The Baltic states are bounded on the west and north by the Baltic Sea, which gives the region its name, on the east by Russia, on the southeast by Belarus, and on the southwest by Poland and an exclave of Russia. The underlying geology is sandstone, shale, and limestone, evidenced by hilly uplands that alternate with low-lying plains and bear mute testimony to the impact of the glacial era. In fact, glacial deposits in the form of eskers, moraines, and drumlins occur in profusion and tend to disrupt the drainage pattern, which results in frequent flooding. The Baltic region is dotted with more than 7,000 lakes and countless peat bogs, swamps, and marshes. A multitude of rivers, notably the Neman (Lithuanian: Nemunas) and Western Dvina (Latvian: Daugava), empty northwestward into the Baltic Sea.
The climate is cool and damp, with greater rainfall in the interior uplands than along the coast. Temperatures are moderate in comparison with other areas of the East European Plain, such as in neighbouring Russia. Despite its extensive agriculture, the Baltic region remains more than one-third forested. Trees that adapt to the often poorly drained soil are common, such as birches and conifers. Among the animals that inhabit the region are elk, boar, roe deer, wolves, hares, and badgers.
The Latvian and Lithuanian peoples speak languages belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European linguistic family and are commonly known as Balts. The Estonian (and Livonian) peoples, who are considered Finnic peoples, speak languages of the Finno-Ugric family and constitute the core of the southern branch of the Baltic Finns. Culturally, the Estonians were strongly influenced by the Germans, and traces of the original Finnish culture have been preserved only in folklore. The Latvians also were considerably Germanized, and the majority of both the Estonians and the Latvians belong to the Lutheran church. However, most Lithuanians, associated historically with Poland, are Roman Catholic.
The vast majority of ethnic Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians live within the borders of their respective states. In all three countries virtually everyone among the titular nationalities speaks the native tongue as their first language, which is remarkable in light of the massive Russian immigration to the Baltic states during the second half of the 20th century. Initially, attempts to Russify the Baltic peoples were overt, but later they were moderated as Russian immigration soared and the sheer weight of the immigrant numbers simply served to promote this objective in less-blatant ways. Independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 allowed the Baltic states to place controls on immigration, and, in the decade following, the Russian presence in Baltic life diminished. At the beginning of the 21st century, the titular nationalities of Lithuania and Estonia accounted for about four-fifths and two-thirds of the countries’ populations, respectively, while ethnic Latvians made up just less than three-fifths of their nation’s population. Around this time, Poles eclipsed Russians as the largest minority in Lithuania. Urban dwellers constitute more than two-thirds of the region’s population, with the largest cities being Vilnius and Kaunas in southeastern Lithuania, the Latvian capital of Riga, and Tallinn on the northwestern coast of Estonia. Life expectancy in the Baltic states is comparatively low by European standards, as are the rates of natural increase, which were negative in all three countries at the beginning of the 21st century, owing in part to an aging population. Overall population fell in each of the Baltic states in the years following independence, primarily because of the return emigration of Russians to Russia, as well as other out-migration to western Europe and North America. In some cases, Russians took on the nationalities of their adopted Baltic countries and were thus counted among the ethnic majorities.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Baltic states struggled to make a transition to a market economy from the system of Soviet national planning that had been in place since the end of World War II. A highly productive region for the former U.S.S.R., the Baltic states catered to economies of scale in output and regional specialization in industry—for example, manufacturing electric motors, machine tools, and radio receivers. Latvia, for example, was a leading producer of Soviet radio receivers. Throughout the 1990s privatization accelerated, national currencies were reintroduced, and non-Russian foreign investment increased.
Agriculture remains important to the Baltic economy, with potatoes, cereal grains, and fodder crops produced and dairy cattle and pigs raised. Timbering and fisheries enjoy modest success. The Baltic region is not rich in natural resources. Though Estonia is an important producer of oil shale, a large share of mineral and energy resources is imported. Low energy supplies, inflationary prices, and an economic collapse in Russia contributed to an energy crisis in the Baltics in the 1990s. Industry in the Baltic states is prominent, especially the production of food and beverages, textiles, wood products, and electronics and the traditional stalwarts of machine building and metal fabricating. The three states have the highest productivity of the former constituent republics of the Soviet Union.
Shortly after attaining independence, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania abandoned the Russian ruble in favour of new domestic currencies (the kroon, lats, and litas, respectively), which, as they strengthened, greatly improved foreign trade. The main trading partners outside the region are Russia, Germany, Finland, and Sweden. The financial stability of the Baltic nations was an important prerequisite to their entering the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2004. Each of the Baltic states was preparing to adopt the euro as its common currency by the end of the decade.
This article covers the history of the region from antiquity to the post-Soviet period. Additional information on the region’s physical and human geography can be found in the article Europe. For discussion of the physical and human geography as well as the history of individual countries in the region, see Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Area 67,612 square miles (175,116 square km). Pop. (2001 est.) 7,412,000.
In prehistoric times Finno-Ugric tribes inhabited a long belt stretching across northern Europe from the Urals through northern Scandinavia, reaching south to present-day Latvia. The predecessors of the modern Balts bordered them along a belt to the south, stretching west from a region in what is now central Russia to the area of the mouth of the Vistula River in Poland. Large areas of present-day Russia, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, and northern Poland were settled by Balts. During the Bronze Age, roughly 1250 bc, the western part of this Baltic region became known in the civilized areas of the Mediterranean basin as the “land of amber.”
The extensive trade relations that developed lasted until the decline of the Roman Empire and the Germanic migrations. Thereafter, from the 8th century ad, the Baltic peoples experienced the expansion of the bellicose trading societies of Scandinavia, which made extensive use of the river systems. Likewise, from the 10th century they came under pressure from East Slav expansion, primarily in the region of modern Belarus.
