In the late 1980s, major protests broke out in the Baltic Republics - Estonia, Latvia
and Lithuania - formerly independent countries that at the time were part of the Soviet Union.
Just four years later, all three would be independent again, the Cold War
would be at an end and the USSR would be on the brink of final collapse.
So, just how did they regain their independence?
Hello and welcome. If you're new to the channel, my name is James Ker-Lindsay and here I take an
informed look at international relations, conflicts and the origins of countries.
There was a time in international relations when might pretty much was right.
States would invade a territory and that would essentially be that.
It would become a part of the conquering country.
However, one of the most important developments over the past 70 years
has been the idea that states do not - and cannot - seize other states by force.
Unlike dissolution or voluntary mergers, which remain causes of what we call state
extinction or state death, conquest is no longer considered to be the legitimate end of a country.
One of the most interesting and important examples of this
relates to the three Baltic Republics: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
Having once existed as independent states, their quest to regain their independence would come to
mark one of the final chapters in the end of the Soviet Union and reaffirm the principle that,
even after many decades of occupation, independent states can still be resurrected.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania lie on the eastern side of the Baltic Sea in Northeast Europe.
Remarkably similar in size, the most northerly is Estonia
which is around 45,000 square kilometers, or 17,500 square miles.
Latvia, lying in the middle, is 64,000 square kilometres, or 25,000 square miles.
And Lithuania, the most southerly, is 65,000 square kilometres or 25,000 square miles.
While they're often thought of together, and they enjoy
very good relations, they are in fact very distinct culturally.
For instance, their languages are different.
Whereas Latvian and Lithuanian are parts of the Indo-European language family - and while
closely related they're not mutually intelligible - Estonian is in fact
related to Finnish and Hungarian, a very different language family.
Religiously, they're also very diverse.
Lithuania is predominantly Catholic.
In contrast, while a quarter of Latvians adhere to Catholicism,
a third are Orthodox and a fifth are Protestant.
Estonia, of the last European countries to convert to christianity, is now largely unreligious.
The three countries have a long and fascinating history in their own right.
Indeed, at one point, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
was one the largest - if not the largest - state in Europe.
However, for our purposes, the story really starts in the 18th century.
Having been under Swedish control, in 1721
Estonia and northern Latvia came under Russian imperial rule following the Great Northern War.
In the decades that followed, the rest came under Moscow's control.
Meanwhile, in 1792, after having united with Poland,
Lithuania was invaded and occupied by Russia.
As the spirit of nationalism swept Europe in the 19th century,
so national consciousness rose in the Baltics.
However, it wasn't until the First World War that they emerged as independent countries.
Following the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, in 1917,
the new communist administration sought to end its involvement in the war.
Under the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk it ceded the Baltic Republics to Germany.
Following the German defeat, in November 1918, the Soviet Union tried to retake them.
This led to wars of independence in each of the three countries.
With external support they pushed back russian forces and in 1920
the soviet union recognized them as independent.
In the years that followed, they gained full international acceptance becoming members of
the League of Nations - a forerunner of the United Nations - in September 1921.
However, their periods as fully independent in sovereign states would prove to be short-lived.
In August 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact
that placed the Baltic Republics under the Soviet sphere of control
and in June 1940 the Soviet Union invaded and annexed all three countries.
In June 1941, the Nazis turned on the Soviet Union and invaded and occupied the republics.
However, just three years later Soviet forces retook them.
Although the annexation of the Baltic Republics was opposed
by the United States and other European countries, including Britain and France,
as the cold war came into force there was little that could be done.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania became trapped behind the Iron Curtain.
For the next half century, the three republics would be a part of the Soviet Union.
Although they maintained their own governance structure and were
separate Soviet Socialist Republics - alongside the other 12 republics,
including Russia, Ukraine and Belarus - they were kept tightly controlled.
This also led to a process of aggressive Russification.
As many tens of thousands of native Balts were deported
and Russian immigration grew, Russian became the official language.
Indeed, for most of the 1950s and 60s the hierarchy of the three republics
was dominated by ethnic Russians.
However, by the 1970s this was starting to change as more and more Estonians,
Latvians and Lithuanians started to rise up the ranks in the republic.
By the middle of the 1980s the wider cracks in the Soviet edifice were beginning to show.
