United Baltic Federation after WW1

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
What if Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had created a federation shortly after their independence. How would this alter history, would they have a better chance avoiding dictatorship or Stalin and Hitler's evil clutches then??
 
What if Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had created a federation shortly after their independence. How would this alter history, would they have a better chance avoiding dictatorship or Stalin and Hitler's evil clutches then??

Unfortunaly, no. I can well see the Federation having the same basic shortcomings Yugoslavia had. There would have been three national languages, and several linguistic minorties. Religiously, Estonia and Latvia are mainly Protestant, while Lithuania is Catholic, but before the WWII there would have been considerable Orthodox and Jewish Comunities as well. If the Federation had been able to create a functioning administration and armed forces - and I can't see this happening without some kind of a Tito character taking charge - , they would probably have collapsed under the internal tension by 1939.
 
Lithuania turned out to be wonderfully authoritarian during the inter-war period.

Mayhap Antanas Smetona could have risen to the challenge and became the strong-armed leader of such a federation.....

Maybe they could have brought Finland in with them in some kind of league/alliance....

Created Pilsudski's dream of a central european grouping of nations....
 
Lithuania turned out to be wonderfully authoritarian during the inter-war period.

Mayhap Antanas Smetona could have risen to the challenge and became the strong-armed leader of such a federation.....

It could be argued that all Baltic States were authoritarian at some point between the WWs. The problem is, the authoritarian rule was based strongly on Nationalism - as opposed to the Socialist Internationalism. I have a feeling a Lithuanian nationalist Antanas Smetona would have had hard time legitimating his rule with Estonians and Latvians.

Maybe they could have brought Finland in with them in some kind of league/alliance...
Not if the Baltic States were authoritarian and nationalistic. Even if the Reds lost the Civil War, the Social Democrats actually continued to be a major force in the Finnish politics in the interwar years. They were extremely suspicious of the Baltic governments.

Therefore, I'd say the only way to form a working Baltic Federation, would be to make it Socialist. And that, of course, would change all.
 
Top