The Baltics are the New Europe. A unique concentration of history and culture.

An authentic experiment has been brewing in the cauldron of history—an experiment of unique historical circumstances seasoned with ethnic and cultural diversity. Relying on their remarkable tenacity, the Baltic people have integrated and transcended dissonant historical episodes of countless kings, crusaders and emperors that have staked their claim to the territory of the three Baltic States. In the 20th century, the Balts won their independence and founded new European states that were very modern at that time. Then came the triple Soviet-Nazi-Soviet occupation with repression and deportation resulting in a loss of 15-20% of the Baltic populations. But in 1991 these nations restored their independence through art and song, which brings us to the Baltic States today—where the New Europe is taking shape.

In the 21st century Baltic flavors have intensified and non-essentials have evaporated in the flames. Today we can contrast three different religious outlooks, three different cultural aesthetics, and three different natural settings all concentrated within 8 million people and an 8-hour drive.

• Streets teeming with people, busy shops, cafes and restaurants.
• Exciting intellectual and cultural offerings—museums, opera, jazz festivals and other local events.
• Attractive personalities and good-looking people.
• Interactive communities with interesting neighborhoods.
• Beautiful lakes, rivers and forests; white sand beaches close to the city.
• Brilliant bar culture.

INTERESTING FACTS^*

	Lietuvos Respublika	Latvijas republika	Eesti Vabariik
CAPITAL	Vilnius	Riga	Tallinn
TOTAL AREA	65,300 km2	64,589 km2	45,226 km2
COASTLINE	90 km	489 km	3,794 km (including 1520 islands)
HIGHEST POINT	Aukštojas Kalnas 294 m	Gaiziņkalns 312 m	Suur Munamägi 318 m
LAND USAGE	FOREST 33%; ARABLE 30%	FOREST 45%; ARABLE 18%	FOREST 47.6%; ARABLE 14%
TOTAL POPULATION	3,555,179	2,231,503	1,304,415
No. of men per 100 women	87	85	85
POPULATION DENSITY	52 people/km2	36 people/km2	29 people/km2
URBAN POPULATION	67%	68%	69%
Computers per 100	15.5	21.9	48.9
Internet hosts per 1000	70.8	57.5	345.4
NO. OF MOBILE PHONES	4,912,000	2,217,000	1,982,000
ETHNIC GROUPS	Lithuanian (83.4%), Polish (6.7%), Russian (6.3%),	Latvian (57.7%), Russian (29.6%), Belarusian (4.1%), Ukranian (2.7%)	Estonian (67.9%), Russian (25.6%)
RELIGIONS	Roman Catholic (79%), Russian Orthodox (4.1%) Lutheran (1.9%)	Lutheran (19.6%), Russian Orthodox (15.3%)	Lutheran (13.6%) Russian Orthodox (12.8%)
GDP BY SECTOR	Agriculture (4.3%), industry (21.46%), services (74.18%)	Agriculture (3.3%), industry (22.3%), services (74.4%)	Agriculture (2.9%), industry (32.3%), services (64.8%)
GDP per head	$7,540	$6,880	$10,080
Energy consumption per head as kg oil equivalent	2,666	1,988	3,835
Net energy imports as % of energy use	43%	53%	31%
Principal exports as $bn	Mineral products 3.2 Machinery & equipment 1.5 Textiles 1.1 Transport equipment 1.0 Total including others 11.8	Wood & wood products 1.3 Metals 0.7 Machinery & equipment 0.5 Textiles 0.4 Total including others 5.1	Machinery & equipment 1.6 Wood & paper 0.9 Clothing & footwear 0.6 Food 0.5 Furniture 0.5 Total including others 7.7
Main export destinations as % of total	Russia 10.4 Latvia 10.3 Germany 9.4 France 7.0 Estonia 5.9 EU25 65.4	Estonia 10.8 Lithuania 10.8 Germany 10.3 United Kingdom 10.1 Russia 8.0 EU25 76.2	Finland 26.8 Sweden 13.2 Russia 8.8 Latvia 6.5 Germany 6.3
UNESCO world heritage sites	Vilnius Historic Centre (1994) Curonian Spit (2000) Kernavė Archaeological Site (2004)	Riga Historic Centre (1997)	Tallinn Historic Centre (1997)
NATURAL RESOURCES	Peat, arable land, amber	Peat, limestone, dolomite, amber, hydropower, wood, arable land	Oil shale, peat, phosphorite, clay, limestone, sand, dolomite, arable land, sea mud
MOST ABUNDANT WILD ANIMAL	Roe deer	Fox and Roe deer	Roe deer
MOST ABUNDANT TREE	Pine	Pine	Pine
% WORLD BLACK STORK POPULATION	--	10%	--
MOST EXPENSIVE PAINTING BY A NATIVE ARTIST	Zwei Köpfe, 1919   Lasar Segall Sold for 412 000 £ sterling in 2007	White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose), 1950 Mark Rothko Sold for 72.8 million USD in 2007.	Tatar Girl in Mshatka Manor Garden Johann Köler Sold for 2.7 million EEK in 2008.
Best selling International Title 2008	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows J.K. Rowling © 2007	Twilight Stephenie Meyer © 2005	The World According to Clarkson Jeremy Clarkson  © 2004
Some celebrities with ethnic origins	Czelslaw Milos—Nobel Prize Winner Arvidas Sabonis—NBA Basketball Player Charles Bronson—Famous actor Anthony Kiedis—Red Hot Chili Peppers band leader Jasha Heifetz—Famous Violinist Philip Glass—Composer	Isaiah Berlin—Philosopher Arturs Irbe—NHL Ice Hockey Player Elina Garanca—Mezzo Soprano Mihail Baryshnikov—Ballet Dancer Mark Rothko—Artist Laila Freivalds—Swedish Foreign Minister	Paul Keres—Chess Master Jaan Manitski—ABBA Manager Carmen Kaas—Supermodel Aarvo Part—Composer Ilon Wiklund—Illustrator Lennart Meri—Politician
ANNUAL BEER CONSUMPTION	65.3 liters per capita	67.9 liters per capita	81 liters per capita
Joined Hanseatic League	--	1282	1285
Established Kingdom	July 6, 1253	--	--
Established Republic	February 16, 1918	November 18, 1918	February 24, 1918
Occupied by Soviet Union	1940	1940	1940
Re-established republics celebrated	March 11, 1990	May 4, 1990	August 20, 1991
Joined NATO	March 29, 2004	March 29, 2004	March 29, 2004
Acceded to European Union	May 1, 2004	May 1, 2004	May 1, 2004
Government	Semi-presidential republic	Parliamentary republic	Parliamentary republic
President Prime Minister	Dalia Grybauskaite Andrius Kubilius	Valdis Zatlers Valdis Dombrovskis	Toomas Hendrik Ilves Andrus Ansip
No. of  seats in the EU Parliament	12	8	6
Anthem	Tautiška giesmė	Dievs, svētī Latviju! God bless Latvia!	Mu isamaa, mu õnn ja rõõm My Fatherland, My Happiness and Joy
National Flag
Coat of Arms

