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Loss and regaining of independence (1940-1991)Page 1 of 4
From the loss of to the regaining of independence (1940-1991): David and Goliath After only two decades, the Baltic countries lost the independence they had acquired at the end of World War I. The reason for this lay in conditions brought about during World War II, for which they were by no means responsible. The disadvantageous geographical location of these countries, which were situated in-between the recently defeated, but now rising powers of Germany and Russia, and far away from the more well-disposed western countries, turned them into defenceless victims of the expansionist totalitarian major powers at their doorsteps. Within a few years of Soviet and German rule, violent changes were made to the fate of the Baltic region on a scale which matched that of the watershed that took place during the 13th and 14th centuries, at a time when written documents were first recorded, which effectively marks the beginning of the ‘history’ of the region. This does not only include the destruction of war, but also changes within the demographic structure. Initially, these changes affected mainly local German and Jewish minorities, which almost entirely disappeared as a result. At the same time, a major shift in the relative numbers of Russians and Baltic nationals began, which was to have a long-term influence on the development of the region. The role of German Balts in Baltic history Prior to their resettlement from Latvia and Estonia, the German Balts, descendants of the members of knightly orders, Hanseatic merchants, and urban middle classes from the time of the rule of the Teutonic Order, constituted only about 3.7 or 1.7 percent of the population respectively – which means: no more than some tens of thousands. Nonetheless, the ancestors of these people (and partly these people even personally) had formed the ruling elite up until 1918. Contrary to the eastern Germans’ colonisation of the region between the rivers Elbe and Memel, no German peasant population had settled in today’s Latvia and Estonia (in Latvia’s territory there were only some local exceptions dating back to the 18th and beginning of the 20th centuries respectively). Little had changed for the privileged Baltic German upper class under Russian rule; rather, when Peter the Great (who was aware that the Germans could contribute significantly towards the modernisation of Russia) annexed the Baltic region he assured the German ‘Ritterschaft’ and German city elders that German law, the German language, and the Protestant religion would be maintained. The last decades of German Baltic history in the Baltic region Towards the end of the 19th century, the centralist unification policy had ensured that the rights of the German upper class in the Baltic provinces gradually dwindled. However, proper change came about only when Estonia and Latvia gained independence. From then on, the majorities of Estonians and Latvians had nation-states with democratic constitutions. Hundreds of nobles were expropriated, left with neither estate nor compensation, while the land was divided and shared among small farmers. Fundamentally new election laws meant that the German middle classes lost all power, such that the once privileged upper class German population was transformed into a protected minority with its own cultural autonomy and independent administration of schools and welfare. All this was brought about in accordance with the minority laws passed by the new Baltic republics, which were internationally considered to be exemplary, and helped to stabilise the region. During the 1930s, Riga had approximately 44,000 German inhabitants (approx. 13 percent of a total population of 380,000), while Tallinn had 8,500 Germans (approx. 8 percent of a total population of 128,000). By contrast, very few Germans lived in Vilnius, which had belonged to Poland during the interwar years and whose population was mostly Polish. Whereas the creation of independent states came as a severe blow to the German Balts, the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939 destroyed their community altogether, for this pact contained a series of major population shifts (following a policy to separate different ‘spheres of interest’), according to which it was agreed to resettle German Balts ‘back home in the Reich’. This brought to an end seven hundred years of history whose architectural traces can still be seen all over Estonia and Latvia.
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