The promises of communism to accelerate economic growth in particular and increase human wellbeing explain why its ideas had especially strong appeal among impatient intellectuals of underdeveloped countries, looking for recipes on how to accelerate the economic and social development of their countries that were progressing too slowly (according to their perceptions) in the framework of capitalist institutions or due to the perceived surviving elements of feudalism. A modern restored regime can succeed in enduring longer than intermediate post-revolutionary and original systems only by displaying even more rapid growth. Therefore, capitalist restoration demonstrates its success not by close similarity between restored and original capitalism (their belonging to same variety) but by the capacity to achieve higher economic growth rates in comparison with both original and intermediate economic systems. This is the idea behind the criterion of restoration economic performance success:

1 In China, the communists remain in power because they manage to deliver on their promises.

#### CREPS (criterion of restoration economic performance success): Restored social system C is economically successful if the growth of the output per capita in C accelerates in comparison with intermediate system B or original system A.

Application of this criterion (the same holds for the next two) involves two tests: the outperforming intermediate system test (OIST) and the outperforming original system test (OOST). The acceleration of economic growth in the restored system in comparison with its immediate antecedent is necessary just to prove its economic superiority. Acceleration in comparison with the original system is necessary to prove that restoration is not just a return of the past system, which already succumbed to revolution once, but is the creation of its improved version. The economic success of restoration is complete if C accelerates in respect to both A and B. In the case of partial success, C accelerates only with respect to B or C. If C outperforms only B but not A, partial success of restoration can mean only its success as rehabilitation. For countries with no capitalist past, the application of CREPS is limited to OIST, which means that only the test of capitalist rehabilitation performance success can be done.

When selecting criteria of rehabilitation and restoration performance success, an important consideration is the availability of time series of the cross-country and cross-time comparable datasets, encompassing as many countries under rehabilitation or restoration as possible. For the assessment of restoration economic performance success, Maddison Project Database data on the historical GDPpc at purchasing power parity (PPP) provide appropriate information (MPD 2013, 2018, 2020). However, GDP only allows a comparison of the productive capacity of societies. The relationship between production and human wellbeing is mediated by distribution, which may be more or less equal, and provides governments with ample possibilities to divert the use of output for aims that otherwise counteract growth in human wellbeing (e.g. military buildup).

After much pondering, I selected human body height and life expectancy at birth as two direct measures of human wellbeing, which combine all three advantages: validity, comparability (cross-country and cross-time) and availability of data.2 These indicators are used measuring the health and somatic performance success of social rehabilitations and social restorations. Both for CRHPS and CRSPS, the reservations hold that the performance success of a restoration can be only partial by C outperforming only B or A. For countries with no capitalist past, only comparison of the post-communist and communist period makes sense testing only for rehabilitation success.

2 For life expectancy, the most authoritative data sources are Human Mortality Database (HMD) (2022) and the Human Life Table Database (HLTD) (2022). For the period after 1960, World Development Indicators (WDI) is another broadly used data source. For older periods, data of the Clio-Infra project are usable (Zijdeman and Ribeiro da Silva 2015 and Ribeiro da Silva 2015a, b). As a last alternative (in the sense of usability when no other data is available), Gapminder data is valid (Lindgren and Johansson 2014; Lindgren 2020).

#### CRHPS (criterion of restoration health performance success): Restored social system C is health successful if the increase of life expectancy in C accelerates in comparison with intermediate system B or original system A.

#### CRSPS (criterion of restoration somatic performance success): Restored social system C is somatically successful if the increase of mean human body height in C accelerates in comparison with intermediate system B or original system A.

Life expectancy discloses the extent to which a specific socio-economic system is able to satisfy basic needs, which are crucial for maintaining health. These are adequate nutrition, basic education, clean water supply, basic housing and healthcare needs. 'Physical stature is an important complement, illuminating the extent to which a socio-economic or political system provides an environment—broadly conceived—propitious to the physical growth and longevity of human organisms, so that they can reach their biological growth potential' (Komlos and Snowdon 2005: 125).

There is an important difference between the two measures. Life expectancy discloses how well human basic needs were satisfied during the lives of individuals during all the biological phases of their lives. However, the bodies of humans grow most intensely during childhood. The most rapid growth takes place during the first 3 years of life, after which it slows down and briefly accelerates during adolescence (in the 13th–15th years of life). Growth is completed between 20 and 25, with height increases between 18 and the year of the end of growth (this varies individually) being insignificant (Bogin 2001). Thus, human height mainly indicates the biological living standard for children during a particular historical period—how good it was to be a child (and to lesser extent, an adolescent) at that time.

The difference in mean heights of consecutive generations indicates how much biological standards of living increased or declined. If fully grown adults are on average taller than their parents or grandparents, this indicates that as children they had a better childhood. There are individual caps on stature growth, depending on one's genetic background. How much of this growth potential is realised depends on the social environment of growth: Are children undernourished or malnourished (their diet lacks the proteins, vitamins and minerals which are essential for normal growth)? Do they frequently suffer from diseases? Must they engage in physically exerting labour from their early years (instead of playing or going to school)? If so, children do not grow to the full extent that their genetic endowments allow. Therefore, some authors propose an even more specific interpretation of stature, arguing that it is an indicator of the nutrition-exertion-climate-disease environments of children (NECDEC; see Grubb and Hansen 2002).

The discovery of this indicator led to the rise and development of anthropometric history (Baten 2017; Bogin 2001; Fogel 2004; Komlos 1995a, b; Steckel 1995, 2013). The distinctive feature of anthropometric history is 'historicisation' of the observed variation in anthropometric data of specific human populations. More specifically, anthropometric historians do not accept explanations of variation in mean height in these populations based on stable (on the historical time scale, which is different from that of evolutionary biology) differences in the genomes of the human population before testing the causal arguments explaining this variation based on the features of their social environment.

Height is the most useful variable for cross-time comparisons of the biological standards of living of children, when the composition of a population is not significantly affected by immigration. If the identity of a population's genome can be assumed, then increases or decreases of mean height indicate improvement or deterioration of the social environment in which children grow. Its application for cross-country comparisons is more problematic because differences in the mean height of populations in different countries can be explained by genomic differences. To control for these differences, it is advisable to limit the scope of cross-country comparisons to populations with similar genetic endowments.

The advantage of this indicator is that reliable data on its value exists for many countries. This applies only to the male population because the main source of this data is conscript measurements.3 Therefore, its application will be limited to males. This book offers one of the few attempts at systematic use of this promising indicator for the comparative exploration of the consequences of post-communist transformation on human wellbeing (see also Komlos and Kriwy 2002; Costa-i-Font and Kossarova 2014).

Differently from CRES, three criteria of performance success allow continuous monitoring of the economic, health and somatic performance of restoration by comparing the period extending from the most recent moment of systemic change, inaugurating C, with increasingly longer periods of similar duration in the history of B and A. Early economic success of the post-communist restoration of capitalism during this period, delimited by the start of market reforms in 1989–1991 and the Great Recession in 2008–2011, can be assessed by comparing economic growth rates during this period with those during late socialism, which is known as the 'stagnation era' in fSU republics. I will call this comparison by application of the OIST the 'assessment in the first retrospective'. It is supplemented by the assessment in the second retrospective, where the early restoration period is compared with the late period in the history of the original system, applying the OOST.

In addition to the assessment of early success by using the OOST and OIST, I provide assessment of actual success, comparing the performance of restored capitalism during the complete period of post-communist restoration with the last three decades of state socialism (1960–1989; OIST). The publication of data takes due time. Basing my assessment of economic success on the Maddison Project Database (MPD), I had to stop at 2018, as this is the last year in its most recent release (MPD 2020), and the time series of height data in the NCD-RisC (2020) closes with 2019. When looking at somatic success, there is the additional complication that it takes time for humans to grow up. So by now, only relatively few post-communist

3 Actually, Non-communicable Diseases Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) (2016) datasets provide data on both sexes. However, compilers of this source warn users about the low reliability of this data, as reflected by very broad confidence intervals for female heights for most countries (especially for the period before WWII). The other most broadly used source (Baten and Blum 2015) provides data only on males.

individuals who have grown up entirely under restored capitalism (born in 1990–2001) could be compared with the last individuals who grew up under socialism. However, because of the happy coincidence of the 100th anniversary of the independence of the Baltic states (2018) correlating with the terminal dates for which data is available, limitation of the assessment of the actual performance success of the Baltic restorations to the 1990–2018 (or 1990–2019) period cannot impair its salience.

Performance success of the capitalist restoration in the Baltic and East European countries can continue to be monitored until 2040, when the duration of the restored capitalist system (1989–2040) will have outlasted that of the complete totalitarian era (1940–1989). Its starting point was the infamous Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed on 23 August 1939, which destroyed the cordon sanitaire encapsulating Stalinist socialism within Soviet borders according to the peace treaties of 1920–1921 and exposed East European countries to the export of the Russian Revolution. So the upcoming 100th anniversary of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (in 2039) seems to be a most appropriate timepoint for the assessment of the ultimate performance success of the Baltic restorations. The latter date can be conveniently rounded to 2040, pandering to the mental habit demonstrated by social scientists to structure their data by decades.

Besides the symbolism of this date, there are important substantive reasons for the ultimate application of the OIST when measuring the economic and social progressiveness of capitalist restoration by its outperformance of the whole totalitarian era instead of only the state socialist system in the strict sense (1940–1941, 1944–1990). Even though 1938 was not the last year of the capitalist economic system or state independence in the Baltic countries,4 the war years (1939–1945) stand in greater continuity with the socialist transformations from 1945 than with the preceding period. The operation of a market economy in the Baltic countries under Nazi occupation remained suspended, subordinating it to all-encompassing state regulation.

There is another important reason to close the time window on the original system in the cross-time comparison with 1938, even though the Baltic countries did survive as independent states during the subsequent one and a half years. This applies in particular to the assessment of the economic performance success, guided by CREPS. In 1939, the Baltic economies were severely affected by the outbreak of WWII, interrupting their trade with the United Kingdom. War-related difficulties led to contraction of their economies, continuing in the next year. Therefore, 1938 is the top year of their economic performance during the interwar period. An additional complication applies to Lithuania: its borders changed twice in 1939. In March 1939, it lost the Klaipėda (Memel) region to Nazi Germany but was granted the Vilnius

4 Some historians (e.g. Ilmjärv 2004) argue that the Baltic countries lost their state independence already in the autumn of 1939, when Soviet military bases were established in all three countries, making the formerly independent countries Soviet protectorates.

region by the USSR in October of the same year. Thus, statistical data for this year is either only fragmentary or difficult to interpret.

Therefore, for application of the OOST to establish early (as of 2007–2008) and actual (as of 2018–2019) performance success of capitalist restoration, GDP growth and life expectancy rates during the early and actual restoration periods are compared with those in 1913–1938, which is another self-contained period in Baltic economic history. I would claim that this exercise also has added theoretical value, stretching the concepts of economic, health and somatic progress to their limits. Mainstream economics still assumes that there are no limits to economic growth; thus, there are no reasons to expect the acceleration of economic growth under restored capitalism. However, the increase of life expectancy and human height has a genetic ceiling, although all former attempts to specify these in numeric values were falsified by actual somatic and health progress (Oeppen and Vaupel 2002). An important finding arising from the application of the OOST to life expectancy and height increase data to country population including all post-socialist countries (see Norkus 2023) is that in most East European countries, growth rates were highest in 1913–1938, which was marked by comparatively slow economic growth.

Generally, countries where the socialist period coincided with phases of health and demographic transitions, characterised by the rapid increase of life expectancy, cannot be expected to surpass this achievement if the genetic potential of further increases of life expectancy and height were nearly exhausted by the time of the reversal to capitalism. On the other hand, there was also broad variation among socialist countries in their economic and human development progress. Restored capitalism countries with growth rates only slightly surpassing the weak growth rates of the socialist era may fail to reduce the economic and human development lag behind advanced capitalist countries with no socialist detour in their histories. However, the reduction of this lag cannot be overlooked in a meaningful theoretical articulation of the idea of what makes a restoration successful. To recall, the promise of 'really existing socialism' was to catch up and overtake advanced capitalist countries. After failing to deliver on this promise, economically and socially successful restorations can at least be expected to reduce this lag.

