Recently it was widely reported that the – to use its lengthy official name - Monument to the Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from the German Fascist Invaders was destroyed by local authorities in the Latvian capital. This is certainly not without precedent, as numerous Red Army monuments have been removed in the Baltic states and also in Poland, Czechia and other nations formerly in the Warsaw Pact, many of these decisions being clearly driven by events in the Ukraine since 2004. I think we on this forum are mostly aware of the talking points used to justify their removal so I won’t bother to repeat those here. Instead I’d make the simple assumption in this particular case that those Latvians who support this decision are clearly unhappy with the direction their national history took in the past, and ask the question what sort of past they’d have preferred to have. I suppose this is a relevant Culture War question in Eastern Europe.
Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that Operation Barbarossa begins as it did, and then history develops differently. From then on, I think Latvia had the following options:
A – Germany wins decisive victory in the East and incorporates Latvia directly into the Reich; it only remains as an administrative area, if that; presumably, local Jews and Russians are either deported/killed or used as slave labor, and German settlers move in
B – same as A, but Latvia is allowed to retain limited autonomy as a vassal state / protectorate
C – the war in the East concludes with a separate negotiated peace in 1941 or 1942, and Latvia remains an independent nation as part of some demilitarized neutral zone between Germany and the USSR
D – same as C, but Latvia remains under German influence and its autonomy remains limited in the practical sense, maybe the Germans even retain military bases in Latvian territory
E – the war concludes with decisive Allied victory, but Stalin recognizes the independence of the Baltic states and withdraws his troops from there; still, Soviet influence remains palpable
F – same as E, but the USSR incorporates Latvia into a new military and economic system of cooperation under Soviet hegemony, and maintains military bases on Latvian soil; also, the Soviets have enough influence, soft power and political mechanisms to ensure that Latvia cannot leave this sphere of influence
G – everything happens as it actually did, but the Baltic states get nominal independence after 1945 instead of getting turned back into Soviet republics. Basically, the Warsaw Pact and COMECON have 3 more members.
I assume hardliner Latvian nationalists would prefer B (even for them, A is too extreme), and more moderate nationalists would prefer C or D. For obvious reasons however, even in the current climate of general anti-Russian/Soviet sentiment, I very much doubt they’d be willing to say this out loud. After all, A, B, C and D all mean that Nazi Germany remains undefeated, and Latvian Jews get genocided and pogromed. For the same reason, I believe these 4 options are unacceptable for the Russian and Jewish minorities in Latvia. After all, even C entails the strong possibility that they get oppressed and ethnically cleansed.
Also, I cannot help but notice that the same very obviously applies to Ukrainian nationalists in general, no matter how much leeway they currently get in Western media.
I’ll make the guess that E is the most ideal option in the eyes of Latvian centrists/normies at first sight; however, it still means that, realistically speaking, Latvia never gets to join either NATO or the EU. It’s the same as Finland’s fate but worse, as the border region between Russia and Finland at least consists of dense forests and numerous lakes, practically impassable ground for Russians if they invade (again). Also, I think it’s clear that the Soviets would agree to something (in their eyes) so unrealistic only if the US agrees to the same in Western Europe. In short, this means that even if NATO is formed, it remains limited in its geographical scope i.e. West Germany never gets incorporated into it, in other words, either the two German states remain neutral or the German state never gets divided and remains neutral.
G is very obviously unacceptable for most Latvians, as the difference from what actually happened is negligible.
F is, I think, also something most of them would only begrudgingly accept. However, the issue with this is that it’s basically merely the local version of NATO, but overseen by Russians. If our position today is that this would be unacceptable and violates our political norms, we’d also have to say that it was not acceptable for the Americans to maintain hegemony over Western European states and station their military units and nuclear weapons on their soil. (I’ll make an expectation for West Germany, as it was a defeated enemy and no peace treaty was signed.) Alternatively, one can make an argument that “but it’s different when the Americans do it, the Russians have always been Mongoloid Ugric-Turkic savages”, but I don’t know how many normies would be willing to say this unironically.
Also, both F and G entail the very real likelihood that the Soviets still get to erect a huge monument in Riga. Even in the case of E it’s relatively likely.
So where does that leave us?
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Notes -
You're talking about Russians not upholding peaceful goals when they're not at peace. That makes no sense.
