Bridging the Baltic Sea: Networks of Resistance and Opposition during the Cold War Era 1498551270, 9781498551274

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Bridging the Baltic Sea

THE HARVARD COLD WAR STUDIES BOOK SERIES Series Editor Mark Kramer, Harvard University Recent Titles in the Series The Vienna Summit and Its Importance in International History Edited by Günter Bischof, Stefan Karner, and Barbara Stelzl-Marx The Legacy of the Cold War: Perspectives on Security, Cooperation, and Conflict Edited by Vojtech Mastny and Zhu Liqun Displaced Terror: History and Perception of Soviet Camps in Germany Bettina Greiner Khrushchev’s Thaw and National Identity in Soviet Azerbaijan, 1954–1959 Jamil Hasanli Unified Military Industries of the Soviet Bloc: Hungary and the Division of Labor in Military Production Pál Germuska The Concept of Neutrality in Stalin’s Foreign Policy, 1945–53 Peter Ruggenthaler Mao and the Sino-Soviet Partnership, 1945–1959: A New History Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia The Soviet Union and the Horn of Africa during the Cold War: Between Ideology and Pragmatism Radoslav A. Yordanov The Power of Dynamic Détente Policies: U.S. Diplomacy between the Military Status Quo and the Transformation of Europe, 1964–1975 Stephan Kieninger The Tito–Stalin Split and Yugoslavia’s Military Opening toward the West, 1950–1954: In NATO’s Backyard Ivan Laković and Dmitar Tasić Bridging the Baltic Sea: Networks of Resistance and Opposition during the Cold War Era Lars Fredrik Stöcker

Bridging the Baltic Sea Networks of Resistance and Opposition during the Cold War Era Lars Fredrik Stöcker

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2018 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN: 978-1-4985-5127-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-1-4985-5128-1 (electronic) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Preface vii Introduction xi Abbreviations xxvii 1  Entangled Histories in Northeastern Europe

1

2  T  he Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949

21

3  “Cold Warfare” at the Edge of the Iron Curtain

67

4  In Search of a Common Language

121

5  The Transnationalization of Opposition around the Baltic Rim

161

6  From Individual to Mass-Based Opposition

211

Conclusion

283

Appendix

303

References

311

Index

341

About the Author

349

v

Preface

I was still an undergraduate when I first learned about Sweden’s role in the intricate web of international support for the Polish Solidarity movement; not only during the so-called “legal period” of post-war Poland’s first independent trade union, but also after December 13th, 1981, the memorable day when General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared war on his own people by imposing martial law. During an internship at the Polish Institute in Stockholm in fall 2003, while translating wall charts from Polish to Swedish for an exhibition on the topic of official and unofficial Swedish support for Solidarity, I became fascinated by the astonishing dynamics of transnational opposition to Soviet-type Socialism that developed in the wake of the turbulent events in Poland. The idea of writing this book, however, emerged first several years later in Berlin. Aiming to explore the overall dynamics of Cold War politics in neutral Sweden and the peculiarities of East-West relations around the Baltic rim, I decided to broaden the geographical and chronological framework of the project which, in the end, turned into a first attempt to write a historical synthesis of the Cold War in the Baltic Sea Region. This book revisits a rather peripheral borderland of the European Cold War theater that has not received much attention in the literature on Europe’s post-1945 history. Yet, the Baltic Sea Region was, as will be shown, far from being a “backwater” of international politics. The focus on the political activities of Poles and Estonians who had escaped their war-torn and crisisridden homelands to Sweden highlights a so far still underexplored aspect of Cold War politics that played out underneath the surface of official East-West relations and international diplomacy. Based on largely unexplored archival collections of individual activists and Polish and Estonian political organizations in Sweden, this book tells the story of their dedicated struggle against the status quo behind the Iron Curtain in changing geopolitical conditions. vii

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Reconstructing the constantly shifting strategies of Cold War Sweden’s largest political diasporas in their attempts to bridge the ideological front line that isolated them from their nearby homelands, the following chapters illustrate how Polish and Estonian émigrés coped with geopolitical realities, how they envisioned political change, and how they contributed to accomplishing it. Drawing on the ongoing historiographical debates about the extent and forms of interaction and exchange across the blocs, this book explores, on the one hand, the specificity of political, economic, and cultural relations between the Nordic neutrals and their opposite coasts. On the other hand, the study aims to shed light on how diaspora-homeland relations played out on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and how transnational dynamics of political opposition affected change on a local, national, and international level. This book thus touches upon an array of questions that are vital to understanding a present marked by the formation of countless new diasporas due to unprecedented waves of forced migration. The luxury of having been able to spend five years on full-time research and writing depended on the generosity of the institutions that funded me. A research grant of the German Historical Institute in Warsaw financed an initial three-month period of archival research in Poland. The German foundation ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius awarded me a PhD scholarship within the program “Germany and Her Eastern Neighbors—Contributions to European History,” which secured the funding for another year of research in Warsaw. The grants and tuition fees during my time as a PhD candidate at the European University Institute in Florence were covered by the Swedish Research Council, which enabled me to spend my formative years as an early stage researcher in an intellectually highly stimulating—and breathtakingly beautiful—environment. I am also grateful to the Estonian Institute for sponsoring my participation in two summer courses in Estonian language and culture at the universities of Tartu and Tallinn and for the award of an Estophilus grant, which contributed to covering the costs of my year-long research stay as a visiting PhD student at Tallinn University. The Natolin European Center awarded me a Paderewski grant and hosted me on the beautiful campus of the College of Europe in the park of Natolin Palace during a shorter research stay in Warsaw. At least as important as the material support was the intellectual advice and encouragement I received throughout the years. First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Philipp Ther, whom I have known since my undergraduate days, for many years of guidance and support. This book would never have been written without his enthusiasm for the project, his inspiring comments, and the fact that he taught me to be more pragmatic. I am also indebted to Kiran Klaus Patel and Federico Romero for the thorough screening of chapter



Preface ix

and thesis drafts and their very detailed response. In their capacity as members of the defense committee, Juhana Aunesluoma and Karsten Brüggemann offered valuable feedback that facilitated the conversion of the thesis into a book. Needless to say, the list of supporters is significantly longer. Discussions with professors and fellow researchers at the European University Institute have contributed to shaping this book as much as the critical remarks and comments I received at numerous international conferences and workshops. I am deeply indebted to my interview partners, who shared their personal memories, offered their own interpretation of the phenomena I was studying, and helped me to put my archival findings into perspective: Mirosław Chojecki, Józef Lebenbaum, and Marek Michalski in Poland, Heiki Ahonen, Tunne Kelam, Lagle Parek, Eve Pärnaste, Vardo Rumessen (†), Vello Salo, and Enn Tarto in Estonia, as well as Aleksander Loit, Jaak Maandi, Enn Nõu, Jakub Święcicki, and Ryszard Szulkin in Sweden. Their interest in my research and willingness to contribute to the project has been an invaluable asset. I would also like to thank other contemporary witnesses for their insights, among them Grzegorz Gauden, Halina Goldfarb, Marju Lauristin, Juhan Mägiste, Leonard Neuger, and Helga Nõu. The staff at various archives and libraries in Florence, Stockholm, Tallinn, Warsaw, Budapest, Gdańsk, and Tartu formed a small army of helpers. I am especially grateful to Joanna Michałowska at the Opposition Archive of the KARTA Center for her assistance and support which went beyond the usual. My thanks go also to Alanna O’Malley, Luisa Panichi, and Jonathan Fitchett for having been efficient, reliable, and flexible proofreaders of draft versions of the manuscript. Finally, I would like to thank Mark Kramer and the editors at Lexington Books for guiding the manuscript through the review and acceptance process and the press’s outside reviewers for advice and comments that helped me in transforming the draft manuscript into a book. The five years I spent thinking, researching, and writing on the topic of oppositional networks around the Baltic rim hold a treasury of impressions, memories, and inspirations. I am privileged to have met people who came to play an important role in my life in the places I used to call home during this period, Warsaw, Florence, and Tallinn; three very different cities that surprised me each in their own way. But even an academic nomad needs a constant in his life. Thus, I want to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for the love, unconditional trust, and moral and practical support I have always received from my parents, Anna Christina Dagnell-Stöcker and Werner Stöcker. It is to them I dedicate this book. Lars Fredrik Stöcker Vienna, September 2017

Introduction

A quarter of a century after the fall of Communism, most of the Cold War fortifications along the southern and eastern coastline of the Baltic Sea have disappeared. And they continue to disappear, as I witnessed during my visits to the Loksa peninsula, located an hour’s drive from the Estonian capital of Tallinn, in 2009 and 2011. During the decades of Soviet occupation, the small town of Loksa hosted a harbor that served as an important hub for the USSR’s Baltic submarine fleet. The peninsula was part of the military exclusion zone along the shores of Pribaltika (as the Baltic territories traditionally were referred to in Russian) and, therefore, closed to civilians. A dense chain of watchtowers along the shores has withstood the ravages of time, as have the bunkers in the pine forests that line the sandy beaches. The complex of typical Soviet-type, concrete-paneled apartment buildings where the most privileged Red Army naval officers lived with their families, by contrast, was in a state of advanced decay. A couple of old women in headscarves sitting in the sun on the wooden benches in front of the entrance to their staircases indicated that the buildings were, nevertheless, inhabited. The Russian-speaking ladies most certainly remembered the time when rare, high-quality consumer goods were sold to the members of the Soviet military elite in the nearby shop, where local Estonian villagers were denied access. The tall trees that were growing out of what once had been the shop’s roof, however, suggested that these days were long past. The feeling of being in an open-air museum of a bygone era grew stronger as I strolled along the deserted beaches of the Loksa peninsula. Spools of barbed wire could still be found only a few meters away from the shore, and thousands of rusty bullet casings on the ground were reminders of the fact that, until fairly recently, Estonian beaches had been sites of regular Soviet army exercises. Two years later, however, as Estonians xi

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celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the restoration of Estonian independence, the curling barbed wire had been cleared away and not a single bullet casing was left in the sand. It is most likely that even the last visible remnants of the once-exclusive shop for Red Army officers will soon vanish, while the Khrushchev-era apartment buildings amidst the tall pine trees, most of whose tenants moved to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, will continue to fall into disrepair. Beneath the iconography of militarization and fortification, expressed in the imagery of raked sand beaches, border patrols, and well-guarded naval bases, there is a parallel, largely untold narrative. Compared to the hot spots of East-West rivalry such as divided Berlin, the repercussions of the superpower conflict were much less perceptible in Europe’s northeastern peripheries. The heavy military surveillance of the Baltic waters and the fortification of the maritime borders of East Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union were counterbalanced by the neutrality doctrines of Sweden and Finland. Throughout the decades of the East-West conflict, the neutral Nordic states were significant strategic tiles in the geopolitical mosaic of Cold War Europe. As a kind of “East-West buffer zone,”1 they actively contributed to soothing the tensions between the blocs, at least on a regional level. The fact that Sweden and Finland, for most of the Cold War era, were considered by Moscow and Warsaw to be more or less friendly neighbors had a crucial impact on the forms and intensity of encounters and communication between the societies around the Baltic rim. Therefore, it would be distorting to approach the Cold War history of the Baltic Sea Region from a perspective that exclusively focuses on conflict and isolation. The specific geopolitical setup in the Baltic Sea Region was one of the factors that facilitated the gradual relaxation of border regimes especially in Poland, but also in the Soviet Union’s Baltic peripheries; an unlikely development had the Soviet and Polish leadership been confronted with a united bloc of NATO member-states on the opposite coast. It was most notably the exceptionally liberal reform path in post-thaw Poland that triggered a considerable intensification of interaction and mobility across the Baltic Sea. Already in the 1960s, Poles could be encountered throughout the Western hemisphere as tourists, business travelers, or seasonal workers. Due to the convenient ferry connections, Poles visited Sweden in large numbers, not least due to the liberal Swedish practice of granting short-term work permits for Polish citizens. To this day, the Polish students who earned some extra money as harvest hands on southern Sweden’s fruit farms and strawberry fields have a special place in Swedish collective memory. The Poles were thus two to three decades ahead of the inhabitants of the Soviet Baltic republics, who could enjoy greater mobility first after the onset of Mikhail Gorbachev’s



Introduction xiii

perestroika. Especially the Latvian SSR remained relatively closed to Western influences throughout the Cold War,2 while the Lithuanians, at least to a certain degree, profited from their proximity to the more liberal People’s Republic of Poland. An exception in many ways, however, was the Estonian SSR, which gradually opened up to Finland, first and foremost due to the Nordic neighbor state’s neutrality policy and the specificity of Finnish-Soviet post-war relations. As the level of geopolitical tensions was generally low around the Gulf of Finland, Tallinn became a major hub for Soviet-Western trade, which gave the Estonians a good idea of Western standards and ways of life. This effect was reinforced by the fact that the inhabitants of the northern parts of Estonia could receive Finnish television. With the establishment of a direct ferry connection to Helsinki in 1965 and the subsequent advancement of the tourism infrastructure, Tallinn eventually developed into the USSR’s “window to the West.”3 What Poland and Soviet Estonia had in common was, in the respective context of the satellite belt and the Soviet Union as a whole, an exceptional exposure to the non-communist world. The fact that both the People’s Republic and the Estonian SSR bordered the Baltic Sea, facing the coastlines of the neutral Nordic states, turns the Baltic Sea Region into a fascinating field of study for historians interested in exploring the nature, range, and repercussions of EastWest contact in Cold War Europe. This book offers the first synthesis of the history of the shifting patterns of communication, interaction, and cooperation in the northeastern peripheries of the European Cold War theater, seen through the prism of a group of actors that has received surprisingly little attention in Cold War historiography. Émigrés from Central and Eastern Europe not only served at the forefront of anti-communist “cold warfare” in the West. Having both the capability and a vital interest in bridging the gap to their homelands that the geopolitical post-war order had created, they established intricate informal networks with their co-nationals at home, using every loophole in the Iron Curtain. Their remarkable creativity in finding ways to facilitate unhampered communication between the blocs was crucial for the interaction between communist and capitalist societies, particularly around the Baltic rim. Sweden hosted diaspora groups from all over communist Europe, but the two largest communities were made up of Estonians and Poles. Sweden’s geographical location, the country’s neutrality, and the gradual liberalization of the national border regimes across the Baltic Sea triggered the development of a multilayered web of contacts between the diaspora communities and their homelands, which adds an interesting and underexplored aspect to the topography of crossBaltic contact during the Cold War. The genesis of the Polish and Estonian diaspora communities in Sweden reaches back to the turmoil of World War II, which unleashed unprecedented

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waves of war refugees throughout the region. As a neutral and non-warring state with a liberal attitude toward war refugees, Sweden was a safe haven in the eye of the storm. Tens of thousands of Balts but also Poles risked their lives on their escape from the terror of both German and Soviet occupation. By the end of the war, approximately 30,000 Baltic citizens, among them around 25,000 from Estonia alone, and 8,000 Poles had claimed political asylum in Sweden. Neighboring Finland, by contrast, which had lost the war against the USSR and was thus forced to adjust its neutrality policy to conditions largely dictated by the Kremlin, extradited all refugees from Sovietcontrolled territories.4 Hence, it was the Kingdom of Sweden that received the largest concentration of war refugees from the opposite coasts. As most of the refugees settled there permanently, the mass escape during the final stages of World War II initiated Sweden’s transition from a largely homogeneous nation state into a country with significant immigrant communities. However, the formation of substantial Estonian and Polish diaspora groups on Swedish soil had significant repercussions even for the homeland societies on Sweden’s opposite coasts. As soon as it became clear that the geopolitical status quo of 1945 would develop into a permanent post-war order, many refugees from the occupied Baltic states and Poland left the temporary camps that had offered them shelter during the war and started to adapt to the thought of a permanent life in Sweden. Integration into the host society and the domestic job market was thus a priority during the immediate post-war years. The broad range of cultural, scholarly, and political organizations established by the refugee communities immediately after the end of World War II, however, gave witness to the strong bonds of patriotism, traditions, and language that connected the refugees to their homelands. As soon as cultural exchange between East and West was officially sanctioned in the spirit of détente, some representatives of the diaspora communities became active bridge builders between the blocs. This affected not only the spheres of culture and education but also trade and business, as the example of the close cooperation between Polish entrepreneurs in the West and their business partners in communist Poland from the early 1970s onwards illustrates. This book, however, addresses a far less known aspect of diaspora-homeland cooperation. Its major protagonists are the sections of the Polish and Estonian diaspora communities in Sweden that chose to engage in émigré politics and more clandestine activities aimed to oppose the communist order at home. Their political and ideological fervor was fueled by the idea, to quote Yossi Shain, of a “continuous struggle to facilitate the conditions for their return” and their “determination not to establish life abroad as a comfortable option, even temporarily.”5 Although politically committed émigrés played a



