V. Stanley Vardys

The Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which had been independent between the two world wars, were annexed by the Kremlin in June of 1940, during the dramatic days when Paris fell to the Germans, and became republics of the Soviet Union. In thus reversing the course of modern Baltic history, Moscow separated the Baltic countries not only from Western Europe, toward which they had been oriented in international politics, but also from the nations of Central and Eastern Europe with which they shared most of their social and cultural characteristics. At present one of the main Communist propaganda themes aimed at the postwar generation of Baits is that the independence of their parents was a historical mistake, a deviation from their manifest destiny to be part of Russia. In the Soviet view, Baltic countries should not be independent; their national survival and progress can be assured only by the Leninist nationality policy of the U.S.S.R. Under Khrushchev, the goal of this policy was to establish melting-pot conditions for "the creation of a single nation with a single native [Russian] language."[i] Khrushchev's successors have continued to pursue this objective.