History of the Baltic States

The Baltic states are three countries in Northern Europe. After centuries of foreign domination the Baltic countries re-emerged as independent nations in the aftermath of World War I in 1918-1920 only to be brutally subjugated by the communist Soviet Union for another fifty years after World War II.

Estonians and the nearly linguistically extinct Livonian people in Latvia are descended from the Baltic Finns, sharing closely related languages and a common cultural ancestry. The Latvians and Lithuanians, linguistically and culturally related to each other, are descended from the Balts, an Indo-European people and culture. The peoples comprising the Baltic states have together inhabited the eastern Baltic coast for millennia, although not always peacefully in ancient times, over which period their populations: Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, have remained remarkably stable within the approximate territorial boundaries of the current Baltic states. While separate peoples with their own customs and traditions, historical factors have introduced cultural commonalities across and differences within them.

After World War II the three nations were under Soviet occupation. The last Russian troops withdrew in August 1994 and the three nations have been members of the European Union and NATO since 2004. Today they are liberal democracies and their market economies are undergoing rapid expansion.

The first people arrived to the territory of the modern Baltic states in the tenth millennium BC. Around the beginning of the fourth millennium BC and through 2200 BC pottery and stone axes were used.

In the 1st century, AD the people living in the area were first denoted by Tacitus in a form of Aestii.

In the 13th century, Christianity and feudalism were effectively forced upon modern Estonia and Latvia by the invasion of the crusaders from the west and the conversion of Lithuania's rulers from Paganism to Christianity. While in Latvia and most of Estonia Livonian Confederation was established, Lithuania established its own state as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania some time before 1252. It later was a major political power of the region.

After the Livonian War in the 16th century, the Confederation ceased to exist, and its lands were incorporated into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1621 most of the Duchy of Livonia was incorporated into the Swedish Empire. During the Great Northern War the Dominions of Sweden of Swedish Estonia and Swedish Livonia were conquered by Russia and then ceded by Sweden in the Treaty of Nystad in 1721.

The Russian Empire gained control of most of the present-day Baltic states in the 18th century when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was partitioned in three stages by the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Habsburg Monarchy, while western parts of Lithuania were incorporated into Prussia.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania became sovereign nations in the aftermath of World War I. They declared independence in 1918, fought independence wars against German Freikorps and Bolshevist Russia, and were recognized as independent countries in 1920.

Following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact pact of 1939, the Soviet Army entered eastern Poland as well as military bases in the Baltic states which were granted after USSR had threatened the three countries with military invasion. In June 1940, the Red Army occupied the whole territory of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and installed new, pro-Soviet governments in all three countries. Following rigged elections, in which only pro-communist candidates were allowed to run, the newly "elected" parliaments of the three countries formally applied to "join" the USSR in August 1940 and were annexed into it as the Estonian SSR, the Latvian SSR, and the Lithuanian SSR.

The Soviet control of the Baltic states was interrupted by Nazi German invasion of the region in 1941. The German occupation lasted until late 1944 (in Courland, until early 1945), when the countries were re-occupied by the Red Army. In all three countries, Baltic partisans, known colloquially as the Forest Brothers, waged unsuccessful guerrilla warfare against the Soviet occupation for the next eight years in a bid to regain their nations' independence.

In the late 1980s massive demonstrations in Estonia against the Soviet regime, known as the Singing Revolution began. One of the most noted protests took place on August 23, 1989, when approximately two million people joined their hands to form a 600-kilometer human chain across the three countries in the event known as the Baltic Way.

Tallinn Song Festival Grounds

The earliest mention of Estonian singing dates back to Saxo Grammaticus Gesta Danorum (ca. 1179). Saxo speaks of Estonian warriors who sang at night while waiting for a battle. The older folksongs are also referred to as runic singing, the tradition shared by all Baltic Finns. This form of singing was widespread among Estonians until the 18th century when it started to be replaced by rhythmic folksongs.

Estonia has more folksongs than any other European people.

The Estonian Song Festival (Laulupidu) is an event which takes place in Tallinn's Song Festival Grounds every five years in July. Begun in 1869 in Tartu it was moved to Tallinn in 1896. The first festival had 822 singers. In 2007 almost 30,000 people participated including dancers and musicians.