Introduction xv

crucial role in the history of Western anti-Communism after World War II, their political agenda significantly differed from that of most anti-communist activists in the West. Due to their focus on “national liberation,” which was the motor of all organized émigré political activism, their mission was not limited to counterpropaganda. Instead of reinforcing the division of Europe, they aimed at overcoming it by supporting oppositional forces in their homelands, adding a more discrete, less visible facet to their political commitment. It is this aspect of diaspora politics that links Polish and Estonian émigrés in Sweden to the evolution of a multilayered set of clandestine and, at times, subversive contacts between the Baltic shores during the Cold War era. Already in the decades preceding the outbreak of World War II, Sweden repeatedly provided shelter for political refugees from the opposite coasts, which turned the neutral country into a sanctuary for oppositional thought and a setting for clandestine activities directed against the political order in the refugees’ home countries. During World War I, the Swedish capital served as an “international information center” for Finns, Poles, Lithuanians, and Belarusians who used neutral Sweden as a forum for the propagation of secession from the Russian Empire.6 After the rise of National Socialism a decade and a half later, German communists and socialists established a small, but politically very active émigré community in Sweden. The Scandinavian country, therefore, soon became a switch point for the smuggling of propaganda material from Leningrad to Berlin and an important node for the communication between the underground resistance in Nazi Germany and its supporters abroad.7 Also during World War II and the Cold War, Sweden maintained its status as a major toehold for oppositional forces from the opposite coasts; this time, however, mainly for political refugees from Poland and the occupied Baltic states.8 Political opposition against Soviet-type state socialism in Europe was, at its core, an interwoven, transnational phenomenon. Insight into the mechanisms and strategies of cooperation across the blocs in this field is, however, still limited due to paucity of current research.9 This book was written to contribute to filling this research gap and to introduce an innovative way of approaching the versatility of “political warfare against the Soviet bloc” during the Cold War.10 The focus on contacts between Polish and Estonian émigrés in Sweden and their homelands aims at shedding light on the synergizing effects of Western activism directed against the European communist regimes and domestic political opposition in the state-socialist orbit. Spanning a period that reaches from the beginnings of organized émigré political activity in Sweden in the early stage of World War II to the fall of Communism, the following chapters investigate processes of communication, mutual influencing, and cooperation in the history of diaspora-homeland relations in the

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Baltic Sea Region. The comparative perspective applied in the book allows for drawing more general conclusions on how uncontrolled interaction could develop under the specific geopolitical conditions of the Cold War around the Baltic rim. The reconstruction of the constantly shifting grassroots-level networks between oppositional actors in the East and West reveals a story that differs from the standard history of post-war international relations between the states that border the Baltic Sea. Although East-West tensions were generally lower in northeastern Europe, intergovernmental cooperation was, with the noticeable exception of the relations between Helsinki and Moscow, generally reduced to a minimum, which earned the small inland sea its reputation as a “backwater of international politics.”11 Focusing on the transnational nature of political opposition and tracing the political and social repercussions of the diaspora-homeland networks on both sides of the Iron Curtain, the book challenges the perceived insignificance of the Baltic Sea Region in the history of Cold War Europe. The narrative is embedded into a larger, more general framework that traces the shifting political, economic, and cultural relations between the neutral Nordic countries and the communist states on the opposite coasts. Taking into account the continuities and ruptures of East-West diplomacy and the evolution of trade, tourism, and officially sanctioned societal exchange between the blocs, this book, then, also offers a more broadly defined overview of the Baltic Sea Region’s Cold War history and its general significance as a borderland of divided Europe. The investigation of the very different kinds of grassroots activism directed against the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe and the wide range of actors involved on both sides of the Iron Curtain call for rather broadly defined terms for the categorization of the phenomena this book is focusing on. Although a critical stance toward the communist regimes, or, at least, their political practices, was a common denominator that connected émigré activists and their Western supporters to non-conformist circles within the Soviet bloc, the term “anti-Communism” is only partly suitable. A considerable number of regime critics in the East and West generally supported the idea of state socialism, but favored reforms within the system. Moreover, the term is politically charged through the rhetoric of the Cold War era, which, strictly speaking, allows for its use only in the narrow context of “cold warfare” itself. As its title suggests, the term “resistance” figures prominently in this book. Scholars interested in the study of state socialism have offered various, sometimes competing definitions. Historian Lynne Viola proposes the use of the term “resistance” in its broadest sense for all kinds of negative responses to the system within communist societies and, thus, as an antipole to passive or



Introduction xvii

approving reactions such as “accommodation, adaptation, acquiescence, apathy, internal emigration, opportunism, and positive support.”12 The political scientist Barbara J. Falk, by contrast, defines “resistance” as a “gray zone,” located somewhere between regime support and active opposition.13 In this book, however, the use of the term is limited to the context of World War II and the immediate post-war period, when armed partisan warfare was the most practiced form of openly combating both the Nazis and the Red Army in the occupied Baltic states and Poland. As the clandestine underground structures acted in close cooperation with exiled representatives of the pre-war governments abroad, the term “resistance” covers the whole range of transnational activism directed against the Occupying Powers in war-torn Europe. However, for the decades following the gradual dissolution of the partisan structures in the late 1940s and 1950s, a change of terminology is required. Organized political activism directed against Moscow’s hegemonic power in large parts of post-war Europe was based upon a highly heterogeneous network of individuals and organizations in the East and West, whose political agendas and strategies considerably shifted over time. Therefore, the book follows the line of thought of Tony Judt who favored the use of the umbrella term “opposition” for all forms of non-conformist political behavior throughout the communist orbit.14 As the book applies a wider, transnationally framed perspective that includes a range of actors in the West, it seems most adequate to use the term “opposition” in its widest possible meaning, detaching it from the field of domestic politics to which it usually is confined. The term “dissent,” by contrast, which is often used to cover various forms of domestic opposition to authoritarian regimes, is used rather carefully. The widespread and frequent appearance of the term in the Western media during the 1970s and 1980s was contested not least by the so-called “dissidents” themselves, who considered it to be a “coinage of American and West European journalists.”15 However, as the term has been adopted into the standard parlance, it will still be used, at least when referring to the clandestine activities of the small nationalist-minded circles that emerged in the Estonian SSR from the early 1970s onwards.16 Nevertheless, the notion remains highly selective and a priori excludes groups such as the equally important nonconformist Soviet intelligentsia or the non-governmental political and social movements in Poland.17 The narrative centers around the constantly shifting relations between individuals, groups, and organizations that shared similar political goals on both sides of the Iron Curtain from a long-term perspective. In the social sciences, the term “network” figures prominently as a concept for describing the fluctuating dynamics of political mobilization, which connect the individual actor to larger structures that exceed the framework of the nation

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state.18 The concept is equally applicable to historical research interested in transnational spaces, as it offers a way to frame various forms of grassroots political activity that rely on cross-border contacts and interaction between individuals, groups, and societies. The book follows the definition of the sociologist Manuel Castells, who described the structure of networks as a “set of interconnected nodes.”19 This understanding of the nature of networks highlights their flexibility and volatility, which is “based on temporary consolidation and a minimal level of institutionalization.”20 The term efficiently conveys the decentralized structure and loose nature of grassroots-level interaction between actors who were usually unaware of the overall dimension of oppositional East-West cooperation. Applied to the patterns of oppositional contacts across the Baltic Sea, the network approach offers a counternarrative to the history of intergovernmental relations in the Baltic Sea Region after 1945, first and foremost due to its “potential to create a radically different mapping of Europe.”21 Finally, some words on the main protagonists of the oppositional networking activities in Cold War Europe, whose story constitutes the backbone of this book. Although migration studies figure prominently in the humanities and social sciences, the evident “scholarly neglect” of émigré political activism aimed at delegitimizing and overthrowing the regimes in their homelands causes certain problems in finding a suitable terminology.22 Like most refugees from Central and Eastern Europe who either refused to return after the installation of communist regimes in their homelands or fled for political reasons at a later stage, many Poles and Estonians in post-war Sweden considered themselves as political “exiles.”23 In an academic context, however, the term should be used with caution. The overwhelming majority of first generation Estonians and, to a significantly lesser degree, Poles in Sweden reached the country on their escape from the atrocities of war at home. Particularly the masses of Estonian refugees who arrived on Swedish shores in the fall of 1944 classify, to use the category proposed by migration scholar Yossi Shain, as “anticipatory refugees,”24 whose escape was rooted in the well-grounded fear of the consequences of a Soviet re-occupation of their homeland. As the Polish refugee community largely consisted of war refugees from the German-occupied territories or of liberated concentration camp prisoners who were evacuated to neutral Sweden in the final phase of World War II, they refused to return home in view of the communist takeover. Their refusal to repatriate was thus in most cases a conscious and voluntary decision that did not involve any political banishment on the part of the homeland regimes. Although the initial phase of life outside the homeland can indeed be experienced as “exilic” by groups of political and war refugees,25 the use of the term “émigré” is more appropriate, given the fact that even émigrés can



Introduction xix

“live with a sense of exile.”26 “Exile” thus classifies more accurately as an identity marker that was consciously used to create social cohesion among the community around the pole of shared opposition to the political order in the homeland. Despite these more general concerns over the use of the term, the book adheres to the widely accepted concept of the “government in exile” to describe the provisional Polish and Estonian governments in the West that, at least on paper, outlived the communist homeland regimes.27 As collective groups, the Poles and Estonians in Sweden only partially qualified as communities of political émigrés. Over the course of time, prevalent political convictions became less unequivocal. Second- and third-generation Estonians who were raised as fully integrated Swedish citizens did not always support the ideological dogmatism of the war refugee generation and sometimes adopted a more “Swedish” view on the situation in the occupied homeland. In the case of the Polish diaspora, it was especially the mass influx of mostly economic migrants from the People’s Republic of Poland from the mid-1950s onwards that, in the long run, undermined the united political stance against the communist order at home. Hence, the term “diaspora” most accurately describes the increasingly heterogeneous communities of Poles and Estonians from a long-term perspective, which is in line with the terminology used among the diaspora communities themselves, especially during the later stages of the Cold War era.28 The term “political emigration,” by contrast, refers to the politically active segments of the diaspora communities for whom the status of a political émigré was a core aspect of their identity. The conceptual framework of the book draws on the ongoing debates in the field of historiography on how to approach Cold War Europe from a historical perspective. Research on the topic has largely remained the domain of scholars primarily interested in the history of diplomacy and international relations. Therefore, most studies in the field of Cold War historiography are still preoccupied with the dichotomy and rivalry between two competing systems, which continues the standard narrative of confrontation and conflict.29 This bipolar approach, however, is in itself a product of the Cold War era that, wittingly or unwittingly, reinforces the remarkably resilient topos of the Iron Curtain as an “impermeable barrier dividing two monolithic blocs.”30 The career of transnational approaches in the humanities and social sciences has led to a shift of focus toward the extent of encounters, transfers, and cooperation across the blocs. Scholars in the field have stressed that the “boundaries that need to be transcended are not necessarily those of the nation-state but those of the Iron Curtain.”31 A dual approach to borders, highlighting features of both isolation and contact, facilitates the distinction between the Iron Curtain as a political reality on the one hand and a figure of speech on the other. This shift of focus has contributed to revising the perception of what the Cold War

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frontier actually meant for the inhabitants of a divided Europe.32 Some scholars have gone as far as reducing the Iron Curtain to a “‘nylon curtain’ that allowed for both the transnational and the transsystemic migration [of] ideas, images, tastes, and habits.”33 This might not always do justice to the sometimes very physical presence of the militarized border between the blocs and, as social anthropologist Anna Matyska aptly observes, even “trivialize certain legal and ideological aspects of Cold War realities.”34 Yet, it remains important to distinguish between the factual permeability of the frontier between communist and non-communist Europe and the topos of the Iron Curtain as a remnant of “Cold War thinking.” It is due to this ongoing paradigm change in the field that the intertwined complexity of cross-border contacts in Cold War Europe can be approached from a new angle. As the book addresses a largely unexplored aspect of European Cold War history, research on the topic required quite an amount of spadework. As far as the literature is concerned, there are only few publications on the topic of Polish and Estonian political émigré activity. The earliest phase of political activism in Sweden during World War II, by contrast, is relatively wellcovered. The comprehensive studies on the Estonian refugee community by the Swedish historians Wilhelm Carlgren and Carl-Göran Andræ put special emphasis on the cooperation between the resistance movement in Germanoccupied Estonia and Estonians in Stockholm.35 This topic is also explored in Mart Orav and Enn Nõu’s volume on the Estonian government in exile.36 Similar studies have been published on the war-time activities of Poles by Andrzej Uggla and Józef Lewandowski.37 Émigré political activism during the post-war period, however, still constitutes a research gap, in particular regarding the communication with oppositional circles in the homelands. Most of the existing publications have the documentary character of chronicles rather than an analytical quality, as they mostly were written by former political activists from the ranks of the Polish and Estonian diaspora communities in Sweden.38 An exception is the remarkable study written by the Estonian historian Indrek Jürjo. Jürjo’s book explores the archival collections of the Estonian Communist Party, the Soviet Estonian branch of the KGB, and VEKSA, the Society for the Development of Cultural Ties with Estonians Abroad, and is the so far only example of a Cold War history of contact and cooperation between Estonians in the East and West.39 None of the mentioned publications, however, draws on evidence from the rich and largely unexplored archival collections of the Polish and Estonian diaspora communities in Sweden. One of the main reasons for this neglect is the fact that they often have been simply hard to access. Many archives are up until now stored in the offices of diaspora organizations or in the cellars of the private homes of émigrés and their descendants. Only gradually are collections of this kind



Introduction xxi

being transferred to public archives, where they can be made available for continued research. For reasons of feasibility, it was inevitable to develop a pragmatic approach to the selection of sources. Hence, the study by no means claims to present an exhaustive analysis of the available documentation, especially due to the broad scope of the book which covers a half century of the Baltic Sea Region’s history. The bulk of primary sources derive from the archives of Estonian and Polish émigré organizations in Sweden, non-governmental organizations, and private collections. Some of these collections have only in recent years been transferred to public archives and still require basic cataloguing. A number of private and organizational archives have found their way from Stockholm and Lund to the Opposition Archive of the KARTA Center in Warsaw, which turned out to be a treasure trove for this particular project. In Estonia, the research focused mainly on the collections of the National Archives of Estonia and the Personal Archives of the Estonian National Library in Tallinn, which host the documents of political organizations and individual émigré activists from Sweden. As for the archival material from state archives, the work on the book has greatly profited from declassified sources stored in the National Archive of Sweden, especially Foreign Ministry documents. Also the archives of the Swedish security police have revealed valuable information, in particular on the war years and the period up to the mid-1950s, as have the archives of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Warsaw-based Institute of National Remembrance hosts the collections of the Polish Ministry of the Interior and the intelligence service which have contributed to shedding light on the activities of Polish émigrés in Sweden and the communist regime’s surveillance practices abroad. Moreover, a research trip to Hungary made it possible to integrate the findings discovered in the archives of Radio Free Europe and the large collection of newspaper articles of the Open Society Archives in Budapest. Even the Labor Movement’s Archive and Library in Stockholm, the Archive of the National Commission of Solidarity in Gdańsk, and the Estonian Cultural History Archives of the Estonian Literary Museum in Tartu hold documents from which the present study has profited. Several volumes of published primary sources from state archives in Tallinn, Warsaw, and Stockholm have revealed further interesting evidence that has considerably enriched the research results. Apart from archival documents, the study has also taken the international press on both sides of the Iron Curtain into account. Even works of political journalism published during the time period under investigation turned out to contain valuable information, and within the context of this study, they served a double function as primary and secondary sources.

xxii

Introduction

This book is predominantly based on written documentation, but oral history interviews have been an invaluable supplement to the accessible primary sources. As the study focuses on networking processes that required a high level of conspiracy, the preserved written sources are often fragmented and use a language and codes that are unfamiliar to an outsider. Therefore, the fifteen semi-structured interviews conducted with former Polish and Estonian émigré activists, dissidents, and opposition leaders have been an invaluable asset.40 They not only put the archival findings into perspective and pointed out crucial, so far undetected, contexts but also helped in getting to the “story underneath the story.”41 It goes without saying that the use of oral history interviews as primary sources is not uncontested, especially in view of the concerns about the validity of the information.42 However, by juxtaposing the stories with written documents and earlier interviews that some of the interviewees had given on similar topics, the conformity could mostly be confirmed. Anecdotes and details that could not be compared to written evidence have been included with the corresponding references to the informant. NOTES 1.  Madeleine Hurd, “Constructing and Challenging Nordic Borders,” in Bordering the Baltic. Scandinavian Boundary-Drawing Processes, 1900–2000, ed. Madeleine Hurd, vol. 10 of Nordische Geschichte, ed. Jens E. Olesen (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2010), 14. 2.  Eduards Bruno Deksnis and Tālavs Jundzis, The Parliamentary Route to the Restoration of Latvian Statehood, 1989–1993 (Riga: Latvian Academy of Sciences, Baltic Center for Strategic Studies, 2010), 108. 3.  Andres Küng, Saatusi ja saavutusi. Baltikum tänapäeval (Lund: Eesti Kirjanike Kooperatiiv, 1973), 18. 4.  Marina Thorborg, “Populations around the Baltic Sea,” in The Baltic Sea Region. Cultures, Politics, Societies, ed. Witold Maciejewski (Uppsala: The Baltic University Press, 2002), 498. After the end of the war, Finland extradited approximately 55,000 Soviet citizens, among them many Estonians, back to the Soviet Union. A climax was reached in 1947 when nearly 2,000 Estonians were deported with the active support of Valpo, the predecessor of the Finnish intelligence service which at the time was dominated by communist sympathizers. Indrek Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti. Vaateid KGB, EKP ja VEKSA arhiividokumentide põhjal (Tallinn: Umara, 1996), 17–18. 5.  Yossi Shain, The Frontier of Loyalty. Political Exiles in the Age of the NationState. 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), xix. 6.  Andrzej Nils Uggla, “Rola Alfa de Pomiana-Haydukiewicza w grze o wizerunek Polski w Szwecji po pierwszej wojnie światowej,” in Polska—Szwecja 1919–1999, ed. Jan Szymański (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2002), 85. 7.  Helmut Müssener, Exil in Schweden. Politische und kulturelle Emigration nach 1933 (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1974), 250–51.



