User:Vecrumba/Balticstatesintro

The Baltic states refers to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, situated along the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea.

Prior to WWII, Finland was also often referred to as a Baltic state. That association dissipated during the Cold War: Finland remained independent and became closely associated with the Scandinavian countries; Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania remained under Soviet control during 1940–1941 and 1944/1945–1991 and became associated with Eastern Europe. Today they are most accurately described as part of Northern Europe.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have been members of the European Union and NATO since 2004. Today the three countries are liberal democracies and their market economies have in recent years undergone rapid expansion.

From a linguistic standpoint, Latvian and Lithuanian are Baltic languages while Finnish and Estonian, as well as the Latvian Liv, are Finno-Ugric languages. Both peoples have inhabited the eastern Baltic coast for millenia.

The primary religions are Lutheranism and Catholicism, whose boundaries of adoption align with historical territorial control by Sweden and Poland-Lithuania. Finland, Estonia, and most of Latvia (territorially) are primarily Lutheran, while Latvian Latgale and Lithuania are primarily Catholic.

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Since restoration of independence, Estonia has continued to pursue the close ties it was able to maintain with Finland--being able to receive Finnish broadcasts while under Soviet subjugation--and today prefers to call itself a Nordic people and country.

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Historically, Latvia has always been the most cosmopolitan of the three states, owing to its port of Rīga. The German Hansa merchants had traded throughout the Baltic states since the 13th century&mdash;Rīga had already been a member of the Hanseatic League since 1282. In its time Rīga had been the largest city in the Swedish empire, later, the second largest port in the Russian empire. In the 1600's, the Duchy of Courland was a global sea power, building ships for the British fleet and possessing colonies as far as Tobago and Africa's Gold Coast. The Holocaust, the "repatriation" (forced resettlement) of Baltic Germans, and Soviet Russification erased much of that cosmopolitan nature, some of which is returning now through the influx of foreign investment, tourism, and repatriation from the diaspora.

Lithuania, as does Estonia and Latvia, today closely follows historical ethnic boundaries. However, with Jogaila's (Władysław II Jagiełło) uniting Lithuania with Poland, Lithuania was once an empire stretching from the Baltic to Black Seas.

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Lithuania and Latvia have reasserted their cultural heritage while also dealing with issues arising from the legacy of the Soviet pursuit of Russification.