This is the rationale behind the supplementation of the tests based on general criteria of economic and human development performance success (CREPS, CRHPS, CRSPS) by a further three special tests. While the general tests apply to all modern restorations (including the 1815–1848 period), the special tests are more tightly anchored in world historical time and apply only to former communist countries. They are motivated by the observation that some former communist countries (with weak growth performance under state socialism and original capitalism) would remain backward even when passing both the OIST and OOST according to the CREPS, CRHPS and CRSPS.

AST (American standard test): Post-socialist restoration of capitalism is economically successful if at the end of the restoration period (2040–2050), the GDPpc of the formerly poor communist country is at least 55% of the US value,

#### and the GDPpc of the formerly communist middle-income country is at least 70% of the US value.5

The use of the United States as a benchmark country is validated by the application of long-term comparisons in my project, encompassing nearly the whole twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. While the economic fortunes of other advanced countries did change significantly during the twentieth century, the status of the United States as a world economic champion has remained stable during the last century and will most probably remain so into the twenty-first century (OECD 2018). Substantively, the AST identifies the economic success of restoration with being able to escape the middle-income trap (MIT). The increase or decrease of the output per capita lag behind the United States is a proper indicator to monitor the economic success of restoration continuously during its complete period. No decrease in the GDPpc lag behind the United States indicates the economic failure of restoration, while a reduced lag means that the country is on the track to success, which in the case of ultimate success culminates in crossing the threshold separating middle-income and high-income countries.

The numerical threshold values are drawn from present discussions (Glawe and Wagner 2016; Im and Rosenblatt 2015; Eichengreen et al. 2012, 2014) on the middle-income trap (MIT), which looms as a threat for countries after they escape from the poverty (or simply Malthusian) trap (Oded 2011). Ye and Robertson (2016) specify the middle-income range as lying between 8% and 36% of US GDPpc, Bulman et al. (2017) suggest 10–50% of the US level range and Woo (2012) defines middle-income countries as those with GDPpc between 20% and 55% of US per capita income. A lower threshold value (55%) applies to countries with a GDPpc value around 20% of that in the United States by 1989. A 70% value applies to countries that were middle-income countries by this time and connects to the longterm economic and social development plans of new EU members. This suggests that mean EU economic and social indicator values would be reached already by 2030. In recent decades, GDPpc in the EU was at 70% of the US level, and there is no compelling evidence to expect that the EU lag behind the United States will decrease or increase. Thus, convergence with the EU mean by 2040 or 2050 is a sufficient condition to assess the capitalist restoration as ultimately economically successful.

JST (Japanese standard test): Post-communist restoration of capitalism is health successful if during the restoration period (1990–2040 or 1990–2050), the life expectancy gap separating the population of a former communist country from that of Japan at the start of this period will decrease by its end.6

5 The 2050 date is appropriate for most fSU republics, where state socialist system was established from 1929.

6 For Central and South Eastern European countries (former USSR satellites and former Yugoslavian republics), 1989–2039 may be a more appropriate time window.

Japan has been the established world champion in life expectancy among both males and females since the early 1980s and will preserve this leading position until the end of the present century, according to UN DESA (2019) projections. There is no difference in the availability or quality of male and female life expectancy data. Therefore, the JST can be used on both male and female subpopulations and on the total population encompassing both sexes.

#### DST (Dutch standard test): Post-communist restoration of capitalism is somatically successful if during the restoration period (1990–2040 or 1990–2050), the male mean height gap separating the population of a former communist country from that of the Netherlands at the start of the period decreases.7

In this criterion, the mean height of Dutch males is used as a benchmark, as since 1985–1986 males from the Netherlands remain world height champions, rising to this position from being only 12th in the ranking in 1914 (Roser et al. 2019). A high 'height genes' concentration alone does not explain why they are height champions. Their position is rather a reflection of improvement and then stable high levels of the wellbeing of children and juveniles. Thus, a decrease of the 'height gap' behind the Netherlands would be a reliable indicator of progress in this area. The application of this test is limited to male height data because of the unreliability of female height data.

## References

———. 2014. Growth Slowdown Redux. Japan and the World Economy 32: 65–84.

7 For Central and South Eastern European countries (former USSR satellites and former Yugoslavian republics), 1989–2039 may be a more appropriate time window.

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## Part II Restoration Success Against the Odds: Baltic States as Laboratories of Modern Restorations

No serious theory of modern revolutions is possible without close comparative scrutiny of the French and the Russian revolutions. For research on fascism, such central cases are Mussolini's Italy and Nazi Germany. This study is grounded in the assumption that the Baltic states are paradigmatic cases of modern restorations. It may appear that the centrality of French and Russian revolutions for comparative historical sociological research on revolutions implies that the historical sociology of modern restorations should also start with a comparison of the French and Russian restorations. However, this shortcut would lead research on restorations astray.

The centrality of the Bourbon restorations is out of question (see Norkus 2023). However, the far too long duration of the intermediate post-revolutionary system makes the Russian reversal very different from its French counterpart. By 1991, socialism was already climacteric in most republics of the fSU, including Russia proper (the Russian Federation). Therefore, the establishment of institutional continuity with the original system was not even attempted.

It was not possible while attempting (now failed) democratic rehabilitation of Russia's political system, because Russia was not a democratic country before the Bolshevik takeover in October 1917. Before that, five elections of the State Duma (in 1906, twice in 1907 and in 1912) took place, but this institution was not a real parliament. Russia remained an absolute monarchy until the February revolution in 1917. Election of the All Russian Constituent Assembly in November 1917 could inaugurate the era of democracy in Russia. However, the Constituent Assembly only met for some thirteen hours (on 18–19 January 1918) before being dispersed by the Bolsheviks, and did not appoint a government (Radkey 2019 (1990)). So, the attempted democratisation of Russia in the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin (President of the Russian Federation in 1991–1999) was conducted not as a re-democratisation (Stepan 1986), but as a 'green field' democratisation or the building of a new democracy.

Market reforms were much more successful in Russia, replacing centrally planned state socialism with a capitalist economy, which displays many astonishing similarities with the Russian capitalism of 1913. Both original and restored Russian capitalism exemplify the same variety of coordinated market economy, which can be described as state monopolist capitalism (Hall and Soskice 2001; Norkus 2012: 125– 126). However, despite many similarities between the original and restored systems, this was only a type restoration of capitalism because restitution of property rights was not even considered, although at least one object of potential restitution did survive: land.

On the one hand, by 1917, there were no clearly defined private property rights for a significant portion of agricultural land in Russia because it remained as the communal property of peasant village communities (obshchina). Most land with clearly defined private property rights was owned by noble landlords, who were among the first targets of revolutionary and then Stalinist terror. On the other hand, by 1991, restitution of prerevolutionary property rights (or paying compensations for their loss) either lacked political support from pivotal political forces, or was hardly possible because of difficulties in identifying legitimate heirs and resolving entitlement conflicts between them. Therefore, a mass privatisation of state assets as the key element in the building of capitalism followed, giving no consideration to the rights of owners that had been dispossessed by the socialist revolution. This was denationalisation without re-privatisation. The sole exception was partial restitution of the property rights of the Orthodox Church.

In both political and economic spheres, the Baltic reversals were the very opposite of the process in Russia. Restorationalism was implemented most consistently in Latvia, which lives under the Constitution (Satversme) of 1922 and the Civil Code that was adopted in 1937. The constitutional doctrines of all three postcommunist Baltic states claim their legal continuity of the interwar Baltic states. They define the de facto extinctions of the Baltic states in 1940–1990 as mere occupations, differing from occupations of Norway or the Netherlands by Nazi Germany in 1940–1945 only in terms of duration.

I will explain in detail why Estonia and Lithuania only partly followed the Latvian example of reenactment of interwar constitutions and other legislation. Most importantly, the privatisation of state assets was prefaced or conducted in parallel with re-privatisation, including restitution of property rights to surviving assets that had been nationalised in 1940–1949 to former owners or their heirs (or the payment of compensation in cases where this was not possible). In this way, institutional continuity was established between the economic systems of the interwar and post-socialist periods.

Decisive and encompassing character of the Baltic restorations, including restoration of the nation states, democratic political regimes and capitalist socioeconomic systems, makes the Baltic countries paradigmatic cases of post-communist restorations, imparting general or even universal significance to their historical experiences during the 'short twentieth century', framed within the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 (Hobsbawm 1994). It is also important that the Baltic states were both products and victims of the Russian Revolution. Their emergence as independent states was made possible by the dissolution of the Russian Empire in 1918. Peace treaties with Soviet Russia in 1920 inaugurated international recognition of the Baltic countries as independent states.

However, spawned by the Russian Revolution, they also became its victims when in 1939 the Soviet Union resumed its export that culminated in the restoration (by 1940) and expansion (by 1945) of the Russian Empire. This bitter experience shaped the identities of the contemporary Baltic states, making them perfect epitomes of the idea of social restoration. All their domestic and foreign policies are now subordinated to the aim of averting or preventing the recurrence of 1940, which was a revolution imposed from abroad. My main thesis in this book is that modern restorations are about making social systems safe and resilient to the recurrence of the revolutionary catastrophe that destroyed the original system. It is inspired by participant or insider observer experiences of post-communist Baltic restorations. According to my experiences and observations up to this day, the Baltic restorations are marked by the pervasive (and sometimes obsessive) concern to prevent or preempt the recurrence of the catastrophe of 1940. 1

This means that the success of restoration is measured not based on similarities among the restored and original system. Restoration implies building an improved, less fragile version of the original system, where improvement means making it invulnerable to a new revolution (most probably prefaced by foreign invasion and occupation). The improvement is indicated by the better economic and social performance of a restored social system in comparison with both the original and intermediate systems, the superior level of international safety and the greater resilience to internally and externally generated shocks. By 2018, which was the centenary of the Baltic countries as independent nation states, the Baltic restorations were largely successful in meeting this challenge. I will provide an audit of their economic, health and somatic performance during the restoration period by applying the OOST and OIST tests described in Part I. This is the purpose of Parts III, IV and V, as well as of the Concluding Discussion.

Describing this success as success against the odds, I refer to the rather scant demographic continuity between the Baltic populations at the time of the breakdown of democracy (1926 in Lithuania, 1934 in Estonia and Latvia) and at the time of their restoration (1989–1990). The demographic continuity between 1940 and 1990 is not that much better. To recall, in 1990, the Latvian population had only 7.29% of people who were at least 15 years old in 1934 (born in 1919 or earlier), 10.77% who were at least 10 years old (born in 1924 or earlier), and 22.23% who were born in 1934 and earlier (HMD 2022). For Estonia, these numbers were 7.03%, 10.64% and 21.79%. In Lithuania's population as of 1990, only 3.01% were at least 15 years old in 1926, 5.19% at least 10 years old and 11.70% were born in 1926 or earlier. The shares of survivors from 1940 were markedly, but not much higher: 10.76, 16.13 and 28.26% for Estonia, 11.74, 17.32 and 29.91% for Latvia and 10.76, 15.92 and 27.61% for Lithuania (HMD 2022).

1 In the social imaginary of indigenous Baltic populations, this catastrophe is comparable only to that of the Holocaust in the social imaginary of people with a Jewish identity. Due to the insistence of the world-historical uniqueness of the Holocaust by many influential opinion-makers and gatekeepers, this sometimes leads to difficult communication between exponents of the Baltic and Jewish communities concerning historical memory.

The success (by 2018) of Baltic token restorations validates my downward revision of Kann's tenet that no successful restoration is possible after the passing of at least one generation (thirty-five to forty years). The endurance and performance success of Baltic restorations by 2018 indeed validates the use of the Baltic magnitudes of demographic continuity across the rupture imposed by intermediate system as the limit or the threshold values in this downward revision. This is another reason for the paradigmatic status of the Baltic restoration cases in the theory of modern social restorations under construction. Acceptance of this status entails also revision of Kann's claim that successful restoration is possible if the original system endured at least thirty-five to forty years. According to Baltic precedents, some twenty years is sufficient to educate a generation of loyalists of original system.