Introduction xxiii

  8.  Much of what is mentioned about the political activity among the Estonian diaspora community in this book could be easily applied to the Latvian case. The Latvian community in Sweden was numerically much smaller and the Latvian SSR for most of the post-war era much less accessible than Soviet Estonia, but the political fervor among Latvian émigrés was nevertheless remarkable. However, a comprehensive synthesis of all forms of opposition to Soviet hegemonic claims around the Baltic rim would exceed the framework of the book.   9.  The scholarly interest in the transnational dimension of dissent and opposition in communist societies has, however, increased in recent years, see, for example, Friederike Kind-Kovács and Jessie Labov, eds., Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond. Transnational Media during and after Socialism, vol. 13 of Studies in Contemporary European History, ed. Konrad Jarausch and Henry Rousso (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013); Robert Brier, ed., Entangled Protest. Transnational Approaches to the History of Dissent in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, vol. 31 of Einzelveröffentlichungen des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Warschau, ed. Eduard Mühle (Osnabrück: fibre Verlag, 2013). 10.  Mark Kramer, “Book Distribution as Political Warfare,” introduction to Hot Books in the Cold War. The CIA-Funded Secret Western Book Distribution Program Behind the Iron Curtain, by Alfred Reisch (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2013), x. 11.  Olaf Mertelsmann and Kaarel Piirimäe, preface to The Baltic Sea Region and the Cold War, ed. Olaf Mertelsmann and Kaarel Piirimäe, vol. 3 of Tartu Historical Studies, ed. Eero Medijainen and Olaf Mertelsmann (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012), 7. 12.  Kevin McDermott and Matthew Stibbe, “Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: An Overview,” in Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe. Challenges to Communist Rule, ed. Kevin McDermott and Matthew Stibbe (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2006), 2. 13.  Barbara J. Falk, “Resistance and Dissent in Central and Eastern Europe,” East European Politics and Societies 25, no. 2 (2011): 321. 14.  Tony Judt, “The Dilemmas of Dissidence: The Politics of Opposition in EastCentral Europe,” East European Politics and Societies 2, no. 2 (1988): 186. 15.  Jonathan Bolton, Worlds of Dissent. Charter 77, The Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture under Communism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 3. 16.  In the Estonian and, more generally, the Soviet case, the rather small scale of organized, radical opposition fits the definition of Barbara J. Falk who situates dissent “at the tip of the pyramid of dissatisfaction with the party-state.” Falk, “Resistance and Dissent in Central and Eastern Europe,” 321. Dissidents in the Estonian SSR, however, usually referred to themselves as teisitimõtlejad (“those who think differently”), which is the literal translation of the term’s Russian equivalent inakomysliashchii. In contemporary Estonia, the term vabadusvõitlejad (“freedom fighters”) is very widely used, which reveals a lot about the perspective from which acts of anti-Soviet dissent are interpreted today, but also about the determination of Estonia’s former dissidents to distinguish themselves from the internationally more

xxiv

Introduction

well-known Soviet Russian regime critics. “We were mainly ‘Freedom Fighters’ not ‘dissidents,’” as one of the former Estonian activists stated during an interview with Meike Wulf, “because dissidents were those who didn’t want to change the basis of the state, especially ‘human rights fighters’ in Moscow and Leningrad. They didn’t want to decolonize [Estonia] . . . they didn’t even want to introduce a multi-party system.” Meike Wulf, Shadowlands. Memory and History in Post-Soviet Estonia (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2016), 123. 17.  The Committee for the Defense of Workers (Komitet Obrony Robotników), for instance, which was founded in 1976 and played a key role for the establishment of the Solidarity movement four years later, preferred to be seen as an unofficial political opposition and not as a dissident movement. Neal Ascherson, The Polish August: The Self-Limiting Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981), 140. 18.  Mario Diani, “Introduction: Social Movements, Contentious Actions, and Social Networks: ‘From Metaphor to Substance?’” in Social Movements and Networks. Relational Approaches to Collective Actions, ed. Mario Diani and Doug McAdam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 4. 19.  Manuel Castells, “Materials for an Exploratory Theory of the Network Society,” The British Journal of Sociology 51, no. 1 (2000): 15. 20.  Philipp Ther, “Comparisons, Cultural Transfers, and the Study of Networks. Toward a Transnational History of Europe,” in Comparative and Transnational History: Central European Approaches and New Perspectives, ed. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2009), 217. 21.  Ibid., 219. 22. Shain, The Frontier of Loyalty, 8. 23.  The term “exile” is the literal translation of the notion commonly used in the political writings and press of Polish and Estonian émigré organizations, especially during the early decades of the Cold War, i.e., uchodźstwo (Polish) and pagulus (Estonian). 24. Shain, The Frontier of Loyalty, 9. 25.  Khachig Tölöyan, “Beyond the Homeland: From Exilic Nationalism to Diasporic Transnationalism,” in The Call of the Homeland. Diaspora Nationalisms, Past and Present, ed. Allon Gal, Athena S. Leoussi, and Anthony D. Smith, vol. 9 of Conference Proceedings of the Institute of Jewish Studies at University College London, ed. Markham J. Geller, François Guesnet, and Ada Rapoport-Albert (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2010), 33. 26. Shain, The Frontier of Loyalty, 11. 27.  The Polish government in London went under the name of Rząd Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej na uchodźstwie, which translates as “Government of the Republic of Poland in Exile.” The same applies to the unofficial Estonian government in the West, the Vabariigi Valitsus Eksiilis (i.e., “Government of the Republic in Exile”). 28.  The terms Polonia and väliseestlus are not politically charged and are still used to describe the diaspora communities of Poles and Estonians living outside the homeland, which today includes both the descendants of the old diaspora and the masses of contemporary work migrants in Western Europe and overseas. 29.  Michael F. Hopkins, “Continuing Debate and New Approaches in Cold War History,” The Historical Journal 50, no. 4 (2007): 913.



Introduction xxv

30.  Sari Autio-Sarasmo and Katalin Miklóssy, “Introduction: The Cold War from a New Perspective,” in Reassessing Cold War Europe, ed. Sari Autio-Sarasmo and Katalin Miklóssy, vol. 14 of Routledge Studies in the History of Russia and Eastern Europe (London: Routledge, 2011), 2. 31.  Michael David-Fox, “Conclusion: Transnational History and the East-West Divide,” in Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, ed. György Péteri (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), 261. 32.  See, for example, Autio-Sarasmo and Miklóssy, eds., Reassessing Cold War Europe; Gertrude Enderle-Burcel et al., eds., Gaps in the Iron Curtain. Economic Relations between Neutral and Socialist Countries in Cold War Europe (Cracow: Jagiellonian Press, 2009); Kind-Kovács and Labov, eds., Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond; Simo Mikkonen and Pia Koivunen, eds., Beyond the Divide: Entangled Histories of Cold War Europe (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015); Rana Mitter and Patrick Major, eds., Across the Blocs. Cold War Cultural and Social History (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2004); Poul Villaume and Odd Arne Westad, eds., Perforating the Iron Curtain. European Détente, Transatlantic Relations, and the Cold War, 1965–1985 (Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010); Annette Vowinckel, Marcus M. Payk, and Thomas Lindenberger, eds., Cold War Cultures. Perspectives on Eastern and Western European Societies (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012). 33.  Cathleen M. Giustino, “Conclusion: Escapes and Other Border Crossings in Socialist Eastern Europe,” in Socialist Escapes. Breaking Away from Ideology and Everyday Routine in Eastern Europe, 1945–1989, ed. Cathleen M. Giustino, Catherine J. Plum, and Alexander Vari (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013), 257. The term “nylon curtain” was coined by György Péteri. See György Péteri, “Nylon Curtain—Transnational and Transsystemic Tendencies in the Cultural Life of State-Socialist Russia and East-Central Europe,” Slavica 10, no. 2 (2004). 34.  Anna Matyska, “Transnational Spaces between Poland and Finland: Grassroots Efforts to Dismantle the Iron Curtain and Their Political Entanglements,” in Beyond the Divide: Entangled Histories of Cold War Europe, ed. Simo Mikkonen and Pia Koivunen (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015), 273. 35.  Carl-Göran Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland 1943–1944, vol. 83 of Acta Academiae Regiae Gustavi Adolphi (Uppsala: Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien för svensk folkkultur, 2004); Wilhelm M. Carlgren, Sverige och Baltikum. Från mellankrigstid till efterkrigsår—en översikt (Stockholm: Publica, 1993). 36.  Mart Orav and Enn Nõu, eds., Tõotan ustavaks jääda . . . Eesti Vabariigi valitsus 1940–1992 (Tartu: Eesti Kirjanduse Selts, 2004). 37.  Józef Lewandowski, Węzeł sztokholmski. Szwedzkie koneksje polskiego podziemia IX 1939—VII 1942, vol. 4 of Acta Sueco-Polonica, ed. Andrzej Nils Uggla (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1999); Andrzej Nils Uggla, Polacy w Szwecji w latach II wojny światowej (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 1997). 38.  For the Estonian case, see, for example, ERN 1947–1997. 50 aastat poliitilist võitlust (Stockholm: Eesti Rahvusnõukogu, 1997); Raimo Raag and Harald Runblom, eds., Estländare i Sverige. Historia, språk, kultur, vol. 12 of Uppsala Multiethnic Papers (Uppsala: Centre for Multiethnic Research, Uppsala University, 1988). As

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Introduction

far as the Polish case study is concerned, this book has profited from several articles published in the volume Polacy w Szwecji po II wojnie światowej (Stockholm: Kongres Polaków w Szwecji, 1992). 39.  Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti. 40.  The number of conducted oral history interviews is comparatively small, reflecting the qualitative approach and the fact that the narratives offered by the interview partners were often highly congruent, giving very similar descriptions of the same story. Brief biographical sketches of the informants are included in the appendix of this book. 41. Linda Shopes, “Making Sense of Oral History,” History Matters. The U.S. Survey Course on the Web, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/oral/, February 2002, accessed on 1 September 2017. 42.  The general dilemma that historians dealing with oral sources are confronted with was also addressed by Józef Lebenbaum, whom the author interviewed in Warsaw, Poland, 8 December 2011: “I always trusted my memory . . . I thought that I always would remember what happened . . . Now I see huge gaps, not so much concerning events, but the surnames of people, there were hundreds of people turning up . . . I don’t even remember people who stayed overnight at my house . . . Now I regret that I didn’t make even short notes.”

Abbreviations

AIPN

AKK “S” AMSZ AO ARAB BBC CIA CSCE CSSO DP EDL EKM EKLA ERA ERAF ERF

Archiwum Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej—Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu [Archive of the Institute of National Remembrance— Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation] Archiwum Komisji Krajowej NSZZ “Solidarność” [The Archive of the National Commission of Solidarity] Archiwum Ministerstwa Spraw Zagranicznych [The Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs] Archiwum Opozycji Ośrodka KARTA [Opposition Archive of the KARTA Center] Arbetarrörelsens Arkiv och Bibliotek [The Labor Movement’s Archive and Library] British Broadcasting Cooperation Central Intelligence Agency Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe Conference of Solidarity Support Organizations Displaced Person Eesti Demokraatlik Liikumine [Estonian Democratic Movement] Eesti Kirjandusmuuseumi Eesti Kultuurilooline Arhiiv [The Estonian Cultural History Archives of the Estonian Literary Museum] Rahvusarhiiv [National Archives of Estonia] Rahvusarhiivi Filiaal [Branch of the National Archives of Estonia] Eesti Rahvusfond [Estonian National Fund] xxvii

xxviii

ERN ERR EVVA FPU HU OSA ICFTU IPA KGB KOR LO MP MRP-AEG NATO NED NKVD NLDL NOWA ÖESK PKP RA REE RFE RL ROPCiO RR SÄPO SIS SPK

Abbreviations

Eesti Rahvusnõukogu [Estonian National Council] Eesti Rahvusrinne [Estonian National Front] Eesti Vangistatud Vabadusvõitlejate Abistamiskeskus [Relief Center for Estonian Prisoners of Conscience] Folkpartiets ungdomsförbund [The Liberal Party’s Youth League] Open Society Archives International Confederation of Free Trade Unions Independent Polish Agency Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti [Committee for State Security] Komitet Obrony Robotników [Committee for the Defense of Workers] Landsorganisationen [National Organization of Trade Unions] Member of Parliament Molotov-Ribbentropi Pakti Avalikustamise Eesti Grupp [Estonian Group on the Publication of the Molotov-von Ribbentrop Pact] North Atlantic Treaty Organization National Endowment for Democracy Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del [The People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs] Nõukogude Liidu Demokraatlik Liikumine [The Democratic Movement of the Soviet Union] Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza [The Independent Publishing House] Östeuropeiska Solidaritetskommittén [The Eastern European Solidarity Committee] Polski Komitet Pomocy [Polish Relief Committee] Riksarkivet [National Archives of Sweden] Rootsi Eestlaste Esindus [Estonian National Congress in Sweden] Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty Ruch Obrony Praw Człowieka i Obywatela [Movement for the Defense of Human and Civil Rights] Rahvusraamatukogu isikuarhiivid [Personal Archives of the Estonian National Library] Säkerhetspolisen [Swedish Security Service] Secret Intelligence Service Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantów [Polish Ex-Combatants Association]



SSR TASS UN USSR VEKSA ZOMO

Abbreviations xxix

Soviet Socialist Republic Telegrafnoe Agentstvo Sovetskovo Soyuza [Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union] United Nations Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Väliseestlastega Kultuurisidemete Arendamise Ühing [Society for the Development of Cultural Ties with Estonians Abroad] Zmotoryzowane Odwody Milicji Obywatelskiej [Motorized Reserves of the Citizens’ Militia]

Chapter One

Entangled Histories in Northeastern Europe

At least since the Viking age, the Baltic Sea Region has been a setting of multilayered entangling processes between the Northern, Central, and Eastern European states and societies around the Baltic shores. People, goods, fashions, and ideas traveled across the Baltic waters, continuously re-establishing the “kinship between the eastern and western part of Europe,” as German historian Matthias Middell put it.1 The cities and ports in the region were intimately interlinked by long-lasting cultural, trade, and family relations. It is thus hardly surprising that the rise of regional great powers usually went hand in hand with hegemonic ambitions to unite the coastlines under a single banner. In the early seventeenth century, the Kingdom of Sweden’s claims to the status of a Northern European great power was underpinned by the ambitious dream of a “Swedish dominium maris Baltici.”2 Yet, despite all military victories, the Baltic was never to become a Swedish inland sea. Even the expansionist policy of tsarist Russia, which founded the new capital St. Petersburg on the ruins of the Swedish fortress Nyenskans in the Neva delta, eventually reached its limits. The Russian imperial ambitions of territorial expansion into the region could, however, still be traced in the martial rhetoric of the Bolsheviks. Following the victories of the 1917 revolution, the mouthpiece of the Kremlin, Izvestia, announced the “conquest of the Baltic Sea” as one of the tasks that lay ahead of the young communist state.3 Yet, the plan to turn the Baltic Sea into a “sea of the social revolution” failed,4 as did Nikita Khrushchev’s foreign policy strategy decades later, launched under the motto of the “Sea of Peace.” Underneath the pacifist fig-leaf, many Western observers discerned a determination to drive NATO forces out of the region and to expand the Soviet sphere of influence to Scandinavia. The most outstanding trait of the region’s history has been the divergence between the political, social, and economic orders around the Baltic rim, 1

2

Chapter One

particularly during the twentieth century. The Baltic Sea Region mirrored Europe’s dichotomy between democracy and dictatorship, market and planned economy, freedom of speech and suppression of oppositional voices. Under the conditions of the East-West conflict, it appeared primarily as a “heavily guarded no-man’s-land between the Cold War’s two main camps.”5 It was first during the euphoric 1990s, then, that the transitional changes in the postsocialist states and a variety of regional integration policies triggered a renaissance of the concept of the Baltic Sea Region as a cultural and spatial entity. Regularly recurring festivals and other symbolic political acts celebrated the rediscovery of a “forgotten space.”6 Not only politicians and journalists but also historians engaged in an ambitious identity-building project which, at its core, was a politically motivated effort to bridge the gap between the wealthy Nordic states and their impoverished post-socialist neighbors. Yet, the ambition of creating an overarching regional identity failed. The project of uniting the nations around the Baltic rim under the roof of an imagined shared history proved to be incompatible with the extraordinary cultural heterogeneity of the region and the differing ways in which its inhabitants envisioned their place and role in post–Cold War Europe.7 Thus, the concept of the Baltic Sea Region as a political project has already receded into what can be labeled the transformation history of both the post-socialist and the Nordic states, which have been confronted with the challenge of adapting to radically changing geopolitical conditions. The Baltic Sea Region in Historiography After the end of World War II, both the factual and, to a no lesser extent, perceived bipolarity of post-Yalta Europe left little space for the imagination of the Baltic Sea Region as a historical entity. The moderately successful policies of intergovernmental cooperation in the region launched during the interbellum were a distant memory, and the military fortification of the southern and eastern coasts consolidated the incorporation of pre-war Germany’s northeastern provinces, Poland, and the Baltic republics into the land-bound Soviet bloc. As late as in the 1980s, any discourse about a historical region around the Baltic rim was considered to reflect either nostalgia or a decidedly anti-Soviet attitude.8 Yet it was during the Cold War that historical thinking in spatial terms and the concept of the Baltic Sea Region were rediscovered and put back on the historiographical agenda. Already in 1977, German historian Klaus Zernack introduced the term Nordosteuropa (Northeastern Europe) as an analytical framework for the investigation of shared histories around the Baltic rim.9 The evident anachronism of discourses about the region as a spatial and, to a certain degree,



