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Journal of Baltic Studies

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The Baltic States from the Soviet

Union to the European Union:
Identity, Discourse and Power in
the Post-Communist Transition
of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
a
David Galbreath
a
University of Bath
Published online: 12 Feb 2014.

To cite this article: David Galbreath (2014) The Baltic States from the Soviet Union to
the European Union: Identity, Discourse and Power in the Post-Communist Transition
of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Journal of Baltic Studies, 45:1, 135-138, DOI:
10.1080/01629778.2014.863990

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01629778.2014.863990

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 BOOK REVIEWS 135

outpaces politics, demolishing its traditional structures and reducing it to sophisticated

communication games. The result is the end of politics as “it used be” and the
beginning of “outright buffoonery” (pp. 193–4).
For all its intellectual insights and morsels of wisdom, the book raises as many
questions as it answers. Since all the “letters” are just a few pages long, they are
inevitably tightfisted on details. Is technology indeed that powerful, as it might have
seemed in the early days of the Arab Spring? Have not the traditional political/power
structures survived just fine in all Arab countries?
Is Realpolitik an exclusive feature of modernity? For its origins, one might need to
go much further than Machiavelli. It was the Athenians who in the words of
Thucydides famously pronounced one of Realpolitik’s dictums: “… right, as the
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world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what
they will and the weak suffer what they must” (The Peloponnesian War 5.89, T.E. Wick
ed., 1982). The essence of politics as “it used be” thus seems not to be all that different
from politics as they are today.
If the Holocaust is the only instance of genocide in human history, does not the
term “genocide” become superfluous? Even Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term,
argued that the Armenian massacres by the Ottoman government qualified as geno-
cide. Were not the Armenians in the eyes of the Ottoman Empire “guilty at birth”
(p. 168), just like Jews in the eyes of the Nazis?
Does Shakespeare sound modern, or do we sound medieval? How uncertain,
unsafe, and insecure are modern Scandinavian or Japanese societies? Can Russia afford
a war with NATO and EU members, or for that matter even with such countries as
Ukraine? Was not Germany the key engine for European integration before the
European financial crisis?
These and many other questions bubble up while reading Donskis’s Fifty Letters.
The reader is left to answer them on her own. And this is done by design. In my
opinion, it is both a key strength and weakness of the book. Still for those who seek to
better understand the region, this book is a must read. It touches upon all strings of
the liberal Baltic heart and mind.

Ainius Lašas © 2014

University of Oxford

The Baltic States from the Soviet Union to the European Union: Identity, Discourse
and Power in the Post-Communist Transition of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
RICHARD MOLE
Abingdon & New York, Routledge, 2012
(BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies)
ISBN: 978-0-415-39497-0

The Soviet experience of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania was different from that of
other national republics in the USSR. Not only was the history of inclusion
 136 JOURNAL OF BALTIC STUDIES

(occupation) different for the Baltic republics, but they also felt themselves different.
Their identities were distinctly national and for many (though not all) distinctly not
Soviet. Upon independence, the Baltic states set out to found a new separate trajectory
for their nations and peoples. As relatively small countries on the eastern Baltic
littoral, their trajectories would look similar, but not quite the same. The goals for
all three were the same: membership in Europe’s largest political-economic commu-
nity and the North Atlantic’s largest military alliance. As many have argued, the
character and nature of this transition from Soviet republics to EU and NATO
member-states cannot be wholly accounted for simply by looking at the material
and rational interests of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Rather, as Richard Mole argues
in The Baltic States from the Soviet Union to the European Union, identity, discourse, and
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power are inextricably linked in explaining the Baltic paths taken from one Union to
another.
Mole’s main contribution is to examine these trajectories, writing “identity
became the object of political manipulation, with elites using a range of means to
attach precise meanings to floating signifiers such as ‘nation,’ ‘state,’ and ‘territory’
and, at the same time, convey the idea of shared identity” (p. 18). How might we
understand identity and political legitimacy in the Baltic context? Mole naturally takes
a constructivist approach which is supported by social identity theory (and by exten-
sion social categorization theory) and psychological approaches to group formation.
Mole states, “national identity must therefore be seen not as something fixed but as
something that is continually negotiated and renegotiated” (p. 3). Theoretically, the
constructivist ontology is largely accepted as the way that identities are “negotiated and
renegotiated.” However, as Mole notes, many questions are still left unanswered by
constructivism. How does ideational manipulation work at the individual level? Why
do constructed groups “feel” real? How do we explain the ebb and flow of identity
renegotiation? The answers to these questions are represented by the emotional
attachment that individuals have for such group identities (even constructed, manipu-
lated and constantly renegotiated) as well as the potency of discourse. The author uses
these explanatory functions to analyze the role of identity in the path from the Soviet
Union to the European Union.
Mole begins with a long view, beginning with the historical pre-modern era to
examine the foundations of contemporary identity construction. The argument is one
of the ideational impact of constant occupation, subservience, and colonization. In the
pre-modern era, the Western Church and the importance of trade networks provided
for a determined effort to subjugate the autochthonous peoples of what is today Latvia
and Estonia, with the conversion of Lithuania coming later (to be the last in Europe).
The second period is the feudal era, which began a momentum to define a regional
identity through the Confederation of Livonia. The feudal era in the north was
matched by the rise of the Polish-Lithuanian Empire in the south and development
of a Lithuanian (rather than Polish, Prussian, or Russian) identity. The book continues
on through the last millennia, with particular concentration on this hierarchical,
subjugated nature of Baltic experiences up to Soviet occupation during and following
World War II. Mole’s attention to the pre-modern at first appears to be unnecessary:
why do we need so much background history if the renegotiation is going on in the
 BOOK REVIEWS 137

