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The Baltic States in Soviet-German Relations, 1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Albert Resis*
Affiliation:
Northern Illinois University

Extract

By 1920 nationalist forces had won independent statehood for Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. But they owed their victory to a propitious sequence of world-shaking events: first, the German defeat of Russia followed by the Entente defeat of Germany; second, the subsequent assistance the Entente rendered nationalist Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians in beating back the Red tide. Peter the Great's “window on Europe” was thereby reduced to a Soviet aperture on Europe. Only the narrow Gulf of Finland, flanked by a “White” Finland and a “White” Estonia, afforded the USSR direct access to the Baltic Sea.

The resurgence of Germany under Hitler and Soviet Russia under Stalin overturned the configuration of world power that had attended the birth of the Baltic Republics. In treating the fate that befell the Baltic States confronted by the resurgence of German and Soviet power in 1939, this article has three aims: first, to give due attention to German policy towards the Baltic States; second, to assess the efficacy and wisdom of the policies pursued by the Baltic States to avoid being ground between the Hitler and the Stalin millstones; and third, to incorporate pertinent new information published in the USSR since 1989. Even under the “Gorbachev Revolution,” publication of newly declassified diplomatic papers in the USSR has been conducted, so far, by dozirovka; i.e., the measuring out of information in small doses. This previously unpublished material, though exiguous, can at least begin to fill certain glaring “blank spots” in the history of the Baltic Question in 1939.

Type
Focus on the Baltics
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Association for the Study of the Nationalities of the USSR and Eastern Europe, Inc. 

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References

Notes

1. Royal Institute of International Affairs, The Baltic States, (London, 1938), pp. 16-18. For more detail, Albert N. Tarulis, Soviet Policy toward the Baltic States, 1918–1940 (Notre Dame, 1959); Georg von Rauch, The Baltic States. The Years of Independence: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, 1917–1940 (Berkeley, 1974).Google Scholar

2. The principle new source is God krizisa, 1938–1939. Dokumenty i materialy, 2 vols. (Moscow: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1990). At this writing, only vol. 1 (29 September 1938-31 May 1939) has been received in the US. All new information from this source and other publications will be designated in the footnotes by an*.Google Scholar

3. XVII S'ezd Vsesoiuznoi Kommunisticheskoi partii (b), Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1934), p. 14.Google Scholar

4. Ibid., pp. 127-128. Litvinov had read the book in full as early as 1928 [Arthur U. Pope, Maxim Litvinov (New York, 1943), p. 318]. Stalin read it in Russian translation in the summer of 1939 [Dmitrii Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediia. Politicheskii portret I. V. Stalina, two books in 4 parts (Moscow, 1989), Book II, Part 1, p. 24].Google Scholar

5. Hitler's Secret Book (New York, 1961), p. 195. Record of the Conversation between the Fuehrer and Ciano, 12 August 1939, DGFP, VII, no. 43.Google Scholar

6. The fate that awaited the Baltic States under the Germans is detailed in Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941–1945: A Study in Occupation Policies (London & New York, 1957), pp. 49-65; 182-197. Also, Sidney Lowery, “The Ostland,” in Arnold Toynbee & V. Toynbee, eds. Survey of International Affairs. 1939–1946. Hitler's Europe (London, 1954), pp. 568-75. On Sovietization, see United States Congress, House Select Committee, The Baltic States, Third Interim Report of the Select Committee on Communist Aggression. House of Representatives, 83rd Congress, 1954. Also, Romuald J. Misiunas & Rein Taagepura, The Baltic States: Years of Dependence, 1940–1980 (Berkeley, 1983).Google Scholar

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10. One source contends that Litvinov proposed to the Polish Ambassador in Moscow that Poland and the USSR partition the Baltic States between them with the Dvina as the dividing line—Bohdan Budorowicz, Polish-Soviet Relations, 1952–1939 (New York, 1963), p. 145. Another source holds that it was the Polish Ambassador who advocated this partition, reasoning that if the Baltic States were to lose their independence it was better to see it bringGoogle Scholar

11. SPE, I, 234. Evidence of such a treaty is lacking.Google Scholar

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17. A point duly noted and reported to Berlin by Ambassador Werner von Schulenburg from Moscow, but it excited little interest in Berlin. [Schulenburg to Foreign Ministry, 13 March 1939, DGFP, Series D, vol. VI, no. 1].Google Scholar

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19. Seeds to Halifax, Moscow, 20 March 1939, DBFP, Series III, vol. 4, no. 452. Payart to Bonnet, Moscow, 11 March 1939, DDF, XIV, no. 306. But Payart also pointed out, à propos, that two currents of opinion clashed in Soviet policy toward Germany: rapprochement versus opposition. The first prevails when the USSR believes itself isolated; the second, when it feels that it is supported by the western powers and the United States. [Payart to Bonnet, Moscow, 19 March 1939, ibid., vol. XV, no. 67] Schulenburg to Ribbentrop, Moscow, 13 March 1939, op. cit. Google Scholar

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22. SPE, vol. I, no. 192.Google Scholar

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58. Halifax to Loraine (Rome), 6 May 1939, Ibid., no. 398.Google Scholar

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72. In this connection, the views expressed by Winston Churchill on 19 May, in the House of Commons, were most cogent. See Churchill, The Gathering Storm (New York, 1961), pp. 334-35.Google Scholar

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