Entangled Histories in Northeastern Europe

3

cultural entity did not necessarily contradict the geopolitical realities of the time. Nordosteuropa was an artificial, strictly historiographical concept that was supposed to offer a guideline for historical research on the centuries between the Viking raids and the collapse of Sweden’s Baltic empire in 1809/15. Zernack later extended his vision of Nordosteuropa into the twentieth century arguing that the interwar period marked a temporary resurgence of vibrant interaction between the states and societies around the Baltic shores.10 It was in this way, Zernack argued, that Russian and, later, Soviet predominance eventually led to the disintegration of the region as a whole.11 However, it was only after the fall of Communism, which was, as was claimed, not only a political but also a “spatial revolution,”12 that interest in the Baltic Sea Region reawakened among historians. The quickly developing entangling processes between the Baltic shores pointed to—and asked for—historical analogies. In this spirit, Klaus Zernack declared the “comeback of the European region of Nordosteuropa into political reality” at the beginning of the 1990s.13 It was under the impact of the “spatial turn,” which reintroduced reflections on the significance of space and spatial categories in the humanities and social sciences, that Fernand Braudel’s epoch-making opus on the Mediterranean Sea, La Méditerranée, was rediscovered.14 Braudel’s structuralist approach defined the sea and the continuous interplay between the populations and civilizations along its coastline as a living entity and historical constant which shaped events and long-term developments in the entire region, despite temporary periods of disintegration. The interpretation of the sea as an integrative factor for the states and societies around its shores considerably affected the historiographical approach to the Baltic Sea Region’s past. First syntheses of the region’s history in a millennial perspective soon followed. Among the most prominent examples are the books of Matti Klinge and David Kirby, which both carry a title clearly inspired by Braudel and have become standard references in the field.15 Kirby and Klinge’s take on the Braudelian bracket of the longue durée creates a broader narrative that allows for the integration of temporary phases of less intense cross-Baltic interaction such as the Cold War era, which in a similar spirit has been labeled an “exception in a millennial process of integration.”16 Other scholars, by contrast, interpret the post-war division of the region as a reverberation of a much older pattern. Michael North, who categorically rejects the concept of a regional histoire totale, argues that the diverging historical trajectories in Scandinavia and continental Europe reveal a North-South divide that reaches back to medieval times.17 Similar concerns about the inherent constructivism of all attempts to write an overarching synthesis of the Baltic Sea Region’s history were raised by Bo Stråth, who urged the scholarly community to avoid producing “false

4

Chapter One

and retouched images of continuity.”18 If there was any historical continuity at all, he stated, it was the heritage of disintegration and incessant conflicts around the Baltic rim.19 In their book Nordens medelhav (“The Mediterranean of the North”), which, again, is a most obvious tribute to La Méditerranée, Kristian Gerner and Klas-Göran Karlsson successfully surmount the obstacles of the structuralist approach.20 In the spirit of Braudel, these Swedish historians offer a panoramic view over long-term patterns of interaction between the societies and nations around the Baltic rim. Gerner and Karlsson favor an actor-centered approach, mapping constantly changing networks of communication and cooperation over the course of the centuries. The authors convincingly show how shifting forms of interaction between the Baltic shores could endure even periods of rivalry and conflict, continuously re-establishing and redefining the regional context. The historical debate on the Baltic Sea Region thus moved from visions of a geographically defined “total and exclusive unit” toward a perspective that highlights the Baltic Sea as a “meeting place,” which facilitated the evolution of both durable and short-lived networks between families, cities, and societies.21 This shift in the perception of the Baltic Sea Region’s history clearly drew inspiration from the social science approach to regions as “areas of communication,” spaces constituted less by geography than by specific patterns of interaction.22 Entangled and Disentangled Histories of the Interwar Period A recurring pattern in the abovementioned syntheses of the Baltic Sea Region’s history is the juxtaposition of the alleged intensity of cross-Baltic cooperation during the interbellum with the perceived absence of interaction between the Baltic shores during the Cold War. The sweeping changes that followed the cataclysm of World War II of course radically altered the nature, mechanisms, and, especially, motives of communication across the Baltic Sea. Yet, it is rather questionable whether the interwar period in hindsight can be interpreted as an era that saw a last resonance of traditionally vibrant transfers and exchanges between the societies around the Baltic rim.23 In fact, political and cultural alienation between the Nordic societies and the young nation states on the southern and eastern shores steadily grew during the two decades between the break-up of the multinational, continental empires and the simultaneous attacks of Nazi Germany and the USSR on their weaker neighbors. In the years that immediately followed the collapse of imperial Russia and the unsuccessful attempts of the Bolsheviks to regain Poland and the Baltic



Entangled Histories in Northeastern Europe 5

territories by force, the idea of forging military and political alliances among the states around the Baltic shores was indeed widely debated. The Baltic states, especially, attempted to consolidate their fragile existence as sovereign republics by (re)discovering historical connections with their Nordic neighbors, seeking to compensate their precarious vicinity to the expansionist Soviet Union with the intensification of Scandinavian-Baltic cooperation. The project of a Baltoscandian Confederation, a Nordic Union between the three Baltic states and Scandinavia, including Finland, based on the vision of the Baltic Sea as the unifying link, was widely discussed during the late 1920s and early 1930s.24 The Nordic states, however, remained averse to any closer cooperation with the young, politically and economically unstable republics on the opposite coasts.25 Helsinki’s interest in joining a political federation with the Baltic states significantly decreased in the wake of the stabilization of the domestic political situation in Finland.26 The Swedish government’s determination to stick to its neutrality policy, on the other hand, a priori excluded any firm political commitments with regards to the Baltic neighbors.27 Stockholm was well aware of the fact that it was Finland that played the key role as the strategically most important bulwark against the Soviet Union. Any further involvement in the potentially unstable eastern parts of the Baltic Sea Region was deemed incompatible with national security interests. The pronounced indifference toward political cooperation with the Baltic states was reflected not only at governmental level. A similar attitude could be observed among the leadership of Sweden’s political parties, which neglected the opportunities of fostering closer bonds with sister parties in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.28 Thus, a special treatment of the Baltic states on the basis of shared historical memories, which the Estonians, in particular, repeatedly referred to in the interwar period, cannot be traced, at least at a political level.29 After all, the ties between Sweden and her former imperial possessions along the Baltic Sea’s eastern shores had been irreversibly cut after 1721, when the Baltic territories became part of the Russian Empire. Any appeal to supposedly common traditions and shared histories was more wishful thinking than a realistic option for the establishment of closer Swedish-Baltic cooperation during the interbellum.30 The scholarly networks that developed across the Baltic Sea during the interwar years constituted a certain exception. First and foremost the old university of Tartu—formerly Dorpat—turned into a meeting place for academics from Sweden, Finland, and the Baltic states, which triggered the emergence of durable personal networks. In general, however, cultural cooperation was too loose to succeed in establishing more permanent patterns of interaction.31 In this respect, Finland certainly played a more important role, especially for the Estonians, with whom the Finns shared a larger number of

6

Chapter One

cultural traits and traditions. Nevertheless, the infrastructural system across the Baltic Sea was considerably expanded during the interwar decades, not least due to the upcoming mass tourism that developed along the Baltic shores. Private sailing ships from the respective opposite coasts were a common sight in the ports around the Baltic rim during the summer months. At the same time, the smuggling of alcohol, especially from Estonia to the Swedish and Finnish archipelagos, certainly generated networks of their own kind.32 On the whole, however, contact and exchange at a non-governmental level was rather sporadic. This applied to an even larger degree to the contact between the Nordic states and Poland. The country’s political and cultural centers were located far from the Baltic shores, and the controversial Polish Corridor provided only limited access to the sea. Although the government of the restored Republic of Poland solemnly celebrated the country’s “Wedding to the Sea” and invested considerable sums in the construction of interwar Poland’s only commercial port in Gdynia,33 Warsaw never engaged in the Baltic Sea Region to any great extent. Initial plans for establishing a Baltic League including Finland and the Baltic states failed, mainly due to the Polish claims of regional leadership and the ongoing conflict with Lithuania over Vilnius, which put an early end to the vision of a political alliance between the young nation states. Poland’s relations with Scandinavia, on the other hand, were restricted mainly to trade and the export of coal. A certain degree of cultural exchange between Sweden and Poland is mentioned in the literature,34 but contacts in the cultural sphere remained restricted to rather marginal groups of actors with an articulated interest in fostering Swedish-Polish relations.35 Thus, Poland did not become an integral part of the Baltic Sea Region during the interwar period, neither with regard to any noticeable Polish presence in the region, nor in the self-perception of Polish society.36 The efforts to foster regional integration were half-hearted from the very beginning and rooted largely in the geopolitical void caused by the collapse of imperial Germany and tsarist Russia in the wake of World War I. The confrontation with two increasingly powerful dictatorships on each flank of the Baltic Sea Region, however, dramatically changed the situation and reinforced the disintegrative tendencies in the region. With the appearance of authoritarian manifestations on the part of the charismatic political leaders of the Baltic states, Antanas Smetona in Lithuania, Kārlis Ulmanis in Latvia, and Konstantin Päts in Estonia, the gap between the Nordic countries and the young nation states on the opposite coast widened considerably. Lithuania had already wandered off the originally intended democratic course with the coup d’état of 1926, while the utterly weak and short-lived coalition governments in Estonia and Latvia clearly marked the shortcomings of parliamen-



Entangled Histories in Northeastern Europe 7

tary democracy in the Baltic republics. By the mid-1930s, all three countries were ruled by strong presidents with a shifting degree of authoritarianism, which led Swedish diplomats to refer generally to the Baltic states as “dictatorships.”37 Thus, Denmark, Sweden, and, despite the recurrent political crises that to a large degree resembled the situation in the Baltic states, even Finland remained the only states around the Baltic rim that succeeded in defending and maintaining democratic standards. The development in the Baltic states mirrored a general pattern of political crises that emerged in Central and Eastern Europe in reaction to the consolidation of Hitler’s and Stalin’s regimes, which flanked what was then consequently labeled as Zwischeneuropa. These unfavorable geopolitical circumstances additionally weakened the Baltic states’ already quite poorly developed cooperation with Sweden, and, to a certain extent, also with Finland.38 The Swedish press of the time used an increasingly negative tone in reports about the political development on the opposite coast. One of the reasons was the Estonian government’s more and more restrictive minority policy. Tallinn’s determination to assimilate the Swedish-speaking population in western Estonia and on the islands by force, if necessary,39 had had a considerable impact on Swedish public opinion and especially the attitudes of the ruling social democratic elites regarding the Baltic states.40 Similar concerns affected Swedish attitudes toward Poland. The country had, at an early stage of its independence, been sharply criticized even by prominent Swedish supporters of Polish sovereignty because of Warsaw’s adamant policy toward its national minorities.41 In view of Poland’s increasingly precarious position between Germany and the Soviet Union in the harsh political climate of the mid-1930s, large sections of Swedish society tended to agree with the widespread opinion in Nazi Germany that stigmatized Poland as a “seasonal state.”42 In the summer of 1936, the Scandinavian states, including Finland, jointly announced political neutrality. This move clearly reaffirmed the obvious reluctance of the Nordic governments to engage in the political turmoil on the continent. The Baltic states, which followed the Nordic example and declared neutrality two years later, maintained a certain level of cooperation amongst themselves within the framework of the Baltic Entente. Meanwhile, Warsaw turned its back on its neighbors around the Baltic rim, focusing on the political vision of neutrality within a continental union, developing the concept of a “Third Europe.”43 Thus, already before the outbreak of the war in September 1939, the failure of regional political integration with the Baltic Sea as a common reference and unifying factor was assured. Against this background, the discrepancy between the Swedish government’s unambiguous support for Finland during both the Winter War and the Continuation War on the one hand, and the de facto recognition of the annexation of the Baltic states

8

Chapter One

in 1940 on the other, appears to be quite consistent.44 World War II merely reinforced the political fault lines that had emerged during the 1930s. The demarcation process had been accelerated by the intensification of Nordic cooperation and Finland’s subsequent political and mental detachment from the group of young nation states along the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic Sea. The unfolding events in Poland and the Baltic states, however, took a clearly “continental” shape. War Refugees and Political Émigrés in Cold War Sweden— A Transnational Approach Migration movements across the Baltic Sea have throughout history intensified communication and exchange between the states and societies along the Baltic shores. The multi-ethnic composition of the population in the main trade centers and seaports around the Baltic rim traditionally mirrored the mobility of the region’s inhabitants, be it in medieval Stockholm, tsarist St. Petersburg, or early twentieth-century Riga. The maritime infrastructure facilitated regular communication between the cosmopolitan metropolises along the coastlines, maintaining the “triangular social structure” of the country of origin, the country of residence, and the migrants themselves.45 Migratory movements and the exchange they triggered between the shores was a historical constant in the region, which persisted beyond the ruptures of political history. The mass influx of political and war refugees to Sweden during World War II and the post-war decades had a similar effect on the topography of cross-Baltic contact, despite the considerably reduced scope of East-West communication. Already with the outbreak of the war, the existing infrastructure between Sweden and her opposite coasts was almost entirely cut. However, Sweden’s status as a non-belligerent country did not leave the Swedes unaffected by the ongoing hostilities in their immediate neighborhood. The incoming masses of refugees and evacuees from Norway, Denmark, and Finland arrived with firsthand reports on the German and Soviet invasions into their home countries. The atrocities of the occupation regimes on the opposite coasts were inevitably closer felt as the number of Polish and Baltic refugees on Swedish soil rose. In addition, the influx of fleeing civilians not only dragged Swedish society closer to the unfolding events in the occupied and war-torn neighbor countries but also put Sweden on the map of the chaotic mass escape from German and Soviet terror that affected the entire continent. Sweden turned into a Switzerland of the North as an island in the middle of a raging war that promised peace and shelter. For occupied Poland, Sweden constituted the only free harbor in the country’s immediate neighborhood. It is therefore not



Entangled Histories in Northeastern Europe 9

surprising that many Poles tried to escape the war via the Baltic waterways.46 At the same time, it was not meat or butter that counted among the most highly valued goods on the black market of German-occupied Estonia, but Swedish crowns and oil for boat engines.47 First small refugee communities developed on Swedish soil immediately after the Nazi attack on Poland and the following Soviet forays westwards. They laid the foundations for a temporary, as it was then still perceived, but well-organized life in displacement. Although the scope of self-organization among war refugees was officially restricted to humanitarian and cultural activities,48 a discrete level of political activism nevertheless existed. The overwhelming majority of refugees, however, reached Sweden at a later stage of the war. Estonians, and, to a significantly lesser degree, Latvians and Lithuanians, arrived in their thousands on Sweden’s eastern shores after their successful escape from the advancing Red Army. A smaller number of refugees came from embattled Polish territories, but also from the empocketed Latvian province of Courland, from where German deserters and Balts who had been forcibly conscripted into the Wehrmacht escaped by sea in spring 1945. Moreover, several hundred Polish escapees from German prison camps reached Sweden across the land frontier from Norway after the occupying forces had started their retreat.49 In December 1944, the Swedish press estimated that around 182,000 refugees dwelled in the country.50 Evacuated Finns and Norwegian refugees constituted the two largest refugee communities, while the Balts came third, numbering over 32,000. As much as 88 percent were Estonian citizens,51 which laid the basis for Stockholm’s future status as the “capital of exile Estonia.”52 Almost all of them had reached Sweden from Estonia or Finland across the autumnal Baltic waters, often in small fishing boats, and their escape is until today remembered as a particularly dramatic episode of both Swedish and Estonian history. The number of Poles, on the other hand, was still low in 1944 and did not exceed 1,000.53 Only in spring 1945 did their percentage rise due to the rescue program of the “White Busses,” a joint project of the Danish government and the Swedish Red Cross under the leadership of the Swedish count Folke Bernadotte. Initially, the busses were intended to evacuate Scandinavian concentration camp prisoners from Germany. Soon, however, the initiative was extended to foreigners, which, by critical voices, has been regarded as an attempt to whitewash Sweden’s reputation in view of earlier concessions to Nazi Germany.54 In April and May 1945, almost 7,000 Polish and Polish-Jewish concentration camp survivors, mostly women, reached Swedish ports. They were joined by an additional number of 9,000 Poles coming with the transports coordinated by the Red Cross and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.55

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Having been a typical country of emigration like many of her neighbor states in Northern and Eastern Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Sweden went through a process of unprecedented internationalization with the mass influx of refugees. Stockholm had never been at the crossroads of the central currents of migration, trade, and cultural exchange in the Baltic Sea Region, in the same way as imperial St. Petersburg, Danzig, or Riga. Yet, by the end of World War II, the city had become host to a vast community of refugees from virtually every corner of the lands around the Baltic rim.56 The inhabitants of Stockholm encountered not only Germans, Norwegians, Danes, and Finns, but also Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Russians, Poles, and Ingrians on the boulevards and streets of the capital. While the days of the old cosmopolitan centers on the southern and eastern shores were numbered in an age of ethnic cleansing, deportations, and forced homogenization, Stockholm turned into a truly “Baltic metropolis.”57 Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, there might never have been closer interaction between Swedes and their neighbors from across the sea than there was toward the end of the war, when thousands of refugees were received on the southeastern Swedish shores and the busloads of concentration camp survivors arrived at the docks of Malmö. In the fall of 1944, as German hegemony over the Baltic states crumbled at the sight of the approaching Red Army and the native population started to escape across the sea in huge numbers, the Swedish Navy regularly cruised the coastal areas in order to rescue Baltic refugees from the stormy waters and to provide them with fuel and food.58 The first encounters ashore were cordial between Swedish locals and the Balts that had survived the crossing of the Baltic Sea despite bad weather conditions and hostile military forces. The coastal population displayed an unconditional willingness to give immediate humanitarian assistance.59 The warmth and compassion of the Swedish helpers is well documented and shines through even in the few media reports on the topic that were published in spite of the self-censorship of the Swedish press during the war years. Newspaper articles of the time stress the stunning contrast between the wretched fishing boats and the determination and “proud bearing” of the Estonians arriving on the Swedish shores revealing the profound sympathy with which the Baltic refugees were greeted by large sections of Swedish society.60 For the Swedes, the arrival of the freed concentration camp prisoners, many of them Polish citizens who were generally in a considerably worse physical condition than the evacuated Norwegians and Danes, marked a similar confrontation with eyewitnesses to the atrocities taking place outside peaceful Sweden. The reactions of the medical personnel, members of the Swedish Women’s Volunteer Defense Service, and journalists who were the first to receive the survivors in the southern Swedish ports, were documented and disseminated with the help of the print media. They