I start this part of the book with the argument (in Chap. 5) that demographic continuity did indeed matter for the success of Baltic token restorations. This chapter focuses on the period of 'extraordinary politics' in 1988–1991, demonstrating that the availability of survivors from the interwar independence years was critically important for the very pursuit of the 'tokenist' strategy of independence restoration, even though it did not predetermine its ultimate prevalence as proponents of this strategy had to compete with the 'typist' alternative. In this way, I also show how the central distinction between type and token restorations promotes a deeper historical understanding of this period, providing new illumination of already known facts. In Chap. 6, I provide a comparative analysis of the practices of the three Baltic states in constructing continuity with their interwar forerunners. The concluding Chap. 7 offers a comparative discussion of property restitution policies in the three Baltic countries, prefacing the comparative analysis of the economic, health and somatic performance of the restored Baltic states in the remaining parts of this book.

#### References

## Chapter 5 Demographic Continuity and Constitutional Politics in the Baltic Restorations

The idea of making a distinction between token and generic restorations was suggested by a reading of the excellent PhD dissertation (defended at the University of Columbia) by the Estonian political scientist Vello Pettai 'Framing the Past as Future: The Power of Legal Restorationism in Estonia', who process-traced the struggle between the two wings of the Estonian independence movement in 1988–1991 (Pettai 2004, 2007). One wing was represented by the Estonian Popular Front, led by the most distinguished Estonian scholars, artists and other public figures, who were part of the establishment of late Soviet Estonia, many of them belonging to the Communist Party. They advocated the restoration of independence using the framework of Soviet institutions.

This would involve winning the election to the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (ESSR), building a government that would then negotiate Estonia's secession from the Soviet Union, using its constitutional right as a union republic. Uniquely among the communist federations (and federations generally), this kind of right was granted to union republics in the Soviet constitutions of 1936 and 1977. In turn, the independent Estonia, emerging out of a successful secession (Third Republic), would be a new state, the successor to the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (Second Republic, since 1940) with no immediate connection to the First Republic of Estonia (1918–1940) (Pettai 2004: 156–160).

Their opponents consisted of anti-Soviet dissidents (many of them former political prisoners), or members of the 'anti-systemic' opposition. Their breakthrough came with the establishment of the Estonian Citizens' Committees (ECC) movement on 24 February 1989. Its aim was to convene the Congress of Estonia as the only legitimate legislative body entitled to restore the independence of Estonia. In their view, the Supreme Soviet of the ESSR was not a legitimate authority entitled to restoring the independence of Estonia because it would have been elected under continuing occupation (marked by the presence of the Soviet Army on Estonian soil), in accordance with the laws of an occupying power (the Soviet Union), and by an electorate that included many persons unauthorised to vote (immigrants from the other Soviet republics after 1940 and members of the Soviet military). The Congress of Estonia had to be elected only by legitimate voters, who included citizens of the Republic of Estonia as of June 1940 and their offspring (Taagepera 1993: 58–60).

The initiative was a huge success, sparking the network of Citizens' Committees, which registered 845,000 residents of Estonia (including children registered by their parents) out of an estimated 910,000 residents who qualified as citizens of the Republic of Estonia in a total population of 1.569 million (1990). In all, 590,000 qualified voters participated in the election to the Congress of Estonia, held on 24 February 1990, or 98% of all adults who registered and 91% of all adults who qualified (Taagepera 1993: 174). There were 1,164,603 adults in Estonia, who were entitled to participate in the election to the last Supreme Soviet of Estonia on 18 March 1990, of whom 911,903 did actually participate (Nohlen and Stöver 2010: 574).

In neighbouring Latvia, a twin movement of the Citizens' Committees emerged, achieving only somewhat slightly less success (in terms of numbers of persons registered). At the election to the Latvian Republic Citizens' Congress on 8–24 April 1990, there were 678,862 citizens and 28,910 applicants who participated (Jundzis 2011: 210), from a total number of 806,974 who were registered by the time of the election (Jundzis 2017b: 275). This equalled 41.2% of the adult population of Latvia (1,960,638 in a total population of 2.668 million; voter turnout—1.593,018) who were entitled to participate in the election to the last Supreme Soviet of Latvia on 18 March 1990 (Nohlen and Stöver 2010: 1122).

I would argue that the key to the success of both movements was the presence of a critical mass of survivors from the interwar period, who already had citizenship rights of the Estonian and Latvian republics. Had the liberalisation and democratisation of the Soviet Union started some 20 or 30 years later (in the 2010s or 2020s), it would have certainly sparked an independence movement in the Baltic countries either way (as can be expected in the Russian Tatarstan or Sakha (Yakutia) republics after Putin's demise). However, with no survivors from the interwar years, it is difficult to imagine the rise of the utterly vital grass-roots movement needed to register (second and third generation?) descendants of citizens of republics that had been made extinct 60 or 70 years earlier.

However, what would have resembled sheer extravagance or otherworldliness in Soviet Estonia in 2010 or 2020 was not yet so in 1989, with so many survivors from the interwar republics amid their offspring and immigrant population. Time matters, as it has the power to shape perceptions of what is just and what is unjust. As long as the indigenous population of Estonia (the same applies to Latvia and Lithuania) included so many citizens of the interwar republic with living memories of the Soviet invasion and brutal Stalinist repressions, immigrants from the other Soviet republics could only be perceived as illegitimate settlers or colonists.

However, this kind of perception would not be so obvious after the attrition of survivors and generational change, making the Russian-speaking population consist mainly of persons born in this land and so entitled (by jus solis) to consider this country as their homeland. Had the struggle for independence in the Baltic countries been launched and won some 20–30 years later, it would have succeeded only in promising and granting citizenship rights to all the permanent residents of Estonia, as the Estonian Popular Front had proposed in 1988–1989.

Counterfactual restoration of independent Estonia in 2010 or 2020, based on the principles and promises of the Estonian Popular Front in 1988–1989, would have been a restoration of Estonia's independence, too. However, this would have been a very different variety of restoration, one that can be described as a 'type restoration', involving no establishment of institutional continuity with the historical interwar Baltic states. This means that the struggle between the two wings of the independence movements in the Baltic countries in 1988–1990 can be described as a struggle between proponents of token (Citizens' Committees movements) and type (popular fronts) restorations, or simply between tokenists and typists.

Alternatively, the very opposition between token and type restorations can be considered simply as a generalisation of the opposition of the ideas fostered by Citizens' Committees movements and popular fronts regarding restoration of independence. Generalisation makes this opposition applicable to cases of other countries and situations, involving not only the restoration of statehood. Andres Kasekamp (2010: 166) describes the Citizens' Committees approach to independence restoration as 'fundamentalist'. Due to the favourable circumstances created by the failure of the August putsch in 1991, the fundamentalist approach triumphed in Estonia and Latvia. The most conspicuous expression of this triumph is citizenship legislation in these two Baltic countries, which excludes Soviet-era immigrants. Of course, they are entitled to apply for citizenship as immigrants who settled here after the restoration of independence. In both countries, the granting of citizenship is conditional on passing language and 'political literacy' tests. In Latvia in the 1990s, there were also annual naturalisation quotas, which were later abolished (Agarin 2010).

Another expression of the triumph of the token or fundamentalist approach is the territorial claims made by Estonia and Latvia upon the Russian Federation (see Map 5.1). Defining themselves as identical to interwar Estonia and Latvia, the post-Soviet Baltic states considered as part of this identity those territories that were negotiated with Soviet Russia when entering into the peace treaties of Tartu (2 February 1920; Estonia and Russia) and Riga (11 August 1920; Latvia and Russia). This territorial identity was violated in 1944–1945 when the Jaanilinn/Ivangorod and Petseri/ Pechory areas were ripped away from Estonia, and the Abrene/Pytalovo area was taken away from Latvia. Thus, the territory of Estonia contracted from 47,450 to 45,228 km2 , or by 4.68% (Estonija 2008: 15), and that of Latvia from 65,685 to 64,573 km2 , or by 1.69% (Nacionālā Enciklopēdija Latvija 2018: 37).

The size of the share of survivors from the original system depends only on the duration of time that has passed since its extinction and on the demographic situation. Generally, their share decreases under the conditions of high birth rates (which was not the case in Estonia and Latvia) or high immigration, which usually involves a population of a younger age (and this indeed did apply). The increase of life expectancy among advanced-age generations also slows down the attrition of survivors, making demographic continuity last longer. Larger shares of survivors mean a larger number of stakeholders in the restitution of nationalised property or

Map 5.1 Border changes of the Baltic countries in 1939–1991. Source: author's own production, credits to Vaidas Morkevičius for his assistance. Dotted lines denote interwar borders (if they differ

those who perceive it as just. It is they who make 'the impossible return of the past' (Démier 2012) practicable via the restitution of ancient property rights, decreasing transaction costs in identifying legitimate claimants and solving their conflicts, which are unavoidable between successors who are not immediate heirs.

However, higher shares of survivors only provide the possibility for enacting a token restoration. Differently from type restorations, which happen because of the generic similarity between original and restored systems, token restorations are enacted by performing a selection of actions from a broad repertoire, which are appropriate to affirm or establish continuity with the claimed original system. Sticking to a token or fundamentalist restoration still left a large menu of different ways of enacting a restoration or building identification with interwar statehood. The choice between these methods depended on the specific domestic and international conditions existing in particular countries.

The idea of excluding the immigrant population from gaining citizenship had strong support among the indigenous populations because they had strong reasons to fear that in the type-restored Estonia and Latvia, political parties representing the Russian-speaking minority (making up 33% of the total population in Estonia and 40% in Latvia as of 1990) would have a decisive political influence. This would force the restored independent state to gravitate in foreign politics towards Russia as the successor state of the Soviet empire, hollowing out their independence.

So while the still strong (by 1989–1991) demographic continuity with the interwar Baltic states accounts for the very possibility of a tokenist approach to the restoration of independent states, the presence of such large shares of an immigrant population explains why the Estonian and Latvian tokenists upheld the exclusion of immigrants from citizenship as a means of constructing continuity between restored states and their interwar antecedents. Exclusionary citizenship legislation and claiming the borders according to the peace treaties of 1920 were sufficient (and thus had substitutes) as a means of constructing continuity. However, they could be perceived necessary only under the specific Estonian and Latvian demographic conditions, making the indigenous population feel as if they were on the brink of becoming minorities in their own countries.

Thus, the composition by age of the populations of Estonia and Latvia explains why the tokenist or fundamentalist approach to the restoration of independence received stronger support than the typist alternative represented by popular fronts until the early 1990s, when they (on the eve of the last elections to the last Supreme Soviets of the Baltic Soviet republics in February–March 1990) embraced tokenism as well. Nevertheless, the exclusion of Soviet-era immigrants from citizenship rights or declining to accept the administrative boundaries between the fSU republics as

⁄-

Map 5.1 (continued) from borders since 1991 (solid line)). 1 and 2 are parts of the interwar territory of Estonia and Latvia detached in 1944–1945; 3 is the Vilnius region (under Poland's control in 1920–1939); 4 is the Klaipėda region (part of Lithuania in 1923–1939 and since 1945)

independent state borders was a disponible political option. There were alternative ways (substitute policies) of constructing continuity with interwar statehood.

The comparison of these Estonian and Latvian practices of restoration with how it was performed in Lithuania supports this argument. Unlike its neighbours, Lithuania accepted the administrative boundaries of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic as its state borders and granted citizenship rights to the entire permanent population of Lithuania at the time (11 March 1990) the restoration of independence was proclaimed. However, this does not mean that the Lithuanian restoration of an independent state was not of the token variety. Influential political forces existed in Lithuania, which advocated exclusion of the Russian-speaking 'colonists' from citizenship rights and even repatriation to their homelands.

Their ultimate failure on this front was related to the political expediency calculations of Lithuanian political leaders during the years of 'extraordinary politics', based on the very different ethnic composition of Lithuania's population, marked by the absolute (approximately 80%) dominance of ethnic Lithuanians. Feeling no imminent danger of 'becoming a minority in their own land', ethnic Lithuanians (differently from the majority of ethnic Estonians and Latvians) did not support politicians who advocated the exclusion of Soviet-era immigrants from citizenship.

