First Year Seminar – Research Paper

The Baltics under occupation – A story of

Russification, Sovietization and Resistance
Dorián F. Ertl - 13989510 - University of Amsterdam

Fig. 1. A man bearing a Lithuanian flag faces a Soviet tank. Unknown author, 3 January 1991.

June 2022
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The city of Narva, in the north-eastern confines of Estonia, has, like the rest of its country,
been an integral part of the European Union for close to two decades – yet it has a seemingly
odd particularity: 87.7% of its more than 58,000 residents are ethnic Russians, and 95.7% are
native Russian speakers1. This statistic is even more striking when compared to the same
figure for 1934, when Russians only represented a minority of 29.7%. It can be seen as a
symptom of the policies that applied to the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
during the decades in which they formed a part of the Soviet Union.
In 1940, the Red Army, under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that
had been concluded a year earlier, invaded the three countries and annexed them as Soviet
Socialist Republics, a procedure widely considered as an illegal occupation 2. From then until
the restoration of their independence in 1991, the Baltics saw a wave of “Sovietization” and
“Russification” in culture, language and demographics. Their languages, unique to the point
of being related to very few others, were relegated to co-official statutes as Russian was made
compulsory in schools. Large worker populations migrated from other parts of the Soviet
Union, particularly to Estonia and Latvia, causing a large decrease of the proportion of natives
in their populations. Limitations to freedom of speech served to restrain traditional Baltic
cultures to the benefit of a centralized, uniformized “Soviet culture”. In the end of the Soviet
era, culture would become a tool of liberation for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – during the
so-called Singing Revolution, the people of the three countries demonstrated in mass, sang,
waved their national pre-Soviet flags, culminating on August 23, 1989, when some 2 million
people formed the Baltic Way, a human chain connecting the three capitals.
This essay will provide an overview of the
history of the domination of the Baltics from the Russian Empire to the Soviet Union -
particularly the ideological, cultural and linguistical hegemony the latter tried to enforce
throughout its occupation of the three states, and the resistance that ensued. I will attempt to
show how, despite countless attempts at suppressing national identities in the name of a state
ideology, the Soviets did nothing but strengthen the will of the Baltic people to defend their
identity and obtain their sovereignty at any cost. My research will be based on secondary
sources that mainly include works on Baltic history, as well as on an interview I conducted
with a native of a Baltic SSR.