Singing played a pivotal role in the independence of Estonia, with the other two Baltic states following on Estonia's heels. Click on this link for more information, including a wonderful look at a movie, The Singing Revolution, and how you can purchase a copy.

http://thesingingrevolution.com/

It's the story of "how culture saved a nation"

Since 1873 the Latvian's have also held their own song festival every five years.

The three Baltic nations re-declared their independence in 1990 and 1991, and their independence was recognized by the Soviet Union on September 6, 1991.

Shame, shame, on the United States of America, Great Britain, and the rest of the "allies" for making an unholy alliance with the butcher Stalin and allowing the murder of millions of Christians in Russia, the murder of these innocent Baltic civilians, and untold millions of others. God will judge Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt for their crimes, along with Josef Stalin.

Monument of Lithuanian victims of Soviet occupation in Gediminas Avenue, Vilnius, Lithuania

Memorial to deported Latvian children who died in exile, 1941-1949

Plaque on the building of Government of Estonia, Toompea, commemorating government members killed by communist terror

Notice that there are no monuments to civilians murdered by Germans during their occupation of these nations

Baltic citizens by the thousands served in the German military to fight against the soviets

Citizens did not flee by the thousands while the Germans occupied the Baltic nations

German forces evacuated and saved Baltic citizens by the thousands from Stalin's forces

Who was the real butcher?

Hitler or Stalin?

Let history speak for itself

"To all Estonian soldiers who died in the second war for the liberation of the fatherland and a free Europe in 1940-1945"

Estonians not allowed to decide their own history and Heritage

Monument of Lihula, located in the cemetery of the small Estonian town of Lihula, was a monument depicting an Estonian soldier in a World War II uniform resembling the German military uniform. It was originally unveiled in Parnu in 2002 but taken down in only nine days after the prime minister bowed to international, mainly Jewish, pressure and condemned the statue. The statue was unveiled in Lihula on August 20, 2004 and taken down by the Estonian authorities on September 3, 2004.

As the dedication included those who fought against Bolshevism in the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS, a number of organizations condemned it, again, most notably the Jewish Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Chief Rabbi of Estonia. Most supporters of the monument have clearly distanced themselves from the Nazi ideology, but this means nothing to Jews who want nothing to interfere with their domination of historical facts.

The head of the Association of Estonian Veterans, who fought on the German side, says he does not regret taking the German uniform, because there was a "naive" hope that somehow an independent Estonia could be salvaged. He thinks wearing a German uniform does not make you a fascist. He also believes that both regimes, Nazi and Soviet, were equally evil but that Stalin was more cunning. He also view Estonians' serving in the German army as having been a necessary evil.

When will we stop letting a small group of people tell us what part of our Heritage is important and what we can memorialize?

Estonia

During the period of Swedish rule over Estonia in the seventeenth century, a few Estonians assisted the Swedes in establishing the colony of New Sweden on the Delaware River. Estonian immigration to the United States was nevertheless quite limited until the late nineteenth century. The first Estonian immigrants were fortune hunters or seamen who jumped Russian sailing vessels. Immigration records do not identify them as Estonians, referring to them instead as "Russians," a practice that continued until 1922. In 1894, one group settled near Fort Pierre, South Dakota, while others settled in New York and San Francisco.

The first significant wave of immigration came after the failure in Estonia of the 1905 Revolution. This wave brought a strong Socialist contingent to the United States that led to the formation of many Estonian American Socialist and Communist organizations. Population estimates of the Estonian American community during this period vary widely and are difficult to reconcile. By 1930, official immigration and census records reveal that there were only about 3,550 Estonian Americans in the United States. Other sources, however, including government estimates, suggest that this number was much larger, recording 5,100 Estonian Americans in 1890, 44,100 in 1910, and 69,200 in 1920. The establishment of an independent Estonia in 1920, combined with the tightening of American immigration laws in the 1920s, dramatically slowed Estonian immigration to the United States. After World War II, there was a tremendous exodus of Estonians from Soviet rule; most Estonians made their way to Sweden or Germany, although about 15,000 of them came to the United States. Unlike the group that arrived in 1905, this group was strongly anti-Socialist and nationalistic; it spanned a larger exile community and was connected by a web of international organizations. The U.S. Census of 1990 lists 26,762 Americans claiming Estonian as a first or second ancestry.

