Out of the great unknown
The Baltic Independent, November 24, 1993
STRANGE AS it may seem, Algirdas Brazauskas is not a household name. As citizens of a continent-sized superpower, Americans have never felt the need for information about other, much smaller, countries such as those on the Baltic, thousands of miles away. The US media generally reflects this lack of interest and, it its own way, does its best to add to the confusion. Take, for example, the most basic question of all. Where are the Baltic States? For fifty years they were nowhere, erased from the map and lost in the vast mass of the Soviet Union. Now Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia (or rather Lat., Lith., and Est.) have finally returned to the maps used by American newspapers and TV, but as nomads. Ignoring all international treaties, Latvia becomes Estonia and Estonia becomes Latvia. Meanwhile Lithuania lurches towards Belarus, ignoring the threat posed by a ballooning Kaliningrad oblast.
Outside the émigré community and a few specialists, Americans know little of the Baltic States, Arvo Pärt may have his listeners and Jaan Kross some readers, but Baltic culture remains something of a mystery. Larger bookshops might stock phrasebooks for the languages of Southeast Asian hill people, but not for the languages of those remote tribes inhabiting Tallinn, Vilnius and Riga. Avowedly, Baltic products other than dusty piles of amber in “Russian”, shops, are equally difficult to find.
Amusing as it may be, American ignorance of the Baltics is not without its dangers for a region very dependent on Western support. For example, “the Baltics” are repeatedly muddled up with “the Balkans” (Slovakia and Slovenia are faced with a similar problem) and at times it seems that this confusion has also coloured, if only subconciously, the American media’s response to the question of the Baltic’s Russian population. There is little real awareness of the region’s history and it is not unusual to see discussion of “Eastern European nationalism” that draws little distinction between, say, Serbia and Estonia. This, of course, can then be exploited by a Russia all too ready to describe Baltic citizenship laws as a form of ethnic cleansing.
Such talk is well received by America’s liberal intelligentsia with their guilty nostalgia for the Pax Sovietica. Meanwhile their old adversaries, the cold warriors, who in the past could always be relied upon to take up the cudgels for a “captive nation” are hopelessly divided as to how to respond to a Russia that is no longer an evil empire.
All is not lost, however. Memories of Baltic resistance to Soviet rule from 1989-91 have not entirely faded and there are still many here who wish the republics well, even if they do not know exactly where they are. Ever larger numbers of American tourists are returning from a Baltic increasingly touted as an attractive if still somewhat off-beat, destination. In addition, not all the stories coming from the region have been negative. Economic reform, particularly in Estonia, has attracted favourable attention and even The New York Times recently felt free to talk of the “Baltics’ new glow.”
Further positive reports can be expected if the Baltic States can show that they are heading in the direction of the free market and liberal democracy. As these come about, Americans will increasingly come to think of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia as Western and (perhaps an obscure) part of their world, rather than Eastern. This would not exactly constitute a security guarantee, but it would be a good second best. Besides, the Clinton administration is not in the business of offering guarantees to anyone, but that is a different story.