TWENTY years ago, your correspondent was in the basement of what had until a few days beforehand been the KGB building in Vilnius, inspecting a pile of confiscated fire-arms and the cells in which countless Lithuanians had been jailed, tortured and killed. Anniversaries have a random (and to me rather Soviet) feel. But these thoughts from Paul Goble, the oracle on matters Baltic (he used to be the desk officer for the region at the State Department) are well worth a read. They were written for a recent commemoration ceremony (I am not sure which) and circulated by email. I'll be glad to add a link if someone supplies it.
Twenty years! It seems almost incredible that it has been 20 years since Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania achieved the recovery of their de facto independence. For those of us who lived through those exciting times half a lifetime ago, it seems both only yesterday and a world away.
But now in this “round” anniversary year, it is time to make an assessment of what has been achieved over that period, what has not been accomplished either because it is difficult or because it is impossible, and what remains to be done both by the peoples of those three countries and by their friends abroad.
Such an assessment acquires a special urgency because this anniversary inevitably recalls another anniversary – the 20th anniversary of the first period of independence of the three Baltic countries during the last century, a period during which Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania achieved a great deal but nonetheless had their effective independence suppressed as a result of a criminal deal between Stalin and Hitler.
Obviously, I do not want to draw a direct parallel between 1940 and 2011. Too many things have changed both in the world for that. But remembering that even 20 years does not make anything “irreversible” is something that should come natural to citizens of the Baltic countries and to their friends and supporters abroad. At the very least, such reflections should help us overcome complacency and a sense that the future is assured.
It is easy, especially at a time of anniversaries, to overlook or at least play down the problems, given how much has been achieved. And consequently, before considering the current and future challenges and what our responses should be, I do want to celebrate what in fact has been achieved. The best way to do that is to recall what the situation in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were 20 years ago and contrast that with the situation today.Twenty years ago, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were under Soviet occupation, with hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops on their territories, Communists either in power or in powerful positions, and the USSR appeared to be reconstituting itself in a way that would allow Western governments to support its existence for a long time to come.
Twenty years ago, the governments in place in the three Baltic countries were not recognized by any foreign state. The United States and some other Western countries did not recognize the Soviet occupation as legitimate, but they maintained ties with representatives of the pre-war governments rather than with the governments in place, a fundamental distinction that is often forgotten.
And twenty years ago, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians lived under a decaying Soviet economic political system one that combined the worst forms of economic life with an arbitrary, authoritarian and often brutal political regime, one that openly celebrated the supremacy of the occupiers over the occupied.
What is the case today? The Soviet troops are gone along with the Soviet Union; the Communists are out of office, completely discredited even if their crimes have not yet been adequately judged; the three Baltic countries are members of the United Nations, recognized by the overwhelming majority of the world's countries, and full partners of both the European Union and NATO; and Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians live under conditions of democracy and free markets, enjoying all the advantages of both.
Not surprisingly, this remarkable, indeed unprecedented turnabout has led to a kind of “end of history” mentality in both the three Baltic countries and among their friends abroad. The leaders and the peoples of the Baltic states routinely and properly celebrate what they have achieved And Western officials who deal with the Baltic countries often say “all's well that ends well,” a comment that both excuses the West for not having done more earlier and that suggests there is little more that needs to be done.
But as the West learned to its dismay on September 11th and as everyone in the Baltic states should never forget given their own past, history does not end, culture and geography cannot be repealed, and the human condition is not transformed by external change. And because all this is true and at the risk of being the skunk at the garden party of celebrations of this anniversary, I would like to devote most of my remarks to these challenges, to what has not been accomplished either because it is difficult or because it is impossible.
I would like to address three “impossibilities” and three “difficulties” in order to begin our reflections at this conference. The three impossibilities, of course, are size, location, and demography; the three difficulties are national integration, memory and forgetting, and meeting the challenges of globalization and international integration.
Let us be blunt: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are small countries. They are smaller than most US states, and they have populations smaller than many US counties. That has three obvious consequences: First, they have little margin for error. Second, they are typically dependent on others. And third, they are often ignored or their interests sacrificed by other countries in the name of reaching agreement with larger and “more important” states.
