The aftermath of the Great Patriotic War was a period of rebuilding, but did not bring an end to the suffering of the Soviet peoples, many of whom faced renewed persecution at the hands of Stalin’s regime. A further consequence of the defeat of Hitler was the emergence of the Soviet Union as one of the world’s great powers. While it did not take long for the newly formed friendship between the USSR, Great Britain and the USA to deteriorate into Cold War, the Allied victory allowed a breathing space in which Stalin could redraw the borders of Eastern Europe and impose favourable communist regimes in territories liberated from the Germans, without any opposition from the other great powers. This included the incorporation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into the USSR, where they were ultimately to present a formidable challenge to the integrity of the Soviet Union. This chapter describes this process and some of its consequences but, before doing so, it is necessary to go back to the end of the Russian Civil War and examine developments in the Baltic states which gained their independence from Russian rule at that time.

INDEPENDENT ESTONIA, LATVIA AND LITHUANIA

Soviet recognition of the three independent Baltic states in 1920 resulted from the particular circumstances of the Russian Civil War at the time, as described in Chapter 2. Support for the Bolsheviks remained strong, especially in the cities, and for the time being the possibility of further revolution remained a hope for Soviet Russia, and a fear for the new governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as well as for the major international powers. Applications by all three countries to join the League of Nations in 1920 were rejected largely as a result of the anticipation that the League might become embroiled in military confrontation with Soviet Russia if it accepted the vulnerable states as members, at a time when the Entente powers were winding up their intervention in the Russian Civil War.