Lithuania's decision not to perform restoration in the Estonian and Latvian ways, i.e. restricting citizenship only to survivors from interwar Lithuania and their offspring, was intimately related to the restored state's acceptance of the administrative boundaries of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic as its state borders. Bluntly put, they were accepted because under Soviet occupation, Lithuania's territory had expanded from 59,731 km2 (as of 15 June 1940) to 65,300 km2 , or by 9.32%. This is much less than the territory of Lithuania (88,111 km2 ) according to the peace treaty with Soviet Russia, signed on 12 July 1920 in Moscow, and border agreements with Latvia and Germany, which the interwar Republic of Lithuania claimed as its legitimate territory in 1924 (Pakštas 1968: 461). However, differently from restored Estonia and restored Latvia, restored Lithuania did not claim its borders according to the 1920 Moscow Peace Treaty as a definition of its territorial identity, as during the interwar years it became involved in a conflict with Poland over a large part of its claimed territory.

According to the peace treaty between Poland and Soviet Russia signed in Riga on 18 March 1921, the border between Poland and Soviet Russia was established east of the Soviet–Lithuanian border, making the establishment of Lithuania's eastern border an issue of Lithuanian–Polish relations. Poland used its military superiority to seize Vilnius and draw the border line on its terms. This border was internationally recognised by the Allied powers on 18 March 1923. Lithuania did not recognise this decision until March 1938, when Poland forced it, by ultimatum, to establish diplomatic relations (Butkus 2019).

Ultimately, Lithuania did become a beneficiary of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, being rewarded for its unyielding position in the conflict over Vilnius, which in 1920–1938 was one of many frozen international conflicts in Eastern Europe, undermining the Versailles rehabilitation of international order. Until the signing of the treaty between Lithuania and Poland on 26 April 1994, confirming the present borders between the two states, the secret protocols of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty of 10 October 1939 were the only international law acts providing grounds for Lithuania's control over Vilnius. According to this treaty, Lithuania did receive together with Vilnius only a small part of the territory which it had been assigned according to the Moscow Peace Treaty of 12 July 1920. After Lithuania's annexation in 1940, its territory was augmented, including some additional areas with an ethnically Lithuanian population.

The most valuable addition was the Klaipėda region that had been separated from Germany according to the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. As compensation for the loss of Vilnius, it was attached to Lithuania since 1923 as its autonomous province. Lithuania's rule was supervised by the signatory powers (Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan) of the Klaipėda Convention, signed on 8 May 1924 in Paris. The signatory powers repeatedly intervened to censure Lithuania's government, based on complaints of encroachment upon the rights of the German minority and voiced by its political parties and supported by the German government. However, they did not protest when, on 22 March 1939, Germany forced Lithuania to sign a treaty transferring the Klaipėda region back to German rule, and Great Britain even recognised this change de jure on 15 May 1939 (Plieg 1932: 222–223).

In 1945, the Klaipėda region was attached to the Lithuanian SSR, while the neighbouring part of Eastern Prussia became the Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg) Oblast of the USSR, according to the Allied powers' Potsdam agreements. However, the status of the Klaipėda region was not explicitly regulated in these agreements. Aside from Germany's refusal to claim its territories east of the Oder–Neisse line, the Soviet decision to attach the Klaipėda region to occupied Lithuania remains as the sole legal basis of its belonging to today's restored independent Lithuania. With such a complicated history and shaky international legal foundations for Lithuania's eastern and western borders, it was simply politically unwise for the government of the restored Lithuanian state to insist on the illegality of all territorial changes under Soviet occupation made after 15 June 1940.

The instability of Lithuanian interwar borders made application of the Estonian and Latvian example of state continuity construction by exclusionary citizenship legislation a difficult (if not impossible) endeavour. Taking under its control Vilnius and the surrounding area in late October 1939, the independent Republic of Lithuania immediately recognised the citizenship rights of those who were then inhabitants (or their offspring) of the new territories under its control before 1920, excluding 'Polish colonists'—persons who had settled there between October 1920 and September 1939, when these territories were 'under Polish occupation'. Another category within the population with no rights to Lithuanian citizenship was war refugees who had arrived in the Vilnius area in September–October 1939.

By May 1940, there were 97,893 persons in the Vilnius area without Lithuanian citizenship (Žepkaitė 1990: 54), or 20.3% from the total of 482,500 persons who were living in Lithuania's newly acquired territory by the end of 1939 (Gaučas 1978: 66). Some 'Polish colonists' would have certainly acquired Lithuanian citizenship according to the naturalisation laws of interwar Lithuania, if it would have outlasted June 1940, like so many 'Russian colonists' in the restored independent Estonia and Latvia after 1991. However, in 1989–1991 it would have been most definitely politically counterproductive to launch discussions on how to sort out people within the population of Eastern Lithuania based on who is entitled to register as a Lithuanian citizen and who is not. This would have only further fuelled the separatist mood among the Polish minority of Lithuania and complicated relations with Poland, from whom Lithuania expected support for the restoration of its independence.

Finding itself deprived, by lucky circumstance, of options to construct its identity with the interwar Republic of Lithuania through territorial claims or exclusionary citizenship politics, restored independent Lithuania chose another path. Already after the international recognition of its restored independence, Lithuania confronted Russia as the successor of the USSR with demands to compensate damages incurred during occupation. These demands were voiced for the first time in the referendum on 14 June 1992, where it was coupled with the demand to immediately withdraw Russian troops from Lithuania. On 13 June 2000, the Lithuanian Seimas accepted the Law on Compensation of Damage Resulting from the Occupation by the USSR. An expert commission was established to calculate the size of the damages (Žalimas 2003: 153).

This commission could use the conclusions of an earlier commission that functioned in 1996–1997 under the Minister of the Economy Vincas Babilius, which estimated the damage of the Soviet occupation in 1940–1990 to the sum of 667.7 billion US dollars at the current rate. The new commission estimated damages for the 1990–1993 period, including also the few years after restoration of independence, when the Russian military was still on Lithuanian soil. In the new estimate, the experts distinguished between direct (20 billion 2000 US dollars) and indirect (780 billion US dollars) damages (Satkauskas 2003).

Until now (2022), Lithuania remains the only Baltic (and more generally the only post-communist) state to have officially filed for reparation of damages incurred under Soviet occupation. In Latvia, a standing commission of historians was established to estimate the damage of the Soviet occupation, producing a series of reports and conducting an international conference (Prikulis 2012). Important archive discoveries were made producing evidence that Latvia's contribution to the USSR budget was always larger than transfers therefrom (Krūmiņš 2017: 289–298). However, there was no attempt to promulgate legislation of the Lithuanian type, and Estonia remained completely aloof regarding further work on the estimation of occupation damages after the release of an early initial report (Salo 2005). It seems that the self-assertiveness of the Baltic countries in the reparation issue stands in reverse relation to their occupation-related territorial losses: Estonia, which lost the largest slice of its territory (as a percentage of its territory in June 1940), is the least self-assertive. Lithuania, which made gains and had no losses, is the most assertive. Latvia, which lost a somewhat smaller part of its territory than Estonia, lies in the middle—it is progressing towards an official damage estimate but is not yet voicing its damage reparation claims.

The reason for these differences is the Russian refusal to even consider border corrections in favour of Estonia and Latvia. Given this refusal, the addition of any further claims to this basic restitutive concern is pointless. Yet, for Lithuania, which has no territorial conflict with Russia or permanent altercations with Russia on alleged violations of the rights of its Russian-speaking minority, the case for reparations is a convenient (and optimal) way of perpetually affirming its continuity and identity with the interwar Republic of Lithuania (arguably, Russia could preempt Lithuanian reparation claims by refusing to recognise the legitimacy of Lithuania's possession of Klaipėda).

The most basic acts of continuity construction made by the Baltic states were of course the independence restoration acts of all three states and their constitutions. Being certain of the support of the absolute majority of the Lithuanian population, the Lithuanian Popular Front (called the Lithuanian Reform Movement (LRM); Lietuvos Persitvarkymo Sąjūdis) under the leadership of Vytautas Landsbergis and Romualdas Ozolas pressed ahead first, not making an issue of questions that were so tantalising to activists from the Estonian and Latvian Citizens' Committees movements: does running as a candidate (or voting) in the election to the supreme soviets (parliaments) of Soviet republics imply recognition of their legitimacy and collaboration with the occupying power? Are such parliaments entitled to restore de jure or de facto interwar states? The leaders of the LRM did not perceive any problems, considering the Soviet institutions merely as a prop that could be abandoned at the moment when the ultimate aim—winning power and proclaiming independence would be achieved (Laurinavičius and Sirutavičius 2008: 502–540).

The day after (11 March 1990) the first meeting of the newly elected parliament (Seimas) of Lithuania (which was the last legislature of Soviet Lithuania, becoming the first legislature of restored independent Lithuania), it proclaimed restoration of the independence of the Lithuanian state, affirming its continuity with the Lithuanian state that had been established in 1918–1920. Besides these references, legal continuity of the post-Soviet Lithuanian state and the interwar Republic of Lithuania was constructed by reinstating, at the same meeting on 11 March 1990, the last Constitution of interwar Lithuania, promulgated on 12 May 1938. A subsequent act passed on the same day replaced this constitution with a Provisional Constitution, which was 'a hybrid of that of 1940 and the extant Constitution of the LiSSR' (Misiunas and Taagepera 1993 (1983): 333). It remained in force until the referendum of 25 October 1992, when the new permanent constitution was accepted. It can in turn be described as another 'hybrid' of the super-presidential 1938 and parliamentary 1922 constitutions, establishing a semi-presidential democracy in Lithuania (Norkus 2013), fortunately surviving at the time of publication in 2023.

By reinstating and then immediately abolishing the 1938 Constitution, the deputies of the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet were not concerned whether it was legally possible to reintroduce the 1938 Constitution. They also had no concerns or doubts about their right to replace it with a different constitution in the way this was done. From the legal point of view, once the 1938 Constitution was reinstated, it could be changed only by proceeding according to its regulations. A three fifths majority was necessary to make any such changes, and the President of the Republic of Lithuania had to endorse these changes. However, on 11 March 1990, Lithuania had no (and could not have) a president elected according to the Constitution of 12 May 1938.

The procedures followed by the supreme soviets of Estonia and Latvia, where popular fronts won constitutional majorities (supported also by a significant proportion of Russian-speaking voters), were similar but more guarded and gradual. Instead of proclaiming restoration of Latvian independence outright, the Latvian Declaration on the Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Latvia (Deklarācija par Latvijas Republikas neatkarības atjaunošanu), accepted on 4 May 1990 by the newly elected parliament, only proclaimed the beginning of its restoration. It contains an extensive historical preamble, which relates the main historical facts on how Latvia lost its independence, ending with a summarising statement that 'according to international law, the incorporation of Latvia into the Soviet Union is invalid. Accordingly, the Republic of Latvia continues to exist de jure as a subject of international law and is recognised as such by more than 50 nations of the word' (cit. According to Deksnis and Talavs 2015: 226).1 It also very clearly describes the role of newly elected parliament: 'to restore de facto the free, democratic and independent Republic of Latvia' (cit. According to Deksnis and Jundzis 2015: 227), which is the only legally coherent interpretation assuming its continuing existence de jure at the moment when the declaration was issued.

In the same document, the newly elected Latvian Supreme Council declared the annulment of the declaration on the accession of Latvia to the Soviet Union that had been accepted by the puppet legislative in 1940 and reinstated the Constitution of Latvia (Satversme) of 1922. In the next sentence, this constitution was suspended until the adoption of its new edition, except for four articles: 'Latvia is an independent democratic republic' (Art. 1); 'The sovereign power of the State of Latvia is vested in the people of Latvia' (Art. 3); 'The territory of the State of Latvia, within the borders established by international agreements, consists of Vidzeme, Latgale, Kurzeme and Zemgale' (Art. 4); and 'The Saeima shall be elected in general, equal and direct elections, and by secret ballot based on proportional representation' (Art. 6) (cit. According to Deksnis and Jundzis 2015: 227).

These articles are singled out because according to the 1922 Constitution, they could be changed only by a national referendum. The declaration closed with the regulation that until the end of the transitional period, constitutional norms of the Latvian SSR and other Soviet legislation may be applied, as far as they do not contradict Articles 1, 2, 3 and 6 of the Constitution of Latvia cited above. The end of the transition period is described as the first session of the new Saeima (parliament). Setting the example for Estonian legislators, the declaration closes by proclaiming the Latvian–Soviet Peace Treaty of 11 August 1920 as the basis for future relations with the Soviet Union, with details to be negotiated by a special government commission (see also Blūzma et al. 1998; Jundzis 2017a, b).

