Following the Soviet invasion of the Baltic states in June 1940, repressive measures were enforced in these countries, including arrests, executions and mass deportations, in accordance with the Serov Instructions. Thousands of opposants and their families were arrested and deported to eliminate any political and social opposition. Rigged elections led the Communist Party to power, and the three countries incorporated the Soviet Union.
After the German occupation, the Soviet Union reoccupied the Baltic states from 1944, sparking several years of armed resistance from groups like the Forest Brothers. This insurgency persisted until the deportation and resettlement of thousands of people, weakening the resistance movement and ending it the mid-1950s. Soviet governments in the Baltic states conformed to Soviet policies, including nationalizing industries, enforcing censorship and severely restricting religious liberties. The Baltic states experienced territorial changes under Soviet rule. At the end of the 1980s, as the influence of the Soviet Union decreased, peaceful demonstrations known as the Singing Revolution in the Baltic states ultimately led to their independence.
Immediate post occupation
Plaque on the building of Government of Estonia, Toompea, commemorating government members killed by communist terror
After the Soviet invasion of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania in June 1940 the repressions followed with the arrests, executions and mass deportations carried out by the Soviets. The Serov Instructions, "On the Procedure for carrying out the Deportation of Anti-Soviet Elements from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia", contained detailed instructions for procedures and protocols to observe in the deportation of Baltic nationals.
The local Communist parties emerged from underground with 1500 members in Lithuania, 500 in Latvia and 133 members in Estonia.[1]
Transitional governments 1940
Soviet propaganda demonstration in Liepāja, 1940. Posters in Russian say: "We demand the full accession to the USSR!"
The Stalinist Soviet regime initiated a constitutional metamorphosis of the three Baltic states by first forming transitional "Peoples Governments."[2] Led by Stalin's close associates,[3] the local communist supporters and those brought in from the Soviet Union, forced the presidents and governments of all three countries to resign, replacing them with the provisional "people's governments".
The Soviets did not immediately install the virtually unknown leaders of the tiny existing Communist parties in each country, and instead put together a broadly left-wing coalition while simultaneously having Soviet emissaries present lists for cabinet installations about which even minor changes would not be sanctioned.[2] The new cabinets at first denied any intention of setting up Soviet regimes, not to mention incorporation into the Soviet Union, instead claiming only to remove "fascist" politicians from office.[4]
In late June and early July 1940, the cabinets announced that the Communist Parties were the only legal political parties.[4] All non-Communist controlled public activity was proscribed, while political, social ideological and religious groups which could be subsumed into the Communist fronts were disbanded, including even the Boy Scouts.[5] Police forces were replaced by specially recruited militias.[6] Formed "Peoples Armies" were rapidly Sovietized in preparation for their eventual absorption into the Red Army.[6]
On 14-15 July 1940, rigged parliamentary elections for the "People's Parliaments"[7] were conducted by local Communists loyal to the Soviet Union. Because of newly installed election restrictions, only the Communists and their allies were effectively allowed to run.[7][8] The election results were completely fabricated to give the Communists large majorities: the Soviet press service released them early, with the result that they had already appeared in print in a London newspaper a full 24 hours before the polls closed.[9][10]
The new assemblies met for the first time in late July, in each case with a single order of business—petitions to join the Soviet Union. This belied claims prior to the elections that no such action would be taken.[8] In each case, the petitions passed. In due course, the Soviet Union "accepted" all three petitions and formally annexed the three countries. The Soviet Union, and later Russia, used these votes to buttress its claim that the Baltic peoples had voluntarily requested to join the Soviet Union after carrying out socialist revolutions in their countries.
