Prosperous but uneasy on Russia's border “ESTONIANS OUT OF SIBERIA—SOVIETS OUT OF ESTONIA”. Amid the protests against the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981, that slogan—on a banner carried by two elderly émigrés outside the Polish embassy in London—stood out as seemingly the most lost of all lost causes. True, Britain, like most other Western countries, recognised Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as still existing de jure, but de facto, they were occupied by the Soviet Union and likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future. Britain had even handed over to the Soviet authorities the Baltic gold reserves entrusted to the Bank of England for safekeeping by the pre-war governments. Complaining about the occupation inside Estonia meant arrest and deportation. In the outside world, it just looked futile.
(Nov 11th 2008, From Economist.com)
The entire article is to be found on The Economist’s website,
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