The Baltics and Russia: neighbours with long memories and short fuses
How trauma, pride, and politics keep the countries locked in a grudge match none of them benefit from
Much of what passes for political analysis these days sounds more like a playground scrap than statecraft. And it’s been amplified in the world of Twitter/X where it often comes down to arguments about toilet paper and outhouses.
The latest spat began on Friday with the Russian Foreign Ministry crowing, in a self-congratulatory tone, about how the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) have allegedly fared worse since breaking away from the USSR. The response from Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius was predictably fiery, and not without some justification.
First, the simple truth: Soviet occupation was real and these weren’t willing brothers in socialism. They were annexed by Joseph Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria, two Georgians, lest anyone confuse the USSR with today’s Russia. They were kept under the thumb by the Ukrainian Leonid Brezhnev and finally let go by Stavropol’s Mikhail Gorbachev, who saw the writing on the Kremlin wall and chose not to redraw it in blood.
So yes, the Baltics have every reason to feel bitter about that history, but what came after hasn’t been an unbroken line of triumph either. They joined the EU and entered NATO and became textbook Western allies, perhaps too enthusiastic for their own good. And to their credit, they built efficient small states with Estonia’s e-governance model a particular highlight. And yet, more than thirty years on, average wages adjusted for purchasing power parity still hover around $2,552 in Estonia, $2,534 in Latvia, and $2,870 in Lithuania [*see footnote]. A figure not much higher than Belarus (Europe’s “last dictatorship”) which clocks in at $2,414. That was, tellingly, omitted from boastful charts posted on Friday by Marko Mihkelson, the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Estonian Parliament.
And for all the talk of Baltic tech wizardry, there’s a curious hollowness to it. There is no Yandex, no VKontakte, no Telegram, no Mail.ru. But then again Germany, and France are all also far behind Russia at this game. Estonia’s great claim to fame, Skype, was snapped up by foreign hands before it could lay roots, while Lithuania boasts of ties to Revolut, but the truth is more administrative than inspirational: Vilnius granted the banking licence but the brains behind it, Nikolay Storonsky, hails from Moscow. And the model itself is rally only a glossy Western riff on the digital banking playbook of Oleg Tinkoff, another Russian original, now rebranded as T-Bank. The Baltics may run smooth state portals, but the deepest tech currents still flow from elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Russia now registers a PPP-adjusted average salary of $2,752, placing it above Estonia and Latvia, and in the same ballpark as Lithuania. And that’s without counting Russia’s huge off-the-books economy, estimated at between 30-50% of GDP.
Up north, Finland ($3,688) and Sweden ($3,862) maintain strong wage figures, and Norway stands tall at $4,567. But those are not the Baltics’ peers. The uncomfortable truth is that PPP wages in Lithuania and Latvia remain nearer to Kazakhstan ($2,102) than they are to their Nordic neighbours. GDP per capita has jumped hugely since 2004, but prosperity on paper can feel cold comfort when your nurses and engineers are working in Frankfurt or Cork.
Still, there’s a sobering truth beneath all this back-and-forth and the Baltics, for all their moral posturing, remain deeply dependent on the very West they turned to. They are the EU’s biggest per capita aid recipients, after Croatia and their power grids, especially since cutting the cord with Russia’s BRELL system, are stretched and exposed with reliability teetering on the whims of a few cables to Poland.
Meanwhile, populations have collapsed and Latvia has lost over 30% of its people since 1989, Lithuania 27% and Estonia 13%. All three now rely on ‘guest workers’ from Central Asia, and the Caucasus to fill gaps in industry and healthcare. Their young leave for Ireland ($4,526) or Germany ($4,426) and what remains is a shrinking tax base and the sense of being on the edge of someone else’s civilisation.
The Baltics carry the scars of domination, just like Russia bears the scars of Soviet collapse. And yet, even now, the very idea of neutrality, or anything resembling a steady-handed coexistence with Moscow, is treated like heresy in the Baltics. Raise the question, might it have been wiser to keep a bridge or two unburnt, and you’ll be verbally eaten alive.