In December 1989, the Congress of People's Deputies – formed earlier that year after the
Soviet Union had held its first partially free, multiparty elections – recognized that Estonia,
1
According to the 2011 Estonian National Census.
2
Mole, 2013, p. 46-47.
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Latvia and Lithuania had been incorporated illegally, as it deemed the “secret protocols” of
the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to be invalid 3. This marked the end of five decades of silence, as
ever since the Pact’s signing in 1939, the Soviet authorities had perpetually denied the
existence of the protocols – which was unanimously recognized as factual by the West –
instead insisting that Baltic states integrated the Soviet Union of their own free will 4.
By the time of the signing of the pact, domination by a foreign
power, and especially Russian domination, was already nothing new for the Baltics - they had
been, for the most part, governorates of the Russian Empire for two centuries. This period of
Russian domination saw movements of national awakening – starting at the turn of the
nineteenth century, as the Baltics seemed destined to be absorbed into the Germanic cultural
sphere of influence, Baltic German intellectuals took a mostly scholarly interest in the
Estonian and Latvian languages, founding literary societies, choral song festivals, and native-
language newspapers, the spread of which among the highly literate population stirred
enthusiasm for their shared cultural heritage, and to a wider extent for the growing idea of
their legitimacy as a distinct nation (note that the same process occurred in Lithuania, but only
several decades after its northern neighbours). The result of these movements was that
throughout the Baltics, there arose a shared consciousness among the peoples – rather than
being condemned to absorption into the Russian or Germanic cultural sphere, and rather than
having fragmented identities linked to social class or religion, they were Estonians (not just
“country folk”), Latvians (not just Courlandians or Livonians) and Lithuanians; each with
their national language, their common past and purpose, their rich cultural heritage, and the
heroes of yore that their newly compiled national epics told about5. This emergence of
strong national identities was not, though, looked upon fondly by Tsarist Russia, which also
feared Germanic domination in the region. The late nineteenth century saw a large campaign
of Russification, particularly in Estonia and Latvia: Russian governors were appointed to the
Baltic provinces, Russian was made the official language as well as the instructional language
in schools and universities, Orthodox faith was imposed through the construction of towering
churches in every city. Earlier, in 1864, the Russian government had even banned the printing
of Lithuanian books written in the Latin alphabet. This wave of measures came too late for
Moscow’s ambitions to be fully realized; Baltic people had spent the better part of that
century forging national identities, and throughout the period of Russification, the attempts to
assimilate them into Russian culture only served to reinforce their pride; many were active in
3
Ibid, p. 75.
4
Vizulis, 1990, p. 117-123
5
Kasekamp, 2010, p.76-82.
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the defence of their culture, best exemplified by the many Lithuanian Knygnešiai, who
circumvented the printing ban by smuggling in books from East Prussia, where many
Lithuanians lived6. In Estonia and Latvia, native-language literature actually proliferated even
better in times of Russification. After the failed
revolution of 1905-06 - during which nationwide congresses such as Lithuania’s Great
Seimas made demands that included the end of Russificationist measures and the censorship
that partly characterized and enabled them, the establishment of their native languages as
schooling languages, greater autonomy and democratic elections - it would take over a decade
until the Baltic nations finally attained self-determination. In February 1918, as newly
Bolshevik Russia was about to retreat from World War I through the signing of the Peace of
Brest-Litovsk, Lithuania declared its status as an independent State, followed by Estonia eight
days later – only for Germany to immediately take control of the Baltics under the terms of
Brest-Litovsk. Upon the end of the war and the collapse of the German Empire, the Baltic
states each gained effective independence as Republics, and, through 1918 to 1920,
successfully fought off the Red Army’s attempts at annexing them 7. This started a two-decade
long period of unprecedented freedom (indeed, it was notably the first time ever that
Estonians had their own independent state8) – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania agreed on their
borders, slowly gained international recognition, joined the League of Nations, and enjoyed a
level of self-determination they had practically never known. They were finally able to make
their national languages official and use their own national flags. These twenty-odd years
would not turn out to be a time of democratic idyll, though; each country’s political sphere
was highly fragmented and unstable, eventually leading to democratically elected leaders
staging self-coups and ruling as autocrats – Konstantin Päts in Estonia, Kārlis Ulmanis in
Latvia and Antanas Smetona in Lithuania. Thus, for a good part of their short time as citizens
of independent states, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians lived under totalitarian, single-
party regimes, and martial law9. Molotov-Ribbentrop, though, would sound the death
knell for the short-lived era of Baltic independence, and usher in the return of foreign
domination. In June 1940, the Soviet Union threatened the Baltic states with invasion unless
their governments resigned – within a few days, they complied, and the three nations came to
be governed by Moscow-friendly cabinets, which promptly voted in favour of joining the
USSR. Just a year later, the Nazis swiftly conquered the region, pushing out the Soviets, and

6
Ibid, p. 80-84.
7
Mole, 2013, p. 38-40.
8
Taylor, 2018, p. 40-41.
9
Kasekamp, 2010, p. 106-110.
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began to rule the Baltics as the Reichskomissariat Ostland – men were drafted into the Waffen
SS, most of the Jewish population was murdered, and the fear of Germanisation that the
Tsar’s government had had many decades earlier would come true, as the Nazis, who saw
most of the local population as ”racially inferior”10, planned to create Lebensraum through the
settling of German colonists. Interesting to note is that the arrival of the Nazis was initially
somewhat welcomed by the population, as they hoped it would signify their liberation from
the Soviet Union11. From July through September of 1944, the Red Army once
again took over the Baltic states. The formerly short-lived Soviet Socialist Republics of
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were re-established, and this time, it would be for good. At this
stage, it can easily be argued that the Soviet government’s long-standing rhetoric that insisted
the Baltic states joined the USSR of their own accord was pure folly; the Baltic people had
known centuries of Russian domination, were conscious of their condition as culturally and
historically rich nations and of their right to self-determination, and, after having fought wars
to defend their newly gained independence against the Bolshevik invader, had already been
forced into the Soviet Union for the duration of a year – during which everything was
nationalized, single-party rule was established, and tens of thousands of citizens were
deported12. They had no desire to be Soviets, as all they wished for was the right to choose
their own future and express their own national identity – instead, this was the beginning of
over four decades of further occupation, characterized by forced ideological hegemony, and a
wide campaign of Sovietization and Russification – both cultural, linguistical and
demographical. The policies that began to be implemented
in the Baltics were always, as in the rest of the Soviet Union, justified by the state ideology –
Marxism-Leninism. The reason why such grand efforts would come to be deployed in the
attempt to erase or drown out national identities is that Marxism and Nationalism are, for lack
of a more inventive analogy, like oil and water. Nationalism sees the world as divided into
nations into which people of any socio-economical profile are grouped together by, if not a
common territory, ethnicity or language, a shared past and a desire to move forward together
– while Marxism sees the world as divided into economic classes, with the desire to see the
proletarian class seize power by uniting and disregarding ethnical or linguistical differences.
To Marx himself, nations were capitalist constructs benefiting the bourgeoisie13.
Marxism’s internationalist vision