Public tribunals were also set up to punish "traitors to the people": those who had fallen short of the "political duty" of voting their countries into the USSR.[11]
Memorial to deported Latvian children who died in exile, 1941–1949
Immediately after the elections, NKVD units under the leadership of Ivan Serov arrested more than 15,000 "hostile elements" and members of their families.[12] Arrests and deportations began slowly, partly because of the language problems, as not enough Soviet officials were capable of reading the local language documents.[13]:47 In the first year of Soviet occupation, from June 1940 to June 1941, the number confirmed executed, conscripted, or deported is estimated at a minimum of 124,467: 59,732 in Estonia, 34,250 in Latvia, and 30,485 in Lithuania.[14] This included eight former heads of state and 38 ministers from Estonia, three former heads of state and 15 ministers from Latvia, and the then president, five prime ministers and 24 other ministers from Lithuania.[15] A large-scale operation was planned for the night of 27–28 June 1941. It was postponed until after the war when the Germans invaded the USSR on 22 June 1941 –Operation Barbarossa.[12] A Lithuanian government official claimed to have seen a Soviet document suggesting that 700,000 deportations were envisaged from Lithuania alone.[13]:48
According to historian Robert Conquest, the selective deportations from the Baltic States represented the policy of "decapitation" of the nation by removing its political and social elite, "as was later evidently to be the motive for the Katyn massacre."[16]
The new Soviet-installed governments in the Baltic states began to align their policies with current Soviet practices.[17] According to the prevailing doctrine in the process, the old "bourgeois" societies were destroyed so that new socialist societies, run by loyal Soviet citizens, could be constructed in their place.[17] The reconstituted parliaments quickly proclaimed the nationalization of large industries, transportation, banks, private housing, and commerce in general.[17] Although the land was now considered the property of the people, for the time being, the regimes expropriated only those holdings comprising 30 or more hectares (about 66 acres).[18] Around 100,000 ethnic German citizens were allowed to sell their land and property and leave the Baltic counties, and if they were racially acceptable, were resettled in Poland and given land and businesses in exchange for the money they had received from the sale of their previous possessions.[13]:46
By creating large numbers of small, nonviable farms, the Soviet regime intended to weaken the institution of private landholding so that later collectivization, a program of agricultural consolidation that was undertaken in the USSR a decade earlier, could be presented as an efficient alternative.[18] The Red Army quickly absorbed the military forces of the Baltic states.[18] Soviet security forces such as the NKVD, imposed strict censorship and press control.[18] In each of the new republics, churches and ecclesiastical property were nationalized, religious education and religious publications were forbidden, seminaries and monasteries were seized (often for the Red Army), and many clergymen were arrested.[18]
Western protests 1940
Between July and August 1940, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian envoys to the United States and the United Kingdom made official protests against Soviet occupation and annexation of their countries. The United States,[19] in accordance with the principles of the Stimson Doctrine (Sumner Welles' Declaration of 23 July 1940[10][20]), as well as most other Western countries[21][22] never formally recognized the annexation, but did not directly interfere with Soviet control. The Baltic states continued their de jure existence in accordance with international law.[23][24]
Diplomatic and consular representations of the Baltic states continued to function between 1940 - 1991 in some Western countries (United States, Australia, Switzerland).[25] Members of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian diplomatic services in Western countries continued to formulate and express the official opinion of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and protected the interests of these countries and their citizens abroad between 1940–1991, i.e., until the restoration of independence of the Baltic states.
On 12 January 1949, in an effort to end the insurgency, the Soviet Council of Ministers issued a decree "on the expulsion and deportation" from Baltic states of "all kulaks and their families, the families of bandits and nationalists", and others.[12] More than 200,000 people are estimated to have been deported from the Baltic in 1940–1953. In addition, at least 75,000 were sent to Gulag. 10 percent of the entire adult Baltic population was deported or sent to labor camps,[12] effectively breaking the back of the insurgency.
After World War II, as part of the goal to more fully integrate Baltic countries into the Soviet Union, mass deportations were concluded in the Baltic countries and the policy of encouraging Soviet immigration to the Baltic states continued.[27]
Independence in 1991
In July 1989, following the dramatic events in East Germany (the fall of the Berlin Wall), the Supreme Soviets in each of the Baltic countries adopted a "Declaration of Sovereignty" and amended the Constitutions to assert the supremacy of their own laws over those of the USSR. Candidates from the pro-independence party Popular Fronts gained a majority in the Supreme Councils in the 1990 democratic elections. The Councils declared their intention to restore full independence.[27]
Soviet political and military forces tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the governments. In 1991, Baltic countries claimed de facto independence. International recognition, including ultimately that of the USSR, followed. The United States, which had never recognized forcible annexation of the Baltic countries by the USSR, resumed full diplomatic relations with the republics.[27]
The Baltic states or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term encompassing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, and the OECD. The three sovereign states on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea are sometimes referred to as the "Baltic nations", less often and in historical circumstances also as the "Baltic republics", the "Baltic lands", or simply the Baltics.