During the early Middle Ages the Finno-Ugrians who subsequently became Estonians lived in eight recognizable independent districts and four lesser ones. Their kinsmen, the Livs, inhabited four major areas in northern Latvia and northern Courland. The western Balts were divided into at least eight recognizable groupings. The westernmost, the Prussians, formed 10 principalities in what subsequently became East Prussia. The Jotvingians and Galindians inhabited an area to the south stretching from present-day Poland east into Belarus. The settlements of the ancestors of the Lithuanians—the Samogitians and the Aukstaiciai—covered most of present-day Lithuania, stretching into Belarus. Five more subdivisions formed the basis for the modern Latvians. Westernmost of these were the Kuronians, who were divided into five to seven principalities on the peninsula of Courland (modern Kurzeme). To the east were the Semigallians, in present-day central Latvia and portions of northern Lithuania. Eastern Latvia was inhabited by the Selonians and Latgalians. At least four major principalities can be distinguished among the latter.
The Balts worshiped the forces of nature, personified as divinities, in sacred oak groves. Their religious and cultural life is primarily known from the large body of folk songs, dainos, many of which have survived. The songs encompass the totality of human life in communion with nature and reveal a strong sense of ethics. Archaeological excavations complement this picture. The spiritual world of the Estonians is known largely from their epic poem Kalevipoeg, a 19th-century compilation of an extensive body of surviving folk song and shamanic chant.
Incursions by Scandinavian Vikings into the coastal areas of the Estonians and the Kuronians began in the 9th century. East Slav pressure had also appeared by the beginning of the millennium. As early as 1030 the southeastern portion of present-day Estonia was overrun, though the struggle continued for more than a century. In 1132 Estonians defeated an East Slav army, and in 1177 they attacked Pskov. East Slav incursions affected the lands of the Balts as well. The Galindians and Jotvingians were largely overrun and partially assimilated, though the latter continued to appear in East Slavic chronicles as late as the 14th century. Raiding parties are known to have occasionally penetrated into Latgalian lands as well.
The Scandinavian and East Slav incursions were accompanied by efforts to introduce Christianity among the Estonians and Balts. The earliest attempt to bring Roman Christianity to the Prussians dates from 997. The first Danish church was built in Courland about 1070, and the first Danish missionary was sent to Estonia about a century later. In 1219–20 Valdemar II, king of Denmark, conquered much of northern Estonia. By the late 12th century, Scandinavian intruders had been joined by Germans, who between 1198 and 1290 overran the remainder of what is now Estonia and Latvia. The Liv territories had succumbed by 1207. Most of Latgalia suffered the same fate a year later. Estonia was conquered by 1227 and Courland by 1263. The Semigallians held out until 1290.
The brunt of the German effort in the region was that of the Crusading Order of the Brothers of the Sword, founded in 1202 by Bishop Albert of Buxhoevden. An allied group, the Knights of the Teutonic Order, focused its attention on the lands of the Prussians, which were conquered between 1236 and 1283. The German incursions catalyzed the Lithuanian tribes, who inhabited the most-remote areas, into organizing effective resistance. The focus of struggle shifted to Samogitia, an area that separated the German holdings in Prussia from their conquests in Latvia. In 1236 the Brothers of the Sword suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Lithuanians and Semigallians at Saule, not far from present-day Šiauliai, Lithuania. The remnants of the Brothers of the Sword, reorganized as the Livonian Order, became a branch of the Knights of the Teutonic Order. An attempt in 1260 to overrun Samogitia likewise was defeated at Durpe (Durbe).
The old order along the Baltic coast was replaced by a number of small feudal political entities. Northern Estonia, including Revel (modern Tallinn), formed part of the Danish realm. The domains of the Teutonic Knights covered East Prussia, and those of the Livonian Order encompassed the bulk of what is now Latvia and southern Estonia. This region also included the four independent ecclesiastical states: the archbishopric of Riga and the bishoprics of Courland (Kurland; Latvian: Kurzeme), Dorpat (now Tartu, Estonia), and Ösel-Wiek. Riga itself was a free city. The German rulers subjugated the local populations but proved insufficiently strong to Germanize them. Even in East Prussia the extinction of the indigenous population took place only under considerably changed circumstances by the end of the 17th century and may have been due as much to epidemics as to cultural assimilation. Apart from the realm of the Teutonic Order in East Prussia, the German Baltic entities were internally weak. Following the pattern in feudal western Europe, internecine warfare proved endemic.
The less-accessible Lithuanians, living in dense forests and swamplands, managed to withstand the foreign incursions and preserve their independence. In 1236 a chieftain, Mindaugas, united several tribes into a Lithuanian political entity. In 1251 he accepted Roman Christianity, and in 1253 he joined the western political hierarchy through coronation at the hands of a papal legate. Ten years later, however, he was assassinated, and the Lithuanians reverted to their traditional nativistic paganism.
It is quite likely that another chieftain, Traidenis, founded the dynasty that subsequently became known as that of Gediminas, who acceded to the throne about 1315 and ruled until his death in 1341 or 1342. Although Lithuanian expansion into the lands of the Kiev realm, which had been destroyed by the Mongols, had begun in the 13th century, it was Gediminas who carved out the empire that became known as historic Lithuania, including more or less the area of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, and northwestern Ukraine. Eastward expansion continued under Gediminas’s successors, Algirdas and Kęstutis, who divided the realm between them. In 1370 Great Prince Algirdas besieged Moscow. The eastward expansion provided resources for the Lithuanian state in its resistance to assaults from the Teutonic Order in the west.
The success of a small non-Christian people in carving out and maintaining an extensive empire testifies to the political skill of its ruling princely caste as well as to the policy of wide autonomy and religious toleration. Lithuanian princes frequently intermarried with the ruling families of the East Slav principalities that fell under their sway and often accepted Orthodox Christianity.