For example, imagine that I'm a Roman general and I'm talking to a barbarian tribe that I want to assimilate into Rome. I make them a promise like "If you accept our terms, not only will your current leadership be allowed to remain in power, but we promise that your tribe will maintain its freedom and we promise not to enslave any of you." The leader's response is to tell me to go screw myself. So I send in the legions, execute the barbarian leadership, and start taking lots of slaves to send back to Rome.
Now the barbarians start complaining "You promised that you would allow our existing leadership to remain in power, and that you wouldn't take any slaves!" Are the barbarians being reasonable here? My promise was entirely contingent on them accepting my terms. They didn't do that; instead they chose to fuck around and find out. So I have zero obligations towards them, and in fact from the perspective of Rome it's good that I'm making a horrible example of them because it'll teach other barbarian tribes what happens when they choose to cross Rome instead of playing nice. I think that in this example, the barbarians are out of line to complain about me failing to uphold a promise of fair treatment when that promise was entirely contingent on them playing nice and helping me to accomplish Rome's goals.
This is how I feel we're holding Russia to unfair standards. For better or worse, Russia and Ukraine are enemies now, which means we can't expect Russia to respect Ukrainian national identity. The Ukrainians chose to fuck around and find out, so now Russia's goals changed from cooperative to punitive, which is basically the entire point of a war - to punish the other side for refusing to accept your diplomatic terms. Do I think Ukraine deserves to be taken over? No, of course not. But I can't condemn Russia for trying to dissolve Ukrainian ethnonationalist identity when that ethnonationalist identity is part of what made Ukraine oppose Russian goals in the first place. They're at war and in war you have no obligation to play nice with your opponent.
No, I am claiming they never had peaceful goals and that's why they're not at peace now - because their un-peaceful goals has driven them to aggression.
That is true, but this is in no way supports the idea that your promises were genuine to begin with. It's more likely, you wanted to cheat them and take them other the easy way, but they saw through your deceit and you chose to do it the hard way.
From the perspective of Rome it's also good to kill all the barbarians or enslave all of them. Screw the perspective of Rome, then. Why should I care what is their perspective if they want to enslave me? Ultimately, it gains me nothing - if they have enough power, they will enslave me, if they don't, I'll kill them and bury them and be free. How any "perspective" helps me here? There's no possibility of peace with them where I end up not enslaved - so why would I care about any "perspective" on their side?
No, the standards are entirely fair. Russians want to control and conquer their neighbors - either peacefully or militarily. They failed to do it peacefully, then they failed to do it by covert (very badly disguised, but at least they pretended it is covert) limited force operation, and now they are failing to do it by open military operation. Their perspective - that of trying to enslave and control their neighbors - remain unchanged. And recognizing and openly talking about it, ripping off the veil of deceit they try to present - is not "unfair" to them. It may be unpleasant to them - as they would much prefer for us to be deceived - but it's not unfair.
They never ever been cooperative. They just tried to take over Ukraine by lesser means - first by installing a puppet ruler, then by instigating insurrections and grabbing territories when opportunity presented itself, and now by open warfare. It's no more "cooperation" than a robbery is a cooperation - what you are arguing is if you didn't promptly give the robber your wallet, it's "unfair" to fault him for trying to murder you, since you behaved "incooperatively", so he was "forced" to move to "punitive" means. That's bullshit, I do not owe a robber my "cooperation", and neither Ukraine owes Russia "cooperation" in its own destruction. It is entirely within Ukraine's rights to tell Russia to fuck off to any proposal or any attempt to intervene into their internal business, and any conquest action by Russia would be an aggression, and it's not "unfair" to say so. Russian is not entitled to anything at all with regard to Ukraine besides fucking off.
Fuck Russian goals. Nobody in Ukraine owes Russians anything with regard to their goals, and they are entirely right and proper to reject any of their goals and pay to them no attention at all, and the only legitimate thing Russia can do is to shove their goals and shut up. Anything else is aggressive behavior, and it is entirely fair to point it out and call Russia what it is - an aggressor.
Additionally, Ukraine is not "ethnonationalist" - at least not any more than any other national state, from France to Japan to Israel to Malaysia to Germany to Thailand to Iceland - are. Ukrainians have their own national state and want to carry out their business without any other state interfering. It is totally right and proper for them to do so.
The fact that they are at war is their crime. The fact that they are also perpetrating this war in a genocidal and war criminal manner just multiplies their criminality.
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I think it's a very fair standard that you can't blame your opponent for becoming your enemy when you fucking started the war.
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