When I was spending much of my time in the Baltic countries nearly 20 years ago, I often pointed out that however important the peoples of these countries were and felt themselves to be, they had to recognize that their size made living by their wits far more important. I often remarked to the Estonians (but the same thing could have been said to the Latvians and Lithuanians) that the fundamental difference between their country and the US was this: when Estonia makes a mistake, I would say, Estonia suffers, but when the US makes a mistake, Estonia suffers.
(Tragically, the first half of this equation remains true, but the second has changed. Having run through our margin for error, it is now the case that when the US makes a mistake, Estonia suffers but so does the US – a pattern that is going to intensify as the relative power of the US declines in the coming decades.)
Related to that is another observation that I and some others had occasions to make. Being small, these countries much resemble the 90 pound weakling on the beach. When the 250 pound lifeguard goes by, they have three options, two of them good and one of them very bad: The good options are to dig in the sand and hope the lifeguard doesn't notice them or to take out a gun a shoot him through the head on the first shot. The bad option is to kick sand at him. Unfortunately, Baltic leaders like many other leaders of small countries – Georgia's Mikheil Saakashvili spring to mind – are often professional sand kickers, seeing this as a way to get attention and even support. But it doing so, these leaders are operating on a mistaken assumption: they believe that attracting attention is the same as attracting support. That is not always the case: indeed, by trying to involve other countries in this way, they advertise their own weaknesses to their opponents.
The second permanent condition is geography. Late Estonian President Lennart Meri liked to say that he would rather have Canada for a neighbor. Indeed. But Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania do not have a choice about their neighbors, and to be blunt, they live in what is a notoriously bad neighborhood, one where their interests have been ignored or trampled on by others.
Unfortunately, there is little sign that the neighborhood is getting better despite all the hopes of 20 years ago. On the one hand, some of the Europeans in whom the Baltic leaders and peoples put so much confidence have proved to be indifferent or worse, sometimes publically telling the Balts and other East Europeans to keep their mouths shut and far more often pursuing their own traditional national interests at Baltic expense, especially when it comes to energy supplies from the Russian Federation.
And on the other, the situation in Russia is deteriorating and deteriorating rapidly. Not only do few in the Russian Federation accept the settlement of 1991 as legitimate and final, but many in that country are openly attracted by radical nationalism verging in some cases on fascism, especially as it becomes obvious that the Russian Federation is at risk of collapse and disintegration in the near future. Because that is so, the coming disintegration of that country is likely to be more violent and bloody than was the end of the USSR, a trend that will have a serious and frightening impact on the neighbors as well.
The Russian invasion of Georgia in August 2008 and the West's half-hearted opposition to that suggest to many in the Russian capital that “a good little war” is just what they need to generate domestic support and put off if not prevent disintegration. There is no guarantee that Moscow will not try this strategy again, especially if it is handed a plausible casus belli by neighboring states, even if it will ultimately be a disaster for Russia itself.
Let me be clear: Saakashvili behaved foolishly, but Russia's Vladimir Putin behaved criminally. That needs to be accepted. Unfortunately, in the eyes of many in the West, foolishness is the greater crime, especially if there is this kind of power imbalance. And that is something smaller powers need always to be remember.
And the third such condition is demography. When people talk about demographic problems in the Baltic countries, they almost inevitably focus on only one of them: the difficulties of coping with the consequences of the Soviet occupation on the ethnic and linguistic make up of their populations. For Lithuania, these problems have been minimal, but for Estonia and Latvia they have been extremely serious. Ensuring that all the residents of these countries speak the national language and that those who came under the conditions of occupation pass through a process of integration both legal and psychological has been difficult, but the reality is that both Tallinn and Riga have achieved wonders, especially given the pressure they have been under from Russia and the West to ignore the fundamental and internationally recognized right of occupied countries not to offer citizenship to those moved in by the occupying authorities.
