Beyond the reunification of Germany, the old Iron Curtain, to quote Goebbels as Churchill did, now marks what amounts to a natural frontier; there are those in Germany who would say that it did so within their country, too, but that is not quite the present concern.
Beyond that line is a kind of Eurasia, only half-Western, only half-European, Not Quite Us, with Moscow as its natural capital, and in defence of which no one in Western Europe would dream of expending blood or treasure, NATO or no NATO, EU or no EU.
That has been the reaction to the events in Ukraine, and that would be the reaction to anything similar in the Baltic States.
Moreover, what are the Baltic States? What are they like?
In Latvia, one third of the population is stateless due to the staggeringly racist definition of citizenship.
In Estonia, even native-born citizenship is alienable upon being found also to hold a Russian passport; the last Patriarch of Moscow, Alexy II, was from Estonia, and he had previously been the Archbishop of his native Tallinn, a city with a world famous Russian Orthodox Cathedral.
Soviet Republics from 1944 to 1991, the Baltic States became independent a few months before the dissolution of the USSR.
Their brief independence between the Wars had been part of the humiliation inflicted by Germany and Austria-Hungary on defeated Russia at Brest-Litovsk in 1918.
Latvia and Estonia became dictatorships in 1934, and Lithuania as early as 1926.
Although Lithuania has a different history, Latvia and Estonia had never existed as independent states before 1918.
After having been ruled by the Teutonic Knights and then by Sweden, they had become parts of the Russian Empire from the 1720s onwards.
In other words, and in order to give some perspective, they had done so only very slightly after the Union between England and Scotland.
Therefore, their incorporation into the Soviet Union in 1944 was nothing more than the restoration of the centuries-old status quo ante.
It was warmly welcomed by much of the Baltic political class, which contained many committed Communists.
That the Polish city of Wilno, now Vilnius, should have become and remained the capital of Lithuania was and is entirely pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939.
It is the case that the large Russian minorities in Lithuania and, especially, in Latvia and in Estonia, increased during the Soviet period, very much at the request of the local Communist Parties, which sought them to fill various positions in the economy.
But those minorities had existed, and had been numerically considerable, for centuries.
Upon independence in 1991, the Baltic States adopted the founding constitutional principle that they had been occupied by the USSR rather than incorporated into it, so that they were merely reverting to their interrupted sovereign statehood.
In 1993, Latvia even elected a President, Guntis Ulmanis, who was a great-nephew of Kārlis Ulmanis, the Inter-War dictator. He had come up through a rapidly reconstituted party that his great-uncle had banned.
But the laws of occupation are comprehensively set out in the Hague Conventions of 1907. The powerless citizenry of an occupied state remains a separate legal entity from its occupier.
Whereas incorporation makes the members of that citizenry into citizens of the incorporating state. That was what happened in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
From 1944 to 1991, their inhabitants were Soviet citizens, simply as a matter of legal fact.
As they had been from 1922 to 1940, and as they had been de facto even if not de jure, along with everyone else in the territory concerned, from 1917 to 1922.
Those states therefore share in the responsibility for the Soviet regime during most of its history.
All over the Soviet Union, there were monuments to the Red Latvian Riflemen who had fought in and for the Revolution.
Latvians had been one of the largest ethnic groups in the Bolshevik secret police, despite comprising a very small proportion of the population of the new Soviet state.
“Russian” and “Communist” were obviously not interchangeable terms, while the Russian Empire had always defined all as equal if they served the Tsar, which was how it had managed to incorporate the Balts, among so very many others.
They were never victims of imperialism as the term is ordinarily understood.
Yet, like many Austrians in relation to the Third Reich, but without the excuse that most people involved are now dead, they are determined to pretend that they were indeed victims.
Citizenship is denied, voting rights are refused, amenities are not extended, schools teaching through the medium of Russian are closed, and so on.
Inside NATO.
Inside the EU.
These are not even measures against small minorities, or against recent immigrants with their children and grandchildren, for whose rights in these spheres the advocates of Eurofederalism and Atlanticism normally, and in most cases rightly, fight with such vigour.
