Why was there no Baltic Union after WWI?

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Given the scale of Russia, why was there never an impetus to a federal union of Baltic States? They seem to have arranged their borders fairly peaceably - why not some sort of formal arrangement?

Or, a Finland-Estonia union? Or even a Finland-Baltic Union?

None of these even seem to have been discussed. Does anyone know anything about this?

 

[Urban fox]

Hmm the only people who pushed for a united Baltic State were the Germans and even that would be an outright puppet to the Kaiser-reich, annexed in all but name.

As for the prospect of any union with Finland that wouldn’t be a ‘’union’’ just ‘’Greater Finland’’

Too many local nationalists with all their petty grievances and ambitions wound up in charge of the Baltic’s to make any chance of a union feasible, you’d need a radically different outcome of the Russian Civil War etc to make this doable.

 

[Pretinieks]

Given the scale of Russia, why was there never an impetus to a federal union of Baltic States? They seem to have arranged their borders fairly peaceably - why not some sort of formal arrangement?

There was.

One of reasons it was not very successful was Polish-Lithuanian conflict over Vilnius. Poland was the strongest economically and militarily in the whole region, so Latvia and Estonia tried to make friends with it, which in turn soured their relationship with Lithuania.

At the moment, I'm unable to provide any links in English, but I'll do a search tomorrow.

 

[Pretinieks]

Also, 1922 Warsaw treaty between Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Poland was not ratified by Finland. The most common explanation I've read is that Finland considered itself more secure from Soviet threat and Baltic countries - more threatened, so it didn't want to take more risks than it had.

You can try this book (starting bottom of page 99) for a quick look.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Hmm the only people who pushed for a united Baltic State were the Germans and even that would be an outright puppet to the Kaiser-reich, annexed in all but name.

As for the prospect of any union with Finland that wouldn’t be a ‘’union’’ just ‘’Greater Finland’’

Too many local nationalists with all their petty grievances and ambitions wound up in charge of the Baltic’s to make any chance of a union feasible, you’d need a radically different outcome of the Russian Civil War etc to make this doable.

Populations in 1922-23:

Estonia 1,089,000
Finland 3,367,500
Latvia 1,885,900
Lithuania 2,029,000

That's hardly "Greater Finland", although a union between Finland and Estonia would clearly be dominated by Finland, not to mention probably viewed as a huge threat by the Soviets.

The local nationalists didn't have any problems avoiding letting their "petty grievances and ambitions" cause any problems with border delimitations between them.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Also, 1922 Warsaw treaty between Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Poland was not ratified by Finland. The most common explanation I've read is that Finland considered itself more secure from Soviet threat and Baltic countries - more threatened, so it didn't want to take more risks than it had.

You can try this book (starting bottom of page 99) for a quick look.

Thank you - your explanations make sense. It seems to me that there was no real chance Finland would commit itself to such a huge strategic liability as the defense of a Baltic state - I was just wondering what prevented the Baltics from uniting.

Even Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia managed a union for a brief time, and that seems a lot less likely than a Baltic federation - but I can see why Estonia and Latvia would have no desire to be involved in a dispute over Vilna, given that Poland was the most important counterbalance to Russia.