Introduction (Alexandra Medzibrodszky): Welcome all to this episode of the Review of Democracy podcast. I’m Alexandra Medzibrodszky, and it is a great pleasure to have with us today Una Bergmane to discuss her book “Politics of Uncertainty: the United States, the Baltic Question, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union”. So, first of all, thank you, Una, for accepting our invitation and being here with us. Before we start discussing your book, let me introduce our guest today.
Una Bergmane’s main research interests are the history of the Soviet collapse, the Baltic states, diasporas, transnational networks, collective memory, and the post-Cold War transitions in the Baltic Sea region. She is currently an Academy of Finland research fellow at the Aleksanteri Institute in Helsinki. Before joining the Institute, she held various fellowships across the world; she was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University in the US, a teaching fellow at the London School of Economics, and a postdoctoral researcher at the Academy of Finland-funded BALTRANS project. She obtained her Ph.D. from Sciences Po in Paris.
The focus of our podcast today is Una’s first book, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2023. As already mentioned, the title of the book is “Politics of Uncertainty: the United States, the Baltic Question, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union”. In a nutshell, the book tells the story of how Cold War superpowers tried to deal with the Baltic question at the end of the 1980s, but also how marginal actors can find strategies to gain recognition and visibility on the international stage during periods of deep historical change. Let’s have a closer look at the ideas and arguments of your book.
My first question is related to this important term included in your subtitle as well, “the Baltic question”. Could you please explain and summarize the Baltic question? I was also wondering, what makes the Baltics a special or different case from other regions such as Central Europe or other Soviet peripheries?
Una Bergmane: Yes, thank you very much. This is a great question that goes right to the heart of my research. The Baltic question focuses on why the Baltic countries were to some extent different, or why what happened to them was different from the experience of Central Eastern European countries during the Cold War, or how they were different from other Soviet republics. The Baltics were independent between the two world wars, between 1918, when they proclaimed their independence, and 1940. First, in 1939 we have the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the secret protocol that divided Eastern Europe into the Russian/Soviet and Nazi spheres of influence. As a consequence of the secret protocols, the Soviet Union first occupies and then illegally annexes the Baltic countries in the summer of 1940.
But at that moment, in the summer of 1940, first the United States and then most of the Western countries do not recognize this annexation of the Baltic countries by the Soviet Union as legal, and that position never changed. Then the Baltic countries are occupied by the Nazis during the Second World War, and then the Red Army comes back and at the same time liberates and again reoccupies the Baltic countries. This meant that during the Cold War, the Baltic countries were practically but not legally part of the Soviet Union because of the non-recognition policy. This policy is similar to what we see today, how today we do not recognize the annexation of Crimea by Russia as legal. We do not recognize the annexation of eastern parts of Ukraine by Russia as legal. The same idea is behind the non-recognition policy towards the Baltic countries during the Cold War. For the West, that was the Baltic question during the Cold War. This situation when three out of fifteen Soviet republics are legally not part of the Soviet Union in the eyes of the West.
A.M. Thank you for explaining the Baltic question and responding to the first question. Let’s discuss your approach and research methods to the subject matter a bit. You mentioned that while writing the book, you wanted to avoid “reproducing imperial and strictly national narratives and perspectives.” Why did you choose this approach? How conscious and how difficult it was to weave such a transnational narrative, a regional story that is embedded both in domestic and international politics. And I was also wondering, since you focus on these dynamics, how do you distinguish between the international and the domestic? For me, it often seemed like the two sides of the same coin. To bring an example, for instance, the Baltic question would be, by default, a foreign policy issue for the US, but because of the presence of a large Baltic diaspora, it can also be looked at as a US internal political issue and question. Could you please talk a bit about your approach to these issues?
U.B.: I wanted to write a book which does not reproduce this Moscow centric narrative about the collapse of the Soviet Union. I think that if we think about the Soviet Union as an empire, then one of the key elements in this imperial history is the asymmetric power relations between the centre and the periphery. If we want to understand how this empire collapsed, we have to look at these connections; we have to understand how this asymmetric power relation was transformed and then how it was cut off.
