It’s not like they have had weak socialist movements.

in Estonia the Bolsheviks got 40 percent of the vote during the 1917 elections. The Latvians had their famous riflemen. In the 1920s there were active underground communist organisations in all three of the baltic states.

Now all of that is forgotten. They’ve managed to rewrite history so efficiently and without opposition. The new generation openly praises fascist despots like Ulmanis, Smetona and Päts. The fascist despots of all three respective states were not exactly the most popular rulers. After all, why do you think their house of cards collapsed so easily in 1940?

Also, it was not like the communist were the only ones in opposition to them either – many social democrats, liberals and members of the national bourgeois were in opposition to the rule of Päts in Estonia, Ulmanis in Latvia and Smetona in Lithuania (most likely due to the semi-colonial nature of their governance).

But now these unpopular dictatorships are revered in these nations. Monuments to these men built without opposition.

How?

  • ☭CommieWolf☆@lemmygrad.ml
    111·
    2 days ago

    Theres way fewer Baltic people. The whole of Estonia has less people than one single city in most other European states. It’s a lot easier to propagandize such a small population.

  • Anna ☭🏳️‍⚧️@lemmygrad.ml
    23·
    3 days ago

    I’m a Lithuanian who is living in the UK. Lithuania before the Soviet annexation was a rural and backward peasant state, where there did not exist any form of a communist party, especially compared to its brothers (Latvia, Estonia). Lithuania had a parliament but it was a fascist backing, such that (as you stated) Antanas Smetona was a fascist and he openly admired Mussolini. On top of that, nazi collaboration was a thing and definitely existed in Lithuania against the Soviets (Note that the Baltic people follow the “double genocide theory” bullshit). When Lithuania was annexed, it had a communist party, while Latvia had a communist party since the Bolsheviks, making it one of the earliest communist parties. Lithuania has had a lot of reactionary uptake, including the Forest Brothers, which most of the action take place in, and has killed innocent civilians.

    According to Human Rights in the Soviet Union, Lithuanian Nationalism still continued to exist even under the Khrushchev and Brezhnev era of the USSR. The dissolution started with the CIA (obviously) and it was not out of the popularity of the masses. The Lithuanian Nationalists staged a bloody provocation in order to frame a Soviet Attack.. It is clear that Lithuania had its reactionary nationalism even during the Soviet era.

    Why do Lithuanians support the modern government? Because they want to. They’re want to act more ‘western’ compared to the great ‘Russian threat’. Western in the sense being distinct from Russia. I have also not been taught of Lithuanian history in the USSR and had to search these things for myself (Hence why I am posting sources). It’s a shame. Lithuania could’ve been a great nation (in the socialist sense) however due to the revisionism of the USSR on top of the Lithuanian nationalism, I cannot call myself a Lithuanian patriot, because I would be associated with the reactionaries that kept this country running and also drowning itself of air as it sends resources to the Ukraine.

  • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
    111·
    3 days ago

    I’m going to offer a more historical explanation and say that imo you have to go back further than WW2 or even WW1 to understand the deep seated issues that these countries have. A big reason why they are so mentally colonized is because they were physically and culturally colonized for hundreds of years by the Germans during the middle ages when the various crusader orders established their own states in the Baltics. During that time they developed a collective Stockholm syndrome and ever since they can’t stop wanting to be German. And just like the western Ukrainians (who were also colonized by Germans in the form of the Austro-Hungarian empire) oftentimes going completely insane in their zeal to show their loyalty to the West, including being more brutal in their atrocities toward Russians and Jews than even the Nazis.

  • OrnluWolfjarl@lemmygrad.ml
    14·
    3 days ago

    I have a 90-year old neighbour from Estonia who immigrated here, after he retired. The way he describes it, the youth in the Baltics in the late 70s and throughout the 80s were for some reason attracted a lot to Western culture (films, rock music, jeans, etc). Because many of those things were inaccessible or banned, they started feeling resentment towards the state. Now those people grew up and are running the countries.

  • eldavi@lemmy.ml
    8·
    3 days ago

    they have historical drama with the bolsheviks from their almost genocidal heavy handed responses to outside pressures from the west; so now any flavor of marxism is as hated there as it is in most everywhere else.

    it’s sort of like a european version of “my grandfather did nothing wrong but was shot anyways on the slave-like plantation that he owned” from cuban expats in my country.