After Algirdas’s death, strife between his son Jogaila on the one hand and Jogaila’s uncle Kęstutis and Kęstutis’s son Vytautas on the other, coupled with growing pressure from the Teutonic Order, presented the Lithuanians with the need for an ally. The choice was between Moscow, which would entail the acceptance of Orthodoxy, and Poland, which would require the adoption of Roman Catholicism. In 1385 Jogaila reached agreement with Poland. He married the 12-year-old Queen Jadwiga and acceded to the Polish throne as Władisław II Jagiełło; Lithuania thus became a part of the Latin Christian world. Subsequently, Jogaila made peace with his cousin Vytautas, who became ruler of Lithuania.
Vytautas renewed the policy of eastward expansion but suffered a defeat in 1399 at the hands of the Golden Horde (lands and peoples of the western Mongol empire) in the Battle of the Vorskla River. The successful campaign in 1410 against the Teutonic Order, however, permanently removed the threat from that quarter; on July 15, 1410, a Polish-Lithuanian army inflicted a crushing defeat on the Teutonic Order at Tannenberg (Grünwald), from which the order never recovered. Vytautas continued the policy of expansion in the east. During his reign the Lithuanian state reached its apogee, extending from the Baltic to the Black seas.
In the long term the acceptance of Roman Catholicism pushed Lithuania culturally toward the West. Such development alienated the East Slav principalities, which increasingly came under pressure from Orthodox Moscow. Simultaneously, the cultural Polonization of the Lithuanian nobility began. Increasingly, a gap developed between the Lithuanian-speaking peasantry and their Polonized overlords, analogous to that between German barons and indigenous peasants in Latvia and Estonia.
During its first two centuries Lithuania’s political union with Poland consisted of a loose alliance based on a joint ruler. On July 1, 1569, the purely personal union was refashioned by a joint parliament meeting in Lublin into a Commonwealth of Two Peoples. While the state entity thereafter had a common elected sovereign and a joint parliament, the legal and administrative structures of the two lands, as well as their armed forces, remained separate. This situation lasted more than two centuries.
The Polish-Lithuanian union (sometimes called the Union of Lublin) initiated a period of political glory, prosperity, and cultural development. Until the middle of the 17th century, the Commonwealth contained the threat from Moscow. Indeed, during the Time of Troubles in Muscovy at the beginning of the 17th century, a Polish-Lithuanian force occupied Moscow. The Catholic Counter-Reformation that accompanied the union placed an indelible stamp on Lithuania. Vilnius emerged as a centre of Baroque culture. Its university, founded in 1579, is the oldest institution of higher learning in that part of the world.
The internal strength of the Confederation of Livonia diminished during the 16th century, though trade with Russia by the Hanseatic League (an organization of German merchants) brought prosperity to the towns. The Reformation rendered the ecclesiastical states anachronisms. The Confederation was unable to withstand the onslaughts of the Russian tsar Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible), who in 1558 had laid claim to the region in an effort to gain an outlet to the sea. The region broke up into three duchies—Courland, Livonia, and Estland—an administrative division that lasted until 1917. Estland, the northern part of modern Estonia, came under Swedish rule. Livonia, with its capital, Riga, became a part of Lithuania, while Courland became a hereditary duchy nominally under Lithuanian suzerainty. German law and administration were retained. The nobility and the magistrates of the free cities kept their privileges.
In 1592 the Baltic lands became an object of contention between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden. The bulk of Livonia, with Riga, was ceded to Sweden in 1629. The southeastern portion, Latgale, remained a part of Lithuania.
The Swedish period remains one of happy memory among the Estonians and Latvians. The Swedish kings, accustomed to a free peasantry in their home country, sought in their struggles with the local nobility to improve the lot of the peasant serfs. Compulsory elementary education was introduced, and the Bible was translated into the indigenous languages. A secondary school was opened in Riga in 1631 and a university in Dorpat in 1632. Swedish administrative efforts, however, were largely thwarted by external turbulence and intermittent warfare in the region.
Courland, nominally under Lithuanian suzerainty, developed as a virtually independent state. Duke Jacob (1642–82) actively fostered trade and industry and created a navy. He acquired two colonies: Tobago in the West Indies and a settlement in Gambia on the west coast of Africa.
From the second half of the 17th century, the Baltic region faced increasing Russian pressure. During the first decade of the 18th century, Estland and Livonia came under Russian rule. By the end of the century, the remainder of Latvia and Lithuania had likewise been incorporated into the Russian Empire. In the middle of the 17th century, peasant unrest among the Cossacks in Ukraine and endemic war with Sweden over Livonia strained the resources of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Vilnius was taken for the first time by a Russian army in 1655. The Truce of Andrusovo in 1667 reestablished a temporary balance with Moscow, with some territory lost in the east. Even though the Commonwealth lost no territory as a result of the Great Northern War (1700–21), this conflict signaled the definite decline of the Polish-Lithuanian state.
The Great Northern War was a watershed in the historical development of Estonia and Latvia. As a result, the Swedish dominion over Livonia and Estland passed to Russia, though a special status of wide autonomy was maintained. In 1795 Courland, a fief of Lithuania, likewise came under Russian rule with a similar status. Incorporation into the Russian Empire provided great opportunities for the German nobility to increase its privilege and power over the peasants as well as to serve in the administration of the Russian Empire as a whole. The servile status of the peasantry increased.
During the greater part of the 18th century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth remained an insignificant pawn ruled by a succession of Saxons who tended to embroil it in their dynastic struggles in Germany. An attempt at rejuvenation under Stanisław II August (Stanisław Poniatowski), who ruled from 1764 to 1795, led to direct foreign intervention. As a result of three partitions (1772, 1793, and 1795), the Commonwealth was erased from the political map of Europe. The first two partitions affected only the East Slav lands of Lithuania, which were ceded to Russia. As a result of the third and last partition, the bulk of the ethnographically Lithuanian lands passed to Russia as well. Only the southwestern part, between the Neman River and East Prussia, was annexed by Prussia. In 1815 that area also came under Russian control.
