by David Zenian
On the top floor of the Viru Hotel in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, outdated listening devices, a small bed, a pair of boots, notebooks, and an old winter coat are the only reminders of an era which the Estonians refer to as the 50 long years of Soviet occupation.
The once shabby high-rise hotel has since been renovated and today it looks like any of the best hotels in Scandinavia. An iron door to the top floor remains locked, but soon a glass partition will allow visitors to see what once was a KGB office from where Soviet Secret agents monitored the conversations of hotel guests.
Estonia, like neighboring Latvia and Lithuania, was occupied by the Soviet Army and incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940, but in just ten short years since independence, following the breakup of the USSR, the Baltic states have turned a new page.
"If someone had predicted that the Baltic states would experience rapid growth and a major improvement in living standards so soon after independence, that person would have been sent to a mental asylum," an Estonian journalist remarked.
"After all, we are small countries with few natural resources but, on the other hand, like American real estate agents would say a lot depends on location, location and location," he said.
And the Baltic states are very well located.
Situated on the Gulf of Finland, Tallinn is home to nearly one third of Estonia's 1.4 million population. Helsinki, the capital of Finland, is a mere 18 minute helicopter hop away—and one charter company provides more than a dozen shuttle flights to and from the two cities every day.
The ease of communication is also true with the Latvian capital of Riga and the Lithuanian capital city of Vilnius.
"I'm sure our situation would have been a lot different if we were land-locked like Armenia," an Estonian travel agent said. "Estonia's population is just a little over 1.4 million, and during the first 10 months of the year 2000, we had more than 2.8 million tourists, mostly from the Scandinavian countries. Of course we don't depend only on tourism, but foreign visitors spend money here and that's good for our economy."
The same proportion of foreign visitors is also true with Latvia and Lithuania. In the first decade after independence, all three countries have given special attention to their tourism potentials. Dozens of new hotels have been built, mostly with major financial investments from such giants like the Radisson, Scandic and similar international groups.
Airports have not just been repaired, but actually replaced with modern facilities. Arriving in any of the three Baltic capitals, a visitor finds it difficult to believe that a mere ten years ago, they were nothing but Soviet airports.
Gone are the days when the only flights out of main airports of the Baltic countries were to Moscow. Most major European carriers now use all three airports.
It's true that maybe Tallinn gets the lion's share of foreign tourists, but Riga and Vilnius are not that far behind.
But what makes the Baltics so attractive?
"We were never assimilated into the Soviet culture despite 50 years of occupation," an Estonian university professor told me. "Unlike some of the other former Soviet Republics, we never embraced the communist ideology. We just kept silent.
"I guess we had no other choice but to remain quiet. After all, the people of the Baltics are pacifists by nature. We are also rather stubborn and don't integrate easily," he said.
One proof of that was the very limited active membership of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians in their respective ruling communist parties from 1940 until independence 50 years later.
But despite their laid-back nature, they were not able to escape the mass deportations and persecutions so familiar with the years of communist rule across the Soviet Union.
Less than a year after the creation of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic in July 1940, the deportations began. Just during the night of June 14, 1941, an estimated 10,000 people, most of them women, children and the elderly, were taken from their homes in the middle of the night and sent to Siberia in cattle cars.
That same night, June 14, 1941, 15,000 Latvians were deported. In March 1949, another 42,000 Latvians were deported. Neighboring Lithuania did not escape the mass deportations either.
Between 1941 and 1952 as many as 300,000 Lithuanians were either deported or jailed.
But as much as the deportations traumatized the population, it was the rapid change in demographics that still lingers on until today. It was during the early years of the occupation that thousands of Soviet workers, especially from Russia and some from the other Soviet republics, were encouraged to settle in the Baltic states.
For example, in the years immediately before the Soviet occupation, more than 85 percent of Tallinn's population were native Estonians. The Russians were a mere five percent.
According to figures based on most recent statistics, the Russians today constitute a little over 40 percent of Tallinn's population. The same proportion also translates to the overall ethnic composition of the country itself.
The same is almost true with Latvia. There, while the ethnic Latvians are in the majority with a 55.7 percent of the population, the Russians still weigh in with a little over 33 percent in a country of 2.4 million.
