Andrejs posts seemingly from the Old Country:

I don’t think its Soviet communism which spread far and wide. I think it was communism which spread like the virus.

I was using soviet in the ideological sense - sorry.

The Soviets then exploited that virus for their own goals. I think there’s plenty of evidence that a lot of the Internationlists didn’t buy ideology wise what the Russians were selling.

Funny part is that it was the non Russians who took the Internationalist baton and ran with it the farthest. Some are still running wondering where everyones gone to.

Enter Putin - who has no small number of admirers in the Baltics and I’m not talking about Ambersuns evil rooskies.

One of the reasons Mao split with Moscow was because he felt that increasingly policy suggestions from Moscow had less and less to do with ideology and more and more with Moscow. He wasn’t the only one.

Well all credit to Mao for figuring that out. Lets hope that realization spreads westward.

Perhaps, but highly unlikely it would have turned the tide.

How did Finland succeed in like circumstances when the Baltics failed ? Finland had some limited military victories on its side - but Finlands manner of handling the communist virus was much more telling. Had the soviet union wanted to occupy Finland - it could have. Put a few million soldiers on their frontier and the work is done. The red army didnt do that. It instead went after the easier low hanging fruit.

Maybe democracy wouldnt have turned the tide - but it was authoritarianism and the specter of dictatorship - with all of its waning WW2 baggage - that made red army conquest of the Baltics easy.

But anyway…What about today ? Estonias Independence Day. It’s a good day. The Baltics have managed to make something of their second chance so far - but there’s alot of work left.

My brand new Ikea computer office chair - with multiple levels of shiny aluminum silky adjustment - allows me to ponder my detachment from the Baltic condition in absolute comfort. I’m a nationalist of the worst order — when pressing the Submit Post button. I only lack an irrelevant self serving website chock full of nothing.

Ate !

Vidas

ps.. Julie Christie didnt win ? Katyn didnt win ? Farging rooskies !

Sveiki!

I simply cannot let this thread die without a comment or two.  Vidai, quite genuinely, this has been the most interesting thread that I’ve seen begun on LOL in 8 years, and I had high hopes for it!  Despite a total of 7 LOL frequent posters participating, not a single one even touched on the quite relevant question that you posed:

Vidas posted on 23 February 2008 02:07 AM

„The nature of the governments in place were certainly a factor when the status of the Baltic nations was considered during the post war Allied conferences. Lithuania and Latvia chose to adopt the stylish form of Mussolini dictatorial fascism that was all the rage in the 30’s and without question suffered because of it. They simply werent representative democracies - so what was there to restore ? Dictators ?

/…../

History eventually showed otherwise - but had Lithuania and Latvia had true representative governments in place in the years leading up to the occupations - the question would have been moot.”

Vidas posted on 24 February 2008 03:54 AM

„Damn - I know I’m the token Lithuanian here - but did any of you non-Internationalists actually read what I wrote ?

/…./

Come on ! You guys cant be serious !
Latvias and Lithuanias post war futures as nations were clearly affected by their dysfunctional governments. The Allies were tasked to restore what ?”

Vidas posted on 25 February 2008 03:32 AM

„How did Finland succeed in like circumstances when the Baltics failed ?”

I’ll answer this much:  Finland, unlike the Baltics, hung onto its democracy not only up until the eve of WWII, but throughout it.  Because the attack by the Soviets in 1939-40 ultimately forced it to side with the loser – Germany – it was expected to pay enormous reparations, among which meant losing the Karelian territory to the USSR.  But, on the other hand: it maintained its sovereignty – albeit, as if on a tightrope - for nearly half of the subsequent century.  But, this was unlike any of the Baltic countries.

I’m as reluctant as anyone else on this forum to play the ‘what-if’ game.  But, Vidai, hats off to you for finally posing a question that as far as I can remember has never appeared here before! 

A recap: at the end of WWII, had the Western Allies been willing to defy its ally - i.e., the USSR that had occupied & annexed the Baltics - then to which legitimate government could the Allies have handed over the governance of any of the Baltic countries? Does everyone agree that the incontrovertible lack of popularly elected governments wasn’t the result of the 3 occupations?  Or are there dissenters even to this?