Throughout the 19th century tsarist rule differed considerably between the Baltic provinces of Estland, Livland, and Courland on the one hand and the Lithuanian lands and Latgale on the other. The former maintained a wide degree of autonomy, especially during the period of liberal reforms during the 1860s and ’70s. After 1881 there was a policy of Russification that lasted until 1905. It extended to education as well as to the legal and administrative systems. However, it could not affect the considerable progress that had been made in education over the century. By the middle of the 19th century, the German University of Dorpat (Tartu), reopened in 1802, had become a focal point in the development of Estonian and Latvian national consciousness. By the end of the century, there was virtually no illiteracy among the Estonians and Latvians.
The Lithuanian lands participated in the abortive Polish risings of 1830–31 and 1863–64 and suffered considerable repression in their aftermath. In 1832 the University of Vilnius was closed, and in 1840 the distinctive law code, in force since the 16th century, was abrogated. After the 1863 revolt Russification was extended to public life. Books in Lithuanian or Latgalian could be published only in the Cyrillic (i.e., the Russian) alphabet. Use of the Russian language became mandatory in all areas of public life, including education. Lithuanian resistance capitalized on the not insignificant Lithuanian population across the border in East Prussia. Books and periodicals printed there were smuggled across the border into Lithuania. Private “schools of the hearth” were organized in villages to provide a substitute for the Russian educational system.
The process of social and national emancipation began in the 19th century. The first step came with the abolition of serfdom. The earliest emancipation occurred in southwestern Lithuania, which had come under Prussian control in 1795. In 1807 it became part of the Napoleonic Grand Duchy of Warsaw and participated in the social reform that French rule introduced. Between 1816 and 1819 serfdom was abolished in the German Baltic provinces of Estland, Livland, and Courland. While the peasants acquired personal freedom, they were not allowed to own land. By the middle of the century, however, this prohibition had been lifted, and the peasantry could acquire leased land as personal property. The Baltic provinces and southwestern Lithuania began to develop a social structure quite distinct from that prevalent in Russia. The big estates, however, remained untouched, and most peasants were unable to acquire enough land to be self-supporting.
In the 19th century there was considerable socioeconomic change in the three Baltic provinces. Emancipation without land in the early part of the century stimulated migration to the cities. The coming of the railroad age during the second half of the century connected these port cities with a vast hinterland. Reval (Tallin), Narva, Riga, and Libau (modern Liepāja, Latvia) emerged as significant centres of export and industry and as homes for substantial commercial fleets. By the end of the century, Riga had become a port of worldwide significance. Its population grew from 250,000 to 500,000 in the period between 1900 and 1914.
Growth affected the character of the urban population. The Baltic German population, which had never made up more than 10 percent of the total, declined in proportion and importance. While German influence remained strong in industry, banking, and the professions, it was slowly superseded by the rising Estonian and Latvian urban classes in the trades, business, and civil service. The percentage of Estonians in the city of Reval rose from 51.8 in 1867 to 88.7 in 1897. That of Latvians in Riga rose from 23.5 to 41.6 during the same period.
Such developments were not mirrored in Lithuania. The peasantry in the greater part of the Lithuanian lands were not emancipated from serfdom until 1861, along with those in the rest of the Russian Empire. Unlike Russia, where land was given to peasant communes, in Lithuania it was granted to individual peasant farmers. As the tsarist government distrusted the Polonized Lithuanian nobility, rural reorganization was frequently carried out in favour of the peasantry. As a result, by the end of the century, Lithuania had become a distinctive region of free farmers unparalleled elsewhere in the Russian Empire. Nevertheless, rural overpopulation led to extensive emigration during the last two decades of the 19th century. The bulk of this emigration did not fuel urbanization in Lithuania but went, for the most part, to North America. Lithuanian cities remained small, underdeveloped administrative centres populated largely by Slavs and Jews.
The Russian Revolution of 1905 was felt in all three lands. Marxism had appeared in the Baltic provinces in the 1880s. Although a Social Democratic Party was founded earliest in Lithuania (1895), it never became as significant as its Latvian and Estonian counterparts, founded in 1904 and 1906, respectively. In 1905 Estonian and Latvian politicians joined revolutionaries in demanding national autonomy. A revolutionary wave swept the Estonian and Latvian countryside. Looting and burning of manor houses had to be subdued by armed force. About 1,000 people were shot, and thousands were exiled to Siberia or fled abroad. In the year 1905 dramatic events also occurred in Lithuania, though not as turbulent as those to the north. In the fall of that year, a congress of 2,000 delegates representing all tendencies in Lithuanian public life gathered in Vilnius and passed a resolution demanding the establishment of an autonomous Lithuanian state within ethnic boundaries.
The last decade of Russian rule in the Baltic lands was a relatively liberal period, allowing the consolidation of the national societies. The liberalization of the imperial Russian government allowed the Baltic peoples to elect representatives to the imperial parliament (Duma). Moreover, in Lithuania the prohibitions against use of the indigenous language in public life and its press in the Latin alphabet had been abrogated in 1904.
The collapse of the German and Russian empires during World War I allowed the Baltic peoples to establish independent states. The road to independence was similar in all three. In November 1917, at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), all of Lithuania and most of Latvia were under German military occupation. Estonia and the eastern part of Latvia were still under Russian control. In 1918, while the Baltic homelands were under German occupation, national councils declared independence and established governments. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 3, 1918, ceded Russian rights to the entire Baltic area to Germany, which sought to organize puppet states in the region. Germany recognized the “independence” of the Duchy of Courland on March 15, 1918; of the Kingdom of Lithuania on March 23, 1918; and of the remainder of the region on September 22, 1918. The Balts, however, sought genuine independence. The German collapse in late 1918 was followed by attempts to reestablish Russian control through the imposition of Soviet regimes. The new national governments managed to survive the threat from the east as well as from other quarters. In 1920 the Soviets concluded peace treaties recognizing independent Baltic states. By 1922 all three states had become recognized members of the international community of states.
