The World - News from June 2, 1989
The Congress of People’s Deputies moved to investigate whether the Baltic republics willingly joined the Soviet Union, after historian Roy A. Medvedev and other deputies charged that the Kremlin forcibly annexed them and then doctored the truth. President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, responding to a request from an Estonian deputy, supported setting up a commission to look into whether secret clauses in a 1939 pact with Nazi Germany assigned Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to the Soviet Union, paving the way for annexation a year later. Gorbachev said he doubted that the Baltic people had opposed joining the Soviet Union.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