So, I wanted to look at this connection, but then I also didn’t want to write this purely national narrative account of, for instance, the Latvian struggle for independence and Latvian dealings with Moscow. Because a lot of, not all, but a lot of academic research in Latvia on this question about how Latvia became independent in 1991 has been written, understandably, from this national perspective. But I really wanted to put this Latvian story into a larger context and write about this as a Baltic effort. If we look at these events, then it is very visible, very obvious from the archives, that at that time, internationally or domestically in the Soviet Union, there was no such thing as a single Latvian, Estonian or Lithuanian question.
There is the Baltic question, which is a bit more a Lithuanian question because Lithuanians were more active and bolder in their approach to their struggle for independence. But it was a common understanding everywhere – in the Baltic countries, in Moscow, in the US – that either all of the Baltic countries will become independent or none of them will. Therefore, it made sense to have this regional perspective to write about the Baltic way towards the re-establishment of their independence. This joint effort was also embedded in these larger dynamics at the end of the Cold War and the Soviet collapse.
And yes, as you mentioned, the foreign and domestic policy parts really are two sides of the same coin. For the Americans, it is an international question obviously, but it’s also a domestic issue because of the Baltic diaspora and because the Congress (who has very strong links with the diaspora) put pressure on Bush. Gorbachev doesn’t want this to be a foreign policy issue, but it becomes such an issue for him because of the Baltic active outreach, because of the non-recognition policy, and the fact that the annexation of the Baltic states was not recognized as legal in 1940.
The international society is forced to be interested in this question. For Gorbachev, it becomes not just a domestic but an international question. For the Baltic countries, there is no clear distinction between domestic and foreign policies at that time because the struggle for independence consists of both domestic mobilization and external action to reach Moscow and then to reach the larger international society, the West, the United States and so forth. And I think that if we want to write a good international history, we have to be able to explain the domestic roots of international politics. And if we want to write a good domestic history, we need to be able to put these domestic dynamics into a larger regional-international context at the same time.
A. M.: I think you clearly explained why it’s imperative to bring together these two aspects, the international and the domestic, to arrive at a full picture and story and why this history is told as a regional story in your book. And I like that you already reflected on the role of Baltic peoples and their agency in bringing change to these dynamics as well. We are going to talk about it a little bit more, but before that, for my next question, I wanted to zoom in on one particular concept and term that is key in your narrative. You call this “a time of deep historical change” that you are looking at in your book, and you highlight how this turbulent period disrupted the existing power structures and created uncertainty.
So this would be the term and the concept I’m really interested in. It’s featured in the title of your book as well, Politics of Uncertainty. And when you’re reading the book, the term ‘uncertainty’ comes up again and again. Indeed, there did not seem to be coherent plans in the minds of the actors that you’re looking at in this situation. But I also would like to challenge this perception, as I felt that you are also quite adequately highlighting some logic to how certain actors decided what to do and what not to do. Just to mention, you identify some red flags; for instance, the use of force by the Soviets would not have been acceptable by the US or some pressure points like the Soviet-American Trade Agreement. Could you please talk a little bit about the role and function of uncertainty in your narrative and discuss why, despite these highlighted guiding frameworks, you think that uncertainty is such a core to the politics of this time?
U.B.: As you mentioned, the main idea in the book is that at the time of this deep historical change, these existing power structures are disrupted by the political, social and international change happening at the time, not just in the Soviet Union, but because of the change in the Soviet Union – also in Europe. And so these very stable Cold War systems and dynamics disappear or start to disappear and get deeply modified. And this leaves the actors, such as, for example, the White House in uncharted waters because they know how to deal with the Soviet Union in the Cold War setting. They know how to deal with an authoritarian Soviet state or even a totalitarian Soviet Union. That’s something that the Americans have been working on, that is, how to deal with this type of Soviet Union since 1945, since the origins of the Cold War. But now this is the big question, what to do with Gorbachev?
We have Bush and Reagan; Bush actually comes into power believing that Reagan has been too soft towards Gorbachev, and there is a huge distrust initially in the White House in the Bush administration regarding Gorbachev. Can we trust him? If we can trust him, is he a real reformer, or are these just nice images, a façade, but actually, the Soviet Union is not going to change? Then, when they realized that they can probably trust him and he is really a reformer, not somebody who has tricked Reagan into believing this, the big question became whether he could survive politically. How is he going to handle the power struggle in the Soviet Union? What does this power struggle in the Soviet Union mean for the United States? And then, at some point at the White House, you also see a realization that this country is probably slowly disintegrating. The uncertainty is the question of what to do with the possible Soviet disintegration and how to handle it? And there is no answer.