On April 12, 1917, the Russian provisional government, which had replaced the tsar during the February Revolution, allowed all ethnic Estonian regions to be administratively united into a single autonomous province. In June, elections to the Estonian National Council (Maapäev) took place. After the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the Maapäev decided to break away from Russia. The Bolsheviks, however, managed to install an administration in Estonia, but it fled in February 1918 when the Germans renewed their advance. On February 24 the Maapäev declared Estonia’s independence and formed a provisional government that disbanded the following day when German troops entered Tallinn.
The Estonian provisional government renewed its activity after the German collapse in November 1918 but was immediately faced with a Soviet invasion. A Soviet Estonian government was established on November 29, 1918. The provisional government, however, managed to withstand the Soviet attack with the aid of a British naval squadron and a Finnish volunteer force. By the end of February 1919, all of Estonia had been cleared of the Soviets. The Soviet Estonian government was dissolved in January 1920. Soon afterward, on February 2, 1920, Soviet Russia signed a treaty of peace with Estonia recognizing the latter’s independence.
On November 30, 1917, after the Bolshevik usurpation of power in Petrograd, the Latvian Provisional National Council, meeting in the Soviet-held part of the country, proclaimed an autonomous Latvian province within ethnographic boundaries. Soon afterward all of Latvia came under German military occupation. On November 18, 1918, the newly created Latvian People’s Council, meeting in Riga, declared the independence of Latvia and set up a national government. A Soviet invasion followed. On January 3, 1919, Riga fell and a Bolshevik Latvian regime was set up. The national government retreated to Liepāja, where it received the protection of a British naval squadron.
The Latvian struggle against the Bolsheviks was complicated by remaining German troops who had been empowered by the Allies to provide defense against the Bolsheviks. Their commander, General Rüdiger von der Goltz, planned to use his force, supplemented by various local anticommunists, to set up Baltic regimes controlled by Germany. Baltic German barons had briefly set up a Baltic duchy on November 9, 1918. German troops took Riga on May 22, 1919, and pushed north. They were stopped by a combined Estonian-Latvian force near Cēsis (Wenden). An armistice negotiated under British auspices forced a return of Riga to the national Latvian government in July. By fall the Soviets had been pushed out of most of Latvia and remained only in eastern Latgale, and by early 1920 they had been cleared from this region as well. On August 11, 1920, Soviet Russia recognized Latvian independence and concluded a treaty of peace.
The armistice negotiated with the Germans during the summer of 1919 required their withdrawal to East Prussia. Before it could be implemented, however, Goltz managed to organize an anticommunist West Russian army, including German monarchist volunteers, under an obscure White Russian adventurer, Pavel Bermondt-Avalov. On October 8, 1919, Bermondt-Avalov’s forces attacked the Latvian army and pushed into the suburbs of Riga. Simultaneously, in an effort to establish communications with Germany, his army moved into western Lithuania. The Latvians, assisted by an Anglo-French naval squadron, counterattacked and defeated the effort. Subsequently, Bermondt-Avalov suffered another defeat in Lithuania. By December 15 all his troops had abandoned Latvia and Lithuania.
On February 16, 1918, the Lithuanian National Council (Taryba), which had been formed in 1917, proclaimed Lithuania’s independence and set up a national government. Although formal German recognition was secured in March, real independence was not achieved until the German collapse in the west in November. Like Estonia and Latvia, Lithuania was immediately faced with a Soviet invasion. The Red Army occupied Vilnius on January 5, 1919, and installed a Soviet government. The national government, protected by German forces that remained in western Lithuania on instructions from the Western Allies, succeeded in organizing an army, which began to push the Soviets out of the country. By the end of August, Lithuania had been cleared of Soviet troops. Soviet Russia signed a peace treaty with Lithuania on July 12, 1920.
The Lithuanian push for independence was complicated by its historic relationship with Poland. For many Poles Lithuania had become a part of their country. Others considered that, if the Lithuanians were to set up an independent state based on the principle of ethnic population, Vilnius—with its large Polish population—should become a part of Poland. The Polish head of state, Marshal Józef Piłsudski, who stemmed from a Polonized Lithuanian noble family, drove the Red Army out of Vilnius in April 1919. The Lithuanians were able to reenter the city in July 1920 when the Red Army pushed the Poles back to Warsaw. In September 1920, however, a Polish force, breaking an armistice with Lithuania, reoccupied the city. In 1922 Poland unilaterally incorporated the city and its surrounding region. Lithuania refused to enter into any formal relations with Poland throughout most of the interwar period. The Polish-Lithuanian conflict over Vilnius prevented the formation of an effective bloc of eastern European countries between Germany and the Soviet Union.
After achieving independence, the Baltic countries faced the need of political and socioeconomic restructuring. Radically parliamentarian constitutions were adopted in all three; the legislatures clearly predominated over the executive. In Estonia a single-chamber parliament (Riigikogu) was elected under a system of proportional representation. The prime minister was also chief of state. The Latvian and Lithuanian parliaments—the Saeima and the Seimas, respectively—each elected a president for their republic. Political parties and groups proliferated, and several dominant parties emerged. In Estonia and Latvia, Social Democrats, farmers’ unions, nationalists, and liberals formed significant political blocs. In Lithuania a conservative Christian Democratic Party dominated. The communist parties, outlawed in Latvia and Lithuania throughout the period of independence and in Estonia after an abortive coup on December 1, 1924, were insignificant.
