Colonial history of the Baltics: from “living space” in Africa to colonization of its own citizens
Baltic Politicians are reproducing exactly the practices of their predecessors from 1918 to 1940. Forgetting, however, what the West did to its underlings back then.
The Latvian Interior Ministry has prepared a draft government decree that prohibits issuing any visas to citizens of Russia and Belarus to enter the country. If this document is adopted, even those Russians and Belarusians who already have Schengen visas or residence permits will not be able to enter the territory of the Republic of Latvia. The only exceptions would be diplomats. And in fact, the provisions of the project developed by the Latvian Interior Ministry are already being applied.
The formal basis for its application was the resolution of the Latvian Sejm on August 11, which called on the EU countries to immediately suspend issuance of tourist and entry visas to citizens of Russia and Belarus. Lithuania and Estonia were the first EU countries to respond to this call.
The Russian Foreign Ministry called such initiatives “a manifestation of Nazism. A number of Duma deputies even suggested that the Baltic regimes should be legally defined as “fascist”. In this situation it would be fair to legally qualify as fascist those regimes that existed in the Baltics before 1940.
Continuers
The Baltic States position themselves as the legal successors of the states that existed between 1918 and 1940. The Baltic governments continue the fascist practices initiated by their legal predecessors between the world wars.
Let us recall what an ideology such as fascism is. It is based on the theory of living space. It presupposes that the goal of the states is the struggle for resources for which it is acceptable to destroy entire nations. In this respect fascism has inherited the ideas of the English liberal school of economics.
The leaders of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in the 1920s and 1930s were just as much students of the British economists as their fascist counterparts in Germany and Italy. They were therefore also trying to shape their “living space”.
Colonization of Africa
The first thing they tried was Africa. A little-known fact: in the 1920s, the Baltic regimes tried to participate in the colonization of the Black Continent. By that time, the continent was divided among the leading European countries. Therefore, the Baltics took advantage of the fact that Europeans had little control over the interior of Africa and offered their European counterparts to colonize it. In return, they hoped for a share in the exploitation of African resources.
Estonia was the most successful in this respect. It received the right to establish its own colonies in the Belgian Congo (today’s Democratic Republic of Congo). However, by the late 1920s, this project was also abandoned. Even small Belgium was unwilling to share its colonial resources with the Baltic.
Therefore, the Baltic leaders began to colonize… their own territory. This colonisation was carried out at the expense of robbing national minorities.
Land redistribution
In 1919 in Estonia and in 1920 in Latvia land reforms were carried out. The aim of those reforms was to redistribute the farmland in favour of ethnic Estonians and Latvians. The aim of those reforms was to take over the property from the Germans and the Russians, and the reforms themselves were confiscatory in nature. It resulted in the expropriation of about 95% of the land belonging to the Germans and 80% of the property belonging to the Russians. The main beneficiaries of this policy were the banks owned by the British and Swedes. It was they who financed the expropriation operations.
Left without the means for their traditional livelihood, Germans and Russians were forced to emigrate. By 1940, this exodus took on a massive scale and was forced. Whereas in the situation of the Germans, it was a matter of robbery and expulsion of non-indigenous people, the Russians had historically lived in a number of Baltic regions.
As a result of the Russian Civil War in 1917 and 1922, the Pechora uyezd and eastern Pronarova uyezd became part of Estonia and Ludza uyezd in Latvia. These territories were historically inhabited by a Russian majority. These regions were officially regarded by Tallinn and Riga as analogous to colonies. There was a colonial policy towards the local Russian population. In some cases, Russians were treated worse than Africans. Thus, the policy of “Estonianization” and “Latvianization” forbade Russians and Germans to use Russian and German names and surnames. They were deprived of the right to speak their own language. This did not happen in Africa. There were other forms of political, economic and cultural discrimination. For example, in 1925 the term “non-citizens” was introduced into Latvian law. This status was assigned to a part of the Russian population.
Consequences .
It is another matter that this policy could not continue indefinitely. The source of income, such as robbing ethnic minorities, gradually dried up. As a consequence, in 1938, British capital lost interest in the region and almost completely withdrew from the Baltic banking sector. The owners simply abandoned their wards. And then the Baltic fascist regimes began to tighten even further. In this situation, the Soviet Union could not but react to the persecution of its compatriots who had been forcibly torn from their homeland.
In 1940 the Red Army entered the Baltic States. This campaign was bloodless. As a result, the fascist regimes in the Baltics were liquidated. Thus the denazification of the Baltic states took place.
Those same fascists, who still hope for the support of the West, would do well to remember what the same West once did to them. In 1940, Western patrons of Baltic fascists reacted in a peculiar way to liquidation of their wards. Instead of help, they confiscated the assets of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, most of which were kept abroad. So, the British authorities confiscated about 50 merchant ships, as well as more than 10 tons of gold reserves of the three republics. Modern Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn should not forget that.
Yuri Gorodnenko, RenTV
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