10
Kasekamp, 2010, p. 131-134.
11
Mole, 2013, p. 47.
12
Ibid, p. 56-58.
13
Mole, 2013, p.51.
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logically made it necessary for the Soviet Union, as a massively multi-ethnic country where
150 to 200 different languages were spoken 14, to have one common language - which was to
be, of course, Russian. In the newly Soviet Baltics, Russian was propagandized as the
beautiful language of unity, as exemplified by a 1953 poem written in Estonian: “our first
words in Russian sounded warm and welcoming. (…) you meet a comrade from a distant
place – in Russian you’ll hold a conversation about your country and your friendship.” 15 In
the early days of the Soviet Union, the policy of korenizaciia (“nativisation”) had assured
Russian was put on an equal footing with native languages, but by the time the Baltics were
annexed, this was no longer in practice 16. Despite this, policies that imposed the teaching of
Russian in schools took many years to be effectively implemented. This can be interpreted as
the result of several factors related to the existing linguistic situation; the Baltic’s three
national languages were already well established and developed – unlike many languages of
the USSR which, prior to Soviet times, were highly fragmented into dialects and had no
written form17, they had substantial literary tradition. Thus, their firm position as national
languages delayed effective linguistic Russification until the late Brezhnev era, when it
became truly intense. Starting in the 1970s, there was a quite radical shift in language policy -
for instance, birth certificates that used to be issued in Estonian were now issued in Russian 18,
and all meetings of the Lithuanian Communist Party’s Central Committee (most members of
which were Lithuanian) had to be held in Russian19.
To get a more concrete and personal grasp on the policies of this period and their
effects, I asked Liina Vahtrik, an Estonian actress and acquaintance of mine, to share some
aspects of her upbringing in the Estonian SSR. As she entered primary school in 1979, native-
language education was diminishing while Russian-language education was growing
(encouraged, according to her, by higher salaries) – even kindergartens were taught in
Russian, though she “luckily escaped” the new system and got to speak Estonian there.
Russian became especially prevalent in universities: all academic works had to be submitted
in Russian – even if, ironically, the topic was Estonian grammar or literature (the same was
true in Lithuania – by 1975, writing a doctoral dissertation in Lithuanian was forbidden 20). All
official documents were exclusively in Russian, despite Estonian’s co-official status. Liina

14
Grenoble, 2003, p. 1-2.
15
Annus, 2016, p.1.
16
Grenoble, 2003, p. 44-45.
17
Ibid, p. 45-48.
18
Taylor, 2018, p.145.
19
Grenoble, 2003, p.106.
20
Ibid, p.106.
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recalls seeing her grandmother, who did not speak Russian, cry – she could not even go see a
doctor without bringing someone with her to act as an interpreter.
The radical and arguably somewhat absurd language policies of the late
Brezhnev era came as Russification had been ongoing for several decades in a different area:
that of population. By 1945, the Baltic states had become largely homogenous – Estonians
and Latvians, for example, respectively formed 94 and 83 percent of their countries’
populations21. This was the result of Nazi policies that had made two historical minorities
largely disappear from the Baltics – the Baltic Germans (Deutschbalten), who, during the
tsarist period, constituted most of the nobility in Estonia and Latvia, and were forcefully
repatriated to their “homeland” as part of the Heim ins Reich policy22, and the Jews, who had
been most present in Latvia and Lithuania (in proportions of 7 and 13 percent respectively 23)
but were the victims of mass murder by the Nazis - only a small fraction of them had survived
by the end of the war24. The 1945 level of homogeneity would never again be reached, as the
proportion of Russians immediately began to rise – the gap left by the flight of large portions
of the university-educated population to the West was filled by a large influx of Russian
immigrants who were mainly assigned to work in factories. This influx would continue
throughout the period of Soviet occupation, though it was at its largest by far in the second
half of the 1940s – so much so that by 1953, the figures I mentioned earlier for Estonia and
Latvia had fallen to 72 and 60 percent, respectively 25. Lithuania, though, saw much less
demographic change – this can be explained, in part, by the larger availability of an already
existing workforce, and the presence of tens of thousands of armed Lithuanian guerrilla
fighters, who fought against Soviet forces for the first decade of occupation. A good example
of the large presence of Russian workers was given to me by Liina, who remembers that
during her childhood, the Lasnamäe district of Tallinn saw the construction of housing for
tens of thousands of workers – but applicants would be placed at the bottom of the waiting list
simply for having an Estonian name. As of 2021, Lasnamäe’s population was still 60%
percent ethnically Russian – over twice the proportion of ethnic Estonians 26. An even more
striking example is the one I introduced this essay with – Narva was almost entirely destroyed
by Soviet air raids in 1944. As its former inhabitants were forbidden from returning, and, as it