All three countries developed authoritarian systems. In Lithuania an army coup d’état on December 16–17, 1926, against the ruling populist–social democratic government installed a nationalist regime headed by Antanas Smetona. By late 1929 Smetona, who had the support of the army and the home guard, had eliminated all political parties except his own Nationalist Union and cast himself as the leader of the nation. His regime maintained power until the Soviet occupation of 1940. New constitutions were promulgated in 1928 and 1938. The latter provided for a single-chamber parliament elected for five years and a strong head of state elected for seven years by an electoral college. Until 1938 Smetona based his position solely on the Nationalist Union. The complex situation in foreign affairs, however, contributed to the appointment in 1938 of a broadly based coalition government representing the major political tendencies in the country.
The multiplicity of parties in Estonia and Latvia prevented the formation of stable coalitions. Elections and changes of cabinet were frequent. The average life span of governments in Estonia between 1919 and 1933 was 8 months and 20 days. The political problems were exacerbated by the financial difficulties and unemployment brought by the world economic crisis of the 1930s. Calls for constitutional reform and stable government increased. Right-wing authoritarian groups grew in strength.
In Estonia the “Vaps” (Vabadussõjalaste Liit; “League of Freedom Fighters”), originally a group of war veterans, emerged as a mass anticommunist and antiparliamentary movement. In October 1933 a referendum on constitutional reform initiated by the Vaps was approved by 72.7 percent. The acting president, Konstantin Päts, was expected to prepare an election for president. Instead, on March 12, 1934, Päts declared a state of emergency, dissolved the Vaps, and arrested its leaders. Soon after, parliament was dissolved, and Päts ruled by decree. Päts viewed his role as that of a regent for a parliamentary system and sought to restructure his regime along conservative democratic lines. In 1936 he legalized the regime by referendum. Constitutional reform preceded the election of a new parliament. The lower chamber was dominated (63 out of 80 seats) by the Patriotic League, which Päts had founded in 1935. On April 23, 1938, he was elected first president of the republic.
A similar development occurred in Latvia. The country had become increasingly polarized between the far right and far left. Attempts at constitutional reform failed. On May 15, 1934, the prime minister, Kārlis Ulmanis, declared a state of emergency. He formed a government of national unity from representatives of most of the important political parties and governed by decree. Unlike Päts, Ulmanis did not bother to hold a referendum to legalize his position. On April 11, 1936, he combined the offices of president and prime minister.
In all three countries the new authoritarian regimes drew their principal support from the well-to-do peasants and from the armed forces and home guards. Opposition remained limited. Peasant strikes and workers’ demonstrations occasionally occurred, particularly in Lithuania, but they never posed serious danger to the regimes. The rural populations and business interests favoured the authoritarian regimes. Foreign trade showed a steady increase, and there was a rise of prosperity. Political repression remained mild, consisting for the most part of temporary imprisonment of opponents, especially those from the extreme left. All three regimes based their reason for existence on the need to preserve national unity and to strengthen the position of the indigenous nationalities in their homelands. All three successfully diminished the power of the far right as well as of the far left. Attempts were made to reorganize society on the basis of representative bodies of professions, patterned on the fascist model in Italy. The state-run sector of the economy was enlarged in Latvia and Lithuania.
The Baltic countries entered independent statehood in 1918–20 as lands that had been ravaged by warfare. The industrial plant, especially in Latvia, had suffered wholesale destruction or relocation into the Russian interior. Fundamental economic reorganization in the immediate aftermath of independence became a necessity, especially in Estonia and Latvia. The agricultural structure of both countries remained semifeudal, with large estates owned by the German nobility. The industrialization that had occurred had been engendered by an imperial Russian market that no longer existed. Agrarian reform on a major scale occurred in both countries. During the struggles for independence, the governments of Latvia and Estonia had promised distribution of land to landless volunteers. The holdings of the large estates were expropriated and redistributed, and the economic power of the German nobility was thus destroyed. Tens of thousands of the rural proletariat were given land. The expropriated forests became state property and provided an important source of revenue through lumber exports. Some of the industrial enterprises were successfully reoriented to Western exports, but many also folded. New industrial undertakings, however, also appeared. In Latvia an entirely new electronics industry appeared and developed significantly. Manufacturing of miniature cameras was introduced in Riga. Estonia developed an entirely new industry with the opening of the oil-shale fields.
Economic reorganization was less drastic in Lithuania, which had developed a prosperous independent farming class in tsarist times. Some redistribution of estate land to army volunteers occurred. Lithuania remained an overwhelmingly rural country throughout the interwar period. The authoritarian regime of Smetona sponsored cooperatives to handle the collection and marketing of farm produce. By the late 1930s these cooperatives had emerged as significant economic undertakings. All three countries were significant exporters of foodstuffs to the western European market, particularly to the United Kingdom, with Germany a close second. Trade with the U.S.S.R. remained minimal.
Cultural life made significant strides, and cultural policy was oriented toward Europe. The arts reached a level equivalent to that of western Europe. Education was expanded. Higher learning in the native languages became the norm. Each of the countries had its own university, along with a number of technical and professional schools. Universal literacy was achieved in Estonia and Latvia. An extensive cultural and educational system for the German, Russian, Jewish, Polish, Belarusian, and other minorities was introduced, consisting of state-supported schools, theatres, places of worship, and community centres. The record on minority policy in the Baltic states during the interwar period was among the best in eastern Europe.
By September 22, 1921, all three states were members of the League of Nations and of the international community. They subscribed to all conventions of a humanitarian, social, and cultural nature and participated in all efforts to maintain the political status quo and prevent the outbreak of war. In 1936 Latvia was given a nonpermanent seat on the Council of the League of Nations. The attempt, particularly by Estonia and Latvia, to serve as a bridge between the West and the U.S.S.R. remained only partly successful. Various projects for regional security did not materialize, because of Western hesitation in making commitments. Lithuania’s conflict with Poland rendered the construction of a regional entente for security purposes extremely difficult. Outside powers sought to avoid entangling alliances. Nevertheless, an Estonian-Latvian alliance was formalized in 1922 and renewed in 1934. In the latter year Lithuania acceded to it as well, and the alliance became known as the Baltic Entente.
