University of Latvia

Department of Political Science

Political Regimes

(H. Smith-Sivertsen)

Differences of authoritarian regimes in Baltic states

Irita Kise

3rd year student

political science

December 11th, 1995

In this paper I want to examine the causes behind the breakdown of the prewar democracies in Baltic states. All three countries have much in common: democracy was established only after the first world war, they have been the part of the Russian empire, they all are small countries, and they are in a similar geographical situation.

I will look at the situation in each country before the coup d’etat and try to find similarities in development. Authoritarian regimes emerged in different times in each of the countries therefore many differences can also be found. Even in Latvia and Estonia where coup d'etats were carried out with interval of two months there are different events and processes which are relevant. I will try to test if these two coup d'etat were caused by the snowballing. Lithuanian was intersting to me only regarding its early transition to authoritarian regime and I tried to find an explaination for that.

It is a myth to consider three Baltic states as one. Residents of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia know that very well, because even limited cooperation has been impossible - cultural traditions are too different. Only in times of emergency the Baltic countries have been able to help each other. The rest of the time they are more like competitors. In R.J.Crampton’s book “Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century” differences among countries are described - three Baltic states appeared together after the first world war, disappeared simultaneously into Soviet Union in 1940, and reappeared with the collapse of Soviet power in 1991. These changes was more the product of external factors than the result of internal similarities. Estonian is a member of Finno-Ugric linguistic group rather than the Indo-European to which Latvian and Lithuanian belong. Latvia has a more divided recent past than the other two states, since its component parts, southern Livonia, Courland, and Latgale, had separate administrative lives under the tsars. Lithuania differs in that Catholicism is the creed of the majority whereas in Latvia and Estonia Lutheranism predominates. In Lithuania the pre-Revolutionary landholders had been Polish or Russian, whilst in Estonia and Latvia they had been predominantly German.

Georg von Rauch argues that Lithuania was not counted as a Baltic state until the Soviet period. It is true that Lithuania has completely different history that determines its predisposition. Political culture in Lithuania is also quite different because of that rich history when Lithuania the only one of the Baltic states had its own statehood. Peoples’ reliance upon strong authority has been the foundation of Lithuanian political culture. I tend to think that here the disharmony between political culture and political structure contributed to replacement of parliamentarian democracy with authoritarian regime.

Even more ancient history has influenced Baltic states to develop rather different perception of statehood. Lithuanians could look back to the time when they formed state together with Poles. Latvians and Estonians had no experience of statehood. Religious differences can greatly influence people’s expectations and predisposition to political system. As it is known from different authors’ works Catholicism is regarded as contributing to sense of collectivism in society. In contrary, Protestantism favor individualistic features. Lithuanian economics suffered greatly from this religious influence because Christian democrats were against radical reforms. After breakdown of Russian empire it was very important to make order in agriculture which was the main branch of economic. In Latvia and Estonia land was distributed among farmers and most of the land holdings were smaller than 25 ha. In Lithuania the reform was not so radical and its economy did not develop so quickly as in Latvia and Estonia. Thousands of Lithuanian agricultural workers came to Latvia in 1920’s and 1930’s looking for job because Lithuania could not provide job for everyone in countryside. The whole economical situation in Lithuania was the worst among Baltic states.

Latvia and Estonia could compete with Western countries in different areas of production, especially in agricultural production. In 1930’s Latvia in all economical showings was on the same level as Finland. Very often people in Latvia reason that our economical situation would be now similar to that of Finland if the occupation of Soviet Union would not interrupt the development of independent Latvian state. Economical situation in Lithuania was worse than in Latvia and Estonia all the interwar period. In the beginning of independence all three states had to build up new economy after the war. Latvia and Estonia managed better and I think that it helped them to maintain democracy longer until the whole world collapsed in economical crisis.

