The Soviet Takeover of the Baltic States - Research Paper Example

? The Soviet “Takeover” of the Baltic s Table of Contents I. Introduction 3 II. The Puppet Communist Parties/People’s Diets 4 III. Election Rigging 6 IV. Violence/Force/Secret Police 7 V. Collectivization 9 VI. Conclusion 10 Works Cited 11 I. Introduction The manner of the “takeover” of the Baltic states by the Soviet Union followed similar scripts or patterns for each of the concerned countries. This paper is a discussion of the different elements of these patterns. It is to be noted that the so-called Nazi-Soviet pact which was sealed in 1939 presaged the actual occupation of the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia in 1940 by the Soviet Red Army in 1940, effectively integrated into the Soviet Union also by that time. This is a break from the long independent existence of the three states, which had been the norm ever since the Russian Civil War that lasted from 1917 to 1922. The Nazi occupation put a halt to the integration of the three Baltic states into the Soviet Union for four years, from 1941 all the way to 1945, but with the end of the occupation that integration resumed in earnest, and in rapid manner, so that the three states were effectively made part of the Soviet Union through a process that has been termed “Sovietization”. The traditional arrangements and institutions of the existing political, social and economic order in the three states were totally ignored and supplanted with Soviet counterparts, causing significant disruption to the lives of the countries involved. Industries were nationalized where they were previously private concerns. Land distribution and collectivization were imposed and made the norm. The school systems were supplanted by the Soviet systems, including the college level curricula. The Soviet system of politics was also used to supplant the existing political systems of the time. There were two kinds of movements that were instituted in order to support the integration efforts, one outward, and one inward. The outward movement was that of the intelligentsia and social, economic and religious leaders of the countries prior to their usurpation by the Soviet Union, being deported out of the three Baltic states by force. The inward movement was the enforced immigration of Russians into the three states, to shift the population balance and demographics to skew towards the Soviet Union’s preferred mix (Smith; Occupation Museum Foundation; Institute of the History of Latvia; Lina; Shtromas et al. 249-260). II. The Puppet Communist Parties/People’s Diets By the time the Soviet Union made its attempts to homogenize the political and legislative systems in the Baltic states in 1940, the Soviet Union had effected the actual control of the three countries by a series of moves that included military action, as well as the annexation and takeover of government through purges of existing members of government and their replacement with Soviet-sourced members in the main. The government elites of the three countries were purged through deportation as well as via their being put to prison. This paved the way for the introduction of the next wave of changes aimed at overhauling the people’s assemblies, effected through the illegal change of the electoral laws in the three counties by Soviet decree, and the calling of People’s Diets elections made on July 14 of 1940. The election was to be in the style and manner of the Soviet Union, where a single party consisting of one slate of candidates were “voted” into office, and named as the “Working People’s Leagues”. These one-slate parties were to be voted without opposition, and with a unanimity of votes. In all of the three states there were indications of suppression of other competing parties wanting to join in the elections and to present alternatives to the Soviet one-party prescription, and the suppression was effective to the degree that the Soviet will won the day. Estonia in particular was singled out for the intensity of the efforts to counter the Soviet machinations there, but in the end the Soviet will prevailed. The Working People’s Leagues were all voted into office in the three states, with all but 10 percent of all votes, signaling the rigging of the unanimous win. By the 21st of July, 1940, the three Diets, “elected” into office, had met and had made proclamations ceding their countries to the Soviet Union and converting their states into members of the USSR. These staged assemblies, which lasted for two days, achieved the “legal” annexation of the three Baltic states into the Soviet Union, as well as the nationalization of agriculture and of land, the nationalization of the countries’ industries, and the nationalization of the countries’ banking sectors. Moreover, the puppet Communist parties had an election of representatives to go to the Soviet Union in Moscow in order to apply for membership into the USSR. By the beginning of August of 1940, the USSR had voted to take in the three states as member republics of the Soviet Union (Shtromas 255-256). It is noteworthy that this simplified working of the machinations of the Soviet Union to annex the three Baltic states through the puppet Communist Diets hide some crucial facts that turned the tide in favor of the Soviet Union, chief among them the prior acts of installing key government officials who were sympathetic to the Soviet machinations, while at the same time removing those who were then in power in the three states, in an act of purging and replacement, as already discussed earlier. The purging