*Many of the figures in this table are taken from The Economist Pocket World in Figures 2008 edition.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BALTIC STATES

Early settlement

The Baltic region was settled sometime between 4000 BC and 1800 BC by two different waves of migrants. Finno-Ugric people came from the middle Volga region; the Finns and the Estonians come from the same stock and can understand each other's languages still today. And Indo-Europeans came from the southeast through Asia and Turkey; the Lithuanians settled the wetlands of the Lithuanian plain; and the Latvian people are descendants of the ‚edge’ culture that developed where these two groups met. A third, now-vanished people, the Old Prussians, settled the Baltic coast between the Namunas and Vistula Rivers.

The Amber Road

Trade routes to the Baltic had developed as early as the Classical period of ancient history. Baltic amber was discovered in the tomb of King Tut. Perhaps the oldest routes were those along the coast from Tallinn to the ancient Roman City of Aquilea on the Adriatic Sea. The precursors to Tallinn and Riga were well known as ports and marketplaces among Scandinavian and Slavic merchants who traded in amber, furs and honey.

13^th-century invaders

The major event pulling the Baltics into the European orbit was the Drang nach Osten, the German expansion to the east in the 13^th century, which more or less coincided with the Mongol advance into Europe. Mongols came out of the east, initially just as a reconnaissance force, but Kievan Rus‘ picked a fight with them, and as a result suffered terrible defeats and spent several centuries under the ‘Mongol Yoke’. The Mongols raided Lithuania several times in the late 13^th century without success, but remained a major force with which Lithuania had to contend in its rise to power.

The Teutonic Knights vs. King Mindaugas

Having been booted out of the Holy Land by Saladin, the elegant Kurdish Muslim ruler of much of Arabia, the German crusaders took out their frustration on the Old Prussians, leading to the extinction of the language some four centuries later. The Teutonic Knights became absolute rulers in Prussia and intended to continue their advance, but the Lithuanians united under King Mindaugas and used their swampy terrain to repel the Crusaders.

