During the 1944–1991 Soviet occupation many people from Russia and other parts of the former USSR were settled in the three Baltic countries, while the local languages, religion and customs were suppressed in an "extremely violent and traumatic" occupation.[5][6] Colonization of the three Baltic countries included mass executions, deportations and repression of the native population. During the 1940–1941 and 1944–1991 occupations 605,000 inhabitants of the three countries in total were either killed or deported (135,000 Estonians, 170,000 Latvians and 320,000 Lithuanians). Their properties and personal belonging were confiscated and given to newly arrived colonists – economic migrants, Soviet military, NKVD personnel, as well as functionaries of the Communist Party.[7]David Chioni Moore classified it as a "reverse cultural colonization", where the colonized perceived the colonizers as culturally inferior.[8] However, the Soviet occupation bears greater hallmarks of "classic" colonialism, that is, the USSR establishing control over foreign territories or peoples for the purpose of exploitation and possibly settlement.
Historically revisionist[30] Russian historiography and school textbooks continue to maintain that the Baltic states voluntarily joined the Soviet Union after their each of their peoples carried out socialist revolutions independent of Soviet influence.[31] The post-Soviet government of Russia and its state officials insist that incorporation of the Baltic states was in accordance with international law[32] and gained de jure recognition by the agreements made in the February 1945 Yalta and the July–August 1945 Potsdam conferences and by the 1975 Helsinki Accords,[33][34] which declared the inviolability of existing frontiers.[35] However, this claim has been described as both "nefarious" and a "horrifying insult" — part of an intentional propaganda campaign to spread a myth of Baltic "incorporation".[36]
Russia also agreed to Europe's demand to "assist persons deported from the occupied Baltic states" upon joining the Council of Europe in 1996.[37][38][39] Also, when the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic signed a separate treaty with Lithuania in 1991, it acknowledged the 1940 annexation as a violation of Lithuanian sovereignty and recognised the de jure continuity of the Lithuanian state.[40][41]
Most Western governments maintained that Baltic sovereignty had not been legitimately overridden[42] and thus continued to recognise the Baltic states as sovereign political entities represented by the legations appointed by the pre-1940 Baltic states, which functioned in Washington and elsewhere.[43] The Baltic states regained de facto independence in 1991 during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Russia started to withdraw its troops from the Baltics starting with Lithuania in August 1993. However, it was a violent process and Soviet forces killed several Latvians and Lithuanians.[44] The full withdrawal of troops deployed by Moscow ended in August 1994.[citation needed] Russia officially ended its military presence in the Baltics in August 1998 by decommissioning the Skrunda-1 radar station in Latvia. The dismantled installations were repatriated to Russia and the site returned to Latvian control, with the last Russian soldier leaving Baltic soil in October 1999.[45][46]
^Ziemele, Ineta (2003). "State Continuity, Succession and Responsibility: Reparations to the Baltic States and their Peoples?". Baltic Yearbook of International Law. 3. Martinus Nijhoff: 165–190. doi:10.1163/221158903x00072.
^Kaplan, Robert B.; Baldauf, Richard B. Jr. (2008). Language Planning and Policy in Europe: The Baltic States, Ireland and Italy. Multilingual Matters. p. 79. ISBN978-1847690289. Archived from the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 2 November 2020. Most Western countries had not recognised the incorporation of the Baltic States into the Soviet Union, a stance that irritated the Soviets without ever becoming a major point of conflict.
^Kavass, Igor I. (1972). Baltic States. W. S. Hein. ISBN978-0930342418. Archived from the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 9 September 2020. The forcible military occupation and subsequent annexation of the Baltic States by the Soviet Union remains to this day (written in 1972) one of the serious unsolved issues of international law
^Davies, Norman (2001). Dear, Ian (ed.). The Oxford companion to World War II. Michael Richard Daniell Foot. Oxford University Press. p. 85. ISBN978-0198604464.
^"22 September 1944 from one occupation to another". Estonian Embassy in Washington. 22 September 2008. Archived from the original on 30 June 2018. Retrieved 1 May 2009. For Estonia, World War II did not end, de facto, until 31 August 1994, with the final withdrawal of former Soviet troops from Estonian soil.
^Feldbrugge, Ferdinand; Gerard Pieter van den Berg; William B. Simons (1985). Encyclopedia of Soviet law. Brill. p. 461. ISBN9024730759. Archived from the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 9 September 2020. On March 26, 1949, the US Department of State issued a circular letter stating that the Baltic countries were still independent nations with their own diplomatic representatives and consuls.
