Regional Formation and Development Studies

This article addresses intersections of migration and economic development as one of the most topical contemporary challenges inthe Baltic states. It uses empirical approach to compare governmental responses to recent economic crisis starting in 2008. Articleanalyses, how these responses were reflected in statistics revealing socio economic dynamics within years of crisis and beyond.Methods of comparing statistical and analysing secondary data are applied. All three states have similar future challenges of agingand declining population and see return migration as one of possible solutions to address this challenge. However, the processesin Estonia provide a better ground for its government to claim that the country makes effort to ensure more stable development.Also, the results demonstrate that Estonia displays more different trends, while Lithuania and Latvia are closer to each other in outmigrationtrends.

The Nordic Baltic region (5+3) is now closely interlinked via trade, investment, mobility of people, and banking. All the countries in this group have pursued some form of integration with the European Union (EU). Six of them are EU member states, four of them are members of the euro area, and all of them are within the European Economic Area (EEA) and are Schengen member states. But can these small countries as a group cooperate more closely and perhaps exercise more collective authority in Europe? The Nordic countries and the Baltic States cooperate in the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Bank and the IMF, and six of them are among European NATO member states. When it comes to European integration the lack of common approach complicates their cooperation. Within this group there are internal divisions between the hardcore EU and euro area member states (the Baltics and Finland), EU members (Denmark and Sweden) and EU outsiders (Iceland and Norway). Common pathways for the future cooperation in Europe may be hard to find. Also, the Nordics are high income welfare states, but the Baltics are neoliberal with minimal governments and low-tax regimes. Additionally, external forces continue to challenge the Nordic Baltic region, including revanchist Russian policies threatening Baltic Sovereignty, unpredictable US policies towards NATO as well as reduced military presence in Europe, and dismal EU and euro area post crisis economic performance. All point to a future of uncertainty including both economic and security risks.

This article offers a comparative analysis of how the First World War affected emerging Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian nationalisms. There has been a clear tendency to treat the three states declared by these national movements in 1918 as a single ‘Baltic’ grouping created as a result of common factors and processes. Yet, such a characterisation downplays differences which arise due to the position of the region at the very frontline of the war in the East, which brought a variety of jurisdictions and political contexts. A further tendency has been to retrospectively portray the nationstate framework ultimately created in all three cases as the realisation of the long-cherished goal of the pre-1918 national movements. Such an understanding of national self-determination, however, only emerged much later, and federalist thinking continued to shape both external and internal conceptions of sovereignty during and immediately after the war. How statehood was conceived, moreover, had a lot to do with which side of the line a region was located during the conflict, with key points of difference being discernible between the Estonian and Lithuanian cases in particular.

The article argues that the Soviet Union, like other powerful states, supported Lithuania’s decision to give up the idea of fighting for Klaipėda Region and obeying Nazi Germany’s demand for its occupation. Such a position was not openly and vividly demonstrated by Moscow politicians for the purpose of sustaining a two-decade-lasting image of being Lithuania’s protectors and supporters in the international arena. During the interwar period, the Soviets acknowledged Germany’s rising interest in Klaipėda, and since 1938, they were sure that Lithuania would have never managed to safeguard Klaipėda’s territory. Despite the fact that the Soviets did not intervene in the Nazi expansion, they indirectly responded by spreading their influence on the Baltic region. That was done by demanding territorial extensions from Finland and thus limiting the political sovereignty of Lithuania and Estonia. Hence, in the spring of 1939, more clearly pronounced zones of influence were drawn onto the Baltic States by Germany and the USSR.

The article is devoted to the results of the new historical investigations concerning the functions of Navy Forces on the Baltic Sea in interwar period. The military authorities of all particular states of Baltic region have had quite different conceptions of their own Navy Forces development at that time in case of some serious military conflict. Enough important influence of such differences may be certified to the objective reasons, concerning the state of Baltic Sea as close area sea, as well as to economic and military potential of each particular state in Baltic region.