And that is the big general uncertainty that the United States don’t know what to do about. At the same time, in this big general confusion, the White House tries to have some sort of guidelines. These guidelines are not an answer to what to do with the Soviet collapse or what to do with the Soviet power struggle. But there are some ideas that yes, for example, we should not allow Gorbachev to use force in the Baltic countries because if that happens, that might be the end of Perestroika. One of the big questions is also: would Gorbachev use force, and would that mean the end of Perestroika? And if that’s the end of perestroika, then do we still need Gorbachev? Because the whole idea was that Gorbachev is interesting as long as he is democratic and a reformer.
But the same thing happens in Moscow. We see this general uncertainty in Moscow because there was a vision, Gorbachev had a vision of this new reformed Soviet Union that would achieve great things. But there really wasn’t a plan of how to handle these social forces that were unleashed by democratization. The whole Soviet system was built around an asymmetric power relation between the centre and the periphery combined with an authoritarian frame in which Moscow would have the final say on everything that happened in the Soviet Union. But then, because of the democratization, suddenly, there is something that Moscow has never seen before. This is an increasingly democratic, increasingly pluralistic, and increasingly active periphery, especially in the Baltic countries, and Gorbachev just does not know what to do with the Baltic countries or with the centre-periphery relation in general. Thus, there is uncertainty because these previous authoritarian imperial power structures are either shifting or falling apart.
But then, in this context, the marginal actors emerge, those who actually have not benefited from previously existing power structures, such as the Baltic countries, those who want to challenge the system, and those who want to climb up in these hierarchies. For them, this is a good time because they can now use this window of opportunity to put the question of their independence on the Soviet domestic agenda and on the international agenda.
A.M: I think this is nicely leading to my next question and moving us towards the topic of marginalized actors and, in particular, the Baltic people, who are also very much the focus of your book. It was very interesting for me that Baltic people perceive themselves quite differently from how they were perceived, or rather misperceived by Moscow as “a relatively rich and a relatively calm part of the USSR”. And you highlight how, because of this misperception, the emergence of the Baltic question seemed sudden for Moscow. But you also clearly show that, of course, this was not a sudden new phenomenon, but basically, what’s behind it is that Soviet leaders completely fail to understand the depth and the seriousness of the grievances in the Baltics. I thought this was a very interesting part of your book. Could you shed a bit more light on this and talk about the sources of these grievances in the Baltics, whether they were different in the three countries, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania? And how were these translated into action, or how did they impact action by Baltic actors? And why were the Soviet leaders so blind, so incapable of seeing the signs of these deep grievances?
U.B.: Yes, Gorbachev’s problem was the hierarchical system that existed in the Soviet Union. I’m not the first one or the last one to say this: This is not my bright idea. There is this argument in the histography regarding the Soviet nationality policies that a hierarchy was formed starting already in the 30s, but then later, after the Second World War, becoming even more visible that you would basically have a hierarchy of these ethnicities and nationalities in the Soviet Union. And, of course, the Russian elder brother would be at the top of this hierarchy. And then all the other nationalities would be somehow organized in this hierarchy.
The perception was very Eurocentric and also, to some extent, racist that these western parts, the Slavic of course, but then also the Baltic, those western parts were somewhere upper, higher in these ethnic hierarchies. Then, the Central Asian would be in the lower part of these hierarchies. The indigenous nations in the north of Russia would be deeply marginalized because they were not positioned in this collective imaginary as Western or as Russian, or they didn’t have this potential to be Russianized as, for example, the Ukrainians.
So the Baltics, because of the geographical situation, because of their race, because of the fact that these were such parts of the Soviet Union that became part of the Soviet Union only later in 1940 and then in 1945, these were well-developed states that already had developed infrastructure. Thus, they were perceived as the civilized part of the Soviet Union by the collective imaginary of the many Soviet citizens. Gorbachev was influenced by this and thought that these are places where people want to migrate from all around the Soviet Union. There are attractive tourist destinations, the cities look like in the West, and their products are sold everywhere in the Soviet Union, and they are some sort of status symbols. So he started to believe in this narrative, this false narrative about Baltic life being somehow good and nice in the Soviet Union. And because he believed this, he also didn’t really look very carefully. He visited the Baltic countries, and he believed what the communists were showing him, the happy people giving him flowers.