^Fried, Daniel (14 June 2007). "U.S.-Baltic Relations: Celebrating 85 Years of Friendship"(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 19 August 2012. Retrieved 29 April 2009. From Sumner Wells' declaration of July 23, 1940, that we would not recognize the occupation. We housed the exiled Baltic diplomatic delegations. We accredited their diplomats. We flew their flags in the State Department's Hall of Flags. We never recognized in deed or word or symbol the illegal occupation of their lands.
^Lauterpacht, E.; C. J. Greenwood (1967). International Law Reports. Cambridge University Press. pp. 62–63. ISBN0521463807. Archived from the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 9 September 2020. The Court said: (256 N.Y.S.2d 196) "The Government of the United States has never recognized the forceful occupation of Estonia and Latvia by the Soviet Union of Socialist Republics nor does it recognize the absorption and incorporation of Latvia and Estonia into the Union of Soviet Socialist republics. The legality of the acts, laws and decrees of the puppet regimes set up in those countries by the USSR is not recognized by the United States, diplomatic or consular officers are not maintained in either Estonia or Latvia and full recognition is given to the Legations of Estonia and Latvia established and maintained here by the Governments in exile of those countries
^Mälksoo, Lauri (2003). Illegal Annexation and State Continuity: The Case of the Incorporation of the Baltic States by the USSR. Leiden & Boston: Brill. ISBN9041121773.
^"Russia and Estonia agree borders". BBC. 18 May 2005. Archived from the original on 12 April 2020. Retrieved 29 April 2009. Five decades of almost unbroken Soviet occupation of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania ended in 1991
^See, for instance, the position expressed by the European Parliament, which condemned "the fact that the occupation of these formerly independent and neutral States by the Soviet Union occurred in 1940 following the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact, and continues." European Parliament (13 January 1983). "Resolution on the situation in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania". Official Journal of the European Communities. C. 42/78. Archived from the original on 28 June 2011. Retrieved 2 March 2007.
^"After the German occupation in 1941–44, Estonia remained occupied by the Soviet Union until the restoration of its independence in 1991." Kolk and Kislyiy v. Estonia (European Court of Human Rights 17 January 2006), Text.
^David James Smith, Estonia: independence and European integration, Routledge, 2001, ISBN0415267285, p. xix
^Van Elsuwege, Peter (April 2004). Russian-speaking minorities in Estonian and Latvia: Problems of integration at the threshold of the European Union(PDF). Flensburg Germany: European Centre for Minority Issues. p. 2. Archived from the original(PDF) on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 10 March 2013. The forcible incorporation of the Baltic states into the Soviet Union in 1940, on the basis of secret protocols to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, is considered to be null and void. Even though the Soviet Union occupied these countries for a period of fifty years, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania continued to exist as subjects of international law.
^Marek (1968). p. 396. "Insofar as the Soviet Union claims that they are not directly annexed territories but autonomous bodies with a legal will of their own, they (The Baltic SSRs) must be considered puppet creations, exactly in the same way in which the Protectorate or Italian-dominated Albania have been classified as such. These puppet creations have been established on the territory of the independent Baltic states; they cover the same territory and include the same population."
^Zalimas, Dainius "Commentary to the Law of the Republic of Lithuania on Compensation of Damage Resulting from the Occupation of the USSR" – Baltic Yearbook of International Law. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, ISBN978-9004137462
^Cite error: The named reference Sokolov was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Combs, Dick (2008). Inside The Soviet Alternate Universe. Penn State Press. pp. 258, 259. ISBN978-0271033556. Archived from the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 9 September 2020. The Putin administration has stubbornly refused to admit the fact of Soviet occupation of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia following World War II, although Putin has acknowledged that in 1989, during Gorbachev's reign, the Soviet parliament officially denounced the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, which led to the forcible incorporation of the three Baltic states into the Soviet Union.
Bugajski, Janusz (2004). Cold peace. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 109. ISBN0275983625. Archived from the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 9 September 2020. Russian officials persistently claim that the Baltic states entered the USSR voluntarily and legally at the close of World War II and failed to acknowledge that Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were under Soviet occupation for fifty years.
^
"Baltic article". The World & I. 2 (3). Washington Times Corp: 692. 1987.
Shtromas, Alexander; Faulkner, Robert K.; Mahoney, Daniel J. (2003). "Soviet Conquest of the Baltic states". Totalitarianism and the prospects for world order: closing the door on the twentieth century. Applications of political theory. Lexington Books. p. 263. ISBN978-0739105337.