Theres way fewer Baltic people. The whole of Estonia has less people than one single city in most other European states. It's a lot easier to propagandize such a small population.
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A small population also makes it easier to successfully repress budding social movements.
I'm going to offer a more historical explanation and say that imo you have to go back further than WW2 or even WW1 to understand the deep seated mental issues that these countries have. A big reason why they are so mentally colonized is because they were physically and culturally colonized for hundreds of years by the Germans during the middle ages when the various crusader orders established their own states in the Baltics. During that time they developed a collective Stockholm syndrome and ever since they can't stop wanting to be German. And just like the western Ukrainians (who were also colonized by Germans in the form of the Austro-Hungarian empire) oftentimes going completely insane in their zeal to show their loyalty to the West, including being more brutal in their atrocities toward Russians and Jews than even the Nazis.
I'm a Lithuanian who is living in the UK. Lithuania before the Soviet annexation was a rural and backward peasant state, where there did not exist any form of a communist party, especially compared to its brothers (Latvia, Estonia). Lithuania had a parliament but it was a fascist backing, such that (as you stated) Antanas Smetona was a fascist and he openly admired Mussolini. On top of that, nazi collaboration was a thing and definitely existed in Lithuania against the Soviets (Note that the Baltic people follow the "double genocide theory" bullshit). When Lithuania was annexed, it had a communist party, while Latvia had a communist party since the Bolsheviks, making it one of the earliest communist parties. Lithuania has had a lot of reactionary uptake, including the Forest Brothers, which most of the action take place in, and has killed innocent civilians.
According to Human Rights in the Soviet Union, Lithuanian Nationalism still continued to exist even under the Khrushchev and Brezhnev era of the USSR. The dissolution started with the CIA (obviously) and it was not out of the popularity of the masses. The Lithuanian Nationalists staged a bloody provocation in order to frame a Soviet Attack.. It is clear that Lithuania had its reactionary nationalism even during the Soviet era.
Why do Lithuanians support the modern government? Because they want to. They're want to act more 'western' compared to the great 'Russian threat'. Western in the sense being distinct from Russia. I have also not been taught of Lithuanian history in the USSR and had to search these things for myself (Hence why I am posting sources). It's a shame. Lithuania could've been a great nation (in the socialist sense) however due to the revisionism of the USSR on top of the Lithuanian nationalism, I cannot call myself a Lithuanian patriot, because I would be associated with the reactionaries that kept this country running and also drowning itself of air as it sends resources to the Ukraine.
Oh wow, another fellow Lithuanian in here. Pretty rare to see lol.
Oh wow, another fellow Lithuanian in here. Pretty rare to see lol.
And Lithuania in WW2 was also the most anti-Nazi Baltic state, with Nazis failing to organize SS units there.
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I have a 90-year old neighbour from Estonia who immigrated here, after he retired. The way he describes it, the youth in the Baltics in the late 70s and throughout the 80s were for some reason attracted a lot to Western culture (films, rock music, jeans, etc). Because many of those things were inaccessible or banned, they started feeling resentment towards the state. Now those people grew up and are running the countries.
Are you me? Because I was thinking this exact thing today and was tempted to ask.
they have historical drama with the bolsheviks and their almost genocidal heavy handed responses to outside pressures from the west; so now any flavor of marxism is has hated there as it is in most everywhere else.