The Baltic Revolution [antikvár]

IntroductionThe gentleman is Lithuanian, but speaks Polish? I don't understand at all. I thought that in Lithuania there were only Muscovites. I know even less about Lithuania than about China. I once saw an article about Lithuania in 'The Constitutional'. But the other papers don't talk about it at all.From Adam Mickiewicz, Dziady ('Forefathers' Eve'), Part IIIThere exists in Estonian folklore a monster called 'The Northern Frog'. It has the head of a giant frog, the body of an ox and the tail of a snake; an awkward sort of beast altogether. Possibly for that reason it also has an extremely bad temper.' This book is something of the same kind. It attempts to combine elements of a portrait of the contemporary Baltic States and their peoples, a sketch and interpretation of their history and culture, a personal report from the struggle, and elements of oral history from people whom I interviewed. It also contains a polemical argument concerning the position of the Baltic Russians, which I think involves dangers greater than the West has realized.If the resulting work appears to fall between two or more stools, I hope at least that it does so with a satisfying thump. The attempt to combine these different elements seemed justified in the first place because the Baltic States are so little known in the West. Writing on other areas of Eastern Europe, some cultural and historical background can be taken for granted; not so here. In particular, people in the West, and indeed Western diplomacy, have a tendency to lump the Baltic States together and regard them as identical. As should become apparent, they are in fact very different, and may experience very different fates in the years to come. In this sense at least, there is no 'Baltic Region'. I also shelter behind the words of the great Polish-Lithuanian writer, Czeslaw Milosz:When the description of countries and civilizations had not yet been inhibited by a multitude of taboos arising from the compartmentahzed division of knowledge, authors, who were usually travellers, did not