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Comment by thriftwy | Hacker News Reader

It's always funny to me how facts about previous allegiance are withheld with impunity, apparently in hopes to confuse a distracted reader.

I can forgive people for forgetting to mention that Baltic states were part of Russia for centuries before they were re-annexed by the USSR in 1945. Indeed I can see how people had 20 years of independence and weren't fans of being included into a socialist utopia. But, just yesterday I've read that Georgia had a "Bolshevik invasion of 1921". A province of Russian Empire for a really long time and up until 1917.

It looks like the free press thinks you can make legitimate territorial claims go away by not mentioning their existence.

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Certainly many parts of the world aren't too big on democracy and self-determination, but from my point of view any military operation not sanctioned by the target region's people or government counts as an invasion.

Maybe that's not how all the people involved saw it, but we see, judge, and name events through the lens of our own values.

> any military operation not sanctioned by the target region's people or government counts as an invasion

It does not give one an excuse to skip the whole history of the region and start it where it fits them. I wonder if their values include skipping uncomfortable trivia or highlighting it when appropriate.

With regards to values, the legitimacy of a 3 years old government is in deep doubt. The values you've mentioned repeatedly lead to political backing of seriously unpopular regimes just because they fit the narrative that was never true in the first place.

If you only care about the current citizens'/government's opinion, you actually can ignore history leading up to that point. Geopolitics is complicated, however, and I think most people would bring more nuance to any moral judgment. What if a large portion of the previous population was killed/driven out, for instance? What if the citizens are subjected to "brainwashing"?

I do have to disagree on the notion that a government should have a historical or traditional basis to be legitimate. In my eyes it needs foremost the support of its "subjects". In reality, different factors make a stable government, but legitimacy is ultimately a value judgment.

I agree with you, but I was talking about a specific article which does an explicit history dive:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/19/georgi...

Also, this convention of not digging into a country's history can only ever work before it brings its history as a topic of conversation. In case of small, post-colonial countries that often happens on the first contact.

> I can forgive people for forgetting to mention that Baltic states were part of Russia for centuries before they were re-annexed by the USSR in 1945. Indeed I can see how people had 20 years of independence and weren't fans of being included into a socialist utopia.

There's fair bit more history than the 20 years of independence squished by Russians in 1940. Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were always very distinct from Russia in religion, language, culture, education and other key areas. A good example of this are literacy rates in European part of Russian empire recorded during 1897 census.[1] Even two centuries later, the effect of protestantism and the trace of school system established by Sweden is clearly visible. Moreover, Estonia and Latvia weren't even ruled by Russians, but by Baltic German nobility, and the main language used in administrative affairs was German.

Likewise, to portray Georgia as a mere "province of Russian Empire" is ridiculous given that they are so distinct that you cannot even read what they write, because they use a different alphabet. Finland or Georgia are no more "a part of Russia" than than Egypt and India are characterized by labeling them as "former British provinces" (with a subtext that they belong to Britain).

[1] https://i.imgur.com/uCFzZmq.jpeg

Before early XX century most of the globe was comprised of countries who looked like that.

> the main language used in administrative affairs was German

> to portray Georgia as a mere "province of Russian Empire" is ridiculous given that they are so distinct that you cannot even read what they write

Please don't tell me that many Englishmen could read Devangari script or that many Frenchmen could read (pre-Latin) Vietnamese.

You may not like it today, but these territorial claims were seen as completely valid.

The subtexts that you are pinning on me are your own invention, I just say about unfaithful representation of history in the press.

> The subtexts that you are pinning on me are your own invention, I just say about unfaithful representation of history in the press.

What is the purpose of having to mention that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were in Russian Empire in the context of their invasion and occupation in the 1940s if not an attempt to give legitimacy to the invasions?

It's far more important to stress that the people on the Baltic coast are not Russians, have nothing in common with them, nor have never wanted to be close with them. The same applies to the many other indigenous Finno-Ugric peoples[1] on the other side of the border inside the present-day Russia who have been driven away from their land like Native Americans and decimated with hostile policies that have resulted in their rapid decline.

[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FeoDW20WQAESJuZ?format=jpg&name=...