The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Latvia or simply Latvia, was de facto one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union between 1940–1941 and 1944–1990.
The three independent Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – were invaded and occupied in June 1940 by the Soviet Union, under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in August 1939, immediately before the outbreak of World War II. The three countries were annexed by the Soviet Union as "constituent republics" in August 1940. Most Western countries did not recognise this annexation, and considered it illegal. On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union and within weeks occupied the Baltic territories. In July 1941, the Third Reich incorporated the Baltic territories into its Reichskommissariat Ostland. As a result of the Red Army 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.
Jüri Uluots was an Estonian prime minister, journalist, prominent attorney and distinguished Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Tartu.
Soviet deportations from Estonia were a series of mass deportations in 1941 and 1945–1951 carried out by the Stalinist regime of the former USSR from then Soviet-occupied Estonia. The two largest waves of deportations occurred in June 1941 and March 1949 simultaneously in all three occupied Baltic countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The deportations targeted primarily women, children and the elderly, calling them 'anti-Soviet elements'. In addition, there were Soviet deportations from Estonia based on the victims' ethnicity and religion. Ethnic Estonians who had been residing in Soviet Russia had already been subjected to deportation since 1935.
The June deportation of 1941 was a mass deportation of tens of thousands of people during World War II from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, present-day western Belarus and western Ukraine, and present-day Moldova – territories which had been occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939–1940 – into the interior of the Soviet Union.
The three Baltic countries, or the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – are held to have continued as legal entities under international law while under the Soviet occupation from 1940 to 1991, as well as during the German occupation in 1941–1944/1945. The prevailing opinion accepts the Baltic thesis of illegal occupation and the actions of the USSR are regarded as contrary to international law in general and to the bilateral treaties between the USSR and the three Baltic countries in particular.
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.
Latvian national partisans were Latvian pro-independence partisans who waged guerrilla warfare against Soviet rule during and after the Second World War.
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 Soviet Union issued an ultimatum to Lithuania before midnight of June 14, 1940. The Soviets, using a formal pretext, demanded that an unspecified number of Soviet soldiers be allowed to enter the Lithuanian territory and that a new pro-Soviet government be formed. The ultimatum and subsequent incorporation of Lithuania into the Soviet Union stemmed from the division of Eastern Europe into the German and Soviet spheres of influence agreed in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939. Lithuania, along with Latvia and Estonia, fell into the Soviet sphere. According to the Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty of October 1939, Lithuania agreed to allow some 20,000 Soviets troops to be stationed at bases within Lithuania in exchange for receiving a portion of the Vilnius Region. Further Soviet actions to establish its dominance in its sphere of influence were delayed by the Winter War with Finland and resumed in spring 1940 when Germany was making rapid advances in western Europe. Despite the threat to the country's independence, Lithuanian authorities did little to plan for contingencies and were unprepared for the ultimatum.
The Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Estonia, or simply Estonia, was a union republic of the Soviet Union (USSR), covering the occupied and annexed territory of Estonia in 1940–1941 and 1944–1991. The Estonian SSR was nominally established to replace the until then independent Republic of Estonia on 21 July 1940, a month after the 16–17 June 1940 Soviet military invasion and occupation of the country during World War II. After the installation of a Stalinist government which, backed by the occupying Soviet Red Army, declared Estonia a Soviet constituency, the Estonian SSR was subsequently incorporated into the Soviet Union as a "union republic" on 6 August 1940. Estonia was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941, and administered as a part of Reichskommissariat Ostland until it was reconquered by the USSR in 1944.
The background of the occupation of the Baltic states covers the period before the first Soviet occupation on 14 June 1940, stretching from independence in 1918 to the Soviet ultimatums in 1939–1940. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia gained independence in the aftermath of the Russian revolutions of 1917 and the German occupation which in the Baltic countries lasted until the end of World War I in November 1918. All three countries signed non-aggression treaties with the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. Despite the treaties, in the aftermath of the 1939 German–Soviet pact, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were occupied, and thereafter forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union, in 1940.