But the reality was different, and he didn’t really have somebody around him with deep regional expertise who could explain that these societies were actually very unsettled and troubled by their experience under Soviet rule. Some things that were troubling the Baltic societies were very common in the Soviet Union. The memories of Stalin’s repressions, of the deportations. The nationality policy, which, on the one hand, enforced some form of regulated national identity, but at the same time deprived the same national identity from any political meaning or rather political agency. The collapsing Soviet economy was a problem for everybody in the Soviet Union. The environmental problems, especially after Chernobyl, the traumatizing experience of the Soviet version of modernity, urbanization was very painful in Lithuania, or collectivization was, for instance, painful everywhere. All these problems were shared in the Soviet Union.
But I think the difference in the Baltic countries is related to the reason why they were the first ones who said that the solution to all these problems is independence. That was simply because there was this memory of independence. People who were alive at the end of the 1930s when the Baltic countries lost their independence, many of them were still alive in the 1980s. So, there was a generation of this living memory and descendants of those people who lived in independent Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Their mind could imagine an alternative, which was independence. There was also an alternative in the democratic experience that Baltic countries had to some extent during the interwar period. That the Soviet reality is not the only reality that is possible.
And then, of course the geographical situation was beneficial because, especially in the Estonian case, as Estonians were in the north, they were able to watch Finnish television and they were able to understand the language quite easily. And then there were these historical ties with Sweden or with Germany. Furthermore, in 1989, when the velvet revolutions broke out all around Eastern Europe, the Baltic countries, due to their historical ties with Poland, saw themselves as being part of Eastern Europe to some extent, not the Soviet Union. Historically, they thought that this also concerned them and that if all those changes were possible in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, then they should be possible as well in the Baltic countries. So, geography played an important role, as did ideas about historical ties and cultural connections.
A. M.: I think as an intellectual historian, I’m always fascinated by how much what you can imagine shapes what you can see, right, in the case of Gorbachev, and also influences what you do in the case of the Baltics. And I would like to discuss more the agency of the Baltic people. We reflected a bit on the hierarchies of nationalities, which was also an important domestic aspect of your analysis. But you also talk a lot about the power hierarchies, and you already mentioned that this deep historical change and this uncertainty that “limits the agency of the powerful and opens windows of opportunity for those seen as marginal”. There was another aspect that played into the techniques and strategies of Baltic actors: you analyze the hierarchy of self-determination claims and how it motivated and shaped American and Soviet reactions to the Baltic push for independence. So, could you talk a bit more about the agency and the dynamics between “those on the top of domestic and international power structures and those on the margins”, as this is very much the focus of your analysis? Also, what were some of the tools and strategies of such marginalized actors to achieve social visibility and recognition in the international arena, and why was this so important in relation to the independence movement?
U.B.: The international visibility was very important for the Baltic independence movement. And this idea of visibility as a recognition. The recognition was a legal recognition; the Baltic countries wanted the international community to legally recognize the re-establishment of their independence, and Baltic actors had a roadmap in mind for how this was supposed to go. They believed that well if the international community will legally recognize the restoration of Baltic independence, then Gorbachev will just have to abide by that, and that will be the end of it.
The Americans and most of the Western countries, however, thought that they can recognize the re-establishment of the Baltic countries only after it has been recognized by Gorbachev. Because at the end of the day, Gorbachev was the one who had the power, both military power and economic power, to coerce Baltic countries into staying in the Soviet Union, and the Baltic countries obviously found this disappointing. They were also looking for existential recognition, and in this sense, visibility and to be recognized meant being seen.
This is usually one of the first aims of marginalized actors and social movements in domestic politics, in particular socially marginalized actors during the time of their self-organization – to be recognized, to be seen, to be acknowledged, and the sentiment in the Baltic countries was similar. They wanted to be recognized as being something different from the other Soviet republics. They wanted to be seen as being different from Russians, and that was important in this Soviet context where Russians were this elder brother at the top of the ethnic national hierarchies. They wanted to be recognized as being part of Europe, but to some extent, they also saw the international environment as sort of a hierarchical setting in which being European was the highest prize, and they wanted to be recognized by this highest prize of being European.