Bishop Albert and the Livonian Order of Knights

With blessings from Pope Innocent III, Bishop Albert of Buxhoeveden went north to establish a Roman Catholic presence. In the spring of 1200 he sailed to the Gulf of Riga with a fleet of 23 vessels and more than 1,500 armed crusaders. He created a military order, the Livonian Brothers of the Sword, and began to build his cathedral in 1215. The German King Philip made him a ‚Prince-Bishop‘ of what had now become the Livonian fief of the Holy Roman Empire that covered much of the territory of modern Latvia and Estonia. This region grew into a medieval cosmopolitan center where German traders, Slavic merchants and Scandinavians did business with the local pagan tribes.

Danish and German Estonia

Tired of dealing with pirates in the waters, Danish merchant ships landed in what is now the Bay of Finland in 1219 and clobbered the Estonian tribes, who remained under Danish rule for over a century; ‘Tallinn’ comes from Taani linn or ‘Danish City’. But in 1343 the Estonians rose in revolt and slaughtered their overlords. Sweden and the Livonian Knights raced to subdue the Estonians and replace the Danes. The Knights got there first and regularized their de facto rule by buying Estonia from the Danes. Now both Estonia and Latvia were mostly under German rule; their chief cities were Hanseatic foundations, and their orientation was to the West.

Lithuanian expansion

In the 14^th century, having repelled the Teutonic knights, the Lithuanians were in a good position to pick up pieces of the former Kievan Rus' principalities. The Rus', ruled by descendants of the Swedish Vikings, were a loose conglomeration of principalities that had been falling apart even before the Mongols arrived to finish it off. As it turned out, Kievan Rus’ had two successor states, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Grand Duchy of Moscow. The area subjugated by Moscow was the forerunner of the modern Russian nation-state; the area that fell to Lithuania gave rise to Belarus' and Ukraine.

In 1385 Poland had run out of royalty and was faced with a dynastic crisis. They had only a very young princess named Jadwiga, whom they had to proclaim King (that’s right, King, not Queen—they really, really felt a need for a king!) of Poland. Jogaila of Lithuania, like most Lithuanians of that period, was a worshiper of the old Pagan gods, but saw that there was no future there. Moscow had a princess it was willing to offer if he would become Orthodox, but the Poles were desperate and trumped Moscow's offer with incentives, so he became Catholic, married Jadwiga, and became King of Poland. The Lithuanian nobles did not want to be ruled from Krakow and forced a settlement in which Jogaila's cousin Vytautas became Grand Duke of Lithuania. Thereafter for several centuries a single dynasty ruled both; the offices of King of Poland & Grand Duke of Lithuania were sometimes occupied by the same man, at other times by two separate members of the ruling family. If Jogaila had married the Muscovite lady, Lithuania would have become Orthodox and the whole region would have been shaped with other values. This decision changed the balance of power in all of northeastern Europe. So Lithuania became the most powerful state in northeastern Europe for two centuries.

The Lithuanians converted to Catholicism, depriving the Teutonic Knights of their official rationale for invading; nevertheless, the Knights tried to take Lithuania again in 1410. But Jogaila and Vytautas joined forces and caught the Knights unprepared at Grunwald. During this battle the Germans lost a very high percentage of their leaders and although it was able to retain its lands in Prussia, the Teutonic Order never recovered its power to threaten its neighbors. Those Knights who remained became the Baltic German nobility. In 1569, however, the Union of Lublin revised the relationship between Poland and Lithuania, much to the Poles’ advantage, and despite their period of power the Lithuanians now found themselves in similar circumstances to the Latvians and Estonians.

The Lutheran Reformation

The Lutheran Reformation spread rapidly among the Baltic German aristocracy, whose humanist leanings inclined them toward reform and whose political ambitions led them to regard the Catholic bishop of Riga as an obstacle. When Walter von Plettenberg, Master the Livonian Knights, declared religious freedom for the people of Livonia, Lutheranism became the dominant religion. This period witnessed the beginning of school education and the expansion of reading skills among the local people. The influence of German culture was very strong on the language, building techniques, everyday life and customs.

The Livonian War & The Swedish Times (1561-1710)

Sweden continued to eye the eastern Baltic Coast with desire, as did Poland-Lithuania, Denmark-Norway, and Muscovy, all of which fought one another in complex and shifting alliances for 25 years in the Livonian War in the mid-16th century. Sweden gained a foothold in Tallinn, while Poland-Lithuania acquired Latgale, the eastern province of Latvia. In 1621 Sweden succeeded in annexing most of the rest of the Livonian lands. The Estonians and Latvians considered these to be good times, since many of the more brutal punishments were abolished; the university at Tartu was founded, and a German pastor officially translated the Bible into Latvian. Education spread among the local populations.

