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The Problem of Soviet Colonialism in the Baltics

2011; Routledge; Volume: 43; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01629778.2011.628551

1751-7877

Epp Annus,

Eastern European Communism and Reforms

Abstract This essay works through some of the necessary preliminary questions in thinking about Soviet colonialism in the Baltics. It opens by tracing the prehistory of critical thinking about Soviet colonialism in the 1960s and considers why the topic of Soviet colonialism has not (or not yet) become a dominant way to understand Soviet history. The central question posed by the article is whether one can speak about the Soviet invasions of the Baltic States as ‘colonization’. It proposes that, initially, communist Russia did not in fact seek to colonize the Baltic States and instead ‘occupied’ them; however, this initial period of occupation later developed into a period of a colonial rule. Keywords: Baltic statesSoviet colonialismpost-colonialismSoviet UnionSoviet occupation in the BalticsBaltic historyBaltic geopolitics Notes Notes 1 The Baltic activists in exile played an important role in the late 1980s and early 1990s. See Zake 2010 Zake, I. 2010. American Latvian: Politics of a Refugee Community, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. [Google Scholar], pp. 162–67 for a Latvian perspective. 2 See Annus 2011 Annus, E. 2011. Postkolonialismi pealetung post-sovetoloogias: Kas paradigmamuutuse künnisel?. Methis. . Studia humaniora Estonica, 7: 10–25. [Google Scholar] for a critical overview of literature published in the field. Recent additions include Kangilaski 2011 Kangilaski, J. 2011. Lisandusi postkolonialismi diskussioonile. Kunstiteaduslikke uurimusi, 1–2: 7–25. [Google Scholar] and Kapper 2011 Kapper, S. 2011. Pärimus ja jäliendus. Postkolonialistlik katse mõista rahvatantsu olukorda Eesti NSV-s ja pärast seda. Methis, 7: 122–35. [Google Scholar]. 3 As the article will suggest, a scarcity of postcolonial discourse in the twenty-first-century Baltics is mostly conditioned by its contemporary cultural and geopolitical position and has much less to do with the historical period under investigation. 4 David Drake summarizes in his Sartre monograph Sartre's expressions about the Soviet Union in 1954, published in five articles in Libération: ‘The tone can be gauged by the headline of the first article – TOTAL FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN THE USSR – while in another Sartre predicted that “Around 1960, before 1965, if France continues to stagnate, the average standard of living in the USSR will be 30 per cent to 40 per cent higher than ours”’ (2005, p. 92). In later years Sartre tried to give different excuses for his laudatory words (fragile health, uncertainty, politeness towards generous guests). Nonetheless it's clear that, for a while, Sartre was impressed with the ‘achievements’ of the Soviet Union. 5 David Chioni Moore's article was initially published in 2001. This quote comes from an introductory summary attached to the revised version of the article, published in 2006. 6 The great exception here would seem to be Ukraine studies, where according to Vitaly Chernetsky, ‘Ukraine has experienced a veritable boom of talking and writing about things postcolonial’ (2007, p. 48). 7 Many recent articles about Baltic or Soviet colonialism touch upon the topic, often with reference to either the supposed discomfort of postcolonial studies faced with the communist regime in the USSR, or else to the resistance within the Baltics themselves to adopting a postcolonial frame (see Buckler 2009 Buckler, JA. 2009. What Comes after ‘Post-Soviet’ in Russian Studies?. PMLA, 124(1): 251–63. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Jirgens 2006 Jirgens, KE. 2006. ‘Fusions of Discourse: Postcolonial/Postmodern Horizons in Baltic Culture’ in Kelertas, V. (ed.) Baltic Postcolonialism (Amsterdam, Rodopi), pp. 45–82 [Google Scholar]; Kelertas 2006b Kelertas, V. (ed.) (2006b) Baltic Postcolonialism (Amsterdam, Rodopi) [Google Scholar]; Moore 2001 Moore, DC. 2001. Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet? Toward a Global Postcolonial Critique. PMLA, 116(1): 111–28. [Google Scholar]; Račevskis 2006 Račevskis, K. 2006. “Toward a Postcolonial Perspective on the Baltic States”. In Baltic Postcolonialism, Edited by: Kelertas, V. 165–186. Amsterdam: Rodopi. [Google Scholar]). My aim here is to map these causes as systematically as possible. 8 It is worth noting not only that colonial critique relied on Western Marxism, but that Lenin himself was also included among its authorities. One of the frequently quoted texts was Lenin's Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (published in 1917), where the author linked colonialism with the growth of capitalism and argued that colonization was necessary for European finance capitalism, which needs new markets to invest its profits (Lenin 1973 Lenin, VI. 1973. Imperializm i raskol sotsializma, Moskva: Politizdat. [Google Scholar]). See, for example, Loomba 1998 Loomba, A. 1998. Colonialism–Postcolonialism, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], p. 5, and Young 1995 Young, R. 1995. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], p. 36. Obviously, this combination of capitalism and colonialism discouraged the possibility of thinking about the Soviet sphere in terms of colonization. 