Despite the lack of binding treaties with the western Allies, wouldn’t the Baltic countries’ bids to restore their sovereignty have been stronger if their previous governments hadn’t been dictatorships?

Visu labu,

Elizabete

PS Just a minor hint:  I personally don’t know enough details about Czechoslovakia’s blow-by-blow demise from a democratic state to a Soviet satellite.  But, if someone wants to mount an argument against Vidas’ question, that’s the only other country – a democracy until WWII, though of course with its own ‘specifika’ – that could be examined.

Aciu labai Elizabete. I appreciate the support.

I thought it was a compelling question. Even though Smetona doesnt have anything close to the reverence that Ulmanis has amongst Latvians - the question remains that if these governments were so strong in identity, positive, beneficial and forward looking—how come they were so easily tossed aside ?

Vidas

Sorry Irene but you will not have any last word.
Vidas did not read my post correctly for I was talking about the 1939-1940 period of time and nothing about post war.
The Molotov Ribbentrop secret protocols were done before the war and basically said “I will not interfere with your sphere of influence”  and to hell with national borders. If Ulmanis was Dictator of Lithuania and Semonta a dictator of Latvia the results would have been the same. Dictator or representative government the results would be the same is what I said.
Russia had sights on the Baltics years before this but couldn’t implement them. Building a railroad line straight to Latvia’s border and moving 5 Russian divisions from Finland to the Latvian border helped Ulmanis make a decision.
Western pledges of support was smoke blowing in the wind for there was no way any western nation could help the Baltics without starting WWIII.
As I stated many posts ago, the allies had a plan to rearm the defeated Axis and attack the Russians but a study showed that they would not get any further than past Moscow. Sorry Baltics but we can not help.
I have never claimed to be a historian but will give insights to misconceptions placed on this LOL.
I am going to ask my son if he can find me a chair like Vidas has to put in my car so when I am traveling 85+ down the interstate I can relax while surfing the web.

“Sorry Irene but you will not have any last word.”

Irene ? Who’s Irene ? Sorry, Kurlander, but Irena hasnt posted anything on this thread.

Seriously. Bottled water Kurlander. The need for a change is pretty damn obvious.

“Vidas did not read my post correctly for I was talking about the 1939-1940 period of time and nothing about post war.”

Vidas read your post correctly and I think you’re in convenient denial. You seem to want to argue that the decisions of the pre war governments had no real effect on what happened post war as you, Kurlander the uber Lett, had resigned yourself to occupation.

Thats fine by me - but consider that maybe not all Latvians and certainly not all Balts were so easy to resign themselves to occupation - note the resistance movements. 

There were several Allied post war conferences on the fate of Europe - there were embassies and ambassadors and officials in exile who were in place to represent and speak for Baltic sovereignty. I expect they would strongly disagree with your defeatism.

My question was - why did they fail to convince the Allied powers that their sovereignty was worth supporting ? And I know exactly why you dont want to address that question.

“Russia had sights on the Baltics years before this but couldn’t implement them.”

Russia HAS its sights on the Baltics today Kurlander. Will Des Moines Iowa surrender tomorrow ? You know, after the morning headache subsides. No hurry.

“I am going to ask my son if he can find me a chair like Vidas has to put in my car so when I am traveling 85+ down the interstate I can relax while surfing the web.”

Its the Klappe chair from Ikea Kurlander. Office style chairs are generally not offered for cars - but hey, maybe your son needs something to do.

Bottled water Kurlander. Only bottled water before fahren fahren fahren auf der Autobahn.  Your posting here seems a lost cause though.

Vidas

Sveiki!

The flip side of Vidas’ question is far more relevant to how the western Allies would have viewed the Baltics than what Russia would have done with its military force.  If the western Allies had been faced with displaced emigres that included elected representatives to the Baltic parliaments who had lost their jobs solely due to the occupations that destroyed recognized democracies, couldn’t this have been used to force them to negotiate differently at Yalta and other conferences?

