Baltic states
By their culture and history, the Baltic countries are close to the Nordic countries. The biggest difference in the history was that the Baltic countries incorporated to the Soviet Union in 1940 (during the Second World War), but not the Nordic countries (with the exception of Karelia, a part of Finland which later joined the Russian SFSR). The three countries would become republics of the Soviet Union as the Estonian SSR, Latvian SSR, and Lithuanian SSR.