STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/links/joinlb ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Washington Post June 10, 2001 Why Is Russia Still Peddling This Old Soviet Lie? By Mark Kramer Mark Kramer is director of the Harvard Project on Cold War Studies and a senior associate of the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University. The Soviet Union is still dead, but some Soviet fictions live on. The Russian government's recent statements in defense of the Soviet occupation of the Baltics are more than just bewildering or dishonest. They are also causing tensions that -- perhaps sooner rather than later -- will be felt in Washington and Europe as the three Baltic nations press their cases to become members of an expanded NATO. It was 60 years ago this week, on the night of June 13, 1941,that Soviet troops began deporting tens of thousands of Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians to prison camps in Siberia. Within hours, men, women and children deemed "enemies of the Soviet regime" were rounded up. Many never made it to the gulags. They were executed on the spot. The brutal operation was intended to consolidate Soviet rule in the Baltic nations, which had been independent until the Soviets sent troops to occupy them in October 1939. Annexation followed, along with puppet governments. The Nazi invasion of the USSR through the Baltics, which took place just a week after the mass deportations, temporarily disrupted the Soviets' hold. But after driving out the Germans in 1944, the Soviet army returned and undertook new rounds of deportations and executions, this time accusing local residents of Nazi collaboration. All told, the Soviet forces shipped off or executed more than 250,000 people, according to the documented evidence. Nearly 10 years have elapsed since the Soviet Union dissolved and the Baltic nations regained their independence -- time enough for Russia, the successor state, to own up to the past. But at the Russian foreign ministry, earlier acknowledgments have given way to the same old Soviet lie: An official statement -- issued last June after Lithuania sought compensation for the damage done by Soviet occupation -- maintains that Lithuania and the other Baltic republics "voluntarily" joined the Soviet Union in the face of the Nazi threat. "The USSR sent its troops into the Baltic region only after the leaders there requested it," the statement said. "Assertions about the 'occupation' and 'annexation' of Lithuania by the Soviet Union ignore the political, historical, and legal realities and are therefore devoid of merit." Russian deputy foreign minister Ivan Sergeyev reiterated that view in March, provoking indignation in the Baltics. Anyone seeking to understand why Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are so intent on joining NATO must look back at the events of 60 years ago. Memories of the Soviet era of domination -- and the mass deportations in particular -- are still raw and emotional. In the mid-1990s, the Latvian government compiled a multi-volume record to commemorate the deportations, emulating the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. The volumes list the names of the deportees along with basic information about them (date of birth, date deported, date of death or release, place of imprisonment). As your eyes scan the stark list of names, it is hard not to be struck by the large percentage who are listed as having died on the way to the gulag or within months of arriving. The lasting impact of the trauma was evident to me during a recent visit to Riga, the capital of Latvia. I spoke at length with a survivor of the deportations, Sima Feigins, who was a 20-year-old student when Soviet troops wearing blue berets burst into her parents' home in June 1941. She and her mother were taken away separately from her father; Feigins never saw him again and learned that he died of malnutrition and dysentery six months later at a forced-labor camp. Feigins and her mother were packed into a boxcar with hundreds of other Latvian deportees for the suffocating journey to a Siberian prison camp. Some of them, including Feigins, could speak Russian. But many who spoke Latvian (or, in some cases, German) knew just a smattering of Russian. Feigins recalled how the Soviet guards berated them: "You're all fascists! How dare you not know Russian?!" Feigins's mother quickly weakened under the strain of the camp, and by February 1942 she was too enervated to stand. When she became severely dehydrated, Feigins begged one of the female guards for some milk, offering her last remaining blouse in trade. The guard snatched the blouse -- leaving Feigins only with the overcoat she was wearing -- and, with a sneer, handed over a thimble-sized glass. Feigins rushed the liquid back to her mother, but it was far too little to help. Her mother died the next day. Feigins later had to exchange food with another prisoner to get herself another blouse. Feigins spent the next 15 years in the camp, barely surviving a regimen that killed many of her fellow prisoners. When she was released in May 1956, the Soviet government provided no money for her to return to Riga. As a result, she was forced to stay in the camp another year until she managed to contact the man who was her fiancé at the time of her