The three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – were re-occupied in 1944–1945 by the Soviet Union (USSR) following the German occupation. The Baltic states regained independence in 1990–1991.
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 Baltic Legations were the missions of the exiled Baltic diplomatic services from 1940 to 1991. After the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states in 1940, the Baltic states instructed their diplomats to maintain their countries' legations in several Western capitals. Members of the Estonian diplomatic service, the Latvian diplomatic service and the Lithuanian diplomatic service continued to be recognised as the diplomatic representatives of the independent pre-World War II states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, whose annexation by the Soviet Union was not recognised by the United States, the United Kingdom, or France. The legations provided consular services to exiled citizens of the Baltic states from 1940 to 1991.
The guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an insurgency waged by Baltic partisans against the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1956. Known alternatively as the "Forest Brothers", the "Brothers of the Wood" and the "Forest Friars", these partisans fought against invading Soviet forces during their occupation of the Baltic states during and after World War II. Similar insurgent groups resisted Soviet occupations in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.
Parliamentary elections were held in Latvia on 14 and 15 July 1940, alongside simultaneous elections in Estonia and Lithuania, following the Soviet occupation of the three countries. The Communist Party of Latvia was legalised and it created the "Latvian Working People's Bloc" to take part in the elections. It was the sole permitted participant in the elections; an attempt to include the Democratic Bloc, an alliance of all now-banned Latvian parties except the Social Democratic Workers' Party, on the ballot was suppressed.
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. Deportations included Lithuanian partisans and their sympathizers or political prisoners deported to Gulag labor camps. 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 14 June in memory of those deported.
The Soviet ultimatum to Estonia was issued on June 16, 1940, with the demand to answer by the midnight of the same day. The pretext was political activities of Estonia allegedly in contradiction to the Soviet–Estonian Mutual Assistance Treaty. The demands were to set up a new government and to allow Soviet troops into Estonia. The Estonian government, after long deliberations, submitted the resignation to President Konstantin Päts, which he signed and an announcement was broadcast about the resignation and the expected entrance of the Soviet Army. The Soviet forces started occupation of Estonia the next day. It was part of the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States.
↑ see, for instance, "Concurrent Resolution of the House and Senate: H. CON. RES. 128"(PDF). 25 July 2005. Retrieved 2006-12-09. [e]xpressing the sense of Congress that the Government of the Russian Federation should issue a clear and unambiguous statement of admission and condemnation of the illegal occupation and annexation by the Soviet Union from 1940 to 1991 of the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
↑ Then acting U.S. Secretary of State, Sumner Wells, described Soviet activities in the Baltic states as: "the devious process where under the political independence and territorial integrity of the three small Baltic republics - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - were to be deliberately annihilated by one of their more powerful neighbors."
↑ European Parliament (13 January 1983). "Resolution on the situation in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania". Official Journal of the European Communities. C. 42/78."whereas the Soviet annexations of the three Baltic States still has not been formally recognized by most European States and the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and the Vatican still adhere to the concept of the Baltic States".
↑ Van Elsuwege, P. (2003). "State Continuity and its Consequences: The Case of the Baltic States". Leiden Journal of International Law. 16 (2): 377–388. doi:10.1017/S0922156503001195. S2CID144809631.
↑ Malksoo, Lauri; Williams, Paul R.; Mälksoo, Lauri; Malksoo, Lauri (2005). "Illegal Annexation and State Continuity: The Case of the Incorporation of the Baltic States by the USSR". The American Journal of International Law. 99 (3). American Society of International Law: 734–736. doi:10.2307/1602324. JSTOR1602324. S2CID143691889.
↑ Д. Муриев, Описание подготовки и проведения балтийской операции 1944 года, Военно-исторический журнал, сентябрь 1984. Translation available, D. Muriyev, Preparations, Conduct of 1944 Baltic Operation Described, Military History Journal (USSR Report, Military affairs), 1984-9, pp. 22-28
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