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/ Former USSR / Politics / Great chess-board /

Baltic Pawns in West’s Grand Game

19.07.2007 15:27 Viktor Kononov

In early July, it was announced that Russian legislators would start working on ratification of the Latvian-Russian border agreement signed in March 2007 only after their summer holidays. Political experts have already described the move as proof that the short thaw in Latvian-Russian relations, which began just above a year ago, is over. Most probably, Russia has reconsidered its relations with the Baltic states due to the situation with missile defense in Europe and the problem of Russian-speaking population.

The news brought about another wave of Russophobia in Latvia and gave rise to numerous rumors. Debates about the Soviet troops’ entering the Baltic countries before World War II and their later annexation by the Soviet Union received an additional spur. Naturally, the main theme of these discussions was once again the idea that Russia must recognize the fact that Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia had been “occupied” and apologize for that and, perhaps, even pay compensations for those past deeds.

It cannot go unnoticed that the Baltic states launch any anti-Russian move looking up to the West, considering themselves an important part of the European community. They forget what they have really been for Europe and the United States. Behind the European stage, Poland and the “Baltic friends” have long been considered a fifth column that stalls Europe’s integration and hinders development of the EU’s relations with Russia. In fact, the Baltic states have always been a card, not even a trump cart, in the policies of the high and mighty.

Beginning in the 1940s, the U.S. and British stand on the Baltic states was quite ambiguous and, as is often the case, based on double standards. The West looked fairly favourably to the accession of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to the Soviet Union. It is enough to recall Churchill’s words after the Tehran conference, who said that Russia’s demands did not go beyond the borders of the czarist Russia and sometimes were even less. This way he actually acknowledged the Soviet Union’s right to annex the Baltic states. This is hardly surprising, as they were a strategically important region in the war against Hitler. Having met the British prime minister, the Soviet ambassador I.Maisky wrote, “Churchill understands perfectly well that the Soviet Union should be the master on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea and he is happy that the Baltic countries will be included in ours, not German, state system. This is historically normal and at the same time reduces the potential life space for Hitler. Here the interests of England and the Soviet Union coincide rather than collide.”

The same idea is proved in the classified report “Some historical trends in Russia’s foreign policy” prepared by the British Foreign Office’s research department on April 17, 1945. It reads that the Soviet borders as shaped by 1940 “were, in their entire length in the west, not a result of aspirations, but a historically grounded strategic and geographic line.”

The U.S. stand was similar. Meeting Soviet ambassador M.Litvinov in March 1942, President Roosevelt said that he in fact had no disagreements with the Soviet government about the Soviet Union’s western borders and that he had always thought it a mistake that the Baltic provinces had been separated from Russia after World War I.

As we can see, the West did not oppose to the Baltic states becoming part of the Soviet Union. This is the same West, which has recently supported Estonia’s barbarism against the Bronze Soldier monument. The West that keeps overlooking Nazi marches and the genocide against the Russian-speaking population in these countries. The West is peremptorily trying to scare everyone with an “energy expansion from the East”, but at the same time plans to deploy elements of missile defense in East Europe.

Global leaders are now using the Baltic states for purposes completely opposite to those they pursued 60 years ago. But is there a guarantee that the balance will not be tipped in the opposite direction very soon and that the Baltic card will not lay differently?

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