Imagined Communities in an Integrating Baltic Region

Abstract

In December 2006, the Estonian government ordered a bronze statue of a Soviet soldier moved from a square in Tallinn to a more obscure location. The statue, which had been erected in 1947, was regarded by ethnic Estonians as a symbol of Soviet occupation and had become an icon of what Benedict Anderson would call old space.1 The statue was perceived to be a symbol of an earlier imperialistic and colonial Soviet occupying force. However, the large ethnic-Russian population in Estonia perceived it as a symbol of liberation from the Nazis, and the Russian Duma responded by denouncing the move. As might be true of a newspaper or a museum, many saw the statue as a tool in promoting an illegitimate identity for many ethnic Estonians.2 The statue's removal would more easily permit the creation (or re-creation) of a new space and a new time for Estonia. Ethnic Estonians, both politicians and the voters who elect them, would consolidate their own imagined community.Investigating Baltic Manifestations of Imagined CommunitiesThe entry of several former Warsaw Pact states into NATO and the EU has made national and ethnic identity issues within these countries more visible and politically sensitive. The nine former Communist societies (with the exception of Slovenia) have a unique perspective on this rapid and large-scale governance and economic change after having spent decades under the political and military tutelage of the Soviet Union. How imagined communities affect the larger European integration movement is not exactly clear. However, public opinion in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia demonstrates that there are differences based on several factors, making the Baltic states an even more distinct part of the former Warsaw Pact countries. Survey data indicate that not every ethnic group within these societies supports joining the European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). One factor of possible importance might be the manifestation of imagined communities. Baltic societies are characterized as having pervasive ethnic divisions, with Russians being the dominant minority. Because the region has been considered an important part of the "near abroad" by tsarist Russian, Soviet, and modern Russian policymakers, any further loss of Moscow's political and economic influence caused by integration with Europe would conceivably put greater pressure on the Russian government to react. Concomitantly, minority ethnic Russians living in the near abroad might experience greater hardship, as they are politically and culturally separated from their homeland. In these cases, there is a two-way dynamic as Baltic imagined communities interact not only in a state and regional context but also in an international one.According to surveys, up to the point of accession, Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians all saw membership in the EU and NATO differently from other ethnic groups and might have taken a different electoral stance if given the chance. In other words, individual economic and social circumstances, as well as political histories, would have influenced voters' attitudes if plebiscites had been held.In this article, I address why voters in the Baltic countries of the EU may have preferred membership in the EU and NATO-organizations with somewhat different objectives. First, I briefly consider the manifestation of imagined communities in Europe, including the Baltics, before and during the Cold War. Next, I discuss the role that the EU and NATO might have played in reference to imagined communities in the Baltics after the Cold War. After that, I briefly discuss the Baltic experience of economic and military integration. Next, I introduce survey data and several empirical analyses expressing how the existence of imagined communities may have impacted public opinion leading to the accessions of the Baltic countries to NATO. Other economic and political factors, such as personal income and satisfaction with democracy, are controlled for and included in these analyses. …