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The occupation of the Baltic states was a period of annexation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania by the Soviet Union from 1940 until its dissolution in 1991.For a brief period, Nazi Germany occupied the Baltic states after it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.
On 28 August, the European Community welcomed the restoration of the sovereignty and independence of the Baltic states. [35] The Soviet Union recognised the Baltic independence on 6 September 1991. The Russian troops stayed for an additional three years, as Boris Yeltsin linked the issue of Russian minorities with troop withdrawals. Lithuania ...
Territorial changes of the Baltic states refers to the redrawing of borders of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia after 1940. The three republics, formerly autonomous regions within the former Russian Empire and before that of former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and as provinces of the Swedish Empire, gained independence in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917.
After the First World War (1914–1918) the term "Baltic states" came to refer to the countries by the Baltic Sea that had gained independence from the former Russian Empire. The term included Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, as well as Finland (which later became grouped among the Nordic countries instead). [6] [better source needed] [7]
Soviet expansion in 1939–1940. After the Soviet invasion of Poland on 17 September 1939, in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact the Soviet forces were given freedom over Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, an important aspect of the agreement to the Soviet government as they were afraid of Germany using the three states as a corridor to get close to Leningrad.
In 1939, the British and French tried to arrange a "guarantee" of the Baltic states to the Soviet Union. The Baltic states would have preferred to remain neutral, but the only security systems on offer were German or Soviet. [27] In June 1939, Estonia and Latvia yielded to German pressure and signed non-aggression pacts. [28]
The Soviet Union reoccupied the Baltic states as part of the Baltic Offensive in 1944, a twofold military-political operation to rout German forces and the "liberation of the Soviet Baltic peoples" [26] beginning in summer-autumn 1944, lasting until the capitulation of German and Latvian forces in Courland pocket in May 1945. An insurgency ...
The Soviet authorities responded to the event with intense rhetoric, [3] but failed to take any constructive actions that could bridge the widening gap between the Baltic republics and the rest of the Soviet Union. Seven months after the protest Lithuania became the first Soviet republic to declare independence.