Three thorns in Russian flesh | Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia 1/2 # 2024

After the turmoil of World War II, the three Baltic states - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - were incorporated into the Soviet Union against their will as socialist republics. This followed by repressions, deportations and a “Sovietization” of the three Baltic states.

However, there is military resistance from the Baltic peoples, in the form of the so-called “Forest Brothers”, who fought as partisans against Soviet rule, ultimately in vain.

For the Soviet Union, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia became a “window to Europe”, and under Khrushchev the liberalization took place.

In the 1990s, under Gorbachev in Moscow, resistance against the rulers in Moscow reached its peak. And in 1990, the three Baltic states were the first of the Soviet republics to declare their independence, which was achieved a year later, despite resistance from Moscow.

This followed by a controversial “de-Russification” with language laws and the liquidation of Soviet monuments, which leads to considerable tensions within the new republics.

In 2004 they joined the EU and later NATO and have been an integral part of the “new” Europe ever since.

The film shows the development of the three Baltic countries to today's independence and sheds new light on an unfairly little-known region in northeastern Europe. A region that will, however, play a key role in Europe's near future in the conflict with Russia.

We try to make a full picture thanks to conversations with historians, politicians and people from different walks of life and using archive material from the Baltic media, trying to understand an dexplain the current reality of life and sensitive issues existing in the three Baltic countries.