GalleryActual and current circumstances
Now the Soviets were complete masters of the Baltic States. Important Soviet personalities, such as Dekanozov, Vyshinsky and Zhdanov, were dispatched from Moscow to form pro-Soviet governments and to produce puppet parliaments by fake elections, which would ask for incorporation into the U.S.S.R. The staging of all this was so scandalously primitive that the Government of the United States and other governments of real democratic countries could not but condemn these proceedings ... as the United States Government did by declaring on July 23, 1940, that:"during these past few days the devious processes whereunder the political independence and territorial integrity of the three small Baltic Republics—Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—were deliberately annihilated by one of their more powerful neighbors, have been rapidly drawing to their conclusion ..."
"From the day when the peoples of these Republics first gained their independent and democratic form of government the people of the United States have watched their admirable progress in self-gov¬ernment with deep and sympathetic interest.
17 "The policy of this Government is universally known. The people of the United States are opposed to predatory activities no matter whether they are carried on by use of force or by threat of force. They are likewise opposed to any form of intervention on the part of one State, however powerful, in the domestic concerns of any other sovereign State, however weak.
"These principles constitute the very foundations upon which the existing relationship between the 21 sovereign Republics of the New World rests.
"The United States will continue to stand by these principles, because of the conviction of the American people that unless the doctrine in which these principles are inherent once again governs the relations between nations, the rule of reason, of justice, and of Law—in other words, the basis of modern civilization itself—cannot be preserved."*
Thus began the Calvary1 of the Baltic peoples. The facts about the persecution, executions and deportations of the Baltic peoples en masse are known, as well as the facts of the nationalization of their properties and destruction of their cultural and economic life.** The standard of living was levelled to that of the Bolshevik. A russification even worse than in Czarist times began. The Bolsheviks did what the hypocritical Germans expected. Their rule became so abhorrent to the Baltic peoples that they considered even their traditional enemies, the Germans, liberators when the latter started their attack against Soviet Russia on June 22, 1941.
It is really unbelievable that the Bolsheviks could have assumed that the Germans would not attack them, although this became evident already in December 1940. But as late as on January 10, 1941, the Germans signed a frontier agreement with the Bolsheviks—this was evidently done in order to continue to deceive the Bolsheviks, who enhanced their atrocities in the spring of 1941 and in May started mass-deportations of the Latvian people.***
But the Germans themselves, after having occupied the Baltic countries, carried on where the Bolsheviks had stopped. Actually the Germans took full possession of all property left—public and private, and, contrary to international law, also mobilized the Baltic peoples for labor and military service.
The Baltic States were submitted to the complete rule of the Gestapo and to the whims of Hitler's satraps, who established the so-called "Ostland" on the combined territories of the Baltic States and White-Russia. Even the names of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are no longer used.****
This is the result of the balance of power politics and breach of treaties and promises of the U.S.S.R. Instead of creating a real collective security organization with the Baltic States and Poland, the U.S.S.R. delivered them to the Gestapo and lost a big slice of its own territory.
Instead of recognizing its error and trying to make good, the Soviet Government is continuing to hold in concentration camps scores of thousands
The U.S.S.R. Government also continues to consider the Baltic States as parts of the U.S.S.R., although it actually lost control over the Baltic territories already in July, 1941, and declared its agreement with Germany of August 23, 19&9, and all subsequent treaties null and void when it signed on July 30, 1941, the treaty of reestablishment of relations with Poland. It is also to be emphasized that the dealings of the U.S.S.R. with Germany or other states in matters of the sovereignty of Latvia and the other Baltic States are null and void according to the universally adopted rule of International Law that "res inter alios acta" are not binding for a third part. The U.S.S.R. signed the Atlantic Charter on September 24, 1941, in London, but tries nonetheless to obtain the recognition of the annexation of the Baltic States effectuated when dealing with Germany.
On May 26, 1942, the U.S.S.R., in signing the alliance treaty with Great Britain, again promised non-aggrandizment and non-interference, but actually it maintains in Moscow the pro-Soviet puppet governments created for the Baltic countries, waiting for reinstatement and for continuing the interrupted bolshevization . . .
The question arises, why does the U.S.S.R. so intensively insist on the possession of the Baltic States and why all this intensive propaganda is made about the Baltic States being historical parts of Russia, artificial creations, buffer states, etc.?
| The Department of State Bulletin of July 27, 1940, Vol. Ill, No. 57. | ||
| Latvia in 1939-1942, Published by the Press Bureau of the Latvian Legation, Washington, D. C. | ||
| Latvia in 1939-1942, pp. 116, 120. | ||
| Latvia Under German Occupation, 1941-1943, Published by the Press Bureau of the Latvian Legation, Washington, D. C. |
| 1 | i.e., "crucifiction" |
