Ethnic Division, National Consolidation
The Consequences of the Hitler-Stalin Pact in the Baltic
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
For the Baltic republics, the secret protocol of the Hitler-Stalin pact meant not only the end of their statehood. Its consequences caused a reorientation and radicalisation of self-perception among Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians. The efforts of the Soviet state to use terror to model the Baltic nations according to its own concept of order provoked resistance and created ethnic divisions within the Baltic societies. This was a necessary condition for the National Socialists’ policies of annihilation, which after the occupation of the Baltic sought to link the local experience with Soviet terror to overall German goals. However, that experience also became an important factor of national consolidation.
(Osteuropa 7-8/2009, pp. 187–202)