1 https://www.voltairenet.org/article203424.html; http://likumi.lv/doc.php?id=75539. Accessed 10 January 2023.

The newly elected parliament of Estonia stated that the interwar Republic of Estonia continues to exist de jure and proclaimed the beginning of its de facto restoration (restitutio ad integrum) on 30 March 1990, postulating that it would continue until fully legitimate authorities (constitutional organs) of the republic could be formed. In order to complete the restoration of independence, during the transitional period the country would be governed according to provisional constitutional rules. The tacit assumption was that completion of the restoration of independence would be possible only after the occupation of Estonia would end after the withdrawal of the Soviet army. This assumption was imposed by the Committee of Estonia, which was the executive body of the Estonian Congress, before the Supreme Council (Graf 2007: 401).

However, provisional constitutional rules for the transitional period were promulgated only on 8 May 1990, broadly following the Latvian precedent. Namely, it restored the pre-Soviet name of the state (the Republic of Estonia) and reinstated five out of six articles of the first chapter (General dispositions) of Estonia's 1937 Constitution (enacted on 1 January 1938), starting with Art. 1: 'Estonia is an independent and sovereign Republic wherein the supreme power of the State is held by the people' (cit. According to Graf 2007: 482). Most daringly, on 16 May 1990, the Estonian parliament announced that relations between the Republic of Estonia and the USSR should be based on the Tartu Peace Treaty of 2 February 1920, which implied Estonia's territorial claims upon the USSR or the RSFSR due to changes made to Estonia's administrative borders during the Soviet times (Graf 2007: 483–484).2

There were three reasons for Estonia's and Latvia's preference for taking a gradual approach to state independence restoration. Firstly, counter to what the Lithuanian leaders expected, the restored independent Lithuania was not immediately recognised by the US and other Western states. Their expectation was based on the policy of nonrecognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, which will be discussed in the next chapter. However, in the spring of 1990, the United States was anxious to endanger the position of Gorbachev, and West Germany needed him to be in government until the German reunification was complete (Spohr-Readman 2008).

Secondly, the Soviet government imposed economic sanctions, stopping the delivery of oil and fuel and reducing gas supply to Lithuania by 80%. Understandably, the newly elected leaders of Estonia (Chairman of the Supreme Council Arnold Rüütel, Prime Minister Edgar Savisaar) and Latvia (Chairman of the Supreme Council Anatolijs Gorbunovs, Prime Minister Ivars Godmanis) preferred to avoid sanctions for their republics or even the imposition of direct presidential rule by Gorbachev. This was the main demand of the local 'interfront' movements, supported by the directors of enterprises that employed a predominantly Russianspeaking workforce and reported directly to ministries in Moscow. Wisely, the Balts consistently upheld the tactic of staging non-violent resistance, depriving Soviet

2 https://web.archive.org/web/20190928001523/http://estonia.news-city.info/docs/sistemsf/dok\_ iersnz.htm. Accessed 10 January 2023.

conservatives in Moscow of pretexts for counter-measures (Misiunas and Taagepera 1993 (1989): 329–336; Taagepera 1993: 177–207; Bleiere et al. 2014: 437–457).

The third and most important reason was the opposition of the citizens' congresses, which were parallel or shadow legislatures, contesting the right of supreme councils to proclaim complete restoration of independence, as they were elected under the conditions of continuing Soviet military occupation and with the participation of 'colonists'. Considering themselves as the only legitimate bodies capable of restoring the independence of the Baltic states in a legally 'clean' way, the congresses nevertheless abstained from proclaiming restoration of independence themselves. They correctly calculated that Moscow would not enter into negotiations on the issue of de-occupation, and they were barely able to govern. Thus, they reserved for themselves the role of the top or spiritual moral authority, leaving matters of practical politics to the governments appointed by the supreme councils, despite their 'sinful' origins.

Inadvertently, the leaders of the citizens' congresses mimicked the stance of the medieval Catholic Church regarding secular authorities. This parallel may also help us better understand how many leaders of Citizens' Committees movements (e.g. Mart Laar, the future Prime Minister of Estonia in 1992–1994 and 1999–2002) could run for (and win) seats in the supreme councils, considered by themselves as illegitimate. To recall, the medieval Catholic Church did not selfrestrict the extent to which it exercised spiritual power, with many Catholic bishops also exercising secular power in their bishoprics, while the Catholic popes ruled over the Papal States and continue to rule the State of the Vatican City even now.

Meanwhile, the principled standpoint of the citizens' congresses was that restoration of independence should be preceded by de-occupation, meaning withdrawal of the Soviet Army, and could be completed only by a government elected through the participation of legitimate citizens alone. The popular front governments were considered just as provisional transition governments for negotiating the withdrawal of the Soviet Army and organising (in collaboration with the Citizens' Committees) truly legitimate elections with participation of only 'genuine' citizens (Pettai 2004: 177–195).

The modus vivendi between the self-perceived legitimate, albeit powerless, citizen congresses and governments, appointed by semi-legitimate (legitimate because of the democratic character of election but illegitimate because of the foreign occupation status and the participation of immigrants) supreme councils, was based on the acceptance of the basics of the tokenist approach by popular fronts on the eve of elections to republican legislatures in February–April 1990. This was affirmation of the continuity and identity of the newly restored states with the interwar Baltic states, implying that the Baltic states are sovereign states under foreign occupation, so that Soviet legislation on the secession of union republics does not apply to them.

According to this legislation, which was passed by the USSR Supreme Council on 3 April 1990, two thirds of the permanent residents of seceding republics should approve secession by referendum. After a 5-year transition period, the referendum had to be repeated, if this was demanded by at least one tenth of the USSR citizens permanently residing in the republic's territory. The conduct and results of both referendums were subject to 'examination' by the union parliament, which was entitled to impose a repeat referendum in case of 'irregularities'. The territories densely populated by non-titular ethnic groups received the right to secede from the seceding republics themselves (Van Elsuwege 2008: 50). Under the terms of this law, Estonia and Latvia had a realistic chance to secede only if secession would be supported by a large part of the immigrant population, which thus could not be excluded from having citizenship rights.

Clearly, the establishment of independence of the Baltic republics under the Soviet 1990 law could produce only a type restoration of the Baltic states. They would be new independent states, defining themselves as the successor states of these republics but not as continuators of the interwar states. Basing on the thesis of the continuity restored in the Baltic states with their interwar counterparts, the new governments of the Baltic republics insisted that relations between them and the Soviet Union government was not an issue of domestic Soviet law but of international law. The standoff was almost miraculously resolved by the failure of the August putsch in 1991.

The outcome was miraculous from the viewpoint of the pro-independence forces in the Baltic states because they could not influence the outcome of the power struggle between Boris Yeltsin's supporters in the capital city of the agonising USSR during the 3-day putsch (19–21 August 1991). In addition, restoration of independence could be completed on the best possible terms for the Baltic countries, with no further cost and sacrifices. Meanwhile, 'as Marju Lauristin would later reveal, many Popular Front leaders in the summer of 1991 believed that the independence process would still take many years and therefore would eventually require additional concessions from Estonia' (Pettai 2004: 194).

In Estonia's case, these August days were miraculous also because two competing authorities in Estonia—the moral (represented by the Committee of Estonia) and the actual political (the Supreme Council with its popular front majority)—managed to achieve consensus (through the efforts of Marju Lauristin, who together with Edgar Savisaar led the Estonian Popular Front) on the text of the declaration about the restoration of independence and how the restoration should be completed. Endorsed by the leaders of the Committee of Estonia, the declaration was accepted and proclaimed by the Supreme Soviet on 20 August 1991, which is now celebrated in Estonia as its independence restoration day (Pettai 2004: 196–197; Taagepera 1993: 200–206). Stating that the coup d'etat in the USSR made the restoration of independence of Estonia by negotiation impossible, it 'reaffirmed' the independence of Estonia, declared the will to restore Estonia's diplomatic relations with other countries and ruled the establishment of the Constitutional Assembly to finalise the Constitution of Estonia. This assembly was to include the members of the Supreme Council of Estonia and those of the Congress of Estonia, abiding by the parity principle (Graf 2007: 447).

The next day, on 21 August 1991, the Supreme Council of Latvia adopted a constitutional law, On the Statehood of the Republic of Latvia, proclaiming the end of the transitional period and restoring de facto independence. However, most articles (except those that were enacted by the 4 May 1990 Declaration) remained suspended until the first session of the newly elected fifth Saeima on 6 July 1993. In making its decisions, the Supreme Council of Latvia did not consult with the Committee of Latvia, which was the standing organ of the Latvian Citizens' Congress elected in April 1990, single-handedly making all decisions of a constitutional character. Even before the August 1991 crisis, it formed a work group of 22 deputies to elaborate a new edition of the 1922 Constitution, following the rulings of the 3 May 1990 Declaration. However, in the end a new edition was not drafted, and the 1922 Constitution was restored unamended (Bleiere et al. 2014: 454–66; Blūzma et al. 1998; Jundzis 2017a, b).

The fifth Saeima, which fully reinstated the Latvian constitution, was elected only by citizens of Latvia as of 1940 and their offspring, so the key demand of fundamentalist tokenism was implemented. Its self-numeration as the fifth Saeima communicates that it is considered as a successor to the fourth Saeima, elected on 3–4 October 1931, and dissolved after the coup of 15 May 1934 by the Prime Minister Karlis Ulmanis. The coup marked the end of the democracy period in the interwar Republic of Latvia, preceding by 5 years the loss of independence. Karlis Ulmanis (who was a qualified agronomist) did not bother to legalise his power by promulgating a new constitution. The ministerial cabinet with Ulmanis as prime minister simply usurped the legislative powers of the Saeima, in blatant violation of the 1922 Constitution. No elections or plebiscites took place during his dictatorship. Thus, full reinstatement of the 1922 Constitution of Latvia marked the completion of the restoration of democracy in Latvia as well.

All three Baltic states were 'velvet' authoritarian regimes by June 1940 (Łossowski 1972; Polonsky 1975). Parliamentary democracy collapsed in Lithuania already in 1926, replaced by the dictatorship of Antanas Smetona. Ulmanis' selfcoup in Latvia was preceded by the self-coup of Prime Minister of Estonia Konstantin Päts on 12 March 1934 in Estonia. Smetona and Päts in Lithuania were lawyers, and so their regimes were meticulously implemented, in the legal sense, functioning according to super-presidential constitutions promulgated on 28 January 1937 (in force from 1 January 1938) in Estonia and on 12 May 1938 in Lithuania (Kasekamp 2010; Plakans 2011).

The authoritarian features of the Lithuanian (which does not even contain the word 'democracy' in its text) and the Estonian constitutions made the Latvian way of constructing continuity between the restored and interwar states impractical, as the reinstatement of these constitutions would have contradicted the aim of not only restoring state independence but also democracy. Therefore, the Constitution of Lithuania of 12 May 1938, reinstated on 11 March 1990, was in force for only 1 hour, replaced by a provisional and then the standing new constitution, adopted by referendum on 25 October 1992.

For similar reasons, the Constitutional Assembly of Estonia decided not to take the Latvian route, reinstating its complete 1937 Constitution, already partly reinstated by the Supreme Council of Estonia on 8 May 1990. Instead, it drafted a new constitution, which was enacted after the referendum of 28 June 1992. However, those drafting this new document made every effort to ascertain that acceptance of the new constitution would correspond to the 1937 Constitution and would therefore be constitutional in itself. For this aim, the preamble of the 1992 Constitution contains reference to Art. 1 of the 1937 Constitution, thus retrospectively recognising it as the only valid legal framework in 1940–1992.3 According to Art. 1 of this constitution, 'Estonia is an independent and sovereign Republic wherein the supreme power of the State is held by the people'. 4

With the referendum of 28 June 1992 interpreted as the act of the supreme power of the Estonian people, the acceptance of the new Constitution of 1992 proceeded according to the 1937 Constitution, i.e. in a fully constitutional and legal way. Taking this legal construction of Estonian constitutional lawyers at face value, the deepest foundation of this legality is the continuity between the Estonian people who lived under the 1937 Constitution in 1938–1940 and the people who voted for the new constitution in 1992. The presence of surviving citizens of Estonia in 1940 amid the population of Estonia in 1992 proved to be the most important prop and embodiment of the continuity between both constituencies, making the introduction of the new constitution correspond to the 1937 Constitution. My distinction between a token restoration (based on demographic continuity) and a type restoration is just a sociological language translation of the legal thinking of Estonian constitutional lawyers, also providing an explication and clarification of its tacit assumptions.