So these were very important questions: just to be recognized as themselves and existing. This was important, especially for Estonians and Latvians, because at the end of the 1980s, the demographic situation in Estonia and Latvia was quite concerning because of migration from other Russian-speaking republics. The problem was not migration itself; because Estonia and Latvia have always been multinational societies, the problem was the scope of the migration.
By the end of the 1980s, Latvians had almost become a minority in Latvia, so there was a fear in Latvia that if they became a minority in their own country, then Latvia would probably not remain a union republic any more than it would be downgraded into an autonomous republic or something similar. Furthermore, people who arrived in the Baltic countries during the Soviet period were not encouraged to embrace local cultures or to learn local languages. They were encouraged to claim this imperial privilege which came with the Russian language. And so there was this fear regarding these issues, and not just in the Baltic countries.
If you read the Soviet press at the end of the 1980s, there is this general fear in the Soviet Union that small nations and small languages will disappear. Thus there was this idea, which my Estonian colleague Kaarel Piirimäe has highlighted extensively, this idea in the Baltic countries, that this is existential politics, these are existential questions, whether we become independent and thus survive or there will be some sort of a turn towards full Russification over time. And in this context, if you are recognized as being Estonian by other Europeans and you are being recognized as Latvian or Lithuanian, there is this external other, this European other who says yes, you exist and you are different and you have the right to be part of this European community.
A.M: Yes, this existential element was really fascinating, and it also showed me why the struggle was so relentless and why the actors in the politics of that time kept pushing for independence. There are so many things we could talk about regarding this book, but my final question focuses on the larger implications of your research results. So, how does your research feed into larger historiographical discussions and debates, maybe in Russian and Soviet studies or in the field of international relations? How could it influence our more general understanding of perestroika and the collapse of the USSR? Do you think this specific Baltic case study maybe can offer relevant insights also on how smaller states and marginalized actors can navigate the muddy waters of big power relations to achieve their goals and have some impact in this area? And maybe, finally, would you say that a transnational, regional approach that you have in your book may be helpful when it comes to the question, to the very topical question of how to decolonize scholarship in this research area?
U.B.: Well, yes, I believe that is absolutely the case if we want to decolonize the Soviet studies, the studies of the Russian empire, the Soviet empire. If we want to think about the collapse of the Soviet Union in a decolonial way, then it is quite important to do what I was trying to do with the book. To see, for example, the Soviet collapse not just from the point of view of Moscow but from the perspective of the so-called periphery or these non-Russian republics. The Russian attitude toward the collapse of the Soviet Union is an important question for many reasons, but it is a question that has been studied a lot. So, we have some idea about Yeltsin’s politics and Gorbachev’s politics, but then the impact that these policies had in other parts of the Soviet Union is unclear.
Because the Soviet Union did not collapse only in Moscow; the Soviet Union collapsed everywhere where the Soviet Union was present, i.e. in the Baltic countries, Central Asia, Armenia and Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova and so on and so forth. And I think it’s very important to study and compare these processes in different parts of these non-Russian republics. To study how these asymmetrical power relations between Moscow and these different republics were transformed and challenged in some places. Maybe they remained the same, maybe in some places of the Soviet Union, the local elites were actually unsettled by these possible changes because they were benefiting from the Soviet system. So, all these questions are very important to be studied, and then we can compare how these processes took place in different parts of the Soviet Union.
And this question of external outreach also has to be taken seriously. For example, Serhii Plokhy has written before me his book The Last Empire, where he basically studied the Ukrainian question in American-Soviet relations, just like I study the Baltic question. And if we compare these two cases, we can come to very interesting conclusions. For example, as Serhii Plokhy writes regarding hierarchies, what was allowed for the Baltic countries – was not allowed for Ukraine. There was an idea that the Baltic countries probably could become independent and that was seen as a legitimate demand in the US, while Ukrainian independence was not seen as a legitimate demand in the US. This is just one comparison. There is also a book published by Isaac McKean Scarborough called Moscow’s Heavy Shadow, and his argument is that there were parts of the Soviet Union where the Soviet collapse was actually very violent. Again, we see this in the Baltic countries, the Soviet attempts to use violence, but for example, Scarborough writes about the violent collapse of the Soviet Union in Tajikistan, which is something that we don’t see if we read only sources from Saint Petersburg or Moscow, we don’t see this violent and deeply tragic part of the Soviet collapse. So yes, if we want to fully understand the Soviet Union as such and its legacies and what is happening today in the region, then we have to look at what happened in all the places where Soviet power was present, not just at the heart of the power.