9 Concerning Russia as a contemporary colonial power, see Thompson 2008 Thompson, E. 2008. “Postcolonial Russia”. In in A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures: Continental Europe and Its Empires, 412–17. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. [Google Scholar]. 10 In a summer 2007 survey of 1802 Russians, ages 16 to 29, 63% agreed with Putin's declaration of 25 April 2005 that the collapse of the Soviet Union was ‘the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century’ (Chandler 2008 Chandler, R. 2008. Shadow World: Resurgent Russia, the Global New Left, and Radical Islam, Washington: Regnery Publishing. [Google Scholar], p. 95). 11 There is no doubt about the existence of a high-quality critical scholarship in contemporary Russia; see the works of Fofanova and Morozov and Zubkova quoted in this article, for example, and the many interesting writings published in the series Istoriia stalinizma by the publisher Rosspen. 12 A pejorative name for Ukrainians in Russian. 13 Latvians and Estonians had belonged to the Lutheran church, which supported general literacy: ‘According to the 1897 census, 96% of Estonians and 92% of Latvians in the Baltic provinces were able to read’, whereas ‘only 29% of Russians could read’ (Kasekamp 2010 Kasekamp, A. 2010. A History of the Baltic States, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 85). 14 Among the earlier ones were Pavlyshyn 1992 Pavlyshyn, M. 1992. Post-Colonial Features in Contemporary Ukrainian Culture. Australian Slavonic and East European Studies, 6(2): 41–55. [Google Scholar], Pavlyshyn 1993 Pavlyshyn, M. 1993. Ukrainian Literature and the Erotics of Postcolonialism: Some Modest Propositions. Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 17(1–2): 110–26. [Google Scholar], Vichnevski 1995 Vichnevski, A. 1995. L’Asie centrale post-soviétique: entre le colonialisme et la modernité. Revue d’études comparatives Est-Ouest, 26(4): 101–123. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], Mettam and Williams 1998 Mettam, CW and Williams, SW. 1998. Internal Colonialism and Cultural Divisions of Labour in the Soviet Republic of Estonia. Nations and Nationalities, 4(3): 363–88. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], and Baberowski 1999 Baberowski, J. 1999. Auf der Suche nach Eindeutigkeit: Kolonialismus und zivilisatorische Mission im Zarenreich und in der Sowjetunion. Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 47(4): 482–504. [Google Scholar]. 15 Also the promising Rossiia i Baltiia series, which is published in Moscow and includes articles by both Russian and Baltic scholars, has not yet reached the post-World War II era (see Chubar’ian & Nazarova 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006) 16 Soviet colonialism was, of course, Russian colonialism. In the following discussion I use the narrower term, ‘Soviet colonialism’, not ‘Russian colonialism’, since Russian colonialism more broadly would involve us in a long history of annexations, evolving over the centuries. We should keep in mind that nearly all the areas forced into the Soviet Union had already experienced earlier waves of Russian colonialism and serious attempts at Russification. Soviet colonialism can often be seen to continue this policy. 17 Concerning the extensions to the Geneva Convention, see Milano (2006 Milano, E. 2006. Unlawful Territorial Situations in International Law: Reconciling Effectiveness, Legality, and Legitimacy, Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], pp. 91–3). 18 This is not to deny the possibility of colonial imagination, of colonial dreams without real conquests (see Zantrop 1997). 19 Regarding the Soviet simulacrum as a postmodern phenomenon, Annus and Hughes use the term simulacrum, a copy without an original, to stress the difference between the Soviet claims about reality and the actual situation: ‘The totalizing nature of the simulacrum, the fact that there was no exterior point of articulation to it, meant that the simulacrum could manufacture itself – not just in cultural or interpretive but also in economic terms, such as numbers and statistics. Such a thoroughly empowered simulacrum was able to counteract and master the facts of reality for decades – if only by neglecting them’ (2004, p. 58). Alexei Yurchak makes a similar point: ‘The late Soviet world became a kind of “postmodern” universe where grounding in the real world was no longer possible, and where reality became reduced to discursive simulacra’ (2006, p. 76). 20 Settler colonies and exploitation colonies are two widely recognized types of colonies. In addition to these, maritime colonies, base colonies, plantation colonies are also sometimes differentiated. For our purposes, it suffices to outline the basic distinction between settler and exploitation colonies. 21 See, for example, Ewa Thompson's Imperial Knowledge (2000 Thompson, E. 2000. Imperial Knowledge, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. [Google Scholar]) on that matter. 22 The numbers were significantly smaller in Estonia and Latvia. Andres Kasekamp points out that very few Lithuanians had been mobilized into the Soviet or German armies and thus more young men were available in Lithuania (2010, p. 142). 23 Concerning mass repressions in Estonia, see Saueauk 2009 Saueauk, M. 2009. ‘Mass Repression in Estonia During the Late Stalinist Period’ in Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity, Estonia since 1944. Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. (Tallinn, Estonian Foundation for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity) [Google Scholar].