Being a citizen of Estonia or Latvia, countries whose economies have done relatively well at least in comparison to Russia's and whose citizenship now means citizenship within the European Union and all the benefits that entails means that ever more ethnic Russians are choosing to take Estonian and Latvian citizenship, if not yet to give up their own ethnic identities. That presents some serious challenges, to which I will return in a moment. But the reality is that today, 20 years after the recovery of Baltic independence, the ethnic composition of the population is NOT the most important demographic problem there. There are now three more significant ones.
First is the hollowing out of the countries. Rural areas are being depopulated and an ever greater share of the population lives in the capitals. Not only does that make the defense of these countries more difficult, but it changes the sources of identity in ways that do not sustain ethno-national identity but rather promote a more cosmopolitan set of values. Such a development is not necessarily bad in and of itself, but it means that the definition of what it means to be an Estonian or a Latvian or a Lithuanian is changing and doing so in ways many may be uncomfortable with.
Second is the departure of the young. Now that these countries are in the European Union and part of the West, an increasing share of young people is choosing to work and live abroad. Many of them will return, at least that is what they say, but many will not. That constitutes a serious brain drain and makes the prospects for the survival of these countries as countries more problematic. If they cannot hold onto the young, these countries face an uncertain and very likely unpleasant future.
And third is the problem I have called elsewhere “the revenge of the middle aged.” As everyone in this room will remember, the Baltic revolutions were led by the very oldest and very youngest in each of the three countries, by those who could remember their countries as they were before the Soviets came in 1940 and by those who had come of age as the Soviet system wound down and who were thus least affected by it. In the early 1990s, this led to a situation in which Estonia had the oldest president and the youngest prime minister in Europe at one and the same time.
But in the intervening years, things have changed. Now, the oldest generation has left the scene, either because of the impact of the actuarial tables or because of a desire to take an often well-deserved rest, and the youngest, having experienced politics and often occupied senior positions earlier than would normally be the case, has left politics to pursue business interests which seem far more promising. As a result, politics in all three countries is now dominated by the middle aged, by precisely the group that was the most affected by Soviet occupation and often is most informed by Soviet values. That does not mean that these people have a Soviet agenda, but it does mean that they often approach what are clearly anti-Soviet values in a Soviet fashion. In short, some of them at least might be described as “anti-Soviet Bolsheviks.” Their existence clearly disturbs many in these countries and that in turn helps to explain why all three have turned to the emigration for their presidencies in recent years. But that is clearly a pattern that cannot long continue, and a reckoning with this shadow of the past is obviously ahead.
These three “impossibilities” blend into the three enormous difficulties: national integration, memory and forgetting, and meeting the challenges of globalization. National integration is in some ways the hardest of the three. It is not enough to have everyone speak the same national language, carry the same passport, and do without dual citizenship. It is critically important to decide what the nation is and what it should be. That does not mean establishing a Procrustean bed of identity definers, but it does require a shared set of values and judgments about the past, the present, and the future within which the political system can operate.
If a large portion of the population does not understand and accept that 1940-1991 was a period of occupation and does not believe that 1991 was a final settlement, then politics becomes not so much impossible as poisoned. That can be seen from the experience of Europe after 1945. One of NATO's greatest contributions was to take foreign policy off the table for European countries early on. That destroyed the basis of the communist appeal for large segments of the population in France and Italy and ultimately made possible the rise of the European Union.
Unfortunately, the new NATO about which we have heard so much does not seem to be playing the same role in the Baltic countries. Many in all three appear to think that 1991was not the end of history but rather something that can and perhaps even should be reversed, an attitude that poisons social and political life and makes the further integration of the nation more difficult. And that is even more threatening because so many people now seem unwilling to recognize the truth about the occupation.
That reflection leads naturally to the second, the problem of memory and forgetting. It has long been a commonplace that “the unexamined life is not worth living” but that a constantly examined life cannot be lived. Extrapolating from that we can say that a nation that does not remember its history will soon cease to be a nation but a nation that lives in the past will soon lack a future. That in turn means that the issue of memory and forgetting is at the center of the life of all nations and especially of nations like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania which have undergone so much trauma.
