Baltics Mark ‘Day of Tragedy’: Absorption Into Soviet Union

The Baltic republics on Saturday quietly marked what Lithuania called “a day of injury, humiliation and tragedy,” the 50th anniversary of the absorption of the republics into the Soviet Union.

Flags flew at half-staff in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, and Latvia announced that its lawmakers had voted to nullify the 1940 declaration of Soviet power.

For decades, July 21 had been celebrated as an official holiday in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. But the three Baltic republics in the last year have expanded their sovereignty and announced their intention to break with the Soviet Union.

Lithuania’s prime minister was quoted Saturday as saying that negotiations with Soviet officials on the republic’s March 11 declaration of independence could start this week.

Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were independent of Moscow briefly between the two world wars. But under a secret agreement signed by Kremlin dictator Josef Stalin and Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler in 1939, they fell into the Soviet sphere of influence.

Soviet soldiers moved in as Nazi forces attacked Poland, and under Soviet pressure the parliaments of the three republics voted to join the Soviet Union. They were admitted as Soviet republics in early August, 1940. Thousands of Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians were killed or sent into exile or prison.

The Latvian Supreme Soviet voted Thursday to void the 50-year-old declaration of Soviet power, Aris Yansons, an assistant to Latvian President Anatoly Gorbunov, said Saturday.

The proclamation strengthened the Parliament’s condemnation of the act in February.

Lithuania’s government said in a statement Saturday that “the 21st of July remains a day of injury, humiliation and tragedy in our memory.”

The Soviet Union’s main newspapers carried articles Saturday backing the Kremlin position by depicting the Baltics’ absorption into the country as voluntary and calling for “responsibility and common sense.”