Even now, though, a sliver of space remains. Not for handshakes outside the Kremlin or some fantasy of shared partnership, but for grown-up dealings. Let the gas flow, open the odd railway line again, you know, basic, useful things.
Nobody’s asking them to hug and there’s no need for the Baltics to forget the past, or Russia to rewrite it. But there’s a world of difference between remembering it and re-enacting it. Living next to a bear doesn’t mean you have to poke it every time you walk past the fence.
Footnote: All wage figures are from the IMF’s World Economic Outlook, October 2024.
"The ghost of occupation is no distant memory. .."
Let us put this 'occupation' in historical context- the states in question, from their (re)foundation in 1919 until the return of the Red Army in 1944 were ruled by fascists who used every opportunity to destabilise and conquer the USSR. The siege of Leningrad was the lasting expression of the hatred that the Baltic ruling classes had for the Soviet regime.
The deportations which you mention would have been inevitable whoever headed the CPSU- the three states had tens of thousands of collaborators with fascism, many of them had taken part in the successive purges and the culminating massacres of socialists, Trade Unionists, Russians, Jews, and many other 'minority' groups deported, if they were lucky (many were summarily executed and thrown into mass graves] to the Nazi founded camps in Poland and elsewhere.
I think we have reached the stage where 'balance' in political writing no longer requires the uncritical repetition of the anti-communist talking points which only seem to have been amplified and expanded since the Cold War ended. No doubt the collapse of the military power of the Soviet state played a part in liberating our chattering classes from any need to contextualise the past- hence the nonsense, in which the Baltics played a leading role, of equating the Soviet regime with that of the fascists who built Nazism.
It has to be understood that the Latvian and Estonian commitment to 'freedom' and 'equality' is notably expressed in the exclusion of Russian speakers from political and civil rights. It was this, no doubt, which inspired their fellow collaborators in Ukraine to attempt to eradicate Russian there too.
Years ago, I read Barry Broadfoot's 'Ordinary Russians', which was released in 1989, and with all due respect to his current deadness, it would be difficult to put together a more condescending piece of literature. According to Mr. Broadfoot, if tomatoes, cucumbers and dill were removed from availability, the word 'salad' would have vanished from the Soviet lexicon in months. His research consisted, reasonably enough, in travelling around the Union to the extent he was allowed (although of course the KGB were always following him), talking to ordinary citizens. One of them was an Estonian elementary-school teacher, who recounted to him proudly how she had extorted a substantial bribe from a Russian woman by implying her son would fail the term if she did not intervene. She was quite clear that her motivation was the woman's ethnicity, and that she would not think of doing such a thing to an Estonian.
That's a pretty small data sample, and my Russian wife assures me there is no shortage of nice Estonians who are helpful and friendly. But the west, and western authors - as well as journalists, who are almost authors - like nothing better than a Baltic-republican with a grievance. Perhaps it is an accident that the steep population decline of the Baltic republics dates almost to the day to when they achieved their independence - a long-term view of population statistics such as can be found at Trading Economics reveals what looks like an upside-down ice-cream cone, with the population climbing purposefully during Soviet-Union membership, coming to a point at independence, and then a near-mirror-image decline. Perhaps so many Balts fled their countries to spread the good news of what a marvellous place it had become since ditching their Russian slavers, and then forgot to come back, that it caused this graphic anomaly. But I'm skeptical.
Often forgotten as well is the Baltic Republics' enthusiasm for Nazism, once upon a time - this is perfectly in line with the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend theory, and it's entirely possible that Hitler's plans for Russia were the attraction for them rather than the dubious delights of fascism. Nonetheless, 'partisan' groups like the Forest Brothers fought visibly on the side of the Nazis - history is clear that their emergence against the Soviet forces followed German occupation in World War II; they were fighting against Soviet re-occupation, so evidently Nazi politics and values were not a deal-breaker for them.
Perhaps the escape-velocity leap in utility prices could have accounted for the dwindling population, were it not so recent and tied to the Baltics' proud renunciation of energy relationships with Russia. But Europe should know what that feels like well enough.