Independence! More people have been willing to fight and die for that concept than for any other, except possibly in the name of God. Its motivating factor is simple enough for anyone to comprehend: "They" should not be able to tell "us" what to do anymore and forevermore. "We" should be free from "their" control. Who "they" are varies. Sometimes it is people who speak different or look different. Other times it is difficult to tell who is who without jerseys with team colors, or different uniforms for soldiers and different flags painted on their tanks. They die for freedom. They kill for freedom. Freedom must be valuable if so many want it. The list of current struggles of countries that have conflicts where someone is willing to fight and die or even kill many others to be autonomous from someone else is long. (1)  And those who have gained that, especially recently when the screws are being tightened much further than before to hold the present world borders at all costs, they are the lucky ones. The Baltic states I saw as potential hope for those who sought or seek freedom. They were after all, the David to the Soviet Union's Goliath, and brought down an empire. Yet all they offer others in that vein is false hope. Their situation was quite different, and shows only how unlikely autonomy is to obtain.

          The short version of the story of the Baltics loss and regaining of their independence since World War II goes something like this: Russia wanted them, so Russia took them. Then Russia did not want them anymore, and they became independent again. This is hardly the spin those countries would like to put on it. They did have many who died resisting the Soviet occupation, and some who even died fighting for independence just before it was obtained. However, the fact of the matter in today's world is that no one gets independence on their own. They get it only by being recognized by other more powerful countries, preferably ones with lots of guns. The Baltic states were lucky that the most powerful country on the planet with the biggest guns never officially recognized their re-incorporation into the Soviet Union, and they were on their side the whole time. Not really, but it did look that way, from a certain point of view.

          Who decided what countries got to be considered countries before (and to a great extent today) being allowed to join organizations like the League of Nations or the United Nations thus proving you could be called a nation because they let you in, these things were decided more informally, and semi- democratically. If you could hold a territory militarily speaking, and sometimes even if you could not, it was like being nominated for being a country. You could then run in an election against whoever your land belonged to before, scrounging for the votes of other countries to see which of you would get the thumbs up as being considered the legitimate government. Not all countries votes counted equally. It was more like an electoral college with weighted votes.  You could win with just a few key states, such as the US, Great Britain, France, Germany, and so on. Getting enough of the votes from the most influential half dozen would trump if your opponent got the votes of every other country on the planet and you would still win, and have yourself a country. Having even just one of them willing to send in troops to back you up was a big plus as well.

          This electoral college of sorts that would determine who gets to have independence also could work in reverse. It is like a vacuum cleaner which blows as well as sucks. If one of the big powerful states wanted your previously-autonomous state, you really did not have much hope. The big states on that imaginary electoral college that decide who are legitimate governments versus who are just guys with a bunch of guns telling everyone else what to do, they do not like to have open disagreements between themselves. Such disagreeing between themselves about who is a country and who is not can easily lead to wars, big ones, and they are getting shy about having them on account of little countries which they have decided for the sake of world peace, really don't matter that much. So often, when one of them really wants a lesser country badly enough, others may put up a bit of a fuss, make a few speeches against it, but generally accept the principle that shit happens. The United States annexed the Republic of Hawaii illegally, China annexed Tibet, and the Soviet Union took back Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania under the pretext, well, that they never should have let them go in the first place.

          Thus to make this all legal-like, the Soviet Union went through the process of asking the residents of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, would you like to join the USSR and give up your independence? The answer was, of course we would! These elections are generally agreed to have been heavily rigged in that direction. Even still, this was good enough for Great Britain, France, and the other major players, so the United States was pretty much the only major holdout. The United States had more honest elections at that time. To prove it, they later asked Hawaii, would they like to join the United States? Hawaii said yes, after 60 years of uncontrolled by themselves immigration from the United States until a majority was assured, they got a more legitimate yes. Independence was not an option. China is similarly moving millions of people into Tibet, repopulating, absorbing and destroying its separate culture, and though it is unlikely that they would ask Tibet to join in a union with them voluntarily since they have no democratic pretenses or recognize Tibet as an separate entity, they probably would soon through immigration win that honestly if it came to a vote. The USSR was in a hurry, so they seemingly decided to simply rig the vote first, and then repopulate them later.

         Though the United States never acknowledged the annexation of the Baltic states, it was also not willing to press the issue either. Far higher on the list was having good relations with the USSR. China is basically free to do whatever it wishes in Tibet, and the Soviet Union was pretty much free to keep the Baltics, and most other former Soviet republics now independent states. The Soviet Union dropped the ball on that one all on its own. If Russia had not allowed it, and if the conflict had not been bungled so badly, the Baltic states independence drives could have struggled on nobly and valiantly, but without outside support, would have been as insignificant to the rest of the world as the plight of the Chechens is considered.

          Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union at the time of their re-independence, who is not very well-liked in the Baltic states, probably did as much to help them achieve independence as Moses did in leading the Israelites through the desert to achieve theirs, though in Gorbachev's case it was wholly inadvertent. Gorbachev's desert was called Peristroika, and it was an easy desert to get lost in. By the time he reached the other side he found literally no one else behind him, and that all had left to settle in different places behind him before he noticed he was crossing it alone.

