Post by dodger on Oct 8, 2013 13:34:10 GMT
Useful survey of the Baltic States, 8 Oct 2013
This Will Podmore review is from: A Concise History of the Baltic States (Cambridge Concise Histories) (Paperback)
This is a good standard account of the history of the three Baltic States. The author is Professor Emeritus at the Department of History, Iowa State University.
In 1926, there was a fascist coup in Lithuania and coups in Estonia and Latvia in 1934. In June 1941, Lithuanian fascists killed hundreds of Red Army soldiers; Latvians killed 800 and Estonians 500.
Plakans notes that the Nazi occupiers and their local allies "succeeded in turning the first six months of the German occupation (June to December) into the most murderous period in the modern history of the Baltic littoral." They killed 90 per cent of the Jewish population: 200,000 in Lithuania, 90,000 in Latvia and 1,000 in Estonia. He points out that "in many cases, the native populations acted on their own" in what he rightly calls `the Baltic littoral's Holocaust'. Other Lithuanians saved 3,000 Jews from death; Latvians saved several hundred at most.
The destruction caused by Hitler's war caused a 45 per cent drop in industrial production in all three countries. Afterwards their peoples had to try to rebuild their ruined countries in the most unfavourable conditions.
The restoration of capitalism in 1991 led to misery. By the mid-1990s, 40-60 per cent of the population in all three countries were in poverty. Pensions and savings fell. Unemployment, suicides and murders all increased.