The Great Northern War

The Baltic Coast was still too valuable to give up on, so the same groups hammered away at each other for another 20 years in the Great Northern War starting 1700. This time Muscovy was the victor and took the Livonian lands formerly held by Sweden. The Baltic Germans continued to be the rulers on site, and for decades had good relations with the Muscovite government. Muscovy’s expansion continued and eventually it acquired Latgale and all of Lithuania, except a small area that went to Prussia.

Tsarist Rule (1710-1917)

Peter the Great was a tyrant; he centralized the government, modernized the army, created a navy, and was ruthless in subjugating the peasants. Having spent some of his formative years with German soldiers, Peter guaranteed the Baltic Germans nobility a fair amount of autonomy within Tsarist Russia, as Peter now called Muscovy, which meant that they retained control over local government, civil and criminal laws, the court and the school system, and used German as the official business language. The mid-19th century was the beginning of rapid industrial development in Tallinn and especially Riga. These were important ports for Russia because they were relatively free of ice in the winters. By the nineteenth century almost all of the territories of the Baltic nations were under Russian rule, and the locals were powerless peasants. Any idea that they would emerge as sovereign nations would have appeared ludicrous.

The Birth of Nations

However, the wave of nationalism let loose by the French revolution spread like a chain reaction until it finally reached the Baltic peasants, some of whom were becoming well educated. Respect for local languages was invigorated and there was a clear desire for sovereignty to be restored among the Baltic peoples. Latvians and Estonians took part in the 1905 Revolution primarily to shake off the Baltic Germans, whose cruelty had earned them the hatred of the native peoples. The revolution was put down, but the desire for freedom still smoldered, and radicalism spread especially among the workers of now-industrialized Riga and Liepaja.

WWI & The Bolshevik Revolution

At the beginning of the 20^th century, all of the European powers were in a race for industrial development and territorial expansion. The air was electric with competition and aggression and the Industrial Revolution had changed the nature of war. When the fighting erupted, the people along the Baltic Sea coast were under Russian rule and fought in the Russian Army against the Germans. The chaos at the end of WWI led to the collapse of the Russian empire.

The Independent Republics

The Baltic people continued the push for independence. Those who had risen to fore as leaders met with great energy and resolve, planning their strategies, motivating the people and drafting their respective national constitutions. These constitutions have been recognized as impressive documents of liberal democracy that were very modern for their time and continue to determine the course of development of the Baltics today. Fortunately for the Baltics, Russia was in chaos and the change in power cost no lives. This new independence gave such a strong thrust to development that the architectural additions of the 1920s and 30s remain among the best in Estonia and Latvia. Lithuania already knew the taste of sovereignty. The early successes of the newly independent states, such as the Latvian Minox camera, were well known in Europe.

WWII & The Soviet Occupation

However, this peaceful development lasted but 20 years. In 1939 Hitler and Stalin divided Europe among themselves in the notorious Molotrov-Ribbentrop Pact. The secret protocols consigned the Baltic States to the Russian sphere of interest. The first Soviet occupation lasted from 1940-41, followed by a three year German occupation, during which pretty much the entire Baltic Jewish population was exterminated. But the Soviets returned, ousted the Germans and re-occupied the Baltic States from 1944-1991. For many the most painful part of the occupations, were the mass deportations that tore families apart and cost many, many lives.

Hands Across the Baltics

Things could easily have gone otherwise, but for the Baltics the big Soviet experiment ended with the Singing Revolution, primarily on the initiative of the artistic unions composed of authors, musicians and scientists. They were the remaining core of intellectuals who had the courage and resources to imagine renewing the independence of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. In 1989, marking the 50^th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, more than a million people joined hands to create a 600 km singing human chain--from the foot of Toompea in Tallinn, crossing Riga and the Daugava River, to the foot of the Gediminas Tower in Vilnius—the Baltic Way was formed; this event was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register. And in 1991, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia all became sovereign nations once more.

21^st Century

Today the Baltic States are as safe and accessible as any other European countries. Over the last two decades the Baltics have found their own unique developmental pathways—navigating the restructuring phases of privatization and denationalization, the creation of national currencies, and the new wave of infrastructure development due to learning the ropes of market economy. International corporations, luxury brands, transportation services have come to the Baltics and developed. Heeding well meant advice from European and American friends, but often blazing their own trails, these nations have become full members of NATO and the EU, which so far has meant a liberal economy, Europe’s lowest taxes, the fastest rise in standard of living, and the sharpest consequences from the word economic crisis.

This is an experimental laboratory for European economy and history: one thousand years of experience with ever fascinating and changeable results.