Lithuania and Latvia, 1939 to 1991: war, occupations and restored independence

Begin with the sequence

Lithuania and Latvia were independent states before the Soviet Union occupied them in June 1940 and annexed them in August. German occupation followed in 1941. Soviet rule returned as German forces were driven back in 1944 and 1945. The restoration of independence in 1990 and 1991 therefore concerned states whose governments and populations had already experienced several changes of power.^[2][3][1]

Keep three questions separate: who controlled the territory, what happened to people living there, and whether other governments accepted the change as lawful. A military victory does not, by itself, answer all three.^[4][1]

The earlier article on national movements and the declarations of 1918 explains how these states were proclaimed. This account begins with the crisis that ended their independent government in 1940.

1939 and 1940: pressure, occupation and annexation

The German-Soviet non-aggression pact of August 1939 included a secret protocol dividing the Baltic region into spheres of interest. Moscow then pressured the Baltic governments to accept Soviet military garrisons. Occupation and annexation followed in 1940. Kaarel Piirimäe’s historical introduction warns against treating the pact as an automatic explanation of every later outcome: political decisions and coercion still have to be examined.^[1]

During the first Soviet occupation, arrests targeted members of the former political, military, economic and cultural leadership. Mass deportations followed in June 1941. Lauri Mälksoo’s study places these events in the history of Stalinist repression. After Soviet rule returned, a large deportation from Lithuania took place in May 1948. Another operation in March 1949 deported people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.^[4]

Occupation, imprisonment, deportation and execution describe different experiences. They should not be added together into a single casualty total without establishing who is counted, which territory is covered and whether the same person appears in more than one category. This introduction does not attempt such a total.

German occupation and the Holocaust

Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 brought Lithuania and Latvia under Nazi occupation. This did not restore their independent states. Both territories were incorporated into the German civilian administration called Reichskommissariat Ostland.^[2][3]

German forces and their collaborators murdered most Jews in Lithuania and Latvia during the Holocaust. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum documents mass shootings by German killing units and local auxiliaries, the confinement of survivors in ghettos and camps, and later deportations. Jewish people from elsewhere in Europe were also deported to Latvia. This was the persecution and murder of people within these societies, not a separate event outside their history.^[2][3]

An account of occupation must therefore distinguish the policies of the occupying power, the conduct of particular collaborators and the lives of victims. It must also leave room to investigate resistance and rescue through their own evidence. Membership of a nationality does not establish an individual’s actions.

The return of Soviet power

As the Red Army returned in 1944 and 1945, Soviet institutions were re-established. Armed resistance continued after the fighting against Germany. Mälksoo describes the subsequent repression of guerrillas and their supporters, including deportations of families. Piirimäe’s synthesis also places nationalisation and forced collectivisation within the restructuring of society under Stalin.^[4][1]

The decades after Stalin’s death in 1953 were not a repetition of the worst years of mass terror. Some deportees returned, and everyday life changed, while political repression and limits on national autonomy continued. Describing the whole period requires attention both to coercion and to the ways people worked, studied, maintained relationships and adapted.^[1][4]

Public movements and the Baltic Way

The Baltic Way on 23 August 1989 linked people in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in a human chain through Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius. The documentary nomination held by UNESCO identifies its organisers as Estonia’s Popular Front Rahvarinne, the Popular Front of Latvia and Lithuania’s Reform Movement Sąjūdis. The protest marked the fiftieth anniversary of the 1939 pact and called for restored independence.^[5]

Public protest was only one part of political change. Historical research also examines negotiations, elections, relations with the Soviet leadership and support from communities abroad. Piirimäe’s introduction describes both the challenge to Moscow and the differences within the movements and institutions involved.^[1]

1990 and 1991: declarations, force and international standing

Lithuania’s Supreme Council adopted the Act on the Re-establishment of the Independent State of Lithuania on 11 March 1990. The Seimas explains its central provision as restoring the exercise of sovereign powers removed by foreign forces in 1940. This was a claim to restored statehood, not a statement that the Soviet government had already accepted it.^[6][1]

Latvia’s declaration of 4 May 1990 restored the constitutional basis of the republic while providing for a transition. On 21 August 1991, its Supreme Council adopted the constitutional law on statehood. That law reaffirmed an independent democratic republic and repealed the declaration’s provision establishing the transition period.^[7][8]

These constitutional decisions did not make the process free of violence. Soviet troops attacked the television facilities in Vilnius in January 1991, killing and injuring civilians defending them. The Seimas account identifies the TV Tower and the Radio and Television building as targets of the attack on 13 January.^[9]

Latvia and Lithuania were admitted to the United Nations on 17 September 1991, under General Assembly resolutions 46/5 and 46/6 respectively. UN admission is a specific international milestone. It is separate from the earlier declarations and does not give a single date for every country’s diplomatic recognition.^[10]

Read this sequence as connected histories of states, institutions and people. The source documents establish particular decisions; scholarship explains their setting and contested meanings. Detailed military campaigns, individual responsibility and the later politics of memory need separate research rather than a single summary judgment.