Latvia

Some historical evidence suggests that the first Latvians in North America may have settled with Swedish and Finnish migrants in the area of Delaware and Pennsylvania around 1640. In the late 1600s, a group from the island of Tobago migrated to Massachusetts. Latvians were also among the thousands of fortune seekers who headed to California during the 1849 Gold Rush. Two histories of Latvians in America claim that Mārtiņš Buciņš, believed to be a Latvian sailor, was among the first to die during the American Civil War.

Latvian American immigrants consist of two distinct groups: those immigrants—often called veclatvieši, or Old Latvians—who settled in the United States before World War II, and those who arrived after the war. Before the war they mainly came to seek fortune or escape the Russian czar's army. They were usually young, single men, although some single women and families also came.

With the beginning of World War I, Latvia became a battleground between German and Russian forces. Latvian migration came to a halt until the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution, when many revolutionary Latvians returned to their homeland to work for the creation of a Bolshevik government (a forerunner to the Communist party) in Latvia as well as in Moscow.

The number of Latvians who journeyed to America before World War II is difficult to determine. Figures compiled by Francis J. Brown and Joseph Slabey Roucek, published in Our Racial and National Minorities in 1937, show that 4,309 Latvians came to the United States before 1900; 8,544 from 1901-1910; 2,776 from 1911-1914; 730 from 1915-1919; 3,399 from 1921-1930; and 519 from 1930-1936. Until the 1930 census, the U.S. government lumped Latvians in with Lithuanians and Russians. Ten years later, the census counted 34,656 people of Latvian origin, about 54 percent of them foreign-born.

World War II's ravages of Latvia turned many Latvians into refugees. Fearing the Soviet communists, they headed to western Europe. By the end of the war, an estimated 240,000 Latvians—more than a tenth of the country's population—were camped in Displaced Persons (DP) facilities in Germany, Austria, and other countries. About half were eventually repatriated to Latvia, but the rest resettled in Germany, England, Sweden, Australia, Canada, and the United States, as well as in other countries. As documented by Andris Skreija in his unpublished thesis on Latvian refugees, an estimated 40,000 Latvians immigrated to the United States from 1949 to 1951 with the help of the U.S. government and various social service and religious organizations.

Lithuania

A number of Lithuanians immigrated to the New World before the American Revolution. The first may have been a Lithuanian physician, Dr. Aleksandras Kursius, who is believed to have lived in New York as early as 1660. Most of the other Lithuanians who ventured to the Americas during this period were members of the noble class or practitioners of particular trades. The first really significant wave of Lithuanian immigration to the United States began in the late 1860s, after the Civil War. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, an estimated 300,000 Lithuanians journeyed to America—a flow that was later halted by the combined effects of World War I, the restriction of immigration into the United States, and the achievement in 1918 of Lithuanian independence. This number is hard to document fully because census records did not officially recognize Lithuanians as a separate nationality until the twentieth century, and the country's people may have been reported as Russian, Polish, or Jewish.

Several key factors brought about the first surge of Lithuanian immigration to the United States. These included the abolition of serfdom in 1861, which resulted in a rise in Lithuania's free population; the growth of transportation, especially railroads; and a famine that broke out in the country in the 1860s. Later, other conditions, such as a depressed farm economy and increased Russian repression, prompted even more Lithuanians to leave their home soil. In 1930 the U.S. Census Bureau listed 193,600 Lithuanians in the United States. This figure represents six percent of the total population of Lithuania at the time.

The initial wave of immigrants to the United States can also be viewed as part of a larger movement

The second wave of immigration had a greater impact on U.S. census figures. Following World War II, a flood of displaced refugees fled west to escape the Russian reoccupation of Lithuania. Eventually 30,000 Dipukai (war refugees or displaced persons) settled in the United States, primarily in cities in the East and the Midwest. These immigrants included many trained and educated leaders and professionals who hoped to return someday to Lithuania. The heightening of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union—known as the Cold War—dampened these expectations, and many Lithuanians sought to create a semi-permanent life in the United States. By 1990 the U.S. Bureau of the Census listed 811,865 Americans claiming "Lithuanian" as a first or second ancestry