Entangled Histories in Northeastern Europe 11

gave evidence of the deep impression that these Swedish-Polish encounters would leave in the collective memory of the parties involved, both Swedes and Poles.61 The war-time interlude of unexpectedly close encounters between Swedes and their neighbors from the opposite coasts, a consequence of the enormous flow of escaping civilians instigated by the World War’s centrifugal forces, did not remain a footnote to history. With the formation of permanent diaspora communities in Sweden, the formerly culturally and nationally homogenous Swedish society went through decisive and lasting change. In particular, the Estonians and Poles, representing the largest groups of political refugees on Swedish soil, had a significant impact on Sweden’s post-war history. Their active engagement in current events and the political development in their homelands did not only prevent the mental detachment of Swedish society from the communist-ruled opposite coasts. It also turned Sweden into the geographically closest outpost of opposition against the communist order and a significant bridge to the West for their co-nationals at home. The diaspora communities remained a key factor of contacts across the Baltic Sea throughout the Cold War era, spinning a web of intertwined histories of both conflict and cooperation. The Polish and Baltic communities in Sweden have a firm place in the history of Swedish post-war diplomacy. Already the very existence of diaspora groups that defined themselves as “political exiles” was a constant source of dispute which considerably affected Sweden’s official relations with both Poland and the Soviet Union. Especially, the frequent, public political manifestations on neutral ground directed against the communist order in their homelands remained a delicate issue, and repeatedly led to diplomatic tensions. The press of the time mirrors the conflicting understandings of asylum law, the freedom of opinion and expression, and of the limits to neutrality on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The main Soviet and Polish organs of regime propaganda delighted in depicting Sweden as a safe haven for reactionary figures and traitors from their own ranks. These propagandistic attacks against the Swedish government were usually coordinated along with the Moscowsponsored communist press in Sweden, which literally echoed the accusations. But the negative publicity had another dimension: it consolidated Sweden’s reputation among oppositional circles behind the Iron Curtain as a country that, despite its neutrality, generally supported the cause of regime critics and promoted a very liberal asylum policy for political refugees from the communist orbit. However, the history of the relations between the diaspora communities and their native homeland regimes was not exclusively antagonistic. The protagonists of émigré political activity in Cold War Sweden remained, of course, frequent targets of propagandistic campaigns. To a certain degree,

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the ambition to slander political émigré leaders and to undermine their credibility in the West can be seen as an extension of the constant efforts to stifle opposition on the domestic scene. On a semi-official level, however, both the Polish and the Soviet leadership revealed a vital interest in bridging the divide between the diaspora and their country of origin. Indeed, soon after the repatriation programs had ended, the communist governments launched a policy of rapprochement, using the Polish and Soviet embassies in Sweden as their most important outposts. Instead of threats, the refugees received propaganda material about the progress of Communism, both via private mail and radio. These new tactics were intensified in the wake of the Thaw in the late 1950s. Pronouncedly apolitical, a mainly cultural exchange was used to weaken the authority of the self-proclaimed political leadership of the diaspora communities. In the spirit of East-West détente, initial contacts in the fields of culture and education developed into various forms of long-term cooperation, coordinated and channeled by allegedly non-political state organizations in Warsaw, Tallinn, and Moscow.62 The list of examples of how diaspora communities from behind the Iron Curtain affected and shaped the history of non-governmental East-West contacts in the Baltic Sea Region and beyond could be substantially extended. While many of the various shades of diaspora-homeland interaction will be introduced in the following chapters, this book will nevertheless focus mainly on the variety of successful and failed networking attempts between regime critics across the Cold War frontier. One the one hand, this is because of the fact that this aspect of East-West interaction counts among the least explored facets of Europe’s Cold War past. On the other hand, this research topic also offers the opportunity to illustrate the role of small activist circles in the development of contacts between societies on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The corresponding counterpart, the clandestine networks of communist spies, infiltrators, and provocateurs, which had their origin in the Soviet bloc and in turn penetrated the diaspora communities on behalf of communist authorities throughout the Cold War era, would be equally interesting to investigate. However, it is up to another book to tell their story, though several incidents of communist infiltration feature in the present study as well. The Periodization of the East-West Conflict— A Matter of Perspective The focus on transnational resistance and opposition against the Soviet westward expansion dictates the timeframe of the book. Consequently, the periodization differs in some respects from the standard chronology of



Entangled Histories in Northeastern Europe

13

Cold War historiography, which predominantly centers on the history of international relations. Nevertheless, even the diplomatic history approach struggles with the chronological framing of the East-West conflict, not least regarding the question over when the superpowers’ rivalry, which to a large degree determined European and global history, actually started. Due to its symbolical value, the year 1945 figures prominently as a crucial point of transition from World to Cold War, denoting the stalemate that froze Europe in its liberated—or occupied—state at the cessation of hostilities. The EastWest conflict as such, however, evolved gradually out of a “growing sense of insecurity at the highest levels” of international diplomacy.63 The traditional master narrative of Cold War history thus identifies the year of 1947 as a political watershed marking the transformation of a latent crisis into a diplomatic and propagandistic war. There are several landmarks that historians usually point to, among them the failure of the Moscow Conference in the spring of 1947,64 the consolidation of the East-West divide during the preparations for the Marshall Plan,65 and the point where the Western Allies realized that the Kremlin would not allow for free elections in its sphere of influence.66 Other scholars propose to locate the onset of the Cold War era at the point when the term “Cold War” itself became commonly used in political speeches and media reports in the West.67 In the end, however, it should be remembered that all periodization efforts are subject to shifting historical interpretations.68 Approaching the East-West conflict from a different angle can thus reveal “processes that run counter to our perceptions” of supposedly established chronologies.69 Cold War historiography was long dominated by U.S. scholars, which has affected the periodization of the East-West conflict and its classification as a post-war phenomenon.70 However, the Western perspective does not do justice to the experiences of significant parts of Europe’s population with Soviet aggression during World War II. Seen from the viewpoint of most nations around the Baltic rim, the dichotomy between Soviet and Western visions of Europe’s post-war future was looming long before the defeat of Hitler’s Germany.71 The expansionist and belligerent nature of Soviet-type Communism, which the Western Allies were confronted with after the Red Army had staked out Stalin’s future sphere of influence, became visible at an early stage. Poland, Finland, and the Baltic states were among the first non-Soviet territories to fall prey to Stalin’s geopolitical ambitions, settled in the secret protocol of the Molotov-von Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939. The invasion of Poland’s eastern territories in September 1939, the installation of Soviet army bases in the Baltic states shortly thereafter, and the attack on Finland in November left little doubt that Soviet expansionism was a substantial regional threat. These early experiences with Moscow’s

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determination to widen its access to the Baltic waters marked a crucial shift in the geopolitical balance around the Baltic rim. They shaped the general attitude toward the Soviet Union and Soviet-type Communism among Poles and Balts and determined the post-war policies of the governments in Stockholm and Helsinki regarding the USSR. The Soviet annexation of the Baltic states in 1940 indeed triggered protests in the West, turning the Baltic question into a diplomatic bone of contention, which has been interpreted as a “prelude to the Cold War.”72 However, the forced war-time alliance with Stalin in the wake of Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 neutralized the diplomatic dissonances, at least temporarily. The eagerly awaited cease-fire and the victory over Hitler’s Third Reich in May 1945 was doubtlessly a key turning point for the majority of Europeans who had survived the most destructive war in history. Nevertheless, the situation looked quite different from the viewpoint of the societies that had been under Soviet occupation already since 1944 or early 1945.73 For the Balts, the loss of state sovereignty remained an unaltered fact. The German occupation from 1941 to 1944 was thus seen as nothing but an interlude under similar terms. Large sections of Polish society, on the other hand, shared the views of the London-based government in exile, which early on had developed a deep mistrust of the Soviet Union and the ambitions of the Polish communists.74 Therefore, the diplomatic recognition of the Moscow-sponsored Warsaw government in July 1945 was not perceived as an act of liberation, but as an internationally sanctioned continuity of foreign hegemony and political terror in the homeland. Even for the Polish and Baltic war refugees in Sweden and elsewhere in the West, the watershed of 1945 did not have the significance that its symbolism implies.75 Many of those who had fled the Baltic states and Poland’s eastern territories had been eyewitnesses to the export of Soviet terror to the newly acquired lands west of the USSR’s pre-war border. These experiences turned out to be formative in the development of an oppositional political agenda among Poles and Balts alike. Anti-Soviet attitudes developed not only in the subversive cells of underground resistance in the occupied territories, but also among the members of the pre-war political elites who had managed to escape westwards during the turmoil of the ongoing war. This aversion to the Soviet Union was deeply rooted, especially among Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians, whose homelands had been occupied and forcibly annexed in August 1940. Polish émigré politics reflected a similar tendency, in spite of the fact that Nazi Germany, for the most part of the war, constituted the much more imminent threat to Poland. As the temporariness of displacement turned out to be an illusion after the end of the war, the strong anti-Soviet stance of the war years formed the



Entangled Histories in Northeastern Europe 15

ideological bedrock on which post-war émigré politics was built. The firsthand experiences of Soviet rule and occupation were, in other words, not a prelude, but an integral element of a longer process that shaped the course of political opposition to the native homeland regimes. Thus, the formation of anti-Soviet communities of war refugees abroad anticipated certain elements of the East-West conflict, which, after the war, was elevated to the level of global politics. The escalation of the East-West tensions into an ideological schism that literally divided Europe for a half century had, of course, an impact on the strategies of émigré politics. The anti-Soviet agenda itself, however, had by then long been consolidated. In view of the genesis of Soviet expansionism into the Baltic Sea Region and the roots of transnational resistance and opposition to the hegemonic ambitions of the USSR, this book draws a line from the beginning of World War II to the fall of Communism. Due to the focus on cross-Baltic networks of opposition from a longue durée perspective, the book goes beyond the marker of 1989, which is often seen as the decisive watershed that officially ended the Cold War. The history of transnational opposition to the geopolitical status quo around the Baltic rim ends first with the restoration of Baltic independence in August 1991; yet, seen from a Baltic point of view, the era of Soviet occupation did not end before the withdrawal of the last remaining Red Army units from the territory of the sovereign Republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in August 1994.76

NOTES 1.  Matthias Middell, “Kulturtransfer und historische Komparatistik—Thesen zu ihrem Verhältnis,” Comparativ 10, no. 1 (2000): 27. 2. Göran Behre, Lars-Olof Larsson, and Eva Österberg, Sveriges historia 1521–1809: Stormaktsdröm och småstatsrealiteter (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1985), 99. 3.  Article published in Izvestia, 25 December 1925, quoted in August Rei, The Drama of the Baltic Peoples (Stockholm: Kirjastus Vaba Eesti, 1970), 52. 4. Andres Küng, Estland—en studie i imperialism, vol. 75 of Aldus Aktuellt (Stockholm: Bokförlaget Aldus/Bonniers, 1971), 31. 5.  Kristian Gerner and Klas-Göran Karlsson, Nordens medelhav. Östersjöområdet som historia, myt och projekt (Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 2002), 21. 6.  Jürgen von Alten, Weltgeschichte der Ostsee (Berlin: Siedler, 1996), 7. 7.  Marta Grzechnik, “Making Use of the Past: The Role of Historians in the Baltic Sea Region Building,” Journal of Baltic Studies 43, no. 3 (2012): 341. 8.  Jörg Hackmann, “Nordosteuropa: Die baltischen Nationen und die Renaissance der Ostseeregion,” in Die Ordnung des Raums. Mentale Landkarten in der Ostseeregion, ed. Norbert Götz, Jörg Hackmann, and Jan Hecker-Stampehl, vol. 6 of Die

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Ostseeregion: Nördliche Dimensionen—Europäische Perspektiven, ed. Bernd Henningsen (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2006), 191.  9. Klaus Zernack, Osteuropa: Eine Einführung in seine Geschichte (München: Beck, 1977). The term described one of the four Eastern European subregions that Zernack identified on the basis of historical patterns of mutual influences and exchange. 10.  Klaus Zernack, Nordosteuropa. Skizzen und Beiträge zu einer Geschichte der Ostseeländer (Lüneburg: Verlag Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 1993), 7. 11.  Stefan Troebst, Kulturstudien Ostmitteleuropas. Aufsätze und Essays (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006), 260. 12.  von Alten, Weltgeschichte der Ostsee, 94. 13.  Quoted in Troebst, Kulturstudien Ostmitteleuropas, 255. 14.  Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II (Paris: Armand Colin, 1949); Hackmann, “Nordosteuropa,” 193. 15.  David Kirby, Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period. The Baltic World 1492–1772 (London: Longman, 1990); David Kirby, The Baltic World 1772–1993. Europe’s Northern Periphery in an Age of Change (London: Longman, 1995); Matti Klinge, The Baltic World (Helsinki: Otava, 1994). 16.  Carl-Axel Fredriksson, “Corona Baltica—der Traum von einer neuen Blütezeit,” in Deutschland, Schweden und die Ostsee-Region, ed. Bernd Henningsen and Bo Stråth, vol. 10 of Nordeuropäische Studien, ed. Bernd Henningsen (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1996), 101. 17.  Michael North, Geschichte der Ostsee. Handel und Kulturen (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2011). 18.  Bo Stråth, “Neue Verhältnisse im Norden,” in Deutschland, Schweden und die Ostsee-Region, ed. Bernd Henningsen and Bo Stråth, vol. 10 of Nordeuropäische Studien, ed. Bernd Henningsen (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1996), 22. 19.  Bo Stråth, “The Baltic as Image and Illusion: The Construction of a Region between Europe and the Nation,” in Myth and Memory in the Construction of Community. Historical Patterns in Europe and Beyond, ed. Bo Stråth, vol. 9 of Multiple Europes, ed. Bo Stråth (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2000), 211. 20.  Gerner and Karlsson, Nordens medelhav. 21.  Marko Lehti, “Call for a Northern Agenda: Mastering Regions—Training Masters,” in Go North! Baltic Sea Region Studies: Past—Present—Future, ed. Carsten Schymik, Valeska Henze, and Jochen Hille, vol. 5 of Die Ostseeregion: Nördliche Dimensionen—Europäische Perspektiven, ed. Bernd Henningsen (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2006), 65. 22.  Lars Rydén, “The Baltic Sea Region and the Relevance of Regional Approaches,” in The Baltic Sea Region. Cultures, Politics, Societies, ed. Witold Maciejewski (Uppsala: The Baltic University Press, 2002), 27. 23.  Zernack, Nordosteuropa, 7. 24.  The geopolitical concept of “Baltoscandia” proved to be deeply rooted in the collective memory of the Baltic nations, as it reappeared in the discourses among the Popular Fronts of the Soviet Baltic republics in the late 1980s. Hans Dahlberg, Östersjön. Kampen om ett hav 862–1990 (Borås: Legenda, 1990), 128.



Entangled Histories in Northeastern Europe 17

25.  Jörg Hackmann, “From ‘Object’ to ‘Subject’: The Contribution of Small Nations to Region-Building in North Eastern Europe,” Journal of Baltic Studies 33, no. 4 (2002): 419–20. 26. Carlgren, Sverige och Baltikum, 28. 27.  Gerner and Karlsson, Nordens medelhav, 220. 28. Ulf Larsson, Svensk socialdemokrati och Baltikum under mellankrigstiden, vol. 17 of Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis. Studia Baltica Stockholmiensia (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1996), 37. 29.  Erik von Sydow, “Diplomatiska relationer mellan Estland och Sverige under mellankrigstiden,” in Estländare i Sverige. Historia, språk, kultur, ed. Raimo Raag and Harald Runblom, vol. 12 of Uppsala Multiethnic Papers (Uppsala: Centre for Multiethnic Research, Uppsala University, 1988), 51. 30.  Carlgren, Sverige och Baltikum, 13, 19. 31.  Gerner and Karlsson, Nordens medelhav, 199; Carlgren, Sverige och Baltikum, 49, 54. 32.  Dahlberg, Östersjön, 119. 33.  Troebst, Kulturstudien Ostmitteleuropas, 30. 34.  According to the Polish historian Jan Szymański, this mutual interest basically found its expression in (and amounted to nothing more than) touristic and cultural curiosity, which led to the foundation of friendship societies in both countries and the first-time exchange of language lecturers between Swedish and Polish universities in the mid-1930s. Jan Szymański, “Polen och Sverige i skuggan av Europas 1800- och 1900-tals historia,” in Polen och Sverige. År av rivalitet och vänskap/Szwecja—Polska. Lata rywalizacji i przyjaźni, ed. Joanna Nicklasson-Młynarska (Stockholm: Svenska Institutet, 1999), 61–62. 35.  Andrzej Nils Uggla, Den svenska Polenbilden och polsk prosa i Sverige 1939–1960. Två studier i reception, vol. 12 of Uppsala Slavic Papers (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1986), 21. 36.  von Alten, Weltgeschichte der Ostsee, 32. 37.  Larsson, Svensk socialdemokrati och Baltikum, 46. 38.  According to Estonia’s envoy to Sweden, Heinrich Laretei, Stockholm’s reluctance to engage politically in the region grounded in the fear that the Baltic states “might easily become a bridgehead in a conflict between the West and the East,” as he reported back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tallinn in 1937. Quoted in Mart Kuldkepp, “The Scandinavian Connection in Early Estonian Nationalism,” Journal of Baltic Studies 44, no. 3 (2013): 332. 39.  Torkel Jansson, “Estland—Schwedens erstes Mallorca in den 1930er Jahren,” Nordost-Archiv. Zeitschrift für Regionalgeschichte 20 (2011): 132. 40. Carlgren, Sverige och Baltikum, 55–56. 41.  Kristian Gerner, “Szwecja, Polska i nowy porządek polityczny nad Bałtykiem po pierwszej wojnie światowej,” in Polska—Szwecja 1919–1999, ed. Jan Szymański (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2002), 72. 42.  Lewandowski, Węzeł sztokholmski, 12. 43.  Mieczysław Nurek, “Klimaty polityczne w rejonie Bałtyku przed i po wybuchu drugiej wojny światowej,” in Bałtyk w polityce polskiej w tysiącleciu. Materiały z sesji

