The fate of Russia’s small neighbours

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33625, 29 August 1974, Page 12

The fate of Russia’s small neighbours

Since the Russian Army reoccupied Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 1944 these countries have generally been regarded, in a world that was said to have been made safe for small nations, as no more than appendages to the Russian empire. The recent acknowledgement by New Zealand and Australia, 30 years later, that the three little Baltic countries have been incorporated in the Soviet Union does no more than accept that they are under effective Russian rule. The Prime Minister (Mr Kirk) has said that New Zealand’s decision does not imply approval of the way the three States were seized and he has expressed regret that their peoples have not been permitted to determine their own destinies. For New Zealanders who remember the beginnings of the Second World War, and for the small, but loyally nationalist, Baltic emigre communities in New Zealand, this is a matter for sad reflection. Although Mr Kirk has done no more than tidy a diplomatic comer in New Zealand’s relations with Russia, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that military conquest of small States by a large neighbour will become acceptable if it is pursued ruthlessly and persisted in long enough. This is not an attitude which should commend itself to a country as small and as isolated as New Zealand. This country might well have a moral duty to remind Russia, and others, of the point on which Mr Kirk has misgivings. Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia in the eastern Baltic have a combined population of about 7 million and an area a little larger than the South Island. They were absorbed by Tsarist Russia in the eighteenth century; rebellions were frequent, but it was not until 1919, with British help during the confusion of the Russian Revolution, that their independence was re-established. For 20 years all three experimented with democracy, but drifted into more authoritarian forms of government in the wake of similar changes among their larger neighbours — Germany, Poland, and Russia. In 1939 they were bullied by the Russians into signing treaties of ’* mutual assistance ” after Stalin and Hitler had partitioned Poland between Russia and Germany. In secret, the two dictators had also signed a treaty which assigned the Baltic republics to a Russian “ sphere of influence ”.

A year later, while the attention of the world was diverted by the German occupation of Paris, Russia presented the three Baltic States with an ultimatum accusing them of “ military conspiracy Without waiting for replies, Stalin’s armies marched in and set up puppet regimes which voted to have the three States join the Soviet Union. In the next year about 150,000 people were deported from the Baltic States to Stalin’s slave labour camps. From 1940 to 1944 the three countries were overrun by Nazi Germany. Thousands more of their people were deported, this time to work for Germany. Since 1944 they have again been part of Russia. Yet their nationalist spirit has remained intact in spite of persecutions by their neighbours for more than 200 years. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have waited a long time before to reassert their independence; for practical reasons it may be convenient for other countries to treat them now as part of Russia. That should be no guarantee that their subject status will be permanent.