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The interwar years (1918-1940)Page 1 of 2The interwar years 1918-1940: Two decades of independence When the Baltic countries acquired independence in 1918-1920, this was not only something completely new in the history of Estonia and Latvia, but actually surpassed the goal towards which the Baltic national movements had been working for several decades. Moreover, it would have been unthinkable if the two major powers, Russia and Germany, had not collapsed around the same time. Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian independence was founded on the principle of self-determination and on the laws of the recently founded League of Nations, which were set up by politicians of the victorious western powers, above all President Wilson from USA. At the same time, economic and foreign policy interests of the western powers (such as the creation of a cordon sanitaire between Germany and the Soviet Union) worked in favour of the new states, which initially had to face up to the danger of Bolshevisation. From the standpoint of the Baltic countries, the threat that Lenin would attempt to expand revolutionary communist activities westwards was perceived to be a direct continuation of the expansionist policy pursued during the rule of the tsars; as a consequence, the alienation between the peoples of the Baltic region and their large neighbour to the east became once again deeper than it had been all the time before. The new Republic of Lithuania had very little in common with the old Grand Duchy which had existed for the centuries during which it was united with Poland. Although the population was made up mainly of Lithuanians, the old capital city of Vilnius contained only a small minority of Lithuanians. Since the majority of the population of Vilnius were Poles, Poland, also having regained independence, occupied Vilnius, which led to an irresolvable conflict between the two formerly united states over Vilnius. On the Lithuanian side, it was said, among other things, that many of the people in the city were not really Poles, but Polonised Lithuanians: after all, the old Lithuanian nobility was accustomed to using the Polish language – a nobility which was, so to speak, of no use to the new republic of peasants and lower middle classes. The German upper class in Latvia and Estonia was even more stringently deprived of its economic basis, for the land reform ensured that all former manor properties in these countries were dissolved.
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