Having emerged as independent entities during the collapse of Germany and Russia, the Baltic states retained independence as long as both of these powers remained weak or antagonistic. In the power struggle that developed in the late 1930s, the Baltic states attempted to maintain absolute neutrality. They had signed nonaggression pacts with the U.S.S.R. that were renewed in 1934. In 1939 they likewise signed nonaggression pacts with Germany. But their fate was determined apart from their own activity.
The Baltic question figured as a stumbling block in the abortive British-French negotiations with the U.S.S.R. in the summer of 1939. The Western unwillingness to sanction the Baltic states’ absorption by the U.S.S.R. was not shared by Germany. In the secret protocol to the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of August 23, 1939, Estonia and Latvia were recognized as falling within a Soviet sphere of influence. Lithuania was given to Germany. A month later, after the Germans had overrun Poland but had failed to induce the Lithuanians to become their allies and retake Vilnius, a secret German-Soviet territorial rearrangement on September 28 assigned most of Lithuania to the Soviet sphere.
In early October Moscow demanded that all three Baltic states sign pacts of mutual assistance that allowed the stationing of Soviet garrisons on their territory. The three states felt isolated and, realizing the futility of military resistance, signed the treaties. Estonia and Latvia admitted garrisons that exceeded their own peacetime armies in size. In the case of Lithuania, the pill was sweetened by the return of Vilnius and its environs, which the Red Army had occupied during its invasion of eastern Poland on September 15, 1939.
While the war in the west remained uncertain, the Soviets observed strictly the limits of their bases and concentrated their attacks on Finland, which had also been assigned to the Soviet sphere of influence but had refused to sign a pact of mutual assistance. The fall of France altered the situation. On the day that Paris fell, June 15, 1940, Joseph Stalin presented an ultimatum to Lithuania to admit an unlimited number of troops and to form a government acceptable to the U.S.S.R. Lithuania was occupied that day. President Smetona fled to Germany, and a “people’s government” was installed. In the next two days, similar ultimatums were presented to Latvia and Estonia, both of which experienced similar fates.
Sovietization moved at a rapid pace, taking little, if any, consideration of the constitutions in force in the three countries. The outlawed communist parties, whose memberships were extremely small, emerged as the leading political force. On July 14–15 the new Soviet regimes organized elections to people’s assemblies in which only a single slate of candidates appeared. The new assemblies immediately voted, by acclamation, to request incorporation of their countries into the U.S.S.R. In early August 1940 these requests were “accepted” by the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.
National and social life was quickly restructured to fit into a Soviet mold. Property was extensively nationalized. Initially professional and educated circles were principally affected. Within a year the targets had become indiscriminate. Beginning on the night of June 13–14, 1941, mass deportations, including women and children, to Arctic or desert regions of the U.S.S.R. were carried out. Estonia lost about 60,000 people, while Latvia and Lithuania lost about 35,000 each. The deportations were still under way when Germany attacked the U.S.S.R. on June 22, 1941.
The Balts considered the Germans liberators. A revolt broke out in Lithuania on the first day of the war, and a provisional government was established. Somewhat later, as the German armies approached Riga and Tallinn, attempts to reestablish national governments were made. It was hoped that the Germans would reestablish Baltic independence, making the resurrected states allies. Such political hopes, as well as expectations of the return of expropriated property, soon evaporated. Germany turned the Baltic states and Belorussia (now Belarus) into a new territorial unit, Ostland, for which outright Germanization and eventual incorporation into the Reich was envisaged. Baltic cooperation became less forthright or ceased altogether.
Indigenous but virtually powerless local administrations were set up in each of the Baltic countries. Their principal task, apart from day-to-day administration, was to funnel Baltic resources into the German war effort. Attempts to attract volunteers for various German-sponsored military or paramilitary units proved only partially successful. In all three countries several armed police battalions composed of volunteers were organized to provide military support away from their homelands. Waffen-SS—that is, frontline divisions serving on the Eastern Front—were also organized. Estonia contributed one such unit and Latvia two. In 1944 a Lithuanian home defense unit was organized, but dislocations and German failure to honour promises to the organizers about its functions led to its effective disbandment. In total disregard of international conventions, the German administration declared a compulsory draft into the Reich labour service. Efforts to conscript such labour did not meet expected results.
Anti-German opposition crystallized in the Baltic countries. Procommunist and nationalist guerrilla movements existed throughout the war. Three thousand Estonians fled to Finland and joined the Finnish armed forces in their war against the U.S.S.R. In Latvia an underground nationalist Central Council of Latvia was formed on August 13, 1943. An analogous body, the Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania, emerged on November 25, 1943, and on March 23, 1944, the underground National Committee of the Estonian Republic was founded. The three maintained contact with each other and with the outside world through Finland and Sweden. Each suffered heavily from German repression in the spring and summer of 1944. During the fall of 1944, most of the region reverted to Soviet control. The Germans held out in western Lithuania until early 1945 and in Courland until the capitulation of May 8, 1945.
Wartime losses in the Baltic states were among the highest in Europe. Estimates of wartime population loss stand at 25 percent for Estonia, 30 percent for Latvia, and 15 percent for Lithuania. These include the Soviet deportations in 1941, the German deportation and extermination of the Jewish population, and the sizable flight to Sweden and Germany in 1944–45. War and occupation deaths have been estimated at 90,000 in Estonia, 180,000 in Latvia, and 250,000 in Lithuania.
Postwar political, industrial, and agricultural policies wrought fundamental changes in the economic and social structures of the Baltic lands. Their economies were integrated into the general Soviet system of planning and development. Considerable increases in production resulted from heavy investment in large projects in Estonia and Latvia. Industrialization and urbanization in less-developed Lithuania began during the late 1950s. Living standards remained generally low by European measures but were higher than average in comparison with the U.S.S.R. as a whole.