18

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naukowej odbytej dnia 11 grudnia 1998 roku organizowanej przez Oddział Gdański Polskiego Towarzystwa Historycznego i Instytut Historii Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, ed. Franciszek Nowiński (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2000), 179. 44. Carlgren, Sverige och Baltikum, 48. 45.  Thomas Faist, “Diaspora and Transnationalism: What Kind of Dance Partners?” in Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods, ed. Rainer Bauböck and Thomas Faist (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010), 9. 46.  Janina Ćwirko-Godycka, Tysiącletnia polska emigracja do Szwecji (Jonstorp: Wiktoriana Förlag, 1996), 16. 47.  “Miniatyrestland i Kummelnäs,” Aftontidningen, 20 February 1944. 48.  Due to Sweden’s neutrality doctrine, direct political engagement had to be kept outside the public sphere, as the renunciation of political activity was a precondition for the refugees’ protected status and shelter in Sweden. Bernard Kangro, Estland i Sverige (Lund: Eesti Kirjanike Kooperatiiv, 1976), 43. 49. Uggla, Polacy w Szwecji, 15. 50.  “Läroböcker klara för baltiska flyktingar,” Stockholms-Tidningen, 11 December 1944. 51.  This figure derives from a census of June 1945, but can be viewed in relation to the first figure, as the escape from the Baltic states to Sweden had basically stopped by the fall of 1944. Among the refugees from Estonia, distinction must be made between the evacuated Estonian Swedes (6,554 persons) and ethnic Estonians (21,815 persons). Anders Berge, Flyktingpolitik i stormakts skugga. Sverige och de sovjetryska flyktingarna under andra världskriget, vol. 26 of Uppsala Multiethnic Papers (Uppsala: Centre for Multiethnic Research, Uppsala University, 1992), 33. 52. Kangro, Estland i Sverige, 264. 53.  Harald Runblom, “Polsko-szwedzkie wzorce migracyjne,” in Polska—Szwecja 1919–1999, ed. Jan Szymański (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2002), 32. 54. Berge, Flyktingpolitik i stormakts skugga, 27. 55. Lars Olsson, On the Threshold of the People’s Home of Sweden. A Labor Perspective of Baltic Refugees and Relieved Polish Concentration Camp Prisoners in Sweden at the End of World War II (New York: The Center for Migration Studies, 1997), 18–19. 56.  Nevertheless, from 1943 onwards, refugees could, as a rule, reside in Stockholm only with a special permit. As the number of refugees exceeded the accommodation possibilities of the capital and the other two major Swedish cities, Gothenburg and Malmö, most refugees were temporarily relocated to rural areas in southern and central Sweden. Uggla, Polacy w Szwecji, 43, 266. 57.  Klaus Zernack defined late imperial St. Petersburg as a classic example of a “Baltic metropolis” (Ostseemetropole) where cultures and mentalities of the different parts of the Baltic Sea Region met and closely interacted. Zernack, Nordosteuropa, 278, 281. 58.  Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland, 91. 59. Olsson, On the Threshold of the People’s Home of Sweden, 4. 60.  See, for example, Stockholm-Tidningen’s report of 5 October 1944, quoted in Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland, 96, or the article entitled “Flykten över havet,” Se, 24–31 August 1944.



Entangled Histories in Northeastern Europe 19

61. Olsson, On the Threshold of the People’s Home of Sweden, 6. 62.  This voluntary and consensual cooperation between regime and co-nationals in the West developed, first and foremost, between members of the Polish diaspora in Sweden and the Warsaw authorities. Particularly after the increased influx of economic migrants from communist Poland from the mid-1950s onwards, the majority of Poles in Sweden could not unequivocally be categorized as political émigrés. To increase cooperation with the rather apolitical part of the Polish community, which was eager to maintain close contacts with the home country, the Polish government founded the Association for Cooperation with Polish Communities Abroad “Polonia” (Towarzystwo Łączności z Polonią Zagraniczną “Polonia”) in 1959, which was preceded by a temporary organization that had been functioning since 1955. Jan Lencznarowicz, “Rola Towarzystwa ‘Polonia’ w polityce PRL wobec Polonii w krajach zachodnich,” Przegląd Polonijny 22, no. 1 (1996): 43. Although the Estonian diaspora was rather homogeneous in its political stance toward the Soviet regime, a considerable number of both first- and second-generation Estonian émigrés agreed to cooperate with the Soviet Estonian equivalent to “Polonia.” The Committee and, later, Society for the Development of Cultural Ties with Estonians Abroad (Väliseestlastega Kultuurisidemete Arendamise Komitee, VEKSA, from 1976 onwards Väliseestlastega Kultuurisidemete Arendamise Ühing) was established in Tallinn in 1960 and modeled on the Union-wide organization Rodina (“Fatherland”). Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 203. 63.  John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War. A New History (New York: The Penguin Press, 2005), 27. 64.  Tony Judt, Die Geschichte Europas seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, vol. 548 of Schriftenreihe der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Munich and Vienna: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2006), 151, 153. 65. Gaddis, The Cold War, 32. 66.  Michael Cox, “The 1980s Revisited or the Cold War as History—Again,” in The Last Decade of the Cold War. From Conflict Escalation to Conflict Transformation, ed. Olav Njølstad (London and New York: Frank Cass, 2004), 6. 67.  Bernd Stöver, Der Kalte Krieg. Geschichte eines radikalen Zeitalters (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 2007), 11–15. 68.  Juhana Aunesluoma and Pauli Kettunen, “History in the Cold War and the Cold War in the Present,” in The Cold War and the Politics of History, ed. Juhana Aunesluoma and Pauli Kettunen (Helsinki: Edita Publishing Ltd., 2008), 9. 69.  Katalin Miklóssy, “Khrushchevism after Khrushchev. The Rise of National Interest in the Eastern Bloc,” in Khrushchev in the Kremlin. Policy and Government in the Soviet Union 1953–1964, ed. Jeremy Smith and Melanie Ilic, vol. 73 of BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies, ed. Richard Sakwa (London: Routledge, 2011), 150. 70.  An exception in this context are the scholars who have interpreted the Cold War as a continuation of an older dichotomy between the Soviet Union and the West, which is rooted in the beginning of the October Revolution and in the end of World War I and based on the ideological dissonance between the geopolitical visions of Woodrow Wilson and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. See, for example, John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know. Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 6;

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Jonathan Haslam, Russia’s Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). 71.  The French historian Georges-Henri Soutou, for example, locates the first phase of the upcoming East-West conflict in the years between 1941 and 1947. Georges-Henri Soutou, La guerre de cinquante ans. Le conflict Est-Ouest 1943–1990 (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard). 72.  Kari Alenius, “A Baltic Prelude to the Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Annexation of the Baltic States, 1939–1941,” in The Baltic Sea Region and the Cold War, ed. Olaf Mertelsmann and Kaarel Piirimäe, vol. 3 of Tartu Historical Studies, ed. Eero Medijainen and Olaf Mertelsmann (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012), 13. 73.  Also Tony Judt stresses that Eastern and Western Europe had different perceptions of 1945, highlighting the perceived continuation of the war in the East. Judt, Die Geschichte Europas, 25. Polish historian Dariusz Stola introduced the term czarna dekada (“black decade”) for the period from 1939 to 1948, stressing the continuity of escape, migration, and ethnic cleansing in Poland beyond 1945. Dariusz Stola, “PRL: Kraj przymusowych migracji czy ‘przywiązania do ziemi?’” Przegląd Polonijny 33, no. 4 (2007): 27. 74.  In view of the uncertain future of post-war Poland, even the approximate half million Polish war refugees and soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces in the West preferred to await the outcome of the political power struggles in Poland in their temporary countries of residence. Andrzej Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, vol. 1 of Druga Wielka Emigracja 1945–1990 (Warsaw: Biblioteka “Więzi,” 1999), 5. 75.  The striking contrast between the masses celebrating on the streets of Stockholm on 8 May 1945 on the one hand, and, on the other, the sorrowful silence of Polish and Baltic refugees in view of the unstemmed flow of depressing news from their homelands, was described by Arvo Horm, one of the most prominent Estonian émigré activists in post-war Sweden. Arvo Horm, “Balti riikidele lõppes Teine Maailmasõda 31. aug. 1994,” in ERN 1947–1997. 50 aastat poliitilist võitlust (Stockholm: Eesti Rahvusnõukogu, 1997), 204. 76. Ibid.

Chapter Two

The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949

WAR-TIME RESISTANCE AND THE SWEDISH CONNECTION World War II began at the Baltic coastline when the German battleship SMS Schleswig-Holstein attacked the Polish garrison at Westerplatte outside the port of the Free City of Danzig in the early hours of September 1st, 1939. Poland, which was soon confronted with another aggressor as Soviet military forces entered her eastern territories on September 17th, was the first victim of the unleashed World War. The Nordic and Baltic states managed, at least initially, to stay out of the conflict by declaring neutrality. Finland’s neutral status, however, did not hinder the Red Army from invading the country after Helsinki’s refusal to cede a significant chunk of her eastern borderlands to the USSR in November 1939. The Baltic states, by contrast, remained formally neutral up to the summer of 1940, although they had at an early stage surrendered to Soviet demands for military bases on their territory in order to avoid the fate of their northern neighbor. Still, the strategy of granting concessions to the Kremlin eventually led to the annexation of the three small republics, which followed the same logic behind the Red Army’s attack on Finland: the determination of the Soviet leadership to establish a buffer zone against any further expansionist cravings of Nazi Germany. Almost one year after the beginning of World War II, large parts of the Baltic Sea Region had fallen prey to the aggressive expansionism of two powerful dictatorships.

21

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The Nucleus of Polish and Estonian Political Activism in Neutral Sweden Sweden was not directly affected by the cataclysmic destruction of states and statehood in its immediate neighborhood. Nevertheless, the effects of Hitler and Stalin’s conquest of Poland and the coups d’état in the Baltic states became visible with the formation of the first refugee communities on Swedish soil, among them several hundred Polish citizens who dwelled in the country at the time of Nazi Germany’s attack on Poland. Their number quickly rose from mid-September onwards with the arrival of refugees from the last unconquered Polish outposts, the port of Gdynia and the Hel peninsula. Swedish law on foreigners did not explicitly comment on the issue of political refugees.1 However, referring to the 1937 amendment, which had been adopted in view of the persecution of political opposition within the Third Reich, refugees from war-torn territories were entitled to claim political asylum.2 Initially, the incoming tide of Polish refugees remained a rather transitory phenomenon, as most of those who reached Sweden soon continued their journey to Western Europe.3 Hence, it was not the uprooted war refugees but the Polish legation in Stockholm that established a first provisional center of organized Polish activity on Swedish soil. Immediately before the outbreak of the war, Sweden had taken over the role of a protecting power for Poland, which decisively influenced the official Swedish stance toward the Polish diplomats in Stockholm. Despite concerns about the credibility of the country’s neutrality policy and German pressure, the Polish envoy, Gustaw Potworowski, was not requested to give up his office. The legation thus continued to function even after Poland’s surrender in early October 1939, when it came under the command of the exiled Polish government in Paris. The Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not raise objections,4 but significantly reduced its official communication with the legation. From then on, the Polish diplomatic corps was under strict surveillance by the Swedish police. In view of Germany’s military advances, Eric Boheman, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and former envoy to Poland, who was known for his pro-Polish sympathies, strongly advised Potworowski not to endanger the government’s positive attitude toward the legation by engaging in political issues.5 In order to respond to the war refugees’ instant needs, members of the legation initiated the Polish Relief Committee (Polski Komitet Pomocy, PKP), an aid organization for Polish citizens in Sweden that was partly financed by the Swedish Ministry of Social Affairs.6 At first, out of consideration for Sweden’s status as a non-belligerent country, the activities of the Committee were strictly limited to humanitarian assistance. However, the agenda soon



The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949 23

expanded beyond the officially sanctioned framework as the number of incoming Polish refugees continued to rise. The outbreak of the Finnish-Soviet Winter War in November 1939 and the German occupation of Norway and Denmark in April 1940 not only lead to the formation of large Nordic refugee communities in Sweden, but also induced a significant number of Poles residing in these countries to seek shelter in the neutral state. Another group of refugees consisted of members of the Polish Army, who had fled to the Baltic states after the Soviet attack on eastern Poland. As Stalin’s pressure on the Baltic governments increased in spring 1940, many of them decided to escape across the Baltic Sea. The Polish diplomats in Stockholm quickly realized the need to limit the size of the refugee community in a neutral country that was surrounded by German-occupied territories. At the same time, most Polish refugees were eager to leave because of Sweden’s geographical proximity to both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The vast majority planned either to reunite with their families and relatives in France and Great Britain, or to join the Polish Armed Forces. Thus, a secretly organized campaign of smuggling Polish refugees to Western Europe developed under the joint command of the PKP and the diplomatic corps.7 These activities were financed by the exiled Polish government, which from June 1940 onwards resided in London.8 The delicate refugee question was solved, at least for the time being. Sweden remained primarily a transit country for Polish refugees, which kept the community small and centered on the diplomatic corps. The escape of Poles from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to Sweden ended abruptly in June 1940 with the Red Army’s invasion into the Baltic states. Since the fall of 1939, Soviet troops had already been garrisoned on their territory. After Hitler’s conquests in Scandinavia in spring 1940, Moscow’s policy toward her Baltic neighbors tightened, while local communist groups were activated. Eventually, in mid-July, Soviet-type staged elections swept the old political elites away in all three countries, making room for communist-ruled puppet governments that successfully applied for incorporation into the USSR one week later. Although the annexation was an only poorly camouflaged act of Soviet aggression, the Swedish stance on this issue was decidedly less resolute than in the case of occupied Poland. In fact, Sweden was the only democratically ruled country to at least de facto acknowledge the incorporation.9 This decision had severe consequences for the Baltic diplomats in Sweden, who in contrast to their Polish colleagues were deprived of their diplomatic status. In one of his last official acts, the Estonian envoy Heinrich Laretei sent a protest note to the Swedish Foreign Ministry, declaring the annexation to be repugnant to the constitution of the Republic of Estonia. Still, their harsh protests notwithstanding, the three Baltic envoys and their staff were forced

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to vacate their legations in August 1940. The premises were handed over at the disposal of the Soviet legation together with the monetary and gold deposits of the Baltic governments stored in the Bank of Sweden.10 While Swedish compliance toward the Kremlin indeed was far-reaching, it did not touch upon the principles of the country’s refugee policy. Laretei, whom the new regime sentenced to death in absentia after his refusal to return to Tallinn, was offered shelter together with the rest of the diplomatic corps and their families.11 The former diplomats thus became the first Estonian political refugees in Sweden together with a number of sailors, whose ships were moored in Swedish ports at the time of the Soviet occupation and who refused to sail back after the communist coup d’état.12 Only a very small number of Estonians managed to escape to Sweden after the forced incorporation of the formerly sovereign republic into the Soviet Union. Among them was the Estonian envoy to Moscow and former State Elder August Rei, who shortly before the withdrawal of diplomatic passports issued by the Republic of Estonia left the USSR with one of the last planes from Riga to Stockholm.13 Together with Laretei, he became the leading figure of the small community of Estonian refugees in Sweden, which, in resemblance to the Polish case, gathered around the diplomatic corps. Stockholm as a Bridgehead between Warsaw and London The merchant fleet and passenger ships that cruised the Baltic waters during peacetime had by mid-1940 been replaced by the frigates and battleships of Hitler’s and Stalin’s naval forces, which held the southern and eastern coastlines of the Baltic Sea in a firm grip. The pre-war infrastructure between the Baltic shores was thus destroyed years before the Iron Curtain went down. Consequently, the Polish and Estonian refugee communities in Sweden remained largely isolated from their homelands. In the case of the Estonians, this isolation was almost total, as the occupation regime had cut all communication with the outside world with the onset of the Sovietization process. The Estonian border guard had been liquidated and replaced by units of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del, NKVD), which established tight control over the Estonian SSR’s coastline. In order to prevent any attempts of escape to Finland or Sweden, local fishermen were soon forbidden to take their boats out to sea.14 During the “Red Year” between June 1940 and June 1941, the Baltic Sea was a practically unsurmountable boundary that efficiently hampered virtually all communication and information flows between the shores. German-occupied Poland, however, was not as hermetically sealed off as the annexed Baltic states. The General Government for the Occupied Polish