extended to the machineries of power of the previous governments and previous political order (Smulkstys; L’Hommedieu 42-44): After the creation of the pro-Soviet governments, Moscow began to move against all potential opposition in the Baltic states. Consequently, noncommunist parties and other mass organizations were outlawed; newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, and radio stations fell under the direct control of the communist parties; the police was transformed into a Soviet-type militia; the armed forces became integrated into the Red Army. Arrests and deportations of prominent national and community leaders started during the first weeks following the occupation. This was the fate of the Presidents of Estonia and Latvia and the former Lithuanian Prime Minister Merkys. (Smulkstys). III. Election Rigging The way the elections were rigged in the three states was via the initial usurpation of the right to change election laws by the Soviet Union, the formation of so-called Supreme Electoral Commissions by the Soviet decrees that also changed the electoral laws even if they went against the country laws on election law changes, and the installing of Soviet members of those Electoral Commissions. The elections were rigged from the very top, by illegal decrees, and then by the Soviets ensuring that they had total control of the whole process of elections through total control of the Electoral Commissions that they formed. Either Soviets were installed to these commissions, or else Communists were installed. The elections were further rigged by the commonality in the name of the official party supported by the Soviet Union in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, as already discussed above. They were all called the Working People’s League or the Working People’s Union. Meanwhile, political organizations heavily dominated by Communists were formed in rapid fashion with the purpose of ensuring the victory of the so-called “people’s nominees” included in the Working People’s Union slate. The rigging went as far as making sure, moreover, that those who were not members of the Communist slate were not made part of the ballot. In Lithuania, this exclusion was achieved via the enactment and enforcement of a law to that effect. In Estonia as well as in Latvia, this exclusion was achieved via violent means, or else by intimidating non-Communist candidates, or both (Smulkstys). The rigging went as far as intimidating and coercing people to vote, to make sure that the single-slate election would result in a large majority of the populations of three states voting for the Communist candidates, in spite of the absence of competitors. Coercion and intimidation were achieved through the threat of harassment and persecution, and the branding of non-voters as the people’s enemies, in all of the states. In Lithuania and in Latvia, authorities stamped the ID papers of those who voted, to distinguish them from those who did not vote. The IDs would then be used to screen and intimidate those who did not vote at some future point, and this fact was used as an instrument of coercion, to make people come out and vote for the Communist candidates. This rigged arrangement had excellent results. Voter turnout was at 80 percent. 99.2 percent of Lithuanian voters voted the Communists into power. The figure was 93 percent for Estonia, and 97.6 percent in Latvia. Elsewhere there was a preponderance of evidence of rigging. There were no independent observers. Only the Electoral Commissions could count the votes. There was no way to validate the poll results. Tass in London had results that they announced for all the three Baltic states one day before the polls closed. Estonia had two sets of election results. The figures for voter turnout were continually revised (Smulkstys; Shtromas et al. 249-260). IV. Violence/Force/Secret Police The unequal power between the Soviet Union and the individual Baltic states, who on top of their inferior military power and economic power were also left to their own devices by the West, including the United States, resulted in the Soviet Union being able to flex its muscles to bully, intimidate, and to finally coerce the governments of the Baltic states to accede to the demands of the Soviets and agree to what amounted to effectively as a de facto takeover of their countries by the Communists. This is so from the very first time that the Russians upped the rhetoric against first, Lithuania, and then later to the two other Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia. With regard to Lithuania the threat of the invasion of the Soviet Red Army was the stick with which they threatened to make real the power behind the ultimatums that they issued against a then placid Lithuanian government. The ultimatums were based on a set of allegations that were largely unfounded, but inflammatory, and meant to put the Lithuanian in a position where the Soviets could fictitiously hold the Lithuanians accountable. The ultimatums amounted to threats of war, unless Lithuania agreed to the demands of the bully the USSR. The substance of the threats and the ultimatums mattered little, as well as the demands, because no matter how much Lithuania tried to assure the Soviets that they had peaceful intentions and that they were not guilty of the crimes they were accused of, the Soviets had only violent intentions in mind. The entry of Soviet troops in large numbers into Lithuania was further proof of that violence and the threat of the use of force. This same threat of the use of force, and the same issuance