I wrote recently that people in the West assume that demographic change, fueled by mass migration both legal and illegal, will soon have deteriorated to a point where there will be no stopping or reversing the process. But there is! I instanced the case of post-Soviet Kazakhstan as an example of how the fortunes of a nation, reduced to a minority in its own state, can change surprisingly suddenly. But Kazakhstan is far from the only example. It is possible to look closer to the Europe, and the heart of Western Civilization, and find demographic reversal brought on by political upheaval—and determined national government policy.
Thus in the three Baltic republics, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the demographic situation has also reversed since the fall of the Soviet Union. These three small nation-states declared independence from the Russian Empire as it collapsed in the wake of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. They established explicitly nationalist regimes that lasted from 1917 until they were occupied by the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II. And this is where their demographic decline began.
In 1922 the newly independent Estonia had a population of 969,976 ethnic Estonians, comprising 87.6% of the population, Russians constituted only 8.6% of Estonia’s population, and no other minority held above a one percent share [Estonia (1920-1940), University Of Arkansas Dynamic Analysis of Dispute Management (DADM) Project].
Donald #Trump meeting a former Miss #Estonia, Kristiina Heinmets, in 1997. We do hope that Mr Trump behaved like a gentleman. pic.twitter.com/nDyzS9577z
— Estonian World (@EstonianWorld) November 9, 2016
An ethnic Estonian
Similarly, Latvia’s population was 73.4% Latvian in 1925 [Ethnicities in region of Latvia. Statistics, roots-saknes.lv], with a Russian minority of some 10.5%.
Miss Universe Latvia 2022 is Kate Alexeeva.
— Beauty Pageant Contest (@FPageants) October 14, 2022
The 27-year-old international model and influencer from Riga bested four other finalists to win the national title. She will now prepare to represent Latvia at the 71st #MissUniverse pageant. 👑 pic.twitter.com/aZCv4xMz1s
An ethnic Latvian
Lithuania’s population was 83.9% ethnically Lithuanian. The largest minority were the Yiddish-speaking Lithuanian Jews, at 7.6%, and a Russian minority of just 2.5%.
Patricija Belousova, Miss Lithuania 2014, gets her hair done by stylist Maurice Den Exter #MissUniversePrelims pic.twitter.com/v5wcrFgMwH
— Louise ~ PageantsNews (@PageantsNEWS) January 24, 2015
An ethnic Lithuanian
These figures were certainly healthy for a set of newly independent states that had spent most of their historic existence as either subjects or constituent members of various Empires. Their chance at independence presented a chance to set demographic policies that might have seen their titular ethnic populations grow both in raw numbers and in share of the population and their true national character to flourish.
Thus VDARE.com has repeatedly cited the great Russian anticommunist Alexander Solzhenitsyn:
Nations are the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities; the very least of them wears its own special colours and bears within itself a special facet of divine intention.
But it was not to be—yet.
Under pressure from the USSR, the three Baltic states surrendered to ultimatums presented by the USSR in 1940. Puppet regimes were set up in each state, and within a short period of time these puppet regimes voted away their sovereignty and therefore the demographic future of these states.
This is not unlike the 1965 Immigration Act in the United States, or the 1948 docking of the Empire Windrush in the United Kingdom. The native populations of these countries, whether a Baltic state or an Anglosphere nation, were not consulted by their governments in taking these actions. The cession of demographic control was made unilaterally, and the titular nations were stripped of their states.
For the next half-century, the people of the Baltic states would be subject to a horrific plethora of disasters and range of state policies which would not only see their share of the populations in their respective states decline, but their overall population figures also decline in absolute terms. One example of the state policies which did incredibly demographic damage to the Baltic states: the mass deportations during and after and after World War II More than 200,000 people were deported from the Baltic states, nearly 10% of the entire adult population, and 17.5% of the entire Estonian population. More than 75,000 of these individuals ended up in the Gulags of the Soviet Union [Deportation Commemoration 2021, June 14, 2021, Estonia.org.au].
