The Baltic Question

This Helsinki Commission hearing was brought to order due to the independence movements in the Baltic States. The independence movements in these states expressed the desire for self-rule on the part of peoples who, after forcible incorporation into the Soviet Union, had been brutally colonized for 50 years, reduced to the status of minorities and second-class citizens in their historic homelands, robbed of their language, their culture and their history, and victimized by police brutality and environmental assault. They sought independence from Moscow not because they hate Russians, but because they saw it as a prerequisite for physical and cultural survival.