After regaining control the Soviets resumed the integration of the Baltic lands into the U.S.S.R. The political structures that had been fashioned in 1940–41 were reestablished. A considerable number of nonindigenous officials, unfamiliar with the societies of the region, were brought in to consolidate Soviet rule and to complement the heavy presence of military and coercive forces.
The regime sought to eradicate the last vestiges of the period of independence. The independent farming class that had provided the political base of the independence period was especially targeted. Opposition proved particularly pronounced and dramatic in rural areas, especially in Lithuania, then still an overwhelmingly agrarian society. National guerrilla opposition developed by late 1944 and lasted into the early 1950s. It proved especially acute during two waves in 1948–49 of forced collectivization accompanied by mass deportations. It has been estimated that between 1946 and 1953 deportations and guerrilla deaths reached 95,000 in Estonia, 125,000 in Latvia, and 310,000 in Lithuania. After 1953 many of the surviving deportees were allowed to return, though in many cases not to their former homes.
Postwar socioeconomic policies transformed all three countries from predominantly rural societies into largely urbanized countries. In 1939 Estonia had been 66 percent rural; Latvia, 65 percent; and Lithuania, 77 percent. Fifty years later these figures were reversed: Estonia was 72 percent urban; Latvia, 71 percent; and Lithuania, 67 percent. The three Baltic republics were the most urbanized portion of the U.S.S.R.
Urbanization, a declining birth rate, and massive immigration of non-Balts, particularly into the major cities of Estonia and Latvia, significantly altered the ethnic composition of the population. At the end of the century, Estonia was about two-thirds Estonian and Latvia slightly more than one-half Latvian. The percentage of native peoples in the populations of the major cities was even smaller. Lithuania, less urbanized and maintaining a higher birth rate, was less affected by immigration, with a native population of about four-fifths.
Immigration also affected the social composition of the population. While the bulk of immigrants were industrial workers, a significant white-collar element also arrived. Russians and other Soviet immigrants manned large military concentrations in the region. They were disproportionately represented in the ruling structure of the regime, the Communist Party apparatus, and political and economic administrative posts. Many of the larger enterprises were directly administered from Moscow.
The immigrant element generally saw little need to learn the local language or to identify with the native population. During the Thaw, a general liberalization of Soviet life in the late 1950s and early 1960s, an attempt was made in Latvia to reverse this trend and to nativize the political and administrative elite. The move backfired and triggered a purge of native elements in the ruling apparatus. As a result, Latvia became more Russified than its two neighbours.
The regime sought to integrate education and cultural life into a multinational Soviet ideological mold but was not entirely successful in this effort. From the late 1950s on, national cultural life did generally manage to transcend various artificial ideological impositions and to emerge as the principal arena of national consciousness and self-identity.
Religious life acquired a similar role. This was especially true in Lithuania, where the Roman Catholic church became a bulwark of national resistance.
By the 1970s the Baltic area had emerged as a hotbed of anti-Soviet dissent. Riots and unsanctioned antiregime demonstrations occurred on several occasions. Unofficial typewritten publications were produced and circulated clandestinely. The most notable periodical of this type, The Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church, appeared from 1972 until the collapse of the Soviet system in the late 1980s.
The attempts to reform the system during the second half of the 1980s under the guidance of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev created a new situation in the Baltic lands. The weakening of the central power structure in Moscow allowed an assertion of increasing autonomy in the constituent republics of the U.S.S.R. The process was especially pronounced in the three Baltic republics, whose indigenous populations had never reconciled themselves to the loss of independence. Moreover, the incorporation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania into the U.S.S.R. had never been recognized de jure by the United States or virtually any other Western country. The remaining prewar legations and consulates in the West underscored the unsettled situation.
In 1988 mass movements for change emerged in each of the Baltic republics: the Popular Front of Estonia, the Popular Front of Latvia, and the Lithuanian Movement for Reconstruction (Sa̡jūdis). In 1989 their elected representatives at the Congress of People’s Deputies in Moscow formally raised the question of the illegality of the incorporation of the Baltic states into the U.S.S.R. On August 23, 1989, a massive demonstration involving some 500,000 people—a human chain linking Tallinn in Estonia, Riga in Latvia, and Vilnius in Lithuania—dramatized the 50th anniversary of the German-Soviet pact of 1939, whose secret provisions had led to the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states.
Elections in early 1990 resulted in pro-independence majorities in all three Baltic legislatures. Meeting on March 11, 1990, the first freely elected parliament in postwar Lithuania declared the reestablishment of an independent state. Estonia followed later in the month and Latvia in May. The declarations were pronounced illegal by Moscow, which set up an economic blockade of Lithuania, restricting deliveries of oil and gas. A series of other moves designed to reinstate pro-Soviet governments and to undercut the Baltic resolve for independence followed. These culminated in bloodshed on January 13, 1991, during the Soviet military occupation of the Vilnius television tower. A few days later a bloody incident occurred in Riga. Sporadic outbreaks of violence continued throughout the spring and summer.
The abortive coup in Moscow in August 1991 by hard-line elements aimed at curtailing Gorbachev’s restructuring of the U.S.S.R. facilitated the implementation of Baltic independence. In early September most countries of the world recognized the sovereignty of the Baltic states. During the same month, they were admitted into the United Nations. The U.S.S.R. itself acknowledged the illegality of their incorporation in 1940 and recognized their reemergence as independent states.
The subsequent decade saw the development of new constitutions, new currencies, and new foreign markets for each of the Baltic states. The immediate post-Soviet period, however, was marked by economic instability, and in 1998 a financial crisis in Russia had repercussions throughout the region. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 21st century, the Baltic states experienced sustained economic growth and closer integration with the nations of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—two groups that all three countries joined in 2004.