithuania, was one of the constituent republics of the USSR between 1940–1941 and 1944–1990. After 1946, its territory and borders mirrored those of today's Republic of Lithuania, with the exception of minor adjustments of the border with Belarus.
The occupation of the Baltic states involved the June 1940 invasion of the Red Army, and the subsequent military occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania by the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Stalin and auspices of the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact that had been signed immediately before the outbreak of World War II. The three countries were then annexed into the Soviet Union as constituent "republics" in August 1940, though United States and most other Western countries never recognised this incorporation, considering it illegal. On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union and within weeks occupied the Baltic territories. In July 1941, the Third Reich incorporated the Baltic territory into its Reichskommissariat Ostland. As a result of the Red Army's Baltic Offensive of 1944, the Soviet Union recaptured most of the Baltic states and trapped the remaining German forces in the Courland pocket until their formal surrender in May 1945.
Ivan Alexandrovich Serov was a Russian Soviet intelligence officer who served as the head of the KGB between March 1954 and December 1958, as well as head of the GRU between 1958 and 1963. He was Deputy Commissar of the NKVD under Lavrentiy Beria, and played a major role in the political intrigues after Joseph Stalin's death. Serov helped establish a variety of secret police forces in Central and Eastern Europe after the construction of the Iron Curtain, and played an important role in crushing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
Soviet deportations from Estonia were a series of mass deportations by the Soviet Union from Estonia in 1941 and 1945–1951. The two largest waves of deportations occurred in June 1941 and March 1949 simultaneously in all three Baltic states. The deportations targeted primarily women, children and the elderly calling them 'anti-Soviet elements'. In addition there were deportations based on ethnicity and religion. Estonians residing in the Leningrad Oblast had already been subjected to deportation since 1935.
The June deportation was a mass deportation by the Soviet Union of tens of thousands of people from the territories occupied in 1940–1941: Baltic states, occupied Poland, and Moldavia.
Occupation of the Baltic states by Nazi Germany occurred during Operation Barbarossa from 1941 to 1944. Initially, many Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians considered the Germans as liberators from the Soviet Union.
The Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940 refers to the military occupation of the Republic of Latvia by the Soviet Union under the provisions of the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany and its Secret Additional Protocol signed in August 1939. The occupation took place according to the European Court of Human Rights, the Government of Latvia, the United States Department of State, and the European Union. In 1989, the USSR also condemned the 1939 secret protocol between Nazi Germany and herself that had led to the invasion and occupation of the three Baltic countries, including Latvia.
Operation Priboi was the code name for the Soviet mass deportation from the Baltic states on 25–28 March 1949. The action is also known as the March deportation by Baltic historians. More than 90,000 Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, labeled as "enemies of the people", were deported to forced settlements in inhospitable areas of the Soviet Union. Over 70% of the deportees were either women or children under the age of 16.
The Soviet re-occupation of Latvia in 1944 refers to the military occupation of Latvia by the Soviet Union in 1944. During World War II Latvia was first occupied by the Soviet Union in June 1940 and then was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941–1944 after which it was re-occupied by the Soviet Union.
Relevant events began regarding the Baltic states and the Soviet Union when, following Bolshevist Russia's conflict with the Baltic states—Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia—several peace treaties were signed with Russia and its successor, the Soviet Union. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Soviet Union and all three Baltic States further signed non-aggression treaties. The Soviet Union also confirmed that it would adhere to the Kellogg–Briand Pact with regard to its neighbors, including Estonia and Latvia, and entered into a convention defining "aggression" that included all three Baltic countries.
The timeline of the occupation of the Baltic states lists key events in the military occupation of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania by the Soviet Union and by Nazi Germany during World War II.
The Sovietization of the Baltic states refers to the sovietization of all spheres of life in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania when they were under control of the Soviet Union. The first period deals with the occupation from June 1940 to July 1941 when the German occupation began. The second period covers 1944 when the Soviet forces pushed the German out, until 1991 when independence was declared.
The Soviet occupation of the Baltic states covers the period from the Soviet–Baltic mutual assistance pacts in 1939, to their invasion and annexation in 1940, to the mass deportations of 1941.
The Guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an armed struggle waged by the Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian partisans, called the Forest Brothers, against the Soviet Union during the Soviet invasion and occupation of the three Baltic states during and after World War II. Similar anti-Soviet Central and Eastern European resistance groups fought against Soviet and communist rule in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, and western Ukraine.
The People's Commissariat for State Security or NKGB, was the name of the Soviet secret police, intelligence and counter-intelligence force that existed from 3 February 1941 to 20 July 1941, and again in 1943, before being renamed the Ministry for State Security (MGB).
Soviet deportations from Lithuania were a series of 35 mass deportations carried out in Lithuania, a country that was occupied as a constituent socialist republic of the Soviet Union, in 1941 and 1945–1952. At least 130,000 people, 70% of them women and children, were forcibly transported to labor camps and other forced settlements in remote parts of the Soviet Union, particularly in the Irkutsk Oblast and Krasnoyarsk Krai. Among the deportees were about 4,500 Poles. These deportations do not include Lithuanian partisans or political prisoners deported to Gulags. Deportations of the civilians served a double purpose: repressing resistance to Sovietization policies in Lithuania and providing free labor in sparsely inhabited areas of the Soviet Union. Approximately 28,000 of Lithuanian deportees died in exile due to poor living conditions. After Stalin's death in 1953, the deportees were slowly and gradually released. The last deportees were released only in 1963. Some 60,000 managed to return to Lithuania, while 30,000 were prohibited from settling back in their homeland. Similar deportations took place in Latvia, Estonia, and other parts of the Soviet Union. Lithuania observes the annual Mourning and Hope Day on June 14 in memory of those deported.
The NKVD Order No. 001223, also known as Об оперативных мерах против антисоветских и социально враждебных элементов, erroneously: О высылке антисоветских элементов из Литвы, Латвии и Эстонии, was an order signed by Lavrentiy Beria on October 11, 1939. In fact, its title was "О введении единой системы оперативного учета антисоветских элементов, выявляемых агентурной разработкой", or translated as, e.g."On the Operative Accounting of Anti-Soviet and Socially Alien Elements"
Soviet deportations from Latvia were a series of mass deportations by the Soviet Union from Latvia in 1941 and 1945–1951, in which around 60,000 inhabitants of Latvia were deported to inhospitable remote areas of the Soviet Union, which had occupied the country in 1940 and again in 1944/1945. Similar deportations were organized by the Soviet regime in the fellow occupied Baltic states of Estonia and Lithuania at the same time.