It is critically important that institutions like the Occupation Museum our host Professor Paulis Lazda has done so much to promote not be marginalized or transformed into a watered down version of its intention. Too many young people in the Baltic countries do not know their history, and the versions offered by Russian media outlets are anything but true. Moreover, it is absolutely necessary that judgment be rendered on that history and on those who made it, instead of saying as many in the West often do, one should look forward not backward.
All three Baltic countries need to ensure that the rising generation knows what the occupation was and why non-recognition policy was so important. The latter in fact constitutes not only international recognition of the occupation but serves as a kind of birth certificate for the rebuilding of these states by offering them the legal basis for their citizenship and other legislation. Take that away and you reduce the Baltic countries to what the Russians like to claim they are – three more former Soviet republics.
(Allow me a personal aside here: One of my biggest efforts 20 years ago was to ensure that there was as much distance as possible in time between the recovery of Baltic independence and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Had these two events happened at the same time, the West likely would have viewed the Balts as part of the larger process rather than as a distinctive development. The consequences of that would have been horrific.)
At the same time, however, this concern with maintaining knowledge of the past must not ossify into a “short course” of propositions that trivialize that past or that prevent people from evolving in ways of their own choosing. Maintaining that balance is going tbe hard, but it is not impossible, as many other countries – including small ones – have shown.
And finally there is the problem of coping with the problems of globalization. I would like to focus on just two aspects of this. On the one hand, the Baltic countries because of their drive to rejoin Europe were asked and have agreed to yield sovereignty in many areas where they had not yet fully reestablished it after the occupation. That has led to a number of serious legal problems and even more to psychological uncertainties with which none of the three is dealing especially well. For example, how do you institutionalize democracy at a supra-national level before you have done so fully at the national level? When there are conflicts between the two, how do you prevent them from corroding support for democratic procedures in the other?
On the other, globalization, the notion that there should be the free flow of people as well as goods and capital, is inherently threatening to national identities and even the nation state. Nowhere are these threats greater than in the case of small countries like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The obvious analogy is this: If you put a drop of blue ink into a large bottle of water, the water may be slightly tinted but the blue itself will disappear entirely.
In the enormous sea of the world, the smaller nations are thus at risk – and it is likely that at least some of their members will react badly to this development, all the more so because some larger countries, including their traditional enemies, have been all too willing to use these tectonic shifts to their own advantage.
All this means that Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians have a great deal of work to do not only to ensure their national survival but to ensure that what survives will be recognizably their nations. And it means that people of Baltic heritage and other friends of the Baltic nations have a great deal of work to do, so much so that none of them should allow these celebrations to get in the way of an honest assessment of that fact.
Let me suggest three things that we must do now in order to ensure that those who come after us will be able to celebrate the 40th and the 60th anniversaries with as much pleasure as we are doing today.
First, all of us need to recognize that history is contingent, that it is not over, and that bad things can happen in the future just as often as good. The events of 1991 are no guarantee that the future will be otherwise. That should be obvious as the three Baltic countries mark the second 20th anniversary of their independence, but tragically it all too often is not.
Second, all of us also need to understand that trends in the Baltic neighborhood are anything but good:Russia is again moving in a terrible and frightening direction, and the West is complaisant, certain that somehow deals can be made and everything can work out, the very attitudes that led to the submersion of the Baltic countries 70 years ago. No one can do more to fight that than those of us who love the Balts but live in the West. We know, and we must testify.
And third, again all of us must recognize that the work ahead is harder than the work we have done already. This role may not be as glamorous, and the tasks may not appear as dramatic. But they are important. In 1991 on January 13th -- which is by the way my birthday -- my wife bought me a birthday card which I think has a message for all of us. The card read: “Anyone can survive a crisis; it is the day to day things that get us down.” Our work is now the day to day kind, and if we do it and do it well, we may be able to avoid disaster and thus be in a position to celebrate many more anniversaries of what was truly the Baltic miracle.