By 1989 the population of ethnic Estonians in Estonia had fallen to 61.5% of the national population. The population of Latvians had decreased to 52% in their own country—a percentage similar to the current 54% share of the American population that whites currently hold (US Census, 2020: DEC Redistricting Data (PL 94-171) )—while in Lithuania the native population had decreased to a share of some 79.6%, the smallest decline of the Baltic states, but a decline nonetheless [All-Union population census of 1989. National composition of the population by republic of the USSR, in Russian].
In contrast to the declining native populations, the Russian populations in these countries had increased substantially. In 1989 Estonia hosted a 30.3% Russian population, Latvia’s population was 34% Russian, and the Lithuanian population held a Russian share of some 9.4%, a four-fold increase from the 1923 census.
The large increases in the shares held by the Russian population were not simply a matter of the results of war, famine, and mass deportations but also and primarily a result of the encouragement of Russification (or Sovietification) of these countries [Russification Efforts In Central Asian And Baltic Regions, by Major Sean C. Brazel, Air Command And Staff College (USAF), December 2012]. Hundreds of thousands of Russians were settled in the Baltic states with the goal of destroying the cohesive ethnic identities of the Baltic peoples and preventing them from challenging Moscow’s rule. (Rather as Washington’s Refugee Racket currently imposes Third Worlders on white communities in the U.S.)
But this process did not hold. Neither did the Soviet Union, for that matter. Just two years after the above-mentioned 1989 census figures, what President Ronald Reagan called the “Evil Empire” would finally cease to exist, broken up along borders which largely represented both past and present ethnic demarcations.
Today the demographic situation in the Baltic states has improved substantially. Latvians, who were reduced to 52% of their national population by 1989 and were within spitting distance of becoming a minority in their own homeland, now constitute 62.4% of their nation-state’s population, and comprise a much higher share of the number of citizens (=voters) in the country [Population by ethnicity at the beginning of year 1935 - 2023, Latvian Census, data.stat.gov.lv]. The Russian population, which peaked at 905,515 individuals (and 34% of the population) in 1989, has been reduced to 445,612 individuals and just 23.7% of the population. Furthermore, roughly 30% of these Russians have not been extended Latvian citizenship and are ultimately expected to either adopt the Latvian language and culture or depart for the Russian Federation [Distribution of Latvian population according to national composition and nationality, Citizenship and Migration Affairs, Latvia, PDF].
Estonia has made similar moves. It maintains a policy of refusing to extend citizenship to ethnic Russians who refuse to adapt the culture, language, and ways of living of the ethnic Estonians. The Estonian population in Estonia now sits at 69.1% of the total share as of 2021, while the Russian population has declined from its 1989 height of 30.3% to 23.6% today [RL21428: Population By Ethnic Nationality, Sex And Place Of Residence (Settlement Region), Statistics Estonia, December 31, 2021]. In numerical form the number of Russians in the country has declined by 160,000 and is now isolated in either the suburbs of Tallinn, the national capital, or the city of Narva, which borders Russia itself. As a result of Estonia’s policy of refusing to grant citizenship to ethnic foreigners, the voter rolls are now 84.1% Estonian [Citizenship, Estonia.eu].
Thirty years on from the fall of the Soviet Union, each of the Baltic states is in the midst of a demographic recovery in which their ethnic populations are recovering their place as the dominant player in their own home. The economies of these states are prosperous and modern, and the populations enjoy increasing standards of living that rival those of the Western democracies—themselves in a period of decline.
The more that Americans know about the story of the Baltic states and their three-decade project to transition away peacefully demographically from the multicultural model, the more hope there is for the Historic American Nation to begin a similar process in its own right and regain the preeminent status which their forebears assumed and intended they would have.
James Karlsson (email him) is the founder and director of the White-Papers Policy Institute. Read them on Substack, follow them on Twitter, and message them on Telegram.
