Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In the north, Finland had also been under Russian control from 1809 until its independence in 1918, but the Finns looked to Scandinavia rather than towards the Baltic states. In the west, Sweden followed a policy of neutrality, but during the 1920s, it took a more active regional role.
After the First World War (1914–1918) the term "Baltic states" came to refer to the countries by the Baltic Sea that had gained independence from the former Russian Empire. The term included Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, as well as Finland (which later became grouped among the Nordic countries instead).
The Russian Bolsheviks ceded the Baltic areas to Germany under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of 3 March 1918. The Imperial German government established occupation governments in Estonia and Latvia [1] and formally recognised the independence of a puppet government in Lithuania on March 24, 1918. [2]
The defeat of Germany in World War I in November 1918, followed by the defeat in 1919 of the Baltische Landeswehr and German Freikorps units of General Rüdiger von der Goltz in Latvia by the 3rd Estonian Division and the North Latvian Brigade, rendered any ideas for the creation of the United Baltic Duchy irrelevant.
The four countries on the Baltic Sea that were formerly parts of the Russian Empire – Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – consolidated their borders and independence after the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian independence wars following the end of World War I by 1920 (see Treaty of Tartu, Latvian-Soviet Riga Peace Treaty and Soviet-Lithuanian Treaty of 1920).
15 June 1941, The Governor of New York, Herbert Lehman, declares 15 June to be Baltic States Day. 22 June 1941 Germany enacts Operation Barbarossa, invades Soviet Union. In Soviet historiography, start of World War II as the Great Patriotic War. 24–25 June 1941 Soviet authorities massacre political prisoners in Rainiai, Lithuania.
As a result of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent Russian Civil War, many Baltic Germans fled to Germany. After 1919, many Baltic Germans felt obliged to depart the newly independent states for Germany, but many stayed as ordinary citizens. [17] In 1925, there were 70,964 Germans in Latvia (3.6%) and 62,144 in 1935 (3.2% of ...
On 4 November 1918, "the Soviet courier's packing-case had 'come to pieces '" in a Berlin railway station; [47] it was filled with insurrectionary documents. Joffe and his staff were ejected from Germany in a sealed train on 5 November 1918. In the Armistice of 11 November 1918 that ended World War I, one clause abrogated the Brest-Litovsk ...