Of course, only surviving citizens of Estonia as of June 1940 and their offspring voted in the constitutional referendum on 28 June 1992, followed by the parliamentary elections on 20 September 1992. This election produced a legislature that was completely legal from the viewpoint of activists in the Citizens' Committees movement. This was indeed the triumph of fundamentalist tokenism. Nevertheless, the fundamentalists had to compromise on at least three points.

Firstly, at the time of the constitutional referendum in Estonia and the elections of the first 'clean' legislatures in Estonia and Latvia to replace the transitional supreme councils of 1990–1992, elected according to Soviet legislation, all three Baltic republics were still under foreign occupation (Pettai 2004: 104). Russian troops remained stationed in their territory. Lithuania got rid of them by late summer in 1993. Estonia and Latvia signed agreements for their withdrawal the following year, with the last troops withdrawing from Estonia in September 1995. In Latvia this took place only in 1999, as Russia negotiated the right to operate the Skrunda radar station until its replacement was built in mainland Russia (Simonsen 2001). To recall, the original idea of the Estonian and Latvian fundamentalist tokenists was that de-occupation should precede the election of a government entitled to represent the states de facto extinguished by Soviet occupation in 1940.

Second, the fundamentalist tokenist programme included decolonisation, meaning the removal of 'civil garrisons' of the occupier power—Russian-speaking

3 https://www.president.ee/en/republic-of-estonia/the-constitution/index.html. Accessed 10 January 2023.

4 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution\_of\_the\_Estonian\_Republic\_(1938). Accessed 10 January 2023.

immigrants (Par Latvijas dekolonizāciju 2002; Pettai 2004: 202; Agarin 2010). Their example was the repatriation of French colonists from Algeria in 1961–1962 and the Portuguese from Angola and Mozambique after 1974. The idea was that the Estonian and Latvian restorations should also involve a reversal to the ethnic composition of the population, approximating the interwar situation. This achievement would have placed the Baltic restorations on par with those ecological restorations that succeed to clean degraded ecological systems from 'invasive species' (see Chap. 3).

However, this did not happen. Repatriation was not an attractive prospect for immigrants because the economic situation in their homelands was even worse than in the Baltic countries in the 1990s. Later, on account of the relative economic success of the Baltic countries (see Chap. 9), repatriation became even less attractive in comparison with having resident status in the restored Baltic states. At the same time, despite their economic success, the Baltic states still were not rich enough to finance repatriation programmes, involving paying the prospective repatriates compensation for their property, pensions and other entitlements. Instead, Estonia and Latvia strategically opted for integration of their Russian-speaking immigrants instead of repatriation. Naturalisation requirements were not eased, with being able to at least speak the indigenous languages remaining a necessary condition for citizenship. However, the authorities did increase the share of subjects taught in Estonian and Latvian at minority schools to enable the offspring of immigrants to satisfy this condition by default (Agarin 2010).

Thirdly, tokenists had to accommodate Russia's refusal to restore the 1940 borders. There was no possibility of perennially sticking to territorial demands in the way Lithuania did with its demands of compensation for damages incurred under occupation because the EU and NATO did not accept new member states with open territorial claims upon neighbouring states. Confronted with the difficult choice between holding onto their position in the territorial dispute with Russia and acceding to Western alliances, both countries preferred the second alternative, signing border agreements with Russia that legalised the present border configurations. However, the Estonian-Russian border treaty remained unratified by Russia, protesting against the one-sided amendment (containing reference to the 1920 Tartu Peace Treaty) by the Estonian parliament during its ratification proceedings.

#### References

Taagepera, Rein. 1993. Estonia: Return to Independence. Boulder: Westview Press.

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## Chapter 6 The 'Baltic Question' and Retroactive Politics in the Baltic Restorations

Of course, survivors from the interwar republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were not single survivals from the interwar years in 1990, helping make the continuity of the Baltic states and societies a sociological reality. The next and no less important asset of tokenist restoration politics in 1988–1991 was the survival of the Baltic states de jure as persons in international law. Knowledge of this legal fact was the main source of inspiration of fundamentalist tokenist restoration politics in the Baltic countries. The main cause of the de jure survival of the Baltic states was the US policy of non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states, dating back to 23 July 1940.

On this day, Sumner Welles, the US acting Secretary of State, made a statement refusing to recognise the pending annexation of the Baltic states as Soviet republics and condemned their occupation by the Soviet Union. This statement was a manifestation of the 1932 Stimson Doctrine, proclaimed after Japan's occupation of Northeastern China (Manchuria). In this doctrine, enunciated by Henry L. Stimson, the US Secretary of State, the United States committed to non-recognition of international territorial changes that were executed by military force (L'hommedieu 2008; Vitas 1990). By this act, the United States rejected Soviet attempts to legalise the annexation as the 'voluntary' self-incorporation of three independent states.

These attempts involved staging fake elections (there was a single list of candidates to vote for and no fair vote count) to elect 'people's assemblies'. As their first acts, they proclaimed the Baltic states as 'Soviet Socialist Republics', asking Moscow to accept them as additional three republics of the USSR. While some local communists could rejoice at this fulfilment of their party programmes, the broader populations were deeply shocked as the accession to the USSR was not part of the programme of the list of 'people's deputies', proclaimed during the election campaign as 'people's legislatives'. The Soviets were greatly assisted by the 'silent submission' of Baltic dictators, who not only failed to order military resistance but did not even voice any diplomatic protest (Ilmjärv 2004).

While Smetona was able to flee to neighbouring Germany, Ulmanis and Päts were captured. The Soviets left them for a month in their presidential offices, forcing them to sign new legislation. In Lithuania, the Soviets took advantage of Lithuanian Prime Minister Antanas Merkys, who was the acting president after Smetona's flight. This gave the policies of the puppet governments a cloak of legality, although many acts signed by the captive heads of state were unconstitutional, including the organisation of fake elections and self-abolition of independent states (Bleiere et al. 2014: 241–260; Laar and Hiio 2018, 1: 189–212; Senn 2007).

Swift abolition of the state independence of the Baltic states by 'people's assemblies' prompted diplomatic legacies of the Baltic countries to refuse to comply to the orders of the 'ministers of foreign affairs' of the puppet governments to hand over buildings and documents to Soviet diplomats and to return home (for imprisonment or shooting). In refusing compliance, Latvian and Lithuanian diplomats followed secret instructions they had received before the Soviet invasion. The Latvian government appointed its minister in London Kārlis Zariņš as the head of its diplomatic corps (with the authority to appoint new representatives). The Lithuanian foreign minister Juozas Urbšys authorised Stasys Lozoraitis for the same role, who was the Lithuanian representative in Rome, representing Lithuania both in Italy and the Vatican City. The Estonian consul in New York Johannes Kaiv took up this function for his state in the United States (Piirimäe 2014: 7–18).

Of course, the legacies of the Baltic states could survive and embark on the mission of giving testimony of their continuation only so long as there were states that recognised their mandates, following the United States in pursuing a non-recognition policy of the Soviet annexations. The practical implications of this policy were the arrest of accounts of the Baltic states held in the banks of states that stuck to a policy of non-recognition and preservation of the status of Baltic state diplomatic missions and their heads. They were allowed to use interest from the arrested funds of the Baltic governments to run the activities of these legations, including the issue of personal documents that continued to be recognised by most Western countries right up until the restoration of independence. The policies of the United Kingdom were similar, whereas Nazi Germany recognised the annexation of the Baltic countries. Democratic Sweden followed its lead in exchange for the Soviets' promise to compensate its companies and citizens for property losses due to the nationalisations and to pay the debts of the Baltic countries to the Swedish government or private companies (Mälksoo 2003).

From December 1941, the United States and the Soviet Union became allies in the anti-Hitlerite coalition, while the United Kingdom was made a Soviet ally following Hitler's attack on his former strategic partner in June 1941. However, neither US President Franklin Roosevelt nor British Prime Minister Winston Churchill renounced the policy of non-recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states. Roosevelt only gave a vague promise to Stalin to reconsider this policy after World War II if the Soviet Union would be able to ascertain the free will of the Baltic peoples to join the USSR in genuine plebiscites. 'In the end, Washington disregarded the so-called political realities and did not recognise the annexation of the Baltic states, although for a time (1943–1945) the decision hung in the balance.

In 1945–1947, on the agenda of relations between the Soviet Union and Western powers, the 'Baltic question' was overshadowed by many new issues, related to the fates of many other East European countries 'liberated' by the Red Army, not to mention the 'German question'. When the tensions over these questions escalated into the Cold War, the 'Baltic question' remained a bone of contention between the Soviet Union and the allied Western powers, among many other issues, until its very end. This secured the de jure survival of the Baltic states until 1990, with several remaining legacies of these countries serving as their de facto survivals, along with the still significant shares of survivors from the first independence (Piirimäe 2014: 115–156; Piirimäe and Mertelsmann 2012).

In his insightful paper, famous Estonian American political scientist Taagepera counterfactually argues that by making the Baltic states nominally independent satellite states instead of annexing them, the Soviet Union would have not only made its post-World War II relations with the Western powers less complicated (Taagepera 2013). In the long run, this would have most probably saved the USSR from disintegration in 1990–1991, as only in the Baltic republics did the population majorities resolutely support separation from the Soviet Union, receiving international support for their cause. The Transcaucasian republics may be another case with separatist majorities.

However, because of conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Moscow had strong levers to enforce on Armenia and Azerbaijan membership in the reformed federation as a better alternative, compared to the prospect of perpetual confrontation as independent states. For Georgia, these levers were the Abkhazia and South Ossetia issues—the populations of these autonomous regions of Georgia preferred direct subordination to Moscow rather than life in the independent Georgian state. With no Baltic example or precedent, separatist movements in the Transcaucasian republics barely had any chances to prevail (Suny 1993, 2011).

In the same paper, Taagepera (2013) reports about his own attempt (together with a group of young Estonian political activists) in the late 1960s to save (without knowing about it at this time) the Soviet Union from its pending disintegration in 1990–1991. Taagepera and his associates argued that it may be in the interests of the Soviet Union itself to resolve the inveterate 'Baltic question' by granting to its Baltic republics the status enjoyed by so-called 'popular democracy' states like Hungary, Poland or Bulgaria: that of a Soviet satellite state with internationally recognised independent state status. Generally, Soviet diplomacy after Stalin's death cared a great deal about the legal formalisation of Cold War divisions (Khudoley 2008). The Neue Ostpolitik (New Eastern Policy) of the FRG from 1969 included normalisation of relations between two German states and recognition of the border between Poland and Germany established at the Potsdam Conference of Allied powers in 1945. In this way, the 'German question' was resolved more or less according to Soviet wishes. Taagepera reasoned that the leaders of the Soviet Union could be attracted by the prospect of getting rid of the last remaining problem related to the international legal status of its Western borders. The solution of the Baltic question in the way proposed by Taagepera would have increased the number of seats under Soviet control in the UN and international organisations, which would have been an additional attractive feature.

For the Baltic nations themselves, the main bonus would be stopping immigration from other former Soviet republics, even if this came at the cost of granting citizenship rights to the Russophone immigrants already settled within the borders of the Baltic republics at the very moment of their secession. The realisation of Taagepera's plan would have involved recognition of the legitimacy of the regime change in June 1940, even including preservation of the power monopoly held by the Communist Party. It would have amounted to the establishment of new Baltic states rather than a restoration of the status quo of June 1940. And of course, no property restoration would have to occur, preserving the socialist economic system. The implementation of Taagepera's plan would have only led to a type restoration of the independent Baltic states; his ideas help illuminate the distinction between token and type restoration.

Taagepera's plan for the restoration of the independent Baltic states was met with an outcry of indignation from the older generation of Baltic emigrants. He was exposed to ostracism from the majority of his Estonian compatriots in emigration. According to Taagepera's ironic retrospective comment, this contributed greatly to the success of his academic career, as expulsion from the political and social activities of the Estonian emigrant community meant he could dedicate more time to academic research.

