TLDR at the botton of post.
Sorry, kind of a clickbait question. This Russian news site has published an article about five supposed myths about the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states. This article and news site in general is obvious Kremlin propaganda, but sadly alot of nationalists in Russia and abroad believe such nonsense, one of them being my own mother.
Some of the supposed ”myths” and their corresponding ”truths” are:
Myth 1. The Soviet entry into the Baltic was an occupation.
The truth: It cannot legally be called a occupation according to the IV Hague Convention because these states were not at war with each other. Also entry of the Red Army was done on a contractual basis. The authorities of the Baltic states concluded agreements on mutual assistance with the USSR and their parliaments themselves chose to join the Union.
Myth 3. As a result of the "Soviet occupation" the socio-economic development of the Baltic countries lagged behind for several decades.
The truth: All three of the Baltic republics were some of the most prosperous in the USSR and received much more financial and material resources than the RSFSR for example.
Myth 4. The citizens of the Baltic republics were oppresed.
The truth: All three republics had their own Council of Ministers, their own republican ministries and departments, headed by ethnic Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians. There were no concentration camps in the Baltics. Alot of Soviet cinema was filmed there and it was called ”The Soviet Hollywood” So what kind of oppression can we talk about? All these claims are just russophobia.
The myths I have left out I felt were irrelevant.
So historians, is there any truth to this kind of reasoning? What parts of this article are just unfair technicalities, convenient absense of relevant information and which are the blatant lies? Please help me debunk this type nationalist propaganda for my mother and other russian relatives.
TL;DR : Help me debunk this propaganda article for people like my fiercely nationalist russian mother.
Use Google Translate for this article as it is in russian.
Myth 1. The Soviet entry into the Baltic was an occupation.
The truth: It cannot legally be called an occupation because these states were not at war according to the IV Hague Convention. Also entry of the Red Army was done on a contractual basis. The authorities of the Baltic states concluded agreements with mutual assistance with the USSR and their parliaments themselves chose to join the Union.
The Soviet position was that the Baltic states voluntarily joined the Soviet Union. It is true that the Soviet controlled governments installed by the Soviets asked to join, but these governments are generally not believed to have been legitimate governments, nor these decisions to join the Soviet union representative of the desires of the people. The majority position outside the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact was that the Soviet occupation to be illegal. The majority of this majority recognised the de facto Soviet rule over the Baltic states:
Whether or not the Soviet occupation met the requirements of "military occupation" under the Hague Convention is hardly the point. The Soviet Union, threatening war and invasion, forced a change of government in the Baltic states, and these puppet governments asked for their nations to be admitted to the Soviet Union. That the Baltic states surrendered rather than fighting wars that they felt they couldn't win does not make the initial occupation and subsequent annexation legal.
Naturally, the Soviet Union insisted that it was legal (and Russia has inherited this stance as their official position), but as with many illegal acts, the opinion of the perpetrator is not a sound basis for determining the legality of the act.
Myth 3. As a result of the "Soviet occupation" the socio-economic development of the Baltic countries lagged behind for several decades.
The truth: All three of the Baltic republics were some of the most prosperous in the USSR and received much more financial and material resources than the RSFSR for example.
Both the myth and the "truth" are true. The socio-economic development of the Baltic states lagged far behind that of Western Europe, and even the Eastern European communist states outside the Soviet Union. The per capita GDPs of the three Baltic countries were about US$1000 in 1993, compared with $1300 for Russia, $1000 for Belarus, $700 for Ukraine, a median of $250 for the 'Stans, and a median of $175 for the Caucasian states. So the Baltic states were among the most prosperous republics in the Soviet Union, but that's very much a case of being a big fish in a small pond. To go outside that small pond, Bulgaria and Albania were much poorer, Romania was similar ($1150), and Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, and Poland were 2-4 times richer. To put Eastern European economic development into perspective, we can compare Germany ($26,000), France ($23,000), Britain ($20,000), Finland ($18,000), Sweden ($24,000), Spain ($13,000), Italy ($19,000), and Greece ($10,000).
Clearly, the economic development of the Baltic countries lagged. That they lagged only as much as Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, and much less than the 'Stans and the Caucasus doesn't mean that they didn't lag.
Myth 4. The citizens of the Baltic republics were oppresed.
While it is (at least mostly) true that there were no camps in the Baltic states, this is simply because people were sent to camps in Siberia. There were two waves of deportations, imprisonments, and executions. The first, much smaller than the second, was in 1940 and 1941 and focussed on non-communist leaders and non-compliant members of the elite and the intelligentsia. Ethnic Russians who had fled the Soviet Union would have been at very high risk of deportation or execution. The total number of victims from all three countries in this first round of major oppression was about 170,000.
After the Soviet "liberation"/re-occupation in 1944, there was a second, larger, wave of deportations, imprisonments, and executions. The first targets were those who had served in the German armed forces or the Finnish army (mostly Estonians), or fought in the armed resistance against the Soviet re-occupation. Approximately 150,000 thousand people from the Baltic states fought as partisans resisting the Soviet re-occupation (the fighting continued into the 1950s). Of them, about 20,000 were killed in action, and another 20,000 arrested and executed, imprisoned, or deported. Next were various "class enemies". The final major deportations were kulaks (with the majority of these deportees being women and children). The Soviet government had issued quotas for how many "kulaks" were to be deported from each country, so it is very likely that many were deported mostly just to meet the quotas. This last round of deportations sent over 90,000 people to Siberia. Overall, over half a million people were deported from the Baltic states, about 1/4 million from Lithuania, and about 1/8 million from Latvia and Estonia.
Apart from these examples of Soviet oppression, there was also the imposition of an unwanted political system, censorship, the banning of non-communist political activity, and the suppression of strikes and worker's rights.
Much of this oppression was not a uniquely Baltic thing - just the general oppression of much of the Soviet population applied to the Baltic states.
The Baltic states also suffered under German occupation, with the majority of the 300,000 Jews in the Baltic states being killed, and also about 35,000 other people.
For further reading on repression and deportations, see http://www.gulag.online/articles/soviet-repression-and-deportations-in-the-baltic-states
