Now, for a little history of these Baltic countries. Read carefully, there's a test at the end!
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| Attribution: Wiki |
800: Viking raids around the Baltic region.
1201: Teutonic Orders (German Knights &/or militant monks) forcibly occupy and convert local pagan peoples to Christianity. The Knights were not defeated in Lithuania until 1410.
1219: Danes seized Tallinn (Estonia), a strategic trading port.
1282: Riga (Latvia) becomes part of the trading confederation of port cities and merchant associations, known as the Hanseatic League, for more than 700 years. Other Hansa cities included Tallinn and Klaipeda.
1386: Royal marriage unties Lithuania & Poland.
1569: In the 16th century the rulers of different regions sought to partner themselves with various foreign powers, which resulted in Polish, Swedish and Danish involvement. Lithuania formed a Commonwealth with Poland giving rise to one of the largest countries in Europe at the time. The region was Catholic with some parts becoming Lutheran during the Reformation.
1655: Russia invades Lithuania (Vilnius). At the beginning of the 18th century the Swedish Empire was attacked by a coalition of several European powers in the Great Northern War. Among these powers was Russia seeking to restore its access to the Baltic Sea. During the course of war it conquered all of the Sweden's provinces on the Eastern Baltic coast.
1772: As a result of Partitions of Poland (1772 to 1795) Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth ceased to exist and its territories were incorporated into the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia and the Habsburg Empire.
1918: Declaration of Independence. After the First World War the term "Baltic States" was used to refer to countries by the Baltic Sea that had gained independence from Russia in its aftermath. As such it included not only former Baltic governorates, but also Lithuania and Finland.
1940: Soviets occupied all of the territory of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, installing new, pro-Soviet governments in all three countries. Newly "elected" parliaments of the three countries formally applied to "join" the Soviet Union in August 1940 and were incorporated into it. Repressions, executions and mass deportations followed after that. Deportations were used as a part of the Soviet Union's attempts (including instituting the Russian language as the only working language) at Russification of its occupied territories. More than 200,000 people were deported by the Soviet government from the Baltic in 1940-1953 to remote, inhospitable areas of the Soviet Union eg Siberia. In addition, at least 75,000 were sent to Gulags. Overall, 10% of the entire adult Baltic population was deported or sent to labor camps
1941: The Soviet control of the Baltic States was interrupted by the Nazi Germany invasion of this region. Initially, many considered the Germans as liberators from the Soviet Union. The Baltic countries hoped for the restoration of independence, but instead the Germans established civil administration. During this occupation the Germans carried out mass deportations and mass killings generating Baltic resistance movements.
1944: The beginning of the Stalinist era. Baltic countries were re-occupied by the Soviet Army and control was re-established, with the passive agreement of the United States and Britain. Forced collectivisation of agriculture began in 1947, and was completed after a mass deportation in March 1949. Private farms were confiscated, and farmers were made to join collective farms. In all three countries Baltic partisans waged unsuccessful guerrilla warfare against the Soviet occupation for the next eight years in a bid to regain their nations' independence. Stalin died in 1953.
1990: In the late 1980s a massive campaign of civil resistance against Soviet rule, known as the Singing Revolution, began. Baltic Way was one of the most spectacular events when a two-million-strong human chain stretched for 600 km from Tallinn to Vilnius on 23 August 1989. In the wake of this campaign Gorbachev's government had privately concluded that the departure of the Baltic republics had become "inevitable". This process contributed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union setting a precedent for the other Soviet republics to secede from the USSR. Soviet Union recognized the independence of the three Baltic States on 6 September 1991.
Each of the three countries declared itself to be the restoration of the sovereign nations that had existed from 1918 to 1940, emphasizing their contention that Soviet domination over the Baltic nations during the Cold War period had been an illegal occupation and annexation. The same legal interpretation is shared by the United States, the United Kingdom, and all other Western democracies, who always considered the forcible incorporation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania into the Soviet Union to be illegal. At least formally, the Western democracies never considered the three Baltic States to be constituent parts of the Soviet Union. Australia was a brief exception to this support of Baltic freedom. In 1974, the Australian Labor government did recognize Soviet dominion (Yes, cough, cough! Another of Gough’s legacies…) but thankfully this decision was reversed by the next Australian Parliament.
2004: After the Baltic States had restored independence, integration with Western Europe was chosen as the main strategic goal. In 2002 the Baltic nations applied to become members of NATO and the EU. Membership was duly achieved in 2004.
2015: Baltic States converted to Euro (conveniently in time for our tour).