Instead of allowing the Baltic countries to be incorporated into the USSR, could the Western Allies have pressured the USSR to declare the three Baltics as satellite countries of the Soviets with, for example, their own seats in the UN?  There isn’t a way for any of us to imagine what this would have meant to Latvia’s Latvians on a day-to-day level in the following 46 years while they were part of the Soviet bloc.  But certainly it would have strengthened their sense of lost sovereignty, and perhaps given them a greater degree of leverage with Moscow, as I assume that Czechoslovakia and other satellites experienced by contrast to the Baltic countries. 

Admittedly, these ‘what-if’ scenarios are tricky and ultimately no one knows how changing one aspect affects the outcome.  Still – I can’t imagine that had democracy been maintained in the Baltics up until the occupations that the western Allies would have completely ignored this and so easily allowed us to become the only ‘captive nations,’ appearing as separate countries only on western maps.

Visu labu,

Elizabete

The fate of the Baltics were sealed by not only the Molotov Ribbentrop agreement - but equally by the pre war failings of Daladier and Chamberlain.

The beginning of the final end began in December 1943 at the Tehran Conference and the Declaration of the Three Powers. The Yalta conference included some continued discussions - but again the common declarations didnt bode well for the restoration of Baltic independence:

“The establishment of order in Europe, and the rebuilding of national economic life, must be achieved by processes which will enable the liberated peoples to destroy the last vestiges of Nazism and fascism and to create democratic institutions of their own choice.”

Stalin lobbied that the new institutions of government in the now Baltic SSR’s were in fact democratic. Elections occurred - representatives publicly selected. Legislatures were in place and functioning. Churchill complained about the violent repressions and forced exile - but when even advisers to Churchill described the Baltic nations as the Ireland of Russia - nothing much came of it.

Smetona met with Cordell Hull at least 3 times 1942-1943. Hull was respectful and sympathetic but Smetona in his letters wrote that he didnt believe Hull or Roosevelt believed in his government.

Vidas

From Wikipedia, somewhere on the continuum from Vidas’ history to scholarly history.

Operation Unthinkable

Operation Unthinkable was a plan ordered by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and developed by the British Armed Forces at the end of World War II. The primary goal of the operation was declared as follows: “to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire.” [1] (The word “Russia” is used heavily throughout the document, although at the time Russia as a political entity had been replaced by the Soviet Union.) The Chiefs of Staff were concerned that given the enormous size of Soviet forces deployed in Europe at the end of the war, and the perception that the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was unreliable, there existed a Soviet threat to Western Europe. Churchill stated within the briefing documents for Unthinkable that it was a “precautionary study” of what he hoped was a “purely hypothetical contigency”.[1]

The majority of the operation would have consisted of American and British forces, but it also contemplated the use of Polish forces and up to 100,000 surrendered German soldiers.

The plan was rejected by the British Chiefs of Staff Committee as militarily unfeasible.

From LITUANUS:
http://www.lituanus.org/1982_2/82_2_01.htm

WORLD WAR II RUSSIAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS AND THE BALTIC STATES:
A TEST CASE

EDMUND R. PADVAISKAS
Siena College
[...]
From the day when the peoples of these [Baltic] Republics first gained their independent and democratic form of government the people of the United States have watched their admirable progress in self-government with deep and sympathetic interest.
The policy of this Government is universally known. The people of the United States are opposed to predatory activities no matter whether they are carried on by the use of force of the threat of force. They are likewise opposed to any form of intervention on the part of one State, however powerful, in the domestic concerns of any other Sovereign State, however weak.