21
Mole, 2013, p. 59.
22
Kasekamp, 2010, p. 68-80 ; Taylor, 2018, p. 70-71 ; Kalnins, 2015, p. 139-140.
23
According to the 1897 Imperial census.
24
Kasekamp, 2010, p. 134-135.
25
Mole, 2013, p. 59.
26
Tallinn City Government. Statistical Yearbook of Tallinn 2021, p. 11.
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immediately bordered Russia, it was resettled almost exclusively by Russians 27. A

particularity of the Russian population that migrated to the Baltics is that, despite settling
there, most of them never quite seemed to bother learning the local languages; despite a large
part of natives being bilingual, Russians remained mostly monolingual; in Latvia, for
example, only about 1 in 5 of them claimed to have a knowledge of Latvian 28. This situation
can be seen as a summary of the arguably hypocritical Soviet attitude towards nationality and
language in the Baltics – despite an official Marxist dogma of equality of the peoples and
respect of native languages, the authorities did little to promote the Baltic national languages,
instead imposing the Russian language to an almost absurd extent while importing a
stubbornly monoglot foreign population.
The decades of Soviet occupation of the Baltics and, as we have seen, the wave
of Russification and Sovietization it brought, saw much resistance, both peaceful and violent,
visible and discreet. An early example of the violent type was that of the “Forest Brothers”,
guerrilla fighters whose activity in Lithuania I have already mentioned, but who were also
present in lesser numbers in Estonia and Latvia – with the material support and overwhelming
sympathy of the population, they persistently fought the Red Army, much to Moscow’s
irritation, until the mid-1950s29. Concurrently, as the Soviet authorities were quickly starting
to implement massive censorship, banning any existing publications they saw as insufficiently
consistent with their doctrine, entirely rewriting history books to establish a narrative of
Russians and Soviets as saviours of the submissive and grateful Balts 30, underground
publication began just as swiftly – for example, like the Lithuanian Knygnešiai of years prior,
Latvians circumvented censorship by publishing books in nearby countries 31. Soviet anti-
religious policies established in the name of state atheism went so far that, as Liina vividly
remembers, the celebration of Christmas was forbidden. Nevertheless, her family would
stubbornly celebrate it behind closed curtains every year, even if traditional Christmas food
was no longer to be found on store shelves. In the Brezhnev era, forms of protests increased
along with the forms of Russification they were opposing – as the Baltic states’ national flags
were banned by Soviet authorities, Latvians, for example, found creative ways to display their
flag’s maroon and white, such as through flowers left on the graves of patriots 32. A more
radical showing of anti-Soviet sentiment occurred in September 1980 in Tallinn; police
27
Taylor, 2013, p. 103-104 ; Kasekamp, 2010, p. 141.
28
Grenoble, 2003, p. 101-102.
29
Kalnins, 2015, p.157 ; Taylor, 2013, p. 118-119.
30
Mole, 2013, p. 60-61.
31
Kalnins, 2015, p.156.
32
Ibid, p. 171.
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crackdown on a punk concert fuelled riots and demonstrations that would last several days,
with slogans like “Out with Brezhnev” and displays of the Estonian flag’s blue, black and
white – to violent reactions from the police. Liina, who was 8 at the time, remembers her
family’s quiet admiration for the young protesters, and a sense that something important had
happened.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have now enjoyed three decades of independence and freedom,
after centuries of being mostly subjected to foreign domination. As nations proud of their
unique languages, cultures and histories – from the days of the vast Grand Duchy of Lithuania
to the folkloric tales of Estonia’s national epic, the Kalevipoeg – they kept their heads high as
their first era of independence was cut short by the horrors of war and followed by yet more
periods of occupation. The five decades spent as part of a totalitarian superpower they had
never wished to integrate, and the absurd, unending censorship, repression, propaganda, and
attempts to kill off their national identities those years brought – only served to reinforce their
spirit. Highly conscious of their past and of their right to statehood, Balts were never fooled
by Moscow’s lies – faced with the imposition of an overarching ideology and of a foreign
language that increasingly and unwelcomely creeped within their lives, they remained quietly
insubmissive, stubbornly resisting against what was forced upon them. This mindset persisted
after they gained independence ; the Baltic states joined both NATO and the EU in 2004,
solidifying their place in the West and away from Russia. Their immediate reaction of
overwhelming solidarity and support in wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows what
they have become – as Liina describes herself, “cautious and careful”, “always aware of the
crazy neighbour”.

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