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 -
Lenin hasn't been any different from Stalin - the only reason why red terror has been attached to Stalin's name but not Lenin's was because Lenin died relatively soon after taking power, and has been gravely ill even before. But he was not an iota less enthusiastic about suppressing dissent and killing the enemies of the revolution (by which he, as well as Stalin, considered anybody who opposed his rule). He may be less paranoid than Stalin (which didn't serve him well - that's why Stalin could take over at the first place) and with slightly more pleasant manners, but there weren't substantial difference between them. He wasn't some unicorn-riding idealist hippie dreamer, like many in the West consider him. Read his contemporary letters, especially ones concerning the Red Terror, and you'll see it.
As for national policies of Soviet regime, they underwent several evolutions. Intermittently, they oscillated between giving the local elites more power (especially if this was necessary for promoting Moscow's goals) and taking that power back. What I talked about was the state of these policies in mature Soviet empire, not Lenin's initial designs.
However, Lenin's revolution scarcely could end up in anything but blood and terror, because by design that's what they were building - an oppressive totalitarian state. It's not some mistake where things went unexpectedly wrong - they actually succeeded to build exactly what they set out to build. Namely, a totalitarian socialist dictatorship.
Formally, yes. But if they didn't speak Ukrainian at home, they rarely were able to speak or read it unless they wanted to. The quality of such teaching was quite low, I can witness to that. When you talk about Ukrainian culture or Ukrainian history, it was even worse - the whole thing was mostly how it lead Ukrainians to the peak moment of their history - joining Russia - after which pretty much nothing of note happened. Ukraine though were in privileged position (very privileged - formally Ukrainian SSR was a separate state, they had a seat in the UN!) Together with Belorussian SSR, the two slavic SSRs were privileged republics, other ethnic republic got much less deference than that.
That's giving him a bit more credit than he deserves - more correct would be to say he presided over Soviet aggressive stance abroad disintegrating, due to overall collapse of the state driven by multiple economic and political factors, and refused to spill too much blood to delay the inevitable collapse for a bit more. Here opposing him to Stalin is appropriate - Stalin wouldn't have hesitated, neither would Khruchev (1956) or Brezhnev (1968). As for democratic reforms, he tried to do as little as possible to keep the state from collapsing and keep the socialist dream going - unfortunately for him, by that time nothing could be done for that. Briefly, the democracy broke out in Russia - only to be promptly extinguished.
Soviet project was a successful revolution. They just had very different goals from what French or American revolutions had. Imposing their vision on others (ultimately, the whole world) was also the part of it, the part that they failed in (due to Marx's economic and societal theory turning out to be utter bullshit) and subsequently abandoned, satisfying themselves with opportunistic conquest when possible, and "peaceful coexistence" talk where they were too weak. The "World Revolution" was their initial goal, and even though it became clear pretty fast they won't achieve it anytime soon, they never abandoned the dream of subjugating every country there is to the communist rule. Because if their system is the best ever, why deny others the glorious future of communism?
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