deportation, whom she had not seen since then. He had made it back to Riga from a separate deportation site in Kazakhstan, and he persuaded his mother to sell her wedding ring so he could pay for Feigins's trip back to Riga. This tragic story of a young woman who was robbed of her parents, her health and the prime years of her life is similar to those of many other survivors I interviewed during my recent trip to Latvia and on previous visits to the Baltic states. I understood why many Baltic officials had hoped that Russia would candidly acknowledge the horrors perpetrated by the Soviet regime. Instead, they had to suffer the further indignity of Russian troops on their soil until 1994, when the military grudgingly completed its withdrawal. The Russian government's recent attempts to defend the Soviet annexation have brought forth statements of protest from Baltic leaders and the Baltic Assembly, a joint advisory group set up by the three Baltic governments. The assembly expressed regret that "Moscow has not yet offered a formal apology for the crimes committed by the legal predecessor of the Russian Federation, the Soviet Union, against Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians. . . . Our appeal to Russia about the past is simultaneously an appeal about the future. Without clearing up the past, the future will have no firm foundation." The Russian government's stance may be motivated in part by a desire to avoid any liability for reparations. The Baltic governments want Moscow to pay for the bloodshed and environmental damage of nearly 50 years of Soviet rule. Under a law adopted last year, the Lithuanian government is obligated to seek reparations of $20 billion. Latvian and Estonian officials have proposed similar amounts, but the Russian government has refused to discuss the matter. Important though the liability issue may be, it does not wholly explain the recent comments by Russian officials. After all, the Russian government could plausibly argue that post-Soviet Russia should not be held accountable for the crimes of the Soviet regime. The whitewashing of Soviet rule in the Baltics is symptomatic instead of Russia's broader failure to distance itself from the Soviet past. It also reflects a widespread sense in Moscow that the Baltic states are and must remain in Russia's "sphere of influence," a term used earlier this year by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian government has vehemently objected to the proposed extension of NATO into the Baltics, but Russia's own actions in misrepresenting the past have exacerbated the problem, giving the Baltic countries greater incentive to seek NATO protection. To be sure, the Baltic governments do not expect Russia to attack their countries or to undertake other malevolent actions in the near future. They are well aware of the difference between today's Russia and the Soviet regime under Joseph Stalin. Nonetheless, memories of what happened in the Baltic states from 1940 to 1991 will not fade anytime soon. Russia's willingness to foment insurgencies and engage in military operations in the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Moldova and Tajikistan has not inspired confidence. So long as the Russian government fails to acknowledge that the Baltic states were victims of Soviet rule and not voluntary participants in their occupation, suspicions of Moscow's ultimate intentions will persist. Because the Baltic states are so small, they know they must make strenuous efforts to qualify for NATO membership. All three are now solid democracies and are working toward eventual membership in the European Union. To bring their armies up to NATO standards, they have established a Baltic Defense College in Tartu, Estonia, under the command of a Danish general, a Baltic peacekeeping battalion (part of which has served in Bosnia-Herzegovina), a joint Baltic naval force, and a Baltic air surveillance and control network. Public sentiment in Lithuania about the prospect of joining NATO has been mixed, but any reservations would likely fade if the Western governments held out a realistic chance of entry. In the West, however, many officials are concerned about antagonizing Russia. These concerns are perfectly legitimate, but there are ways of handling the problem without giving Russia a de facto veto over the process. The United States and its allies should stress that the debate over membership for the Baltic countries is a sign of fundamental changes under way in NATO. Although NATO will remain a military alliance, that role will increasingly be overshadowed by its status as a political community of democratic states -- a community that Russia, too, might someday aspire to join. If NATO fails to take in the Baltic states, it will create a new dividing line in Europe. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union brought hope that the divisions of the past could be overcome. A decade later, there is still a chance that this goal can be realized. Although the tragic experiences of 60 years ago cannot be undone, the admission of the Baltic states -- and perhaps eventually Russia -- into NATO will demonstrate that the Western allies will not abandon the new democracies of Europe to an unknown fate. Miroslav Antic, http://www.antic.org/ ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
