Russia’s Policy in the Baltic
From the direction of the Baltic Sea, reconstituted Russia threatens us with another political danger. This danger comes from the strange policy Russia has pursued in the Baltic countries, a policy whose repetition is revealed by many signs. Feeling instinctively her administrative incapacity, Russia thus distinctly shows the effects of the influence of German elements in the staff of her administrators. During all the time of her domination over these countries, she left full power in the hands of the Baltic barons who—except in some accidental and temporary cases—have been the administrators and the real masters of the land. They took great advantage of this situation, endeavouring to give the country a German character. Further, they organised systematic German colonisation, for the realisation of which Berlin put large sums at their disposal. This colonisation took on such vast proportions and was carried on so openly that it finally attracted the attention of the Russian Government itself, which, in order to paralyse its effects, set up Russian colonisation in its turn. The latter, however, led to no results, the Russian peasant not being prepared for the intensive agricultural methods adopted in the country. The feelings and leanings of the Baltic nobility have clearly shown themselves during the war. It is enough to remember that they offered to General Hindenburg a third part of their lands for the purpose of colonisation. Their leanings were in perfect accord with the aims of the Pan-Germans, of whom many were emigrants from the Baltic, and who, like Professor Schiemann and P. Rohrbach, have not been playing an unimportant part. It is extremely interesting to observe that these tendencies have not ceased with the defeat of Germany. It is known that the Germans have promised to Latvia energetic assistance against the Bolsheviki if a right to the land is granted to all the combatants.
It is certain that after the war there will be a surplus of population in Germany, and it is not for nothing that Count Brokdorff-Rantzau complains in one of his notes that it will be difficult to find room for this surplus of inhabitants, as it is probable that the principal States will close their doors to them. There is no doubt whatever that a large part of this excess of population will go over to the Baltic, where they will find land ready for them and will be received with open arms by the Baltic barons of Pan-German mind. The Russian Government, as past experience has proved, will be unable to oppose this fresh Drang nach Osten, and if the Lettish people do not possess enough freedom of action, that is to say, if there is no independent Latvia, one can be supremely sure that German influence will be very great. On the other hand, the resolution of the various Landestags, Landesrats, and Regentschaftsrats, which have asked for the closest rapprochement with Germany, militarily and economically, and have offered the ducal crown to the Hohenzollern dynasty, leaves no doubt about the direction in which the sympathies of the Baltic Germans will go. The Baltic is, in the hands of Russia, a borderland with predominant German interests, a land to which Germany stretches out her hand, a land always ready, at a moment favourable to Pan-Germanism, to detach itself from Russia and pass over to the side of her adversaries. Thus, to be logical in the matter of the Baltic States, one must decide, not between Russia and Latvia, but between the latter and Germany.
And thus the argument of political motives leads to a conclusion which is not at all to the advantage of Russia’s reconstitution. For the re-establishment of equilibrium in European politics, Russia is of no value. She is not, to that end, something which should be invented if she did not exist.[4]