In political sphere all three countries introduced one-cameral parliament, elections were free, universal, equal, secret and proportional. If the institutions of the state were formed after pattern of Western democracies then party system was forming from bottom. Many different small parties emerged. Liberal election bills made possible the situation when a great number of small parties were represented in the parliament. That contributed to instability. Specially Estonia and Latvia suffered from government crises. These regular crisis can be pointed out as the main reason why in Latvia and Estonia could emerge authoritarian regimes - they were meant to bring order and to end continuous discussions in parliament among numerous parties. Therefore it is not surprising that population of Latvia and Estonia did not regard coup d’etat as threatening rather it was seen as the only solution. Party fragmentation and imperfect legislation made basis for authoritarian regimes. I have read the book of Ulmanis’ adjutant Alfrçds Bçrziòð. He writes about the events that happened in 30’s from standpoint of those who ended the parliamentarism. I suppose that his opinion about political and economical problems in Latvia can be a little bit exaggerated but it really helps to understand the reasons why these people thought that Latvia needs one strong authority. Bçrziòð states that government is not responsible for world’s economical crisis but if there is one it must act in such a way that no group of society must bear the whole burden. In this economical crisis parliament continued to change governments one after another (till 1934 there were 18 governments in Latvia) instead of forming one stable government in order to coup with crisis. Government lost confidence in eyes of people. Bçrziòð argues that the ground for such situation was the principles of parliamentarism written in constitution. When the constitution was written its authors wanted to avoid the concentration of power in one person’s hands but instead another situation was created - all power belonged to parliament and no one controlled it.

By the late 20’s it was apparent that under the Estonian and Latvian constitutions there was an inbuilt tendency for governments to change very frequently, thus frustrating any attempt at long-term planning. The average life of Estonian governments between 1919 and 1933 was eight months and twenty days. (Rauch, 1974) In last Latvian parliament (1931) there were 27 parties from which 12 had only one representative and only two parties had more than 10 representatives. The time which was needed to form a new government was quite long - sometimes more that one month. No party ever had a clear majority and it was forced to seek support of smaller parties. Such agreements were often not in favor of state interests because government did all in order to get majority of votes in parliament. Political parties lost also their ideological appeal. In 1933 Estonian parliament 11% of representatives changed their party or became independents.

In the second half of 1920’s the situation in Estonia was getting better after the amendments in electoral law - parties had to pay a definite sum of money in order to be registered for election. After a couple of years the number of parties was reduced to eleven. That happened also because of the trend towards alliances between parties. No such trend was visible in Latvia. I suppose that parliamentary fragmentation was of greater importance when it comes to discussing the causes behind breakdown of democracy in Latvia then in Estonia. Estonia managed to reduce fragmentation in its parliament but the instability did not end.

Latvia’s attempts to improve the situation in parliament and party system ended with failure. The Farmers’ Union had prepared constitutional amendments which were supposed to give more power to president and this president would be elected by the people. But parliament did not want to share its power with anyone. Farmers’ Union failed to convince the largest parliamentary group - socialdemocrats - of effects of the constitutional reform. Socialdemocrats and some other minority representatives were afraid that such concentration of power in one hands would end the democracy.

It is interesting that just representatives of rural parties tried to introduce the institution of popularly elected president both in Latvia and Estonia. Latvian historian Ernests Blanks explains the anti-parliamentary trends in countryside with long Latvian history under oppressors. Having always someone to work for developed in Latvian peasants hate. This hate is directed toward everyone who wants to make decisions in their name and it is transfered to parliaments. Blanks regards that as a trend to anarchism. With that sentiment for anarchism can be explained why Farmers’ Union and not other parties were so eager to change the constitution. As an evidence for that serves the popular support for these constitutional changes in rural areas.

Estonia had different model of transition to authoritarian regime - it happened gradually. First, an extreme right-wing party got majority in largest cities and president Päts feared a fascist turnover. He gave more power to army general and dissolved the parliament. Next year, 1935 parties were dissolved. Constitutional amendments to align political procedures with authoritarian principles were introduced and in February 1936 plebiscite was organized.

Latvian coup d’etat happened at one night and on next morning parliament and parties were dissolved, president Ulmanis and his government functioned alone.