> people on the Baltic coast are not Russians, have nothing in common with them, nor have never wanted to be close with them

That wording already shows an unexpected amount of agitation that would prompt further inquires.

> have been driven away from their land like Native Americans and decimated with hostile policies that have resulted in their rapid decline

That's mostly an unfaithful description of what's been happening, no. It also runs counter to the previous "have nothing in common with them, nor have never wanted to be close with them". If you really didn't want to be close to Russians you would get out of our hair for a chance.

"re-annexed"

Wrong word.

"In Nystad, King Frederick I of Sweden formally recognized the transfer of Estonia, Livonia, Ingria, and Southeast Finland (Kexholms län and part of Karelian Isthmus) to Russia in exchange for two million silver thaler, while Russia returned the bulk of Finland to Swedish rule." [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Nystad

The treaty of Nystad from 1721 is obsolete and has been superseded by other treaties. Estonia[1], Latvia[2] and Lithuania[3] fought successful wars of independence against Russia in 1918-1919 and made peace treaties in which Russians recognized sovereignity and withdrew territorial claims. (These treaties were later violated when Russians entered a secret pact with Hitler and they jointly invaded everyone in Europe between Germany and Russia.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tartu_(Estonia%E2%80...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian%E2%80%93Soviet_Peace_T...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Lithuanian_Peac...

> Hitler and they jointly invaded everyone in Europe between Germany and Russia

Wow, I didn't knew Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are located between Germany and Russia.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Map_used...

Here's a helpful map visualizing how Russia and Germany divided Eastern Europe in the secret protocol[1] to the Hitler-Stalin pact: https://i.imgur.com/DvCrPWB.jpeg

As to the "Judenfrei" status, that's a great deal due to the executions and mass deportations[2] that Russians unleashed after invading in 1940. First they banned all Jewish organizations, even fraternities and tennis clubs. Then they started targeting the professional class (politicians, doctors, lawyers, etc) to wipe out people capable of running the country and challenge the Russian rule. Their crime was officially designated as "being socially undesirable". Jews were overrepresented among the victims by a factor of 10. By the time Germans arrived in 1941, only 900 Jews were left in Estonia, as depicted on your map. Some had been deported, others ran away wherever they could. The last 900 remained because they believed that Germans couldn't be worse than the Russian terror of 1940-1941.

When Russians invaded again in 1944 and began their 50-year occupation of the country (which included another wave of terror and mass deportations[3]), they replaced German antisemitic policies with their own and continued suppressing Jewish culture until the very end of the USSR. The Jewish school in Tallinn, for example, opened in 1924, was closed by Germans in 1941, and only in 1990, as the USSR entered the final death spiral, got its confiscated real estate back and resumed teaching. So if you intended to be clever and play the Jewish card, you chose a very wrong place to do it. Germans had the holocaust in store for them, and for Russians they were exploiters of the working class, destined for Siberian labor camps.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_deportation

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Priboi

Soviet nomenclature did consist of Jews to significant extent. At times more, at times less, but it's disingenous for you to mention Jews being overrepresented among the victims without mentioning they were also overrepresented among Soviet officials, including high ranking ones.

Of course, it weren't these random religious small business owners but people significantly conditioned by the socialist regime, which they participated in creating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parrot_Speaking_Yiddish the movie highlights that fact: a Soviet military officer occupying Lithuania in 1939 turns out to be Jew, which does not preclude him from internment of the movie protagonist, also Jew and Polish army soldier at the time in the plot.

Indeed, one of the most notorious war criminals in "Judenfrei" Estonia was Idel Jakobson[1], a Latvian Jew, who in the 1930s tried to overthrow the democratic government, but got arrested and imprisoned. He was freed under 1938 general amnestia and left the country. Returned in 1940 with invading forces as a NKVD officer. In that role, he tortured and executed hundreds of notable public figures, including many Jewish businessmen. Excavations at mass execution sites have shown that his modus operandi was shooting his victims right in the face. The fact that Jakobson was still alive was discovered in 1996, but he died before the massive case against him could be brought to court.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idel_Jakobson

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