Opinion: Baltic States decided to clean up history under the guise of fight against Russia

Daugavpils Mayor Andrejs Elksnins said in early May that law-abiding residents and guests to the city will be able to lay flowers at the monuments without any special conditions and to stay on the territory of memorable places, if they make no crowds. At the same time, the politician advised not to take St. George's ribbons and other symbols on May 9th, thereby not to commit any provocative actions that could lead to people’s detention. In his talk with Alfa Radio, political expert Aleksandr Shpakovsky commented on the events taking place in the Baltic States and the attitudes towards Russian citizens.

According to Mr. Shpakovsky, Latvia is actively implementing a Russophobic policy towards its residents who have not yet been granted citizenship.

“At the moment, persons who have limited political rights live in the Baltic States. They have special documents stating that these citizens cannot participate in political processes. There are more than 10 percent of such people in Latvia. Basically, these are Russian-speakers who, due to certain circumstances and the Latvian legislation, have turned to be over the side of the Latvian statehood. Actually, it is apartheid. A similar phenomenon exists in Estonia – though to a lesser extent. Of course, over the past time, these dwarf states have been carrying out a Russophobic policy towards some of their citizens who are not indigenous. Actually, Estonia and Latvia were part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, so considerable Russian-speaking communities were formed on their territories – including 30 thousand Belarusians. The latter were discriminated against as well. I must say that the beginning of the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine became an apogee of that policy: a decision was made to clean up history under the guise of the struggle against the Russian Federation,” the expert said.

Mr. Shpakovsky added that those who served the Nazi occupiers during the Great Patriotic War, those who have not yet abandoned Nazi ideas, and those who committed war crimes, including on the territory of Belarus, are involved in the fight against everything Russian.

“All these marches of the Latvian SS men are living proof of that. During the investigation into the criminal case on the genocide of the Belarusian people, persons involved in war crimes have been identified. Some of them are still alive, despite their old age. The Baltic States refuse any assistance to the Belarusian Prosecutor General's Office in these criminal cases, and we will not be able to bring them to justice. But I must say that the glorification of everything connected with Nazism and the cleansing of historical memory in the Baltic States is explained precisely by this. All this is done by the spiritual descendants of the misanthropic ideology that ruled on the territory of these states in the 1940s,” the expert noted.

Meanwhile, Mr. Shpakovsky believes it is not necessary to exclusively negatively interpret the policy of the Baltic States. “In general, it is not fair to generally assert that the Baltic peoples were on the side of our enemy. After all, there were people in the Baltic States who supported the Soviet power. It should be mentioned that, in the post-war period, fighter battalions – created by residents of Latvia and Estonia, among others – played a huge role in the victory over banditry,” he said.

In conclusion, the expert stressed that Victory Day will always be celebrated, but the future of the Baltic States’ regimes is vague. Mr. Shpakovsky recalled that a fascist regime was formed there in the 1930s, but it resulted in nothing good for these territories.