Importantly, Taagepera's plan was not a purely intellectual venture addressing only the Estonian emigrant audience—the author had no illusions about its reaction. This was a political action, addressing those who held power in the United States and in the USSR. Namely, Taagepera himself did everything possible to expose his plan to publicity, trying to get published in the most-read American newspapers. Taagepera's associate Helmo Raag used his contact with Zbigniew Brzezinski to get his plan read by officials in the US State Department, where it received (according to Taagepera's report) a favourable reception (Taagepera 2013: 27–28).

However, to get a chance at realisation, Taagepera's plan needed the favourable attention of the Soviet government. However, this side perceived it only as a sophisticated and therefore very dangerous ideological diversion—Taagepera was included on the list of persons who were forbidden to visit Estonia (Taagepera 2013: 40). Retrospectively, while Stalin's rash annexation of the Baltic countries was one of his greatest blunders, predetermining the failure of the Soviet Union to survive Gorbachev's perestroika, the implementation of Taagepera's plan was possibly the last chance to correct it.

In fact, Soviet leaders had a strong interest in the resolution of the 'Baltic question'. However, they expected that this question would be resolved during the 'Helsinki process', culminating in the signing of the Helsinki Accords during the meeting of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held on 30 July– 1 August 1975 after 2 years of negotiations (Morgan 2018). Alas, they miscalculated, as the United States continued with its policy of non-recognition. Baltic émigré organisations used further meetings of this conference to keep providing the Baltic question with publicity. 'It seems that Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders became victims of their own propaganda campaign: they mistakenly believed that the post-Second World War borders in Europe had become inviolable in Helsinki and that occupation of some territories by the Soviet Union during the Second World War, including the Baltic states, had been recognised by the West' (Khudoley 2008: 65).

Taagepera opined that his plan appeared too late to have any chance of practical success. This was the early Brezhnevist period, with its increasingly rigid conservatism, ultimately earning it the fame of the 'stagnation era'. Nikita Khrushchev was the last Soviet leader (before Gorbachev with his perestroika) able to make daring experiments. However, he also sincerely believed that the communist utopia could be realised and was self-intoxicated by propaganda about the exemplary resolution of the 'national question' in the Soviet Union via the implementation of Leninist national policy. The last point applies also to Gorbachev (Lewin 1991 (1988)).

Although most historians still stick to the principle that history does not have a subjunctive mode, others accept the use of counterfactual and alternative history to explore historical junctures by explicating the futures that were lost by history taking the course it actually took. Accepting its use for this purpose, Taagepera's retrospective comments about the viability of his plan can be expanded by the consideration that restoration of the independence of the Baltic states would have been most probable in the event of a power struggle among Stalin's associates, where Lavrentiy Beria (1899–1953) would have emerged as the winner.

During some 4 months (March–June 1953), when he was the most powerful member in the triumvirate of Stalin's successors (including also Malenkov and Khrushchev), Beria did attempt to reverse Stalin's policy of Russification and to reinstate korenizatsiya (nativisation). This meant the promotion of the representatives of the titular nations of the union and autonomous republics in the nomenklatura of these republics. This reversal was perhaps most swift in the Baltic republics, where local cadres were not trusted at the higher levels of the administrative hierarchy (Knight 1993: 186–191; Wydra 2007: 165–166).

Beria is known of having personally interrogated the captive Lithuanian partisan leader Jonas Žemaitis-Vytautas after his arrest on 30 May 1953 (the operatives were instructed to capture him alive at any cost) (Gaškaitė-Žemaitienė 2006: 43; Eidintas et al. 2019: 127–134). It is impossible to know the political role proposed for Žemaitis by Beria, if the latter had emerged victorious out of the coup d'etat organised by Nikita Khrushchev. In fact, Beria himself was arrested only a month later (on 26 June 1953). Beria is known for proposing to solve the 'German question' by agreeing to the restoration of capitalism in East Germany in exchange for the neutrality of united Germany (Gaddis 2005: 105–106; Knight 1993: 191–194).

It perhaps is not too reckless to speculate that the next step towards the solution of the 'Baltic question' could have been to grant the Baltic republics a status similar to that of other Soviet satellite states in Europe—exactly what Taagepera had proposed in vain more than one decade later. After all, for the author of the best scholarly study on this controversial Soviet politician, 'it is not all that hard to imagine him as a "policeman-turned-liberal" in the same genre as Iurii Andropov, Brezhnev's successor as party leader in 1982' (Knight 1993: 226). But, again, this would have amounted only to a type restoration despite the still overwhelming overlap between populations in 1940 and by 1953. In reality, a token restoration of the Baltic states took place at the time when attrition of demographic continuity between the interwar and late Soviet Baltic populations was approaching its limits.

Most certainly, constitutional law is not the only tool or medium used by the contemporary Baltic states to affirm their continuity with the interwar Baltic states. Among other things, it is inscribed into the institutional chronology of these Baltic countries, disclosed in the official self-presentation of state offices. For example, the political system of the restored independent Republic of Latvia is functioning according to its 1922 Constitution; thus, its parliament (Saeima), elected on 6 October 2018, is identified as the 13th, with numeration starting from the first Saeima elected on 7–8 October 1922.1 Accordingly, the Cabinet of the Ministers appointed on 23 January 2019 under Krišjānis Kariņš is numbered as the 40th, counting from the first provisional government under Karlis Ulmanis, established on 18 November 1918.2 And so, the President Egils Levits, elected on 29 May 2019, is considered the 10th or 12th president of Latvia, counting from Jānis Čakste, elected on 7 November 1922.3

The chronological list of Lithuanian parliaments (Seimas) is based on the same principles, starting with four parliaments from the interwar period and closing with the 13th Seimas, elected in October 2020.4 Uniquely among the Baltic states, the list includes (as the fifth Seimas) the 12th Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, elected in February–March 1990, which proclaimed restoration of independence on 11 March 1990. In the Estonian and Latvian lists, the supreme Soviets that were elected according to Soviet legislation and restored independence under the watchful and worried gaze of the citizens' congresses are counted separately and are not included into the overall numeration. The Estonian list closes with the 14th parliament (Riigikogu), elected on 3 March 2019, with overall numeration starting with the first parliament elected on 27–29 November 1920.5

According to the Estonian official list of heads of state, published at the president's office website, restored Estonia can boast of an uninterrupted lineage. It starts

1 https://www.saeima.lv/en/about-saeima/history-of-the-legislature. Accessed 10 January 2023. 2 https://www.mk.gov.lv/en/history-cabinet-ministers. Accessed 10 January 2023. 3 https://www.president.lv/en/former-presidents-latvia. Accessed 10 January 2023. The actual list of Latvian presidents on this website also includes Pauls Kalniņš, who was the Speaker of the 4th Saeima, disbanded by Karlis Ulmanis, and Deputy Speaker Jāzeps Rancāns. They are listed as acting presidents in 1944–1945 and 1947–1969. This interpretation is based on Latvia's 1922 Constitution, which stipulated that the speaker was required to fill in the position of acting president, as and when necessary. After the death of Kalniņš in 1945, this status was claimed by his deputy Rancāns. However, these claims were accepted only by some of the Latvian exile community (see below in the main text of this chapter).

4 https://www.lrs.lt/sip/portal.show?p\_r=35357&p\_k=1. Accessed 10 January 2023. 5 https://www.riigikogu.ee/en/introduction-and-history/history-riigikogu/. Accessed

10 January 2023.

with Konstantin Päts, prime minister of the provisional government, appointed on the day of Estonia's independence proclamation (24 February 1918), and closes with President of Estonia Alar Karis, elected on 31 August 2021. There is no gap for the period of de facto extinction of the independent Estonian state in 1940–1991 because the Estonian way of constructing the identity of its state includes retroactive recognition of the authority of various office-holders, who claimed authority during this period.6

Monarchic legitimists applied the same reasoning in the years of the French Revolution and Napoleon's empire, who considered entitled members of the deposed dynasty as legitimate rulers, who had been impeded from exercising their legitimate authority by 'usurpers' in possession of real power. In the view of the French Bourbon legitimists, Louis XVI did not cease to be the King of France after his deposition on 21 September 1792. After his execution, the legitimate ruler of France (as Louis XVII) was his son Louis (1785–1795), who never ruled, and after his death in a republican prison, legitimacy passed onto the brother of Louis XVI Count of Provence. According to the Bourbon legitimist perception (as well as in his own self-perception), he was the King of France Louis XVIII also in the years when real power was in the hands of the usurper Napoleon (Mansel 2011). Besides the actual constitution, continuity between the Estonian state in 1918–1940 and that since 1991 is bolstered by the image of succession of the top level of authority, with not a single day lapsed during the period when the Estonian state had no legitimate holder of supreme authority in opposition and parallel to the Soviet usurpers.

According to this Estonian legitimist narrative, after the Soviets (17 June 1940) took the President of Estonia Konstantin Päts into captivity and made him their puppet, the legitimate head of state became the last prime minister of independent Estonia, Yuri Uluots, who went into hiding after being dismissed from office. In fact, this was Uluots' own self-perception, shared by many of his compatriots. It was based on a ruling in the 1937 Constitution, where it was outlined that when the president of the republic cannot perform his duties, they are taken over by the prime minister. Importantly, Uluots' authority was not just symbolical. When in February 1944 Uluots called all able-bodied men born in 1904–1923 to report for German military service, up to 38,000 draftees heeded his call, helping the Germans defend Estonia from Soviet invasion for more than 6 months (Misiunas and Taagepera 1993 (1983): 48–49, 60; Smith 2001: 36).

Uluots used this authority to appoint an Estonian government under Otto Tief on 18 September 1944, just before the German departure. Tief's government attempted to take under Tallinn its control, with its small volunteer military force clashing both with German and Soviet forces. Estonian forces seized government buildings and replaced the flag of Germany with the Estonian tricolour in the Pikk Hermann flag tower. However, they could not prevail over the advancing Red Army, who captured Tallinn on 22 September 1944. Tief's government went into hiding. Most of its

6 Heads of State (president.ee). Accessed 10 January 2023.

members (including Tief) were caught, executed or deported by the Soviets, and only a few were lucky enough to flee to Sweden (Laar and Hiio 2018, 1: 226–234).

Surely Uluots and Tief understood that a small Estonian power will not be able to hold onto Tallinn. What reasons then motivated their actions? Most probably, they simply decided to reenact the events of late February 1918, when a group of Estonian politicians, then in hiding from the Bolsheviks, proclaimed Estonian independence on 24 February 1918 making the most of the power vacuum created by the flight of the Bolsheviks from the advancing German military. Taking Tallinn, the Germans did not recognise the Estonian government that had gone into hiding. However, its emissaries approached Allied governments, urging them to support Estonia's independence in expectation of or after Germany's defeat, making appeals to the very fact of the proclamation of Estonia's independence, even if it had only symbolic meaning on 24 February 1918 (yet remains celebrated as the Estonian Independence Day until now) (Raun 2001 (1987): 104–107).

In 1944, it looked as if history was repeating itself, the difference being that now the Germans were fleeing and the Soviets were advancing. Having no illusions about their intentions, Estonian politicians calculated that the largely symbolic act of the restoration of Estonia's independence could increase the chances of its real restoration at the expected peace conference regulating postwar settlement. The Warsaw Uprising, which was still not ultimately crushed at the time of the outbreak of its twin in Tallinn, may have served as another example and source of inspiration for Estonian insurgents because the political (mis)calculations of the Estonian and Polish insurgents proved to be very similar. This time however, their expectations were disappointed. Although the United Kingdom and the United States did not grant formal recognition to the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states, the Baltic question was not discussed at the Yalta (4–11 February 1945) or the Potsdam (17 July–2 August 1945) conferences, where their leaders discussed key issues concerning postwar settlement in Europe (Piirimäe 2014).

This is what Estonian politicians, attempting to restore the Estonian state based on the assumption that the Estonian constitution of 1937 was still in power, could not know in September 1944. Uluots, who was suffering from gastric cancer by this time, departed for Sweden after appointing Tief's government, where he died on 9 January 1945. August Rei, who was foreign minister in Tief's government, assumed the role of acting president, receiving the support of its members who managed to emigrate from Estonia. This decision was substantiated in the 1937 Estonian Constitution, which ruled that when the prime minister could not perform his duties (and Tief was under Soviet arrest), they were to be fulfilled by the eldest member of the government (Made 2008).