The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949 25

Territories, the Polish heartland that had not been incorporated into either Germany or the Soviet Union, remained, at least initially, still open to foreigners, especially those from the neutral states.15 Thus, not only Swedish diplomats, but also trade representatives of Swedish companies could regularly travel to Poland. As Sweden’s trade ties with Western Europe had been cut off by the military front lines, cooperation with Nazi Germany and the German-occupied territories was a question of economic survival for the export-dependent Swedish industries.16 Swedish-German trade constituted one of the few remaining bridges between occupied Poland and the outside world. A small, conspiratorial circle of Poles in Stockholm was ready to use this channel for their own purposes. The willingness of Swedish citizens to function as couriers for the exiled government helped to ensure the flow of uncensored information between the underground resistance in Poland and non-occupied Europe, turning the Swedish connection into a key factor of the transnational Polish struggle against the German occupier. The Swedish legation in Warsaw served as one of the earliest toeholds for the activities of the exiled government’s representatives in Stockholm. Sven Grafström, the Swedish envoy to Poland and one of the diplomats who continued to support the Polish diplomatic corps in Sweden, agreed to carry out a number of missions for the legation.17 On his travels between Stockholm and Warsaw, he transferred private letters and personally investigated the fate of Polish citizens whose names were on the lists that he had received from the Polish diplomats. He was also responsible for the transfer of a larger sum of money, entrusted to him by the Polish legation, “into the right hands,” as he noted in his diary.18 The operations conducted by Grafström ended quite abruptly in late November 1939, when the Swedish legation in Warsaw was dissolved and its duties were taken over by Sweden’s diplomatic representation in Berlin. Polish liaison officers in Stockholm, who worked on behalf of the exiled government, thus began to search for alternative, more durable solutions. Their task was to create the necessary prerequisites for a network of informants who could penetrate the informational blockade between occupied Poland and London via neutral Sweden. The initiated circles in Stockholm were confined to persons who were directly involved with the exiled government’s intelligence service. Not even envoy Potworowski was fully informed about the scope of the cross-Baltic operations.19 The key protagonists of the network were Mieczysław Thugutt and Tadeusz Rudnicki, employees of the exiled government’s Ministry of the Interior, who had both come to Sweden via the Baltic states.20 Initially, they recruited couriers among the crew members of Swedish cargo vessels that shipped iron ore to Danzig and coal from German-occupied Poland back to Sweden. Their strategy changed when Polish refugees in Stockholm

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brought the Swedish commercial representatives to the liaison officers’ attention. A small group of businessmen still resided in occupied Warsaw as agents of some of Sweden’s leading companies, and they crossed the border on a regular basis. The recruitment of couriers among the Swedes that had returned to Poland after the outbreak of the war promised to be more effective and was, finally, crowned with success. Among the most active agents in service of Poland’s exiled government and its representatives in Stockholm were the Swedish consul, Carl Herslow, the bank manager Harald Axell, and the director of a Warsaw-based subcompany to the ASEA Corporation, Sven Norrman. Their courier activities between Sweden and occupied Poland created a channel that considerably facilitated the communication between the Polish resistance movement and the exiled government in London. Via this route, numerous microfilms containing uncensored documentation of the situation in occupied Poland could be smuggled abroad. The publication of this material was organized by the exiled government’s Ministry of the Interior. Moreover, the underground resistance could be directly supplied with money via clearing transactions, which were conducted with the help of the Swedish intermediaries.21 In July 1942, chiffre officers at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs revealed these clandestine operations by decoding the radio communication between Polish agents in London and Stockholm, but it was already too late to warn the Swedish couriers.22 Together with a larger number of Polish resistance fighters, they fell into the hands of the Gestapo. With the discovery of one of the few gaps in the otherwise efficient system of German surveillance, the occupation authorities could effectively jam, to quote Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, the “most important courier route between the Polish resistance movement in the General Government and the Polish government in exile in London.”23 German pressure on Stockholm rose significantly after this incident, but the dissolution of the Polish legation could be avoided due to a compromise agreement. Envoy Potworowski had to resign and leave the country together with three legation members, among them Thugutt and Rudnicki, the liaison officers of the exiled government. Potworowski was replaced by Henryk Sokolnicki, the former Polish envoy to Finland, who had sought shelter in Sweden in June 1941 after the onset of Finland and Nazi Germany’s joint attack on the USSR. However, for the time being, he functioned only as chargé d’affaires,24 which underlined the rather provisional status of Poland’s legation. The communication between the exiled government and the armed wing of the Polish resistance movement, which in February 1942 conflated into the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), was not entirely blocked after the revelation of the Swedish connection. Radio contact ensured at least a minimum level of



The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949 27

cooperation across the military front line. A more substantial and systematic informational exchange, however, still required the services of couriers. The southern route via Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Italy had become almost impassable since the winter of 1941,25 so that neutral Sweden still remained an important transit country. The Poles in Stockholm were of course forced to maintain a low profile from mid-1942 onwards, but the situation gradually changed after the Battle of Stalingrad. A subsequent series of German surrenders in the East sparked off a wave of antifascist sentiment in Sweden.26 This turn of public opinion foreboded the end of the Swedish concessions in favor of Nazi Germany and triggered considerable political activism among the Polish refugee community. Soon, a new branch of the exiled government’s intelligence service was established under the command of the Polish legation’s military attaché, Colonel Feliks Brzeskwiński. This became one of the key nodes within the communication network between London and occupied Poland and a bridgehead for the channeling of Home Army couriers to Western Europe.27 Once again, it was Sweden’s demand for coal from the occupied Polish territories that secured a reliable infrastructure between Danzig and Swedish ports, which functioned up to the Red Army’s westward advances in the fall of 1944. The coal ships became a crucial hub for the clandestine cooperation between the Polish underground resistance and the world outside Nazi Germany’s sphere of influence. Onboard Swedish ships, further refugees were smuggled to Sweden, while the Home Army’s couriers used the trade route as a bridge to London and back, thus securing a permanent flow of information between the different nodes of the resistance networks both within and outside the country.28 In the Swedish harbors, they could count on reliable contacts who were closely connected to representatives of the exiled government,29 among them the Polish lectors at the universities of Lund and Stockholm.30 Sweden thus constituted an important strategic link in the wartime networks that connected the Polish resistance movement to the exiled government in London. However, the northern route via neutral Sweden was not the only secret channel that the Polish resistance managed to establish during the years of German occupation. In general, the Polish diplomats and their confidants in Sweden played rather a supporting role,31 which contrasts with the significance of the war-time activities of the Estonians in Sweden on behalf of their occupied homeland. Estonian Resistance and the Foreign Delegation of the Republic of Estonia After the rigged elections that followed the invasion of the Baltic states by the Red Army, the government of the Republic of Estonia was dissolved and

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most of its members deported eastwards. In contrast to the case of many other occupied countries during World War II, Estonia was thus not represented by an exiled government abroad. Resistance outside the country, both against the brutal Sovietization policies during the “Red Year” and the usurpation by Nazi Germany that followed Hitler’s attack on the USSR, was organized by a handful of Estonian diplomats; the very few representatives of pre-war state authorities that had escaped Soviet persecution. Despite their isolation from the homeland, the former envoys Rei and Laretei took the first steps to coordinate all activities aimed at restoring Estonia’s independence immediately after the annexation. As a first toehold of national resistance outside Estonia, they formed the Foreign Delegation of the Republic of Estonia (Eesti Vabariigi Välisdelegatsioon) together with the former envoy to Helsinki, Aleksander Warma, in September 1940. The aim of the Delegation, which had to operate very discretely in view of Sweden’s neutral status,32 was to channel communication and cooperation between the Estonian diplomats that had remained abroad. A central aspect of the Delegation’s activities was the collection of all available information on the situation in Estonia, which was considerably facilitated by the fact that Warma could intercept Soviet Estonian radio broadcasts in nearby Helsinki.33 After the German attack on the USSR in June 1941, the Delegation ostentatiously voted for close cooperation with the Western Allies. Indeed, Rei and Laretei were recruited by the British intelligence service shortly after the occupation of Estonia by Nazi Germany. Around the same time, they started cooperating with the U.S. legation in Stockholm, which supplied them with the technical devices for the interception of daily radio reports from German-occupied Estonia.34 The Estonian diplomats put their firm trust in the Atlantic Declaration as the major guarantee for the restoration of Estonian statehood after the end of the war. Thus, they clearly rejected the tactics adopted by Hjalmar Mäe’s German-sponsored puppet government in Tallinn, which after one year of Soviet terror opted for collaboration with Nazi Germany.35 Nevertheless, passive resistance against the German occupying forces, which had initially been welcomed by large parts of Estonian society as liberators from the “Soviet yoke,” was still widespread in Estonia, especially as the Germans soon tightened the reins. There were distinct sympathies for the Western Allies in the occupied country, which mirrored the stance of the Estonian diplomats in Helsinki and Stockholm. In November 1941, the economist Hans Ronimois from the University of Tartu succeeded in establishing direct communication with Aleksander Warma in Helsinki via an Estonian courier. A second channel to Finland was established in January 1942 by the journalist and editor Jaan Ots,36 who soon became a key figure for the coordi-



The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949 29

nation of national resistance and the dissemination of uncensored information in Estonia.37 Via Helsinki, Rei and Laretei could directly interact with the resistance movement in the occupied home country providing access to reliable firsthand information on the developments in Estonia. Rei, in turn, used Warma’s channels in order to regularly supply the Estonian resistance fighters with political reports and analyses as well as clips from the Western press. In late 1942, Hans Ronimois illegally crossed the Gulf of Finland to Helsinki, from where he traveled to Stockholm in order to support the crossBaltic operations of the Foreign Delegation. A few months later, he was joined by Jaan Ots,38 who reached the Swedish coast by boat in the spring of 1943. By then, the number of Estonian asylum seekers in Sweden had already grown to several hundred. While the Swedish government had followed a quite restrictive refugee policy in the early war years in a pursuit to minimize political tensions with Berlin, the authorities proceeded to grant shelter to practically all refugees who reached Sweden’s borders from Nazi-occupied Europe after Stalingrad.39 Most of the newly arrived Estonian refugees were young men from the coastal districts who had escaped German military mass mobilization in Estonia by sea.40 They significantly enlarged the Estonian community in Sweden, which so far had been a refugee colony of merely a few dozen members.41 After his arrival in Sweden, Ots succeeded in establishing radio contact with Estonian resistance fighters, securing the communication between the underground movement and the outside world.42 Moreover, he was responsible for the organization of a regular traffic route between Sweden and Estonia. The Estonian refugee community in Sweden had funded the purchase of a courier boat, which set out on its first trip to occupied Estonia in fall 1943. On board were several hundred copies of an Estonian newspaper printed in Sweden intended to spread uncensored information about the political and military situation in Europe among the homeland population.43 The boat returned with the wives of several of the resistance fighters in Stockholm and a huge collection of printed documentation, which included complete issues of Estonian newspapers and journals, and items from the private libraries of Ronimois and Ots.44 Clandestine operations of this kind did not, of course, remain unnoticed. Already at an early stage of these activities, the intelligence corps of the Swedish Armed Forces had become aware of the illegal courier traffic. The intelligence officials, however, were willing to support the activities, as the Estonian couriers were seen as potential allies in the establishment of a spy network on the opposite coast. Detailed information about Soviet military advances westwards was of vital importance to Sweden’s military leadership, which perceived the anticipated reconquest of the Baltic territories by the Red Army as a threat to national security.45

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The communication between intelligence officials and the Estonian refugee community was facilitated by the Baltic German countess Margareta Stenbock. Since her escape from Kolga Manor in northern Estonia to Sweden in the summer of 1940, she had been working for both the Swedish intelligence corps and the British embassy.46 Stenbock had excellent connections among the Estonian sailors who had sought shelter in Sweden in the wake of the Soviet occupation, and she played a key role in the recruitment of reliable couriers from their ranks.47 Their mission was to deliver information about Soviet troop movements on the Eastern Front and the estimated strength of Red Army units via radio contact back to Sweden. The transit across the sea was organized by the refugees themselves, while the required technical devices and logistical support were provided by Swedish intelligence in cooperation with its British and U.S. counterparts.48 With the assistance of the Swedish Armed Forces’ intelligence corps and confidants who occupied key positions in the state administration, a clandestine traffic route could be established between the Baltic shores. This secured a regular correspondence between Rei and Laretei and the Estonian underground movement.49 The efficiency of the networks between the national resistance in Estonia and its supporters in Stockholm and Helsinki became visible with the formation of the Estonian National Committee (Eesti Vabariigi Rahvuskomitee) in Tallinn in March 1944. The clandestine organization was a joint initiative, established by activists who belonged to several Estonian democratic parties, which, since 1935, had been repressed by the authoritarian pre-war regime of Konstantin Päts, but still proved to be able to go into action.50 The Estonian National Committee’s aim was to restore Estonian state sovereignty on the basis of parliamentary democracy as soon as the military situation allowed for it. Among the Committee members were several resistance fighters who maintained close contact with the representatives of the Foreign Delegation in Sweden and Finland.51 With the formation of the Committee, this crossborder cooperation was intended to take a more institutionalized shape. Rei and Laretei in Stockholm and Warma in Helsinki were appointed the Committee’s representatives abroad.52 Three days later, the establishment of the Tallinn-based underground organization was echoed by the foundation of the Estonian Committee (Eesti Komitee) in Stockholm, which aimed at facilitating the dissemination of uncensored information in both Sweden and Estonia.53 Organized Estonian resistance against the German occupying forces was thus based on transnational structures that depended on an efficient system of communication across the Baltic Sea. Although a wave of arrests in German-occupied Estonia temporarily jammed the activities of the Estonian National Committee,54 the transborder operations continued. While direct communication with the resistance move-



The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949 31

ment had initially been the main driving force behind the cross-Baltic traffic, the courier boats now frequently returned to Sweden with refugees onboard. In view of an imminent Soviet reoccupation of the Baltic states, the smuggling of Estonian citizens out of the country was increasingly prioritized. By then, the discrete evacuation of Estonia’s Swedish minority, which was organized by already “repatriated” Estonian Swedes, was already in full swing.55 These activities had been approved by the Swedish government and were actively supported by the coastguard. The fact that the organizers of these operations even smuggled significant numbers of ethnic Estonians to Sweden was greeted with silent consent.56 This tolerance certainly had an impact on the Swedish authorities’ stance toward the Estonian refugees’ own rescue efforts. During an incident in the Stockholm Archipelago in May 1944, a group of couriers, who had organized a motorboat for the purpose of evacuating Estonian citizens, was arrested. However, the intervention from a secretary of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs led to their immediate release. The Swedish coastguards were informed that the trip to occupied Estonia had been planned with the consent of Statens flyktingnämnd, the central governmental authority for refugee questions. Thus, only the secret correspondence onboard, destined for the Estonian underground movement, was confiscated.57 It was not the first time that the above-mentioned secretary, Sigfrid Sandberg, had become involved in the organization of the courier traffic,58 and he was not the only state official with intimate knowledge about the Estonian refugees’ clandestine networks. Heinrich Laretei had earlier applied for a large ration of boat fuel from the National Planning Department for the sake of evacuating “a number of prominent Estonians” to Sweden, and Foreign Minister Christian Günther was also apprised of the request. Unlike the National Planning Department, the Foreign Ministry did not give its consent but neither did it intervene.59 Again, a certain dissonance can be observed between the official stance toward the political refugees and the sympathy for their activities among key decision makers in Sweden’s state administration. This distinction between the informal and the formal level was, however, crucial as it turned out in late July 1944 when Rei and Laretei attempted to inform the Swedish public about the situation in Estonia. Ever since June, their communication with the Estonian National Committee in Tallinn had been significantly improved,60 especially due to the resistance movement’s own intelligence service, which had sent couriers to Sweden with the task of re-establishing direct radio contact with the homeland.61 Thus, the Committee’s public appeal to the Estonian people, encouraging the fight against both the German and the anticipated Soviet occupiers, quickly reached Stockholm. Its authenticity was confirmed by a liaison agent from Tallinn, who arrived in

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Sweden a few days later.62 However, the press conference dedicated to news of the appeal, convoked by Rei and Laretei, was cancelled at short notice due to the intervention of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after vehement protests from the Soviet legation.63 This episode heralded both Sweden’s future compliant stance vis-à-vis Moscow and the political and moral dilemma that the existence of openly anti-Soviet refugee communities on Swedish soil would constitute in later years. The Mass Evacuation across the Baltic Sea of Fall 1944 After months of futile attempts to break through the front at the gates of Narva in eastern Estonia, the Red Army finally succeeded in driving back the Germans in late July 1944. While Hitler’s army units gradually retreated, Soviet troops surged into Estonian territory, triggering an unprecedented wave of mass escape across the Baltic Sea. The hitherto sporadic efforts of Estonian citizens to flee the country developed into a well-organized evacuation program. Laretei, Rei, and their helpers discretely turned to the Swedish authorities in this matter. They contacted the Alien Commission which upon approval by the government’s Cabinet Office agreed to raise the number of visas for Estonian refugees. Even the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was privy to the plans.64 A formal consent was never given, but at a meeting with August Rei, Sweden’s Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson indicated that his government would not put any obstacles in the way.65 Thus, the waters between Sweden and Estonia turned into a heavily trafficked route between July and September 1944. While thousands of Estonians escaped westwards by their own means, the speedboats that the refugees in Stockholm had organized for evacuation purposes shuttled between Swedish ports and the embattled opposite coast. Thanks to the close cooperation between the circles around Laretei and Rei and the crews involved in the evacuation mission, the transit routes also sustained communication with the resistance movement, keeping the agents in Stockholm constantly informed about the current military situation at home.66 The first large-scale evacuation measures were undertaken with the financial and logistic support of the U.S. War Refugee Board, which had expanded its activities to Sweden.67 Soon afterwards, Rei and other members of the Estonian refugee community in Stockholm engaged in parallel operations. Their mission was mainly financed by donations that had been collected in close cooperation with religious organizations and church representatives, among them Bishop Sven Danell who had spent several years in Estonia as a pastor for the Swedish minority.68 Laretei and Ots, on the other hand, were responsible for setting up the rescue program of the Stockholm-based