Apart from being increasingly unable to keep up with the United States in an ever more
expensive arms race, it was also marred in a costly and unwinnable war in Afghanistan.
On top of this, it was crumbling from inside.
The 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exposed the weaknesses of the Soviet system.
Faced with such increasingly obvious problems, the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev,
recognised the need for change;
introducing the twin policies of 'Glasnost' (Openness) and 'Perestroika' (Restructuring).
It was against this backdrop that nationalist sentiment now began to
really emerge within the three Baltic Republics.
In 1987, major protests broke out in Riga, the Latvian capital,
which later spread to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia - a process
that would eventually come to be called the "Singing Revolution".
This strengthened those who now sought to re-establish the distinct
national identities of the republics after years of Soviet Russification.
At the same time, support now grew for them to reclaim their sovereignty.
Across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania calls for independence grew.
This would lead to a huge statement of popular sentiment when, on 23 August 1989,
the 50th anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact,
between one and two million people joined hands along a 600 kilometre route
linking the three Baltic capitals - a protest that came to be known as the "Baltic Way".
All the while, Soviet control was starting to collapse elsewhere.
The fall of the Berlin Wall, in November 1989,
which would lead to German unification the following year, also saw the other
Soviet satellite states - including Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary - break away.
As more and more countries of the Warsaw Pact reasserted their political independence,
so calls grew within the Baltic Republics for steps to reclaim their statehood.
The first to take the step was Lithuania, which declared independence on 11 March 1990.
Even though the Soviet Union imposed an economic blockade on the country as punishment,
a little under two months later, on the 4 May, Latvia followed suit.
This was followed by a joint declaration, signed by the three Soviet leaders of the republics,
announcing the creation of a Council of Baltic States
and calling for the restoration of state independence for each of them.
With the prospect that this nationalist sentiment could now spread more widely
across the other Soviet republics, Moscow tried to deal with the situation.
At first this led to negotiations, however by now it was clear that the
Baltic republics were intent on leaving the Soviet Union.
In response, the Soviet authorities turned to more heavy-handed measures.
In January 1991, it launched a concerted attack against pro-independent supporters in Lithuania,
leading to the deaths of 14 protesters with hundreds more injured.
But by this stage the tide had turned.
Internationally, opinion was starting to swing behind the republics.
On 11 February 1991, Iceland recognised lithuania's independence.
This was followed by other european states in the months that followed.
By the summer, the Soviet Union was starting to come apart.
On 21 August 1991, Estonia and Latvia both
formally restated their full independence from the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, just three days later, Ukraine,
the second most significant republic of the Soviet Union after Russia,
announced its independence - followed by Belarus, the third most significant, the next day.
However, the key moment came on 2 September 1991.
At a press conference at his summer holiday retreat in Kennebunkport,
the US President, George Bush, formally announced that Washington had recognised
the independence of the three Baltic Republics.
Significantly, he made it clear that this wasn't a recognition of new independence,
it was instead recognition of their reclaimed independence.
This followed a message to Congress from the US President just a few months earlier
in which Bush had reaffirmed that the United States had
never accepted their annexation and incorporation into the Soviet Union.
Other countries made the same point.
Technically, they'd never stopped recognising the Baltic Republics as independent.
With the Soviet Union now obviously collapsing,
Moscow decided that there was no point continuing the fight.
On 6 September 1991, the Soviet Union formally recognised the three Baltic
Republics as independent states and the Soviet representative to the United Nations
voted to recommend their membership.
On 17 September 1991, the three republics were unanimously admitted as member states
of the United Nations by the UN General Assembly.
After half a century, Estonia, Latvia
and Lithuania had formally regained their independence.
It's now a central tenet of international law that conquest cannot lead to the end of a state.
Perhaps the best and most significant example of this
was the regained independence of the three Baltic Republics.
Having been conquered and annexed by the Soviet Union at the start of the Second World War,
in the view of many countries they never formally ceased to be independent states.
After 50 years of Soviet rule rule that saw a concerted effort to change the demographic
character of the three countries, they were eventually able to reassert that independence
against the backdrop of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
However, this isn't quite the end of the story.
Just months later they'd be followed by the rest of the
Soviet republics - an issue i hope to come back to in a future video.
I hope you found that interesting, if so here's another video that you might find useful.
Thanks so much for watching and see you in the next video.