It's only Lithuania which boasts an 81 percent ethnic Lithuanian population in a country of 3.6 million where the Russians are a mere 8.4 percent.
Over the centuries, all three Baltic states have always shared a common destiny, and while treated as Balts by outsiders, a name given to the inhabitants of the Baltics, they have kept their identities in more than one way.
All three national languages are different. Despite repeated proclamations of Baltic cooperation, ordinary Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians generally ignore each other. If asked, an average citizen may well be hard pressed to name a single cultural figure from the other Baltic states, but could probably name many from Russia or Sweden.
They are also different in orientation. The Estonians have very close links with Finland and Scandinavia, the Latvians feel closer to the Germans while the Lithuanians are more likely to be influenced by the Poles, other Central Europeans and probably more so to the United States—home to the largest Lithuanian Diaspora.
There are also differences in religion. Latvia and Estonia are predominantly Lutheran while Lithuania is Catholic.
Even though their differences are many, they do share a collective mistrust of Russia. Nearly 10 years after independence, all three Baltic nations still hold a grudge.
They also share a common faith in the West, a staunch refusal to submit to foreign occupation, and closeness to the land, nature and especially their forests.
The Soviet occupation is over. Gone are the long lines for bread, the communist flags, the many statues of Lenin, the rampant shortages of everything from bananas to toilet paper, restricted zones, censorship, the virtually all-ethnic Russian police forces, searchlights along its shores to prevent escape to the West, May Day parades and Communism.
Along with the mass deportations during the early years of the Soviet occupation, hundreds of thousands of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians also escaped to the West. Some settled in the nearby Nordic countries, but many thousands of others started new lives in the United States and Canada.
Those in so-called self-imposed exile never accepted the communist regime in their home countries.
Estonian émigrés maintained a sort of government-in-exile until 1991 when the entity was disbanded following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Re-birth of the Estonian Republic restored the citizenship to all those who had fled their country during and after the second World War.
Many of the émigrés began returning to Estonia, and several Diaspora Estonians, including many from the 25,000-strong community living in the United States, were given top government positions, including ambassadorships in such places as Germany, Austria, and the United States.
The parents of the current Estonian Foreign Minister Toomas H. Ilves, who lived most of his adult life in New Jersey, escaped to Sweden in 1944 where he was born.
The Latvian Diaspora, which numbers close to 100,000 in the United States alone, was also quick to adjust to the new realities at home.
The President of Latvia, Ms. Vaira Vike-Freibegra, was a young girl of seven when her parents escaped to Canada. She moved back to Latvia and was elected President in July 1999.
The Latvians, like the other Baltic nations, restored the citizenship of all those who had left the country because of the Soviet occupation.
Today, thousands of Diaspora Latvians have not only returned to their homes, but have also entered government and the diplomatic service. The Latvian Ambassadors in Canada, Portugal and NATO Headquarters in Brussels are all Diaspora Latvians.
The same is true with the Lithuanians, who have the largest Diaspora in the United States—an estimated 1,000,000.
All three Baltic communities in the United States, Canada, western Europe and Scandinavia are very active in their close involvement with their home countries.
The input from Diaspora Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, along with the open-door policy adopted by the various administrations since independence, has helped boost and rejuvenate the economies of the three Baltic states.
Estonia has styled itself as a gateway between East and West, and has aggressively pursued economic reform and integration with the West. It has also made excellent progress in infrastructural adjustments, boosting industrial production, enhancing privatization and enacting laws that provide equal opportunities for domestic and foreign individuals as well as corporations.
Once totally dependent on the rest of the Soviet Union, Estonia today lists a number of neighboring countries as its leading trading partners.
The second largest of the Baltic states, Latvia has also replaced its old centrally planned economic system with a structure based on free-market principles. Two-thirds of employment and more than 60 percent of the GDP is now in the private sector—and growing. Unemployment has held steady at seven percent in recent years.
The largest of the three, Lithuania, is moving ahead with the privatization of its large industrial base. Unemployment remains low and inflation under control.
"Give the Baltic states a few more years and they will be like the rest of the Scandinavian countries. Fifty years of occupation did not turn these people into Soviets. They have just gone back to their roots, and have done extremely well in the first ten years since independence," a Western diplomat said.