contemporary era? The answer lies in the fact that a historiography of seven centuries
of subjugation (for Estonians and Latvians) and a lost empire (for Lithuanians) to this
day remains an important part of the nationalist discourses in the Baltic region.
The focus on the Soviet era extends this narrative. The Soviets occupied and
included the Baltic republics into the USSR by 1944, on the back of an agreement
between Nazi Germany and Moscow, while at the same time an acknowledgement of
the status quo and Soviet suffering in the war by Western powers. Nationalism and its
narratives were threats to the spread of Marxism-Leninism in the Baltic republics.
Thus, even while Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania was being Sovietized through the
immigration of trusted “peoples” and the forced emigration of Baltic “peoples,” it was
the discourse of the Soviet Union which competed with a national perception of
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Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians as nations. Mole shows how these discursive
conflicts bubble up as the Soviet Union begins to change, first after the death of Stalin,
and then under Brezhnev, and finally with the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev. The result of
a long discursive history of colonialism informed the nationalist movements for
autonomy and then independence which would eventually produce once again the
states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
For Mole, these narratives are important in terms of how to explain the
construction of the demos and how this shapes the post-Soviet experience of the
Baltic states. For Latvia and Estonia, their historical experience of colonialism and
subjugation was used as a defining criterion for deciding who was in and out of the
new, independent demos. This group identification impacted on many issues from rules
around lustration to who would receive citizenship and the right to vote. At the same
time, Lithuania took an alternative course, with different historical experiences as well
as different contemporary realities, such as being more ethnically homogeneous than
Estonia and Latvia (and also pre-Soviet Lithuania). Again, these details are important
because they determine what is reasoned and even possible in the post-Soviet demo-
cratic transition and nation-building. In other words, from markets to political parties,
to citizenship and permanent residency, these discursive and thus ideational factors
mattered. And they also determined how the Baltic states saw themselves in relation
to their neighbors and further afield.
For Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the relationships with the West and Russia
were key to their future existence as states. And identity and discourse are funda-
mental in our understanding of the paths taken towards East and West. With national
survival seemingly at stake, the three Baltic states sought maximum guarantees in
NATO, while at the same time ensuring an economic future in the EU. Yet, relations
with Russia went sour quickly after independence, with tension over Russian-speaking
minorities, borders and troop withdrawals. Mole aptly points out that while territorial
and thus national security was seen as vital for the Baltic states, other European
countries had begun to transition away from a sense of national security towards a
greater focus on regional and even global security. For Mole, there is an existing
security paradox that is played out here, whereby “increasing my external security
reduces my internal security” (p. 146). The result was a constant tension between the
drive for Western integration (into the EU and NATO) and their relations with Russia
and Russian-speaking minorities at home.
 138 JOURNAL OF BALTIC STUDIES

The book concludes by illustrating how identity is constrained by historiographical

narratives and how the subsequent legitimizing political discourses can inform the path
taken by the Baltic States from the Soviet Union to the European Union. Mole is not
the first to look at the path from the USSR to the EU and NATO, nor is he the first to
examine the role of identity and discourse in explaining this path. Nevertheless, where
others have looked specifically at minorities or foreign policy or even meticulously at
the adoptions of EU legislation in Baltic legislatures, Mole is the first to provide a
broad-brush approach to the subject. I would like to have seen more theoretical
contribution and rigor in the analytical approach, as well as a greater use of actual
discourse to inform the analysis. Nevertheless, Mole has provided an interesting and
well-written exploration of the Baltic states and their journey from persistent sub-
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jugation to EU and NATO member-states.

David Galbreath © 2014

University of Bath

The Politics of Energy and Memory between the Baltic States and Russia
AGNIA GRIGAS
Farnham, Ashgate, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4094-4653-8

Recently there has been a spate of policy papers on the subject of energy politics,
particularly since Lithuania has established the NATO Centre of Excellence for Energy
Security in Vilnius, but this is the first scholarly monograph on Baltic-Russian energy
politics. More academic research has been published on memory politics during recent
years, spurred on by the relocation of the Soviet victory monument in Tallinn in 2007,
and it is a rapidly expanding field.
Grigas deals mainly with the impact of domestic politics on foreign policy, i.e.
relations with Russia. Her study seeks to explain (or “unpack”) the sources of Estonian,
Latvian and Lithuanian policies, rather than those of Russia. She examines develop-
ments during the first two decades of restored independence, from 1994 to 2012,
placing Baltic governments on a scale of “cooperative” or “adversarial” politics towards
Russia, interchanging these terms with “pragmatic” and “principled,” respectively.
Her approach is to take four case studies: (1) oil, focusing on the closure of the
Ventspils oil pipeline in 2003, the “temporary” closure of the Druzhba pipeline in 2006
after the Lithuanian decision to sell the Mažiekiai oil refinery terminal to a Polish
company rather than to a Russian one, and the stoppage of the transit of Russian oil
through Estonian ports in 2007 in response to the “Bronze Soldier” conflict; (2) gas,
particularly decisions about ownership, beginning with privatization of the sector in
the 1990s resulting in Russian control and concluding with the EU’s Third Energy
Package where Lithuania has been the first EU member state to proceed with the
“unbundling” of supply and delivery infrastructure, which Gazprom continues to
oppose tooth and nail; (3) Soviet Victory Day, specifically the Baltic presidents’