The United States will continue to stand by these principles, because the conviction of the American people that unless the doctrine in which these principles are inherent once again governs relations between nations, the rule of reason, of justice, and of law — in other words the basis of modern civilization itelf — cannot be preserved.1

Acting Secretary of State Sumner Wells
on the Soviet annexation of the
Baltic States, July, 1940

Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, ancient nations but new states in the inter-war period, were invaded and forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940. The United States and other Western governments refused to recognize the legality of the Soviet action which was followed by arrests, murder, and deportation into forced labor camps of tens of thousands of the Baltic population.3 After the June, 1941 German attack on the U.S.S.R., the Soviet Union became an ally of Britain and soon of the United States. Among the first demands Stalin made to his new friends were that they recognize the June 1941 frontiers. The Baltic States thus became an early test case of Russian-Western relations. It was a relatively minor phase of World War II diplomacy soon to be overshadowed by other great divisive issues such as the Polish Question and the future of Germany. Nevertheless the Baltic case is perhaps instructive as a very early example of Soviet war-aims, tactics, and negotiating techniques and the American response to them. The initial high-minded Wilsonian idealism of the American leaders would quickly be sacrificed to the exigencies of Realpolitik.
[...]
The American position was formulated in a long memorandum Hull sent to the President on 4 February, 1942. Eden had kept Winant, the American Ambassador, fully informed of his Moscow trip, even giving him his notes and papers. Winant, in a series of cables in January, reported to the State Department where Dunn, the Political Adviser on European Affairs, and Roy Atherton headed an intensive study, the result of which was Hull’s memorandum.17

The memorandum carefully reviewed the Eden mission, accurately assessed the Soviet demands, indicated the British willingness to compromise on the Baltic States, and in strong terms reaffirmed the original American position “not to recognize any territorial changes which have been made in European frontiers since the outbreak of World War and not to enter into any commitments of a territorial nature in Europe which might hamper the proceedings of the postwar Peace Conference.” (my italics, my bold)The State Department pointed out that if concessions were made on this issue, it would be difficult to resist further Soviet demands relating to frontiers, territory, or spheres of influence that would certainly follow once the Soviet Union was in a favorable bargaining position. Hull and the State Department expected that Stalin would exert all kinds of pressure to attain immediate recognition of the fruits of the Nazi-Soviet pact. Recognition by the United States and Britain would mean among other things justification for the Soviet invasion of the Baltic States, Poland, and Finland. The memorandum warned of the effect American assent to Soviet territorial demands would have on the attitude of small countries everywhere. It would betray the “high principles of international conduct” advocated by the United States. It would also disturb the Latin American Republics and the Vatican.18

Above all “the recognition at this time of Soviet claims to the Baltic States would be certain to have an effect upon the integrity of the Atlantic Charter. The Soviet Union and the British Government must not be permitted to argue that the Baltic States willingly and freely chose annexation to the U.S.S.R. “It must be clear to all intelligent people who take the trouble to look into the matter that the Baltic States were invaded by Soviet armed forces and that the population of these States at no time had an opportunity freely to express their desires as to whether or not they would like to remain independent.” Moreover, if the Soviet invasion of the Baltic States and the rigged plebiscites that followed should be accepted as a model for ascertaining the wishes of other peoples, it would be a precedent that “would destroy the meaning of one of the most important clauses of the Atlantic Charter and would tend to undermine the force of the whole document.“19

The attitude of the American Government in January and February 1942 to the Soviet demand for recognition of the absorption of the Baltic States therefore remained unequivocal: no recognition, no territorial concessions, no diminution of the principles of the Atlantic Charter. ...
[...]

Halifax, taken aback, reiterated his old arguments and suggested his frustration with these minor Baltic States. They were not very successful governments, he asserted, when they were free, and they had been after all part of Imperial Russia for over one hundred years. When Wells pointed out the irrelevance of this, Halifax said that he might be thought to be cynical, “but that weighing the two in the balance, he did not feel that the enjoyment of self-government by the Baltic peoples could be compared in importance to the assurances that the Soviet Union would loyally continue until after the war, and even more important after the war.

Oh, and neat thing about that Wells dimplomatic letter from July 1940… Was the Soviet Union an ally of the US and UK in July 1940 Ambersun ? If not - then why not ?

Vidas

Here’s one theory and one version of history.  I wonder if anyone at Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam even knew who Ulmanis, Pats, and Smetona were.
   
