Russia at war 1941-1945

The mutual assistance pacts we had with Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia did not produce the desired results. The bourgeois cliques in these countries were hostile to the Soviet Union, and the anti-Soviet "Baltic Entente" between Latvia and Estonia was latterly extended to Lithuania.

Therefore, especially in view of the international situation, we demanded a change in the government personnel of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and the introduction into these countries of additional Red Army formations. In July free parliamentary elections took place in all three countries, and we can now note with satisfaction that the peoples of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in a friendly élan elected representatives who have since unanimously declared themselves in favour of the introduction of the Soviet system in all three countries, and for their incorporation in the USSR. Ninety-five per cent of all these people had previously formed part of the USSR (sic).

Molotov reckoned that, since September 1939, the population of the Soviet Union had

increased by about twenty-three million people, all of which meant "an important increase in our might and territory".

Relations with Turkey and Iran, he went on, were now "fairly normal", despite the revelations in the German White Paper on the sinister role the two countries had played in the Anglo-French plotting against the Soviet Union. Relations with Japan—since the licking she had received at Halkin Gol—were now also "fairly normal", and a Manchukuo-Mongolian commission would shortly deal with the frontier problem

between the two countries. And then: "I shall not dwell on our relations with the USA if only because there is nothing good to report. [Laughter.] We understand that some Americans don't like our successes in the Baltic countries." He also referred to the gold belonging to the Baltic States which the USA had "grabbed", even though the Soviet Union had bought this gold from them.

He ended with the suggestion that the war would continue for a long time; and that "the entire Soviet people" must remain in a state of "mobilised preparedness" in view of the danger of a military attack on them. "We must not be caught unawares by any 'accident'

or any of the tricks of our foreign enemies."

Paletskis, Kirchenstein and Lauristin respectively representing Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, spoke at this Supreme Soviet meeting, and on August 2 new laws were adopted on the "Formation of the Moldavian SSR", on the "Inclusion of Northern Bukovina and the Khotinsk, Akkerman and Ismail districts of Bessarabia in the Ukrainian SSR", and on the "Admission of the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian SSR's into the USSR". These laws were passed at the request of the parliaments of the three countries, and in virtue of Arts. 34 and 35 of the Soviet Constitution. The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was

instructed to fix the date for elections in the three countries. On August 10 Pravda published a "Poem on Stalin" by Salome Neris, a Lithuanian poetess.

Meantime, in the three Baltic States a purge was being carried out amongst "Fascist" and other unreliable elements, with Vyshinsky, Dekanozov and Zhdanov supervising these

operations; estimates vary as to the number of persons deported from the Baltic

Republics between July 1940 and the outbreak of the Soviet-German war, but it is not improbable that they ran into tens of thousands.

Although the Baltic States, like the rest of Europe, had been affected by the war in the West, consumer goods were still plentiful in cities like Tallinn and Riga, and even long afterwards, all the elaborate and ingenious pretexts Russians used to think up in 1940

forgoing on more or less official "missions" to these newly-recovered territories in order to replenish their wardrobes and buy other nice things continued to be a standing joke.

The elections in the three Baltic Soviet Republics followed the usual Soviet pattern, but Russians who visited these countries in the autumn of 1940 had no great illusions about their peoples' unanimous love for the Soviet Union. There were strong pro-Soviet

currents among the Latvian working class, but that was about all. When the Germans

overran the Baltic States in June-July 1941, they met with very little opposition from the population; certain elements continued to be violently anti-Soviet, as is admitted in much of the Russian post-war writing on that stage of the war. The Estonians, although most of them disliked the Germans, had strong affinities with Finland, and Finland was at war with Russia...

Chapter VI RUSSIA AND THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN: A

PSYCHOLOGICAL TURNING-POINT?

In post-war Soviet histories of the war, there is a marked tendency to minimise the