Bush Liberates Latvia - victory speech in Riga

“From the vantage point of this new century, we recognize the end of the Cold War as part of an even broader movement in our world We have learned that governments accountable to citizens are peaceful, while dictatorships stir resentments and hatred to cover their own failings. ….We have learned that even after a long wait in the darkness of tyranny, freedom can arrive suddenly, like the break of day. And we have learned that the demand for self-government is often driven and sustained by patriotism - by the traditions, and heroes, and language of a native land.”

He did not choke on a pretzel when he said this… Wilsonian "sel determination", is OK unless you have oil in the soil rather than carrots.

These Baltic lands were under the Teutonic Order, or Sweden, or Poland or Russia or Germany since 1500. They had a very short-lived existence between WWI and WW2 as a result of the dismantling the German Empire at Brest-Litovsk in 1918.

They fared just as badly in the early part of WWII and did not fight as did the Finns.

Constantin Päts , who some see as a traitor, believed he was rescuing the Estonian people when he submitted to pressure from Moscow and signed the fateful naval and air base agreement (a mutual assistance treaty) with the Soviets in September 1939, just a month after the secret protocol to the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (signed by Molotov and Ribbentrop) had given a free hand to the Soviets in Latvia, Estonia, and Finland. It brought 25,000 Red Army soldiers into the country.

Päts remains a popular figure in the country, in spite of the fact that Estonia, which had only been an independent republic for some two decades, was annexed by the Soviet Union in June 1940 without a shot being fired. Päts himself, along with his family and other civil and miltary leaders, was arrested by the Soviet Secret police, the NKVD, and was subsequently deported to the Gulags. He died in 1956 in a mental hospital in Kalinin (now known as Tver), to the north-west of Moscow.

Augustinas Voldemaras was a controversial leader in Lithuania tried to return after exile when the Russians took Lithuania from the Germans , he was arrested at the border by the Bolsheviks and was not heard from again. Only in the past decade did family members learn that he had died in a Moscow prison on May 16, 1942.

His name is said to have been pinched by Rowling for Lord Voldemart...unlikely.

In in Latvia 1936 K Ulmanis seized the Presidency concentrating the legislative rights and the executive authority in one person - encouraged no doubt by the success of Hitler.

By means of political and legal violence, though without bloodshed in , the parliamentary republic was liquidated and a regime of authoritarian dictatorship was established. Eventually under the terms of the Molotov Ribbentrop act the Russians seized the country. On October 5, 1939, Latvia and the USSR signed a pact on mutual assistance, later also an agreement on trade. According to the provisions of the Pact in the territory of Latvia (mainly in Liepaja and Ventspils) the Soviet military bases were located (25000 persons). The Pact was imposed on Latvia and the government of Latvia without resistance submitted to the demands of the Soviets.

K Ulmanis was exiled during the war and died in 1942, in prison in Krasnovodsk.