of ultimatums for the government to essentially yield or else, was re-enacted not long after in Latvia, where the violence played out exactly in the same terms, without the overt use of force, but with the threat of force certain and already inside the national territory of the country at that time. Likewise in Estonia, with the Soviet Red Army within or very near the country, ready to strike and to inflict harm on a national scale, the Estonians had no choice but to yield to the demand of the Soviets. The threat of force was real in each case, and so was the potential violence. The violence was psychological but its effects were real and physical, because the violence resulted in the overthrow of the existing governments and the effective occupation of the Baltic states by the Soviets (Smulkstys). There is also the argument that the presence of the Soviet Red Army within Latvian soil even before the Latvians acceded to the Soviet demands for a change of government was an effective de facto form of coercion that made the ultimatums mere formalities and the formal declaration of what had been already on the ground established as an occupation and a direct threat of the use of force if the Soviets do not get what they want (Occupation Museum Foundation) V. Collectivization As already been discussed, the first major moves by the Soviets when they were able to gain control of the Baltic states governments were to enforce collectivization, and that meant the collectivization of the key economic activities, namely agriculture and the production of food. The collectivization of agriculture meant the collective tilling and caring of the agricultural lands, owned by the government and in this case the central government in Moscow for all of the USSR, using the labor of the farmers to enrich the union's coffers, and with the government planning what and how to plant, and where, using what equipment, and how much by yield. The land redistribution effort that preceded this collectivization was an attempt to essentially wipe the slate clean of the former economic and agricultural order, to replace it with the Soviet-style centralized and collectivized agricultural order (Smith; Pins). In Latvia, from the time of the Soviets' gaining power back in the country in 1945 forward, collectivization was undertaken as a means to control the means of production in the country, and to extract profits from the collectivized land, even as the Soviets outwardly made pledges to preserve the way of life and the farm plots of the small farmers. The small farms gave way to autocratic collective farms called kolkhozes, and to even larger state farms called Sovkhozes. These farms had formal management structures, with the farmers allowed to keep small plots of land in theory but in practice were essentially kept from their small plots and yoked to the state farm machineries in order to make produce and profits for the state and for the Soviet Union. The same held for Lithuania and Estonia, as similar collectivization drives and dynamics held ground (Pins). VI. Conclusion In all of the three Baltic states the effective “takeover” of the vital political, social and economic processes of the countries was made possible through the cunning use of force and the supplanting of Soviet political and economic systems. This is a cookie-cutter pattern that was put to effective use in each of the countries in succession, using almost exactly the same script in each case, and then making use of the same formulas to run the country afterwards. The commonalities extended to the way the economies were collectivized, the way force was used to coerce the governments to submission, the way the political processes including the elections were rigged, and the way the communist parties were set up as Trojan horses to enable the smooth transition of power into the hands of the Soviets. This represented the most important aspects of Stalin's and Russia's collectivist imperialism, that emphasized the use of power politics, and the drive towards empire as a primary motivation and source of further strength (Pins; Smith; Occupation Museum Foundation; Institute of the History of Latvia; Lina; Shtromas et al. 249-260). Works Cited Institute of the History of Latvia. “The Hidden and Forbidden History of Latvia Under Soviet and Nazi Occupations 1940-1991”. Selected Research of the Commission of the Historians of Latvia Volume 14. 2005. Web. 7 December 2012. Lina, Juri. “The Communist Take-Over in Estonia”. Under the Sign of the Scorpion- The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire. 2002. Web. 7 December 2012. L’Hommedieu, Jonathan. “Exiles and Constituents: Baltic Refugees and American Cold War Politics, 1948-1960”. University of Turku Faculty of Social Sciences. 2011. Web. 7 December 2012. Occupation Museum Foundation. “The Three Occupations of Latvia”. OMF. 2005. Web. 7 December 2012. < http://www.mfa.gov.lv/data/file/e/P/3_okupacijas.pdf> Pins, Michael. “Collectivization in Latvia”. Econ10.bu.edu. n.d. Web. 7 December 2012. Shtromas, Alexander et al. “The Modus Operandi of a Communist Takeover”. Totalitarianism and the Prospects for a World Order. 2003. Lexington Books/Google Books. 7 December 2012. . Smith, Jeremy. “Soviet Nationalist Policies”. Gale Encyclopedia of Russian History. 2012. Web. 7 December 2012. Smulkstys, Julius. “The Incorporation of the Baltic States by the Soviet Union”. Lituanus 14 (2)- Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences. Summer 1968. Web. 7 December 2012. < http://www.lituanus.org/1968/68_2_02Smulkstys.html> Read More