A.M.: Yes, I think that’s a great concluding thought there. So, I think we managed to cover many of the main points in your book, but of course, I want to highlight that the depth and the richness of your book and narrative is so much more. I encourage our listeners to read the book to read more about the details and anecdotes and all the archival materials that you unearthed for this book. As we have a little bit of time, I wanted to ask you, do you want to say just a couple of sentences about your next project? Your first book has just been published. Do you have any research in progress or in planning?
U.B.: Yes, I’m working on a new project at the University of Helsinki at the Aleksanteri Institute, which is the Finnish centre for Eastern European and Russian Studies. The new project is still about the collapse of the Soviet Union, but this time, I want to look, still from this transnational perspective, on the dynamics inside the Soviet borders, even though, as I said, this transnational question is also important. I’m interested in debates about the history of the Soviet Union, debates that took place at the time of Perestroika. At the time of perestroika, because of democratization, because of the increasing freedom of speech which came with Gorbachev reforms, we see everywhere in the Soviet Union groups of activists becoming more and more present in the public space and telling a different story about the history of the Soviet Union – different than the official version.
A very strong example, which is also one of my case studies that I want to look at, are the Crimean Tatars, and they are probably a good example to study these processes. There have been Crimean Tatar activists for a very long time in the Soviet Union, but this mass mobilization really gains momentum at the time of Perestroika and develops into a very strong activism. First, they talk about the deportations of Crimean Tatars during the war and then, as a consequence, comes the claim about the possibility of returning to Crimea. And this is very inspiring for the Baltic countries and other parts of the Soviet Union. This is the beginning of such activism by different groups in different parts of the Soviet Union, people basically telling a different story than the official story.
What I’m interested in in this process is first the connections between these groups. I start from the Baltic vantage point, but then I look at what were the connections that the Baltic activists had with other non-Russian republics with Russians, with Memorial. But at the same time, the bigger question is to what extent did these honest discussions about Soviet history contribute to the delegitimization of the Soviet power? Because at the time, Khrushchev, and also initially Gorbachev, had a similar idea, that approach was that we should talk a little bit about history, basically in a framework where Stalin is the main and only perpetrator and the Communist Party is the first victim.
That was Khrushchev’s approach, and that was initially also what Gorbachev wanted to do; he was willing to do the rehabilitation of all the big political trials and victims who were members of the Communist Party, like Bukharin for example. He was very willing to talk about Bukharin but not that willing to talk about Crimean Tatars. Then these discussions go out of hand, and there is this honest, deep discussion about the extent and the diversity of the victims and that the victims were not just prominent members of the Communist Party, not just the so-called class enemies, but it turns out those were entire ethnic groups. And that’s what I want to investigate in my research. What was the impact that these discussions had on the legitimacy of the Soviet state in the eyes of the Soviet citizens?
A.M.: Well, as a historian by training, I’m already super interested in your next project, and I’m sure, the same way as your book that we have discussed today, your next project will also help us to better understand the Soviet collapse. So, Una, thank you for this fascinating talk today. In this episode, we have been discussing Una Berman’s book entitled Politics of Uncertainty, the United States, the Baltic Question, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. I believe our discussion highlighted the complexity of how Cold War superpowers, the Soviet Union and the USA, tried to deal with the Baltic question at the end of the 1980s. But we also got a fuller picture of the agency of the people in the Baltics. And I truly believe that this volume makes an important contribution to our better understanding of the Soviet collapse and the Perestroika period. And as you mentioned, there’s so much more space for research about this question, and I’m sure the book will inspire further studies that aim to expand the focus beyond the Cold War superpower dynamics. So, thank you again, Una, for being with us today. And also, thank you all for listening to this episode of the Review of Democracy podcast.