Rather, these are measures against large population groups that are several centuries old.
Beyond that line is a kind of Eurasia, only half-Western, only half-European, Not Quite Us, with Moscow as its natural capital, and in defence of which no one in Western Europe would dream of expending blood or treasure, NATO or no NATO, EU or no EU.
That has been the reaction to the events in Ukraine, and that would be the reaction to anything similar in the Baltic States.
Moreover, what are the Baltic States? What are they like?
In Latvia, one third of the population is stateless due to the staggeringly racist definition of citizenship.
In Estonia, even native-born citizenship is alienable upon being found also to hold a Russian passport; the last Patriarch of Moscow, Alexy II, was from Estonia, and he had previously been the Archbishop of his native Tallinn, a city with a world famous Russian Orthodox Cathedral.
Soviet Republics from 1944 to 1991, the Baltic States became independent a few months before the dissolution of the USSR.
Their brief independence between the Wars had been part of the humiliation inflicted by Germany and Austria-Hungary on defeated Russia at Brest-Litovsk in 1918.
Latvia and Estonia became dictatorships in 1934, and Lithuania as early as 1926.
Although Lithuania has a different history, Latvia and Estonia had never existed as independent states before 1918.
After having been ruled by the Teutonic Knights and then by Sweden, they had become parts of the Russian Empire from the 1720s onwards.
In other words, and in order to give some perspective, they had done so only very slightly after the Union between England and Scotland.
Therefore, their incorporation into the Soviet Union in 1944 was nothing more than the restoration of the centuries-old status quo ante.
It was warmly welcomed by much of the Baltic political class, which contained many committed Communists.
That the Polish city of Wilno, now Vilnius, should have become and remained the capital of Lithuania was and is entirely pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939.
It is the case that the large Russian minorities in Lithuania and, especially, in Latvia and in Estonia, increased during the Soviet period, very much at the request of the local Communist Parties, which sought them to fill various positions in the economy.
But those minorities had existed, and had been numerically considerable, for centuries.
Upon independence in 1991, the Baltic States adopted the founding constitutional principle that they had been occupied by the USSR rather than incorporated into it, so that they were merely reverting to their interrupted sovereign statehood.
In 1993, Latvia even elected a President, Guntis Ulmanis, who was a great-nephew of Kārlis Ulmanis, the Inter-War dictator. He had come up through a rapidly reconstituted party that his great-uncle had banned.
But the laws of occupation are comprehensively set out in the Hague Conventions of 1907. The powerless citizenry of an occupied state remains a separate legal entity from its occupier.
Whereas incorporation makes the members of that citizenry into citizens of the incorporating state. That was what happened in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
From 1944 to 1991, their inhabitants were Soviet citizens, simply as a matter of legal fact.
As they had been from 1922 to 1940, and as they had been de facto even if not de jure, along with everyone else in the territory concerned, from 1917 to 1922.
Those states therefore share in the responsibility for the Soviet regime during most of its history.
All over the Soviet Union, there were monuments to the Red Latvian Riflemen who had fought in and for the Revolution.
Latvians had been one of the largest ethnic groups in the Bolshevik secret police, despite comprising a very small proportion of the population of the new Soviet state.
“Russian” and “Communist” were obviously not interchangeable terms, while the Russian Empire had always defined all as equal if they served the Tsar, which was how it had managed to incorporate the Balts, among so very many others.
They were never victims of imperialism as the term is ordinarily understood.
Yet, like many Austrians in relation to the Third Reich, but without the excuse that most people involved are now dead, they are determined to pretend that they were indeed victims.
Citizenship is denied, voting rights are refused, amenities are not extended, schools teaching through the medium of Russian are closed, and so on.
Inside NATO.
Inside the EU.
These are not even measures against small minorities, or against recent immigrants with their children and grandchildren, for whose rights in these spheres the advocates of Eurofederalism and Atlanticism normally, and in most cases rightly, fight with such vigour.
Rather, these are measures against large population groups that are several centuries old.
No comments:
Post a Comment