On 12 January 1953, Rei appointed an Estonian government under Johannes Sikkar in Oslo, making Estonia the first and only Baltic state with a government in exile, which is another established practice to perpetuate the legal continuation of de facto extinct states. It was not successful in getting international recognition, nor were its successors. After the death of Rei in 1963, the position of acting president was taken by Prime Minister Aleksander Warma (Made 2008). He was succeeded by Tõnis Kint in 1970, and Kint by Heinrich Mark in 1990. After Rei's death, a single person assumed the duties of both acting president and prime minister, bearing the title 'Prime Minister in the duties of the President'. However, in 1990 these offices were separated again, with Heinrich Mark continuing as the acting president (1 March 1990–8 October 1992) and Enno Penno as prime minister (1 March 1990–- 7 October 1992) (Maasing 2018: 101–106). When Estonian independence was also restored in Estonia itself on 20 August 1991, for nearly a year Estonia had two governments (one in Estonia, another in exile) claiming legitimacy.

It seems like the members of the Constitutional Assembly working on the new Constitution of Estonia in 1991–1992 did not take the Estonian government in exile seriously. Otherwise, the Assembly could have used its services to resolve a legal difficulty, which Assembly members perceived as an insurmountable obstacle for reinstatement of the 1937 Constitution. This was the prime concern to the leaders of the Congress of Estonia, with their legalistic frame of mind, who were the main supporters of its reintroduction. According to the 1937 Constitution, in nominating presidential candidates, a major player was the Upper Chamber of the parliament. However, some of its members were appointed by the president. As by 1991 almost all members of the Upper Chamber in 1940 and Konstantin Päts were dead, there was a legal impasse. There appeared to be no legal way of electing a new Estonian president if the 1937 Constitution would be reintroduced (Taagepera 1994: 216).

In principle, it could be resolved simply by asking Heinrich Mark, the incumbent Prime Minister in the duties of the President of the Republic of Estonia of its government in exile, to appoint new members to the Upper Chamber. However, this solution was never considered. Nevertheless, after election of the first President of restored Estonia Lennart Meri, the latter invited the acting president in exile Heinrich Mark to participate in the inauguration ceremony on 8 October 1992. At the ceremony, Mark handed over his credentials to the incoming president. In turn, Meri made a speech thanking Estonia's government in exile for maintaining the legal continuity of the Estonian state (Made 2008:140; Maasing 2018: 107). In this way, the embarrassment of Estonia's having two governments, which continued for more than 1 year after the complete de facto restoration of its independence in August 1991, was ultimately resolved.

As the restored Latvian and Lithuanian states had no governments in exile, they were spared of similar perplexities in the construction of their continuity with their interwar predecessors. However, Lithuania followed Estonia's example of retroactive legalisation of authorities that had made attempts between 1940 and 1990 to restore the de facto extinct state in 1940; they will be discussed shortly below. Latvia displayed least activity in this kind of legislation for two reasons. Firstly, reinstatement of the 1920 Constitution made the additional construction of acts of state continuity redundant. Secondly, in the years 1940–1990, struggles for the restoration of independence in Latvia never progressed to the extent that a government effectively claiming control over the country or its part was ever established.

Among Latvian emigrants, there were attempts to establish a government in exile under the Chairman of the Latvian Central Council Bishop Jāzeps Rancāns, who was Deputy Speaker of the Latvian Parliament at the time of Ulmanis' coup in 1934 and presented himself as the 'acting president' of the Republic of Latvia (Deksnis and Beķere 2017: 238). However, they were never finalised due to resistance from Latvian diplomats in exile, who considered themselves as the sole legitimate representatives of the de jure surviving Latvian state. There was a similar conflict between the Estonian government in exile and its surviving diplomatic legacies (Made 2008).

Lithuania can boast of even two domestic attempts at independence restoration, providing rich historical material for the tokenist legitimist narrative on continuity of the Lithuanian state in 1940–1990. While Estonian patriots did attempt to restore independence using the vacuum of power created by the retreat of the Germans in 1944, Lithuanian insurgents did so in June 1941, using the flight of the Soviets as their opportunity. They seized the Kaunas radio station and on 23 June 1941 proclaimed the restoration of Lithuanian independence under a provisional government. Actually, it had already been secretly formed in Berlin on 22 April 1941 by the Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF), which prepared for the anti-Soviet uprising in collaboration with the German intelligence service (Misiunas and Taagepera 1993: 47–48; Žaldokas 2011).

The leader of the LAF, the former minister of Lithuania in Germany Kazys Škirpa, took the position of prime minister. However, the Germans did not allow him or other members of the provisional government to depart to Kaunas to take up their responsibilities. Nevertheless, under acting Prime Minister Juozas Ambrazevičius, the provisional government was able to establish its authority over the complete territory of Lithuania up to early August 1941, when it was disbanded by the Germans (Brandišauskas 2006 [2002]). Anniversaries of the Kaunas insurrection were celebrated during the first decade after the independence restoration in 1990. However, the reputation of its many activists is tarnished by participation in the Jewish Holocaust. Therefore, its memories became overshadowed by the glory of the anti-Soviet resistance war, waged in 1944–1953 (Girnius 1990; Gaškaitė et al. 1996; Pocius 2009), which culminated in the restoration of the Lithuanian state in the guise of an underground partisan state.

This is how contemporary Lithuanian historians (Gailius 2006a; Vaitkevičius and Petrauskienė 2019; Vaitkevičius 2020) interpret the declaration signed by eight Lithuanian partisan leaders, representing all the regions of Lithuania, in a bunker in Minaičiai (Radviliškis District Municipality) during their meeting on 2–- 22 February 1949 (Eidintas et al. 2019: 101–112). They are supported by Lithuanian experts in constitutional law, including the Chairman of the Constitutional Court (in 2014–2021) of this country, Dainius Žalimas (2011). The declaration was signed on 16 February 1949, on the occasion of the 31st anniversary of the proclamation of Lithuanian independence. The Minaičiai meeting and signing of this declaration completed the formation of a Lithuanian underground partisan state, which had started in 1946.

This makes the Lithuanian case unique among the Baltic countries. In all three, armed underground anti-Soviet activities started immediately after the Red Army reconquered them from Germany in 1944–1945. In all these reconquered territories, Soviets proclaimed mobilisation to the Red Army, which most young men fit for military service attempted to avoid by going into hiding. However, in Estonia and Latvia, there was little manpower to mobilise in the first place, as in these countries most males of draft age complied when German occupation authorities proclaimed their mobilisations in 1943–1944. The key factor for successful mobilisation was the support of interwar-period influential political leaders who survived Soviet repressions. They made young Estonians and Latvians believe they would be fighting for the restoration of the independence of their homelands, even though the Germans did not make any promises of this kind. Latvian and Estonian SS legions were created and engaged in heavy fighting against the Red Army on the Eastern front (Kott et al. 2017).

After all of this fighting, armed anti-Soviet movements had few human resources to rely on because the most patriotically motivated members of the young generation, who were determined to fight for the independence of their homelands, had already been killed in action by 1944 or had retreated with the German army. Thus, the formations of Estonian and Latvian anti-Soviet 'forest brothers', who continued their activities until the late 1950s, were rather small and scattered and did not attempt to establish centralised organisational structures beyond the regional level. They acted only locally under leaders who can be described as warlords (Anušauskas 2006 (2002); Laar 2007; Turčinskis 2017).

Very differently, Lithuanian political elites who survived the Soviet deportations in 1944–1945 encouraged the Lithuanian youth to shirk German mobilisation, and so the German attempt to build Lithuanian SS units failed. By the end of the war, the forests of Lithuania were full of young men, hoping to live to see the independence of Lithuania restored at the expected peace conference or until war between former allies in the anti-Hitlerite coalition would break out. Due to the scale and vitality of the anti-Soviet military resistance, most rural areas of Lithuania were characterised by a classical situation of divided or dual sovereignty: Soviets exercised their authority in the daytime, while the partisans were in control at night. Regionally centralised command structures had emerged already by 1946 (Girnius 1990; Gaškaitė et al. 1996; Gaškaitė-Žemaitienė 2006).

The centralisation of the Lithuanian partisan movement was completed by Jonas Žemaitis-Vytautas, who was in command of partisans in Western Lithuania, successfully organising the all-Lithuanian summit of partisan commanders in Minaičiai in February 1949. At the summit, the partisan movement was given the title of the Lithuanian Freedom Fight Movement (LFFM; Lietuvos laisvės kovos sąjūdis; LLKS) and included three regional commands: Western Lithuania (Jūra), Southern Lithuania (Nemunas) and Eastern Lithuania (King Mindaugas). The declaration of 16 February 1949 proclaimed that the Council of the LFFM was the highest political body of the nation. Until the 'end of occupation', the double role of the partisan high command and the provisional underground government was given to the Presidium of the LFFM, with Žemaitis-Vytautas taking the office of its chairman, equivalent to that of the head of the underground state. It was also explicitly stated that after the liberation of Lithuania, the chairmen of the Presidium of the LFFM Council would take up the position of acting president of Lithuania and would appoint its provisional government (Eidintas et al. 2019; Vaitkevičius and Petrauskienė 2019).

Only the Polish underground state (known as the Polish Secret State) of 1939–1944 can serve as a parallel to the underground institutions created by Lithuanian partisans. However, the Polish underground state subordinated itself to the Polish government in exile, followed its instructions and received some support in arms and equipment transported by the Allied air force. Very differently, the LFFM Council took the central role for itself. There were no regular communications between Lithuanian partisans and political centres in emigration. Only a few emissaries managed to break through the 'iron curtain' and come back. As the Cold War took off, American and British secret services made several attempts to establish contact with anti-Soviet partisans in Lithuania and the other Baltic countries, redirecting their activities to the collection of intelligence information. They failed because the British secret service was infiltrated by a network of Soviet spies around Kim Philby (Mockūnas 1997).

Even before construction of the Lithuanian partisan state was finalised, most partisan commanders conceived themselves as officers of the Lithuanian Army. Partisans wore the uniforms of the Lithuanian interwar army and adopted its ranks. There was a ladder of promotions, with Žemaitis-Vytautas receiving the rank of general. Partisans also established their system of military decorations. Both promotions and decorations were meticulously documented, with many partisan archives escaping seizure by the Soviet secret police until the restoration of Lithuanian independence (Vaitkevičius and Petrauskienė 2019: 34–37). The surviving partisan archives also contain detailed financial documentation. Where they could afford to do so, partisans did pay the food or accommodation they received from their supporters in the civilian population. These impressive remains of the clandestine 'bunker bureaucracy' provide conclusive evidence that there was indeed an underground partisan state, not just 'bands' as Soviet propaganda insinuated (Gailius 2006a; Vaitkevičius 2020).

The declaration of 16 February 1949 proclaimed the ultimate aim of the partisan struggle to be the restoration of the Lithuanian parliamentary republic of 1920–1926. This idea is symptomatic of the partisans' critical attitudes towards the dictatorship of Antanas Smetona (1926–1940), which is well documented in extant sources (Pocius 2020). This attitude was related not only to the foreign policy of the nationalist regime during the last 2 years of its existence (1938–1940), involving three capitulations: yielding to the Polish ultimatum in March 1938 to renounce from claims upon Vilnius, which was the official capital according to Lithuania's constitutions; surrendering to Germany in March 1939 over the 'Klaipėda question'; and 'silent submission' to the Soviet occupation in October 1939–June 1940. Partisans were also critical of the widening divide between the military and administrative elite of independent Lithuania and the 'common people', which made parts of the Lithuanian population vulnerable to communist propaganda (Pocius 2020).

Therefore, partisan leaders envisaged the restored independent Lithuanian state as being more socially just and cohesive and thus more resistant to any new attempts to undermine the restored independent Lithuanian state from within. The declaration of 16 February 1949 stated that 'social care is not a matter of individual citizens or organisations alone, but it is rather one of the priority tasks of the State' (Art. 19).7 Agrarian reform was also promised as one of several reforms to be implemented soon after liberation: 'a rational settlement of the social problems and the reconstruction of the State economy are linked to the reform of agriculture, municipalities and industry, which shall be implemented at the very outset of independent existence' (Art. 20). Thus, restoration of independence was coupled with reforms, which were meant to create a better and more resilient Lithuanian state, compared to what existed in 1940 (Pocius 2020).