In Lithuania the right wing Nationalist Party feared that socialist parties which were in government at that time would become closer to Soviet Union. Together with parts of army Nationalist Party took over in 16-17 December 1926.

The formal reasons in each of the Baltic states are different. Lithuania wanted to avoid increase of socialist influence, Estonia tried to stop fascists getting the power but Latvia wanted to end the fragmentation in parliament that hindered the development of the state. Always there was one person who felt that he could take the responsibility for the future of the state - Smetona in Lithuania, Päts in Estonia, and Ulmanis in Latvia and all these leaders were the ones who took active part in building the independent states in 1918. All of the new leaders came from peasants and they had one power base - army.

Lithuania had worst economical situation that contributed to breakdown of democracy much earlier than in other Baltic states. Another cause of breakdown of democracy in Lithuania earlier than in other Baltic states is its political culture which is different from that in Latvia and Estonia. Lithuanian political culture is based on long traditions of statehood when the head of the state was a king and on religion. The common history and religion with Poland partly influenced Lithuania’s decision to suspend parliament - it had an example next door to it. I cannot argue that coup d’etat in Lithuania was only the effect of snowballing but, of course, without coup d’etat in Poland the situation in Lithuania would be different. It is clear that this particular wave of authoritarian regimes did not continue in Latvia and Estonia.

Economical situation in Latvia and Estonia proved that parliamentary democracy was effective until the world’s economical crisis broke through. The short time between both coup d’etats does not allow to speak about pure snowballing effect. I think that both presidents planned to suspend parliament long before and could not be influenced by neighbor. Maybe successful coup d’etat in Estonia encouraged Ulmanis to carry out his plans earlier. Many historians note that Ulmanis was thinking about coup d’etat already in 1933 and was planning its realization in the time when constitutional amendments were discussed not depending on the result of that discussion. During that year Ulmanis changed his opinion about the countries which had adapted the authoritarian rule and was particuliarly interested in their experience.(Ðilde, 1976: 577)

The role of the military organizations in coup d’etats is also very widely discussed in literature. Both Latvia and Estonia in the years of independence tried to strenghten their military potential. Armies and newly formed military organizations “Aizsargi” in Latvia and “Kaitseliit” in Estonia were the bases for realization of coup d’etats. Latvian organization had no legislative foundation and that could be used explaining why it took part in the coup d'etat. On contrary, Estonian “Kaitseliit” had legislation regulating it but that did not stop it from taking part in coup d'etat. Ulmanis and Päts were able to attract military leaders with their ideas and that helped them to get support of military forces.

As in Estonia also in Latvia the necessity of authoritarian regime was motivated by fear for fascist coming to power. I think that it was quite real in Estonia where Estonian Association of Freedom Fighters had gained power in biggest cities and its project of constitutional changes got majority in refferendum. Latvian fascist organization “Pçrkonkrusts” was not so influential and was carefully controlled by security agencies and Ulmanis only used the danger of fascist overturn to justify his usurpation of power. In my opinion that danger was not cruicial and did not need such radical means. Both Latvia and Estonia failed to solve the problems with extremist organizations. Other parties could come together in order to defend democracy like it was done in France. Latvian parties clearly had so big differences in opinions that such cooperation would not be possible. Besides, if some parties themselves do not consider democracy as the only one possibility for state development, it is impossible to gain consensus.

Two causes behind the breakdown of democracies in Latvia and Estonia have christallized: 1) The economical crisis;

2) The parlamentary crisis.

In Estonia I can add also the danger of fascist coup d'etat or legal coming to power. I think that coup d'etats in both countries were caused by similar internal situation. The direct reason for suspending parliamentary system was more important in Estonia, and Latvia was encouraged by the events there without having any direct danger of losing democracy.

Literature:

Bçrziòð, Alfrçds Labie gadi

Ðilde, Âdolfs (1976) Latvijas vçsture. 1914-1940 Daugava, Sthlm

Die Krise des Parlamentarismus in Ostmitteleuropa zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen (1967) Marburg

Rauch, Georg von (1974) The Baltic States: The Years of Independence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania 1917-40 Berkley, LA