          Peristroika and Glasnost were Gorbachev's plans to reform and revitalize the Soviet Union. They had radical changes to the economy to make it more efficient, and more openness in debates in the press, and allowed criticism of the leadership. Semi-authoritarian leaderships generally do not like to be criticized. They rightly tend to think that is hardly conducive to being able to hold onto their posts. They also tend to oppose radical changes because radical changes are unpredictable. Thus, many of those leaders basically wondered how the hell Gorbachev got his post, and probably figured they could wait him out by ignoring him, or by making sure his reforms failed or backfired.

          To garner support for his policies, Gorbachev eventually was willing to encourage nationalist-leaning opponents of local leaders hostile to his reforms and that were appointed by his predecessor. With greater democracy, and the publics in the Baltics overwhelmingly in favor of greater autonomy, Gorbachev thought these reform-minded nationalists with greater public support could help his reforms succeed. In November of 1989, the Baltic Republics were given a great deal of autonomy over their local territories.(2)  In more honest and competitive elections, hard-line leaders were replaced by the reform-minded, yet also pro-independent movement leaders. When in April 1990 a law was passed detailing the means for republics to legally secede from the Soviet Union, (Lithuania had already declared its own independence) though extremely difficult to actually implement and pass (2/3 of all eligible voters, no campaigning)(3) , a clear finish line for the independence movements was now in plain sight. Independence was attainable and legal to work for. As Edward Walker put it...

          "On the face of it, the 26 April 1990 law went considerable distance toward accommodating the
           demands of the union republics. Unlike the drafts of a new union treaty that would be published
           in the coming months, the law provided for a reasonable degree of authority for the central
           government that was similar to the powers afforded federal governments elsewhere in the 
           world." (4) 

          Despite promising a greater degree of autonomy to the region, the independence-minded new leaderships in the Baltics would not likely have been willing to settle for anything less than full and complete independence. It was only a question of when. However, Gorbachev did still have allies overseas.(5)   It was unlikely the large countries mentioned previously (as deciding who is a country and who isn't) would recognize them if they did declare independence and even the United States, their one major hold out against acknowledging their re-incorporation into the Soviet Union, cautioned them against any such attempts unless permitted by the Soviet Union because they would not be supported by the US over the Soviet Union. As the US ambassador to the Moscow told them,

           "the United States government and virtually all Americans would sympathize with Lithuania
           if it declared independence. Nevertheless, immediate recognition would be unlikely since 
           recognition involves a judgement that a government actually controls the territory it claims. 
           If Lithuania remained under effective Soviet control, the American government could probably 
           not recognize its government as independent, no matter how much it might sympathize." (6)

          The West feared chaos if the Soviet Union fell apart, a potential loss of control over nuclear weapons, possibly ending up in the hands of terrorists or rogue states, but also feared that independence for these states might send the wrong signal and give hope to separatist movements elsewhere. As Walker mentions, "most states are generally loath to legitimize secession, not only because it is impossible to agree on criteria for determining which groups qualify as "nations" and accordingly have a right to exercise "self-determination," but also because most governments fear encouraging separatists within their own borders or separatist violence elsewhere in the world."(7)

          Bush himself hinted at that in a speech even after the USSR began falling to pieces just before the August coup, that he would stand with and support Gorbachev and Glasnost, and warned against such independence movements and any breakup the Soviet Union in a speech in Kiev on August 1st, 1991.

           "Yet freedom is not the same as independence. Americans will not support those who seek
           independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid
           those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred."(8)

          Despite these signals from the West, the Soviet Union in 1991 was now showing its weaknesses. It had already lost control over Eastern European countries such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and others, and East Germany had re-united with West Germany. Despite trying to accommodate their regions with more autonomy, a country which had been glued together by fear and tyranny was bound to fly apart once it seemed vulnerable. The deals it offered to allow secession were only proof of that weakness.
Lithuania was the first republic to see how far it could go. Rather than wait for the Soviet Union's OK or its own plans for secession, which allowed a framework for republics to legally pursue independence within the federal structure, the Lithuanian legislature passed a resolution declaring immediate independence in March 1990.(9)  Though officially the United States was both in favor of eventual independence, it was also committed to the Soviet Union in keeping its borders in the short-term and allowing secession only through legal internal means. When trying to decide whether to support the radical minority within the Lithuanian popular front Sajudis party's plan for an immediate declaration of independence after winning the election, the Lithuanian leader President Vytautas Landsbergis was advised by the former ambassador to the United States of the pre-1940 government, Stasys Lozoraitis, to do so. Anatol Lieven writes,

           "Lozoraitis advised Landsbergis to declare immediate defacto independence. He reported, over-
           optimistically, that ex-President Reagan had been urging Lithuania's case with Bush, his 
           successor."(10)

          After declaring independence, the Lithuanian press began to ignore all attempts at Soviet imposed censorship. This undermined the ability of the Soviet Union to control what the public was seeing, hearing, and thinking. If anything, it was the very openness which Gorbachev promoted which began his undoing. As a Soviet leader, he had no idea that the political power in the world was now controlled by a large vacuum tube of streaming electrons in people's living rooms. As Richard Krickus said, 

          "The Soviet elite, who lived and worked in the closed parochial world of the CPSU, had no means
           to measure just how powerful TV had become...anywhere.  ...  Soviet journalists, who had the
           opportunity to operate like their peers in democratic societies, henceforth could not be as easily 
           intimidated as they had in the past. Operating like a journalist in a free and open environment 
           was  intoxicating, and the young men and women who experienced this rush became addicted."