By CRAIG R. WHITNEY, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: October 15, 1990

Roosevelt Aide Called an Unwitting Spy
LEAD: A new book by a prominent Soviet K.G.B. defector names Harry L. Hopkins, an architect of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and his closest personal adviser, as an unwitting ‘‘agent of major significance’’ for the Soviet Union.

A new book by a prominent Soviet K.G.B. defector names Harry L. Hopkins, an architect of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and his closest personal adviser, as an unwitting ‘‘agent of major significance’’ for the Soviet Union.

‘‘K.G.B.: The Inside Story,’’ by Oleg A. Gordievsky, the Soviet Union’s spy chief in London from 1982 until his defection in 1985, also says that the ‘‘Fifth Man’’ long sought as a Soviet spy inside British intelligence was John Cairncross, an undercover expert with M.I.6, the British foreign-intelligence agency, and that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed at Sing-Sing prison in New York in 1953 for spying, were ‘‘dedicated, courageous Soviet agents.’’

The book, co-written by a Cambridge University history professor, Christopher Andrew, says that Mr. Gordievsky concluded that Mr. Hopkins was valuable to the Soviets in the sense that he encouraged Roosevelt to take positions favored by Moscow, and not a knowing spy. It says Mr. Hopkins influenced the United States to accept Soviet control over Poland, the Baltic states and Romania.
Mr. Gordievsky, who now lives under an alias in England, defected from Moscow in 1985 after surmising that his cover had been blown as a double agent who had also worked for British intelligence for nearly two decades.

Sir Anthony Accused Cairncross

His book, purporting to be a history of the Soviet intelligence agency since its founding on Dec. 20, 1917, is being published in the United States by Harper Collins Publishers and in Britain by Hodder & Stoughton later this week. Excerpts have been sold to The Times of London and to Time magazine in the United States, and both began publishing them this weekend.

Mr. Gordievsky said he had verified Mr. Cairncross’s identification as the ‘‘Fifth Man,’’ working with the famous quartet of Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Sir Anthony Blunt, from conversations with other K.G.B. officials over the years in Moscow and from secondary references in the files.

A 1987 book by Peter Wright, a former British intelligence official, said that Sir Anthony Blunt had identified Mr. Cairncross as a spy in a confession in 1964 and that the latter immediately confessed. Mr. Cairncross never responded to the allegations. Mr. Wright speculated that the real ‘‘Fifth Man’’ was somebody else - Sir Roger Hollis, the former director of M.I.5, the British domestic counterespionage agency.

With the cold war now dead, the public relations of espionage have come in from the cold, at least to the point where Mr. Gordievsky appears for photographers in goatee and mustache, which he dispenses with when journalists leave cameras at home. As, presumably, the man he really is, he looks more like an ordinary Soviet intellectual than a spymaster.

His Infiltration of M.I.5

‘‘I liked history and historical studies,’’ explained Mr. Gordievsky, who speaks fluent English and says he infiltrated M.I.5 because, as the K.G.B.‘s London station chief, he knew it was ‘‘clean’’ of spies by the time he worked here in the early 1980’s.

Harry Hopkins, as ‘‘Mr. New Deal’’ in the 1930’s, was a target of right-wing critics of Roosevelt’s liberal social policies. He later was an adviser to President Truman. The assertion that he unwittingly helped the Soviet Union stems from a lecture that Mr. Gordievsky attended in the K.G.B.‘s headquarters in Moscow by Iskhak A. Akhmerov, who the book says was Alger Hiss’s wartime K.G.B. controller.

Mr. Hiss, who served in the State Department, was accused by Whittaker Chambers of having given him confidential documents to transmit to the Soviet Union. Mr. Hiss was convicted of perjury but denied having been a Soviet spy.

‘‘Akhmerov identified the most important of all Soviet wartime agents in the United States,’’ the book says, ‘‘as Harry Hopkins.’’

‘‘But Gordievsky concluded that Hopkins had been an unconscious rather than a conscious agent,’’ the book says. ‘‘Hopkins was an American patriot with no admiration for either the principle or the practice of the Communist state.’’