The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949 33

Estonian Committee. The underground Estonian National Committee in Tallinn prepared the passenger lists and assigned the tasks of transporting the refugees to pre-arranged meeting places. Aleksander Warma and his helpers in Helsinki coordinated the activities and ensured the continuous flow of information between the three capitals.69 Thus, an efficient cross-Baltic infrastructure developed during the late summer of 1944. The well-coordinated operations allowed for the evacuation of a large number of Estonians in a race against time while the Red Army swiftly occupied the eastern and southern parts of the country. However, the planned evacuation of the first independent Estonian government since 1940, which had been hastily appointed during the short time slot between the Germans’ hurried retreat from Tallinn and the following Soviet reoccupation of the city in order to secure the legal continuity of Estonia’s independence,70 failed. The rescue of the members of acting Prime Minister Otto Tief’s government, who had left the capital only hours before the arrival of the first Soviet tanks, was supposed to be the last of the missions sponsored by the War Refugee Board. However, as the courier boat from Sweden was delayed, almost the entire government fell into the hands of the Soviet secret police.71 The final act of evacuation took place on the waters of the Gulf of Bothnia. Already in the spring, the Swedish envoy to Helsinki, Hans Beck-Friis, had reported back to Stockholm on the Finnish Foreign Ministry’s indications that a permanent transfer of the Estonian war refugees in Finland to neighboring Sweden might become a necessity.72 After the Finnish-Soviet armistice which ended the so-called Continuation War was signed in September 1944 on very unfavorable terms for Finland, the Finnish government could no longer guarantee to be able to follow the legal principles that ensured the inviolability of political refugees. In order to avoid the moral dilemma of extraditing the Estonians, many of whom had fought in Finnish uniforms against the Red Army, the police and armed forces organized a secret transport of refugees to the Finnish west coast in cooperation with former Estonian envoy Warma in Helsinki.73 The evacuation mission under the command of August Rei now redirected all its traffic toward Finland, carrying out the evacuation of 7,200 Estonians across the Bothnian Sea in merely two weeks.74 An estimated several hundred Estonians remained in Finland,75 but with the departure of Aleksander Warma and his entourage to Sweden, the Finnish toehold of the Estonian resistance movement had practically broken apart. From the fall of 1944 onwards, the armed underground’s remaining allies abroad were concentrated in neutral Sweden. There, the number of Estonians had risen from merely 2,000 persons in August 1944 to approximately 24,500 by November, half of whom had reached Sweden on the boats of the Estonian refugee community’s evacuation campaigns from Estonia and Finland.76

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One of the main pillars of Sweden’s refugee policy during World War II was the strict prohibition of any political activity among war refugees from the occupied territories. In view of the atrocities of war in the immediate neighborhood and the threat of hostile invasion, it was in Sweden’s national interest to uphold the status of a neutral and non-belligerent country at any price. However, as the cases of Polish and Estonian activism on Swedish soil have shown, the ban on political activity proved to be ineffective in practice. It did not hinder the Polish and Estonian diplomats and their allies from engaging in highly conspiratorial activities, whose primary aim was to strengthen and support the underground structures of resistance that had developed in their German-occupied homelands. Swedish authorities not only tolerated these activities for the most part, but tacitly approved them. Even individual Swedish helpers sympathized with the political mission of Poles and Estonians in Stockholm and actively supported the clandestine operations. The role played by volunteers and the multilayered involvement of Swedish officials and state authorities in the transborder networks shed an interesting light on Sweden’s neutrality policy during World War II. With the engagement of the Swedish Armed Forces’ intelligence corps in the efforts of establishing spy networks on the opposite coast and its close cooperation with the intelligence services of Great Britain and the United States, the gap between the formal and informal practices of Swedish neutrality widened even further. This aspect of Sweden’s war-time violations of the neutrality doctrine forms an interesting contrast to the government’s earlier concessions to Nazi Germany, which had caused “considerable resentment towards Sweden” among the Western Allies.77 The focus on the Swedish connection and its significance for the underground movements on Sweden’s opposite coasts reveals the transnational dimension of resistance during the war years. Radio signals, which facilitated regular communication between the embattled territories and the nonoccupied countries west of Germany’s front lines, were doubtlessly a central source of uncensored information for the resistance fighters in the Germanoccupied states regarding the political and military development in Europe. However, direct communication with the well-interconnected representatives of the pre-war state order abroad, who functioned as a crucial link between the Western Allies and the resistance movements in Central and Eastern Europe, still had to be maintained via couriers. In this context, Sweden gained a significant role as one of the very few European states that were not directly involved in the hostilities and thus functioned as a strategically located bridgehead. As both the Polish and the Estonian cases have illustrated, the channels across the Baltic Sea could, under these premises, develop into important lifelines for the national resistance movements in the southern and eastern parts of the Baltic Sea Region during various phases of World War II.



The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949 35

POLITICAL MOBILIZATION IN VIEW OF THE UPCOMING COLD WAR The transnational resistance networks across the Baltic Sea broke down more or less simultaneously. While the Soviet Navy, which had been trapped in the Gulf of Finland, broke through the naval front line and advanced into the Baltic Sea’s central basin, the Red Army inexorably approached the coastlines from the interior. In September 1944, the communication by sea between the Poles in Sweden and the Home Army was interrupted.78 A few weeks later, in early October, the last embattled bastions of Estonia, the islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa, fell, almost entirely cutting off the Estonian resistance movement from the outside world.79 For those who had fled the atrocities of war and for the populations of their now “liberated” homelands, an Iron Curtain had already descended in the fall of 1944. The Red Army’s rapid westward advances marked the onset of a new occupation of the Baltic states and the territory of pre-war Poland; this time, however, by a partner of the Western Allies and an anticipated victor of the war. Stalin’s propaganda machinery ran at full speed in order to convince the world that the nations of Central and Eastern Europe actually hailed the advent of the Soviet troops. As in the wake of the first Soviet invasion of June 1940, the occupied Baltic states were thoroughly isolated from the outside world. The same did not apply, at least for the time being, to the “liberated” Polish territories, although they had been ruled by a provisional government appointed and sponsored by the USSR since July 1944. However, in the winter of 1944/45, the armed wing of the Polish resistance, with whom the exiled government in London had closely cooperated, was disbanded. The defeat of the Home Army destroyed long-established communication channels and limited the possibilities of Poland’s pre-war political and military elites to directly interfere in the homeland from abroad. Thus, Polish activists in the West changed their strategy of supporting national resistance by relocating the principal level of activity to their countries of residence.80 This was the starting shot for a propaganda war that was also fought on Swedish soil, aimed at giving a voice to the oppressed populations in the Soviet sphere of influence. Mobilizing Political Support in Neutral Sweden Despite the ban on political activity, which remained in force until July 1946,81 the Baltic refugee communities in Sweden had early on geared up for an ideological warfare with an openly anti-Soviet agenda. In 1943, a small circle of scholars and former politicians from the occupied Baltic states,

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among them August Rei, founded the Baltic Committee (Baltiska Kommittén) in cooperation with a group of Swedish intellectuals. The Committee’s primary goal was the dissemination of uncensored information on the impact of the Soviet and German occupations on the populations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Among the most prominent Swedish members of the Committee were the archeologist Birger Nerman, who was head of the Swedish History Museum, and his colleague Sigurd Curman, the former director of Stockholm’s Baltic Institute and current head of the Swedish National Heritage Board. Their engagement was based partly on the fact that they shared the fervent anti-Sovietism of the Committee’s Baltic members, but also on their professional pre-war connections with the University of Tartu.82 The rise of anti-German sentiments in Sweden, fueled by the incoming reports on the continuous series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, was, as elsewhere in Western Europe, accompanied by an unprecedented manifestation of pro-Soviet sympathies. Hitler’s assault against the Soviet Union had considerably contributed to justifying Moscow’s security interests in the Baltic Sea Region, while issues such as the despotic nature of the Stalinist regime or the national interest of Balts and Poles faded into the background.83 Alarmed by the prevailing pro-Soviet moods, in the fall of 1943 the Baltic Committee edited a first volume of articles on the war-time fate of the Baltic states highlighting the fundamental threat that Stalin constituted for the small nations west of the pre-war Soviet border. In a contribution to the volume, August Rei reminded his Swedish readers that the Baltic territories were “good gateways” into Scandinavia for any hostile military power, be it Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.84 Swedish historian Adolf Schück, on the other hand, focused on the common features of both dictatorships. He depicted Soviet Communism and National Socialism as largely comparable phenomena, anticipating the line of argumentation of the post-war theories of totalitarianism.85 Arvo Horm, a Tartu economist, who one year later published an overview of the political, social, and economic developments in Estonia since the Soviet invasion of 1940, claimed that it was the Baltic nations’ mission to inform the outside world about both German and Soviet atrocities. After all, the Balts counted among the few European nations to have experienced life under the hammer and sickle and the swastika alike. Horm, who was one of the key agents of the clandestine cooperation between Stockholm and the Estonian resistance, based his book on a sample of written evidence on the terror of the “Red Year.” The documents had been compiled by the underground movement in German-occupied Estonia and smuggled to Sweden on the speedboats that connected the shores during the late war years.86 Unaffected by the anti-German turn, which significantly influenced the political discourse in Sweden from 1943 onwards, leading Baltic activists



The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949 37

thus explicitly acknowledged that they considered the Soviet Union to be the most dangerous threat to their nations. In the long run, however, this conviction counteracted the refugees’ efforts of promoting sympathies for the Baltic cause, giving rise to distrust not only in pronouncedly pro-Soviet circles, but also among the social democratic establishment. In particular, left-wing activists, ranging from communists to trade union representatives, proved to be eager to accuse the Baltic war refugees of fascist tendencies and collaboration with the Nazis long into the post-war era. The political activities of Poland’s exiled government in London and among the Polish refugee communities scattered in other parts of nonoccupied Europe, by contrast, had long been targeted mainly at Berlin. Especially during the later war years, a steadily increasing number of reliable testimonies on German atrocities committed on Polish soil reached the exiled government in London via refugees and Home Army couriers. These reports triggered an unprecedented publishing campaign, even in Sweden, where strict war-time censorship, which had significantly hampered the dissemination of information about German war crimes, was abolished in 1943.87 One of the most influential publications was Tadeusz Norwid-Nowacki’s drastic depiction of Polish suffering under German rule. Norwid-Nowacki, a delegate of the exiled government to Stockholm, who closely cooperated with the Polish legation, published his book under a pseudonym in 1944.88 It considerably reinforced anti-German sentiments and triggered a public discourse on the actual nature of Germany’s war of conquest in the East. Among the most prominent Swedish voices heard in the following debate were the poet Harry Martinsson, the socialist and author Ture Nerman,89 and one of the pioneers of the Swedish welfare state, Alva Myrdal. In a publication on the ongoing Warsaw Uprising, they jointly appealed to the Swedish public to demonstrate their support for the civilians fighting in the besieged capital.90 The controversial role of the Red Army, which passively observed the uprising from the opposite bank of the Vistula, was omitted. Only the book’s co-editor, the famous writer Eyvind Johnson, took a firm anti-Soviet stand, harshly criticizing the Swedish sympathies for the Soviet “liberators” and the provisional Polish government whose claim to power was based on Stalin’s political and military support.91 From spring 1943 onwards, anti-Soviet tendencies had already become increasingly evident even among the Polish refugee communities outside the occupied home country. The detection of mass graves in the woods of Katyn near Smolensk containing the bodies of tens of thousands executed officers of the Polish Army had caused an irrevocable schism between the so-called “London Poles” and Moscow. Eventually, all diplomatic relations between the exiled government and the Soviet Union were suspended. The

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next strategic move by the Kremlin was the promotion of the Union of Polish Patriots (Związek Patriotów Polskich), which had been established in cooperation between Polish communists in Moscow and the Soviet leadership, as an alternative and competing center of Polish national resistance.92 This step sealed the end of the national unity of all Polish political camps struggling against the German occupying forces, which also affected the small refugee community in Sweden. Communist sympathies were widespread especially among the crews of the Polish merchant ships that had sought shelter in Swedish ports after the German assault on Poland in September 1939. The sailors had spent most of the war years as internees on their ships, but could move freely once it became obvious that Hitler’s conquering armies were on the retreat.93 It was mainly from their rows that the Moscow-based Union managed to recruit local supporters in Sweden. In view of this new level of communist agitation, the Stockholm representatives of the exiled government developed an increasingly distinct anti-Soviet policy. In the end, however, they were fighting a losing battle. The official Swedish stance toward the Polish legation cooled significantly as it became clear that the government it represented would most probably not return to Poland.94 Moreover, the Swedish Communist Party keenly assisted Moscow in its propaganda war against the London-based “puppet government,” as the communist newspaper Ny Dag (“New Day”) labeled it, stigmatizing it as a remnant of an order whose democratic deficits had been criticized before the war.95 Nevertheless, the Communist Party’s influence on governmental policies was limited, although the communists temporarily gained electoral strength. Crucial to the marginalization of the anti-Soviet faction of the Polish community, however, was the Swedish government’s realpolitik course. In view of the Red Army’s victorious advances, the Swedish leadership was convinced that a future sovereign Poland could not be anti-German and anti-Soviet at the same time.96 This opinion, which took the most probable post-war scenario of a significant westward expansion of the Soviet sphere of influence into account, was supported by most leading political circles. It lay the foundation for a somewhat schizophrenic perception of Poland’s political situation that shaped Sweden’s policy in the immediate post-war years. The denouement of the conflict between the exiled government in London and the Soviet-sponsored provisional government was foreshadowed by several events. In December 1944, the prime minister in exile and president of the Polish Peasants’ Party, Stanisław Mikołajczyk, resigned and returned to Poland in order to ensure the political plurality of the new government. This decision significantly weakened the position of his successor in London, especially as the political support among the Western Allies was decreasing. This tendency became evident with the decision to exclude the exiled



The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949 39

government from the consultations in the run-up to the Yalta Conference in February 1945.97 After the international diplomatic recognition of the pro-Soviet Provisional Government of National Unity in early July 1945, the government in exile and the majority of the Polish Armed Forces in the West refused to return in a symbolic act of protest against the territorial and political changes in Poland. This step marked the beginning of a political struggle fought from abroad against both the Soviet Union and the collaborating forces in the homeland.98 For the Polish diplomats in Stockholm, the withdrawal of recognition of the exiled government meant the loss of their diplomatic status. Chargé d’affaires Sokolnicki was forced to hand over the Polish legation to the representatives of the new order, experiencing the same fate as his Baltic colleagues five years earlier. However, as in the case of the former Baltic envoys and their staff, the Polish ex-diplomats continued their political activity as informal leaders of the, by then, already significant Polish refugee community in Sweden. Renegotiating the Refugee Status in the Light of Soviet and Polish Repatriation Campaigns The pronouncedly anti-Soviet sentiments among the Polish and Baltic refugees in Sweden clashed with the prevailing pro-Soviet sympathies and the geopolitical realism that guided Swedish discourses at the time. This gap widened as the war-time grand coalition was succeeded by a social democratic government in late July 1945. Swedish social democracy traditionally viewed the Soviet Union as a peaceful dictatorship and endeavored to treat the Western democracies and the USSR on equal terms.99 In this spirit, the first post-war government pursued a “bridge-building policy,” which was largely designed by Foreign Minister Östen Undén. Together with Minister of Trade Gunnar Myrdal, he represented the left wing of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, which with Tage Erlander at its lead dominated the government after Prime Minister Hansson’s death in October 1946.100 This faction strongly advocated rapprochement and close trade ties not only with the Soviet Union, but also with the Republic of Poland, the Swedish industries’ new main supplier of coal. There was, however, a noticeable discrepancy between the official Swedish stance and the political sympathies of key actors inside Sweden’s state administration. Especially striking was the ideological gap between Foreign Minister Undén and his ministry staff.101 Many officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs displayed a rather reluctant attitude toward the Warsaw government. Despite the formal dissolution of the exiled government’s diplomatic representation, the Polish legation continued to function de facto

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for some time with the Ministry’s approval.102 The legation members were allowed to keep their diplomatic passports, notwithstanding Warsaw’s harsh protests.103 This was a remarkable concession to the old guard of Polish diplomats, as Warsaw already had appointed Jerzy Pański, one of the main war-time agitators of the pro-Soviet Union of Polish Patriots in Sweden, as chargé d’affaires.104 By prolonging the interim phase and thus delaying the takeover of the legation by the diplomatic corps from Warsaw, the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs indirectly contributed to consolidating the authority and leadership of the exiled government’s representatives among the Poles in Sweden. This kind of unofficial support on the part of Swedish authorities also proved to be of significant importance for the refugees’ lobbying activities. These were considerably intensified with the onset of the repatriation programs and turned into a downright propaganda war with the new masters in Warsaw and Tallinn. The Polish government aimed to repatriate as many Polish citizens as possible from their temporary places of displacement in Western Europe back to the homeland, both in order to compensate for the severe human losses of the war and to avoid the establishment of anti-Soviet Polish communities abroad.105 Similar considerations lay behind the large-scale repatriation program of the Kremlin.106 Moreover, the Soviet leadership was determined to punish the “traitors” and to save the prestige of the USSR as a state with a superior political and social system.107 The Soviet repatriation campaign was thus conducted in a much more vigorous and aggressive manner than the Polish equivalent, which did not insist on forcing Polish citizens to return. All Soviet citizens in the West, which of course, seen from the Kremlin’s perspective, included Baltic refugees, were to be repatriated, by force if necessary. The Swedish government initially considered the refugee problem to be a temporary concern.108 Finnish evacuees had already started to return to Finland before the war was over, and Norwegians and Danes soon followed their example. This was one of the reasons why the Polish concentration camp prisoners who came to Sweden in spring 1945 were not registered as “refugees” by Swedish authorities, but as “repatriates” who were supposed to return to Poland after their recovery.109 Accordingly, Sweden was one of the first countries to allow the new pro-Soviet government in Warsaw to start its repatriation campaign on its territory with the support of the national print media in October 1945.110 The majority of Poles in Sweden were considered to be politically passive, especially as the huge group of concentration camp prisoners had reached the country via the Red Cross and not on their own volition as political refugees. However, in the end, only about one third of the Polish community in Sweden eventually decided to return.111 It was, as



The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949 41

Adam Ostrowski, the new Polish envoy, complained, the “intense and hostile propaganda”112 of the “London Poles” and their supporters that had curbed the success of the Polish Repatriation Mission.113 The camp around the former diplomatic corps of the, by then, dissolved legation, started a large-scale media campaign which received partial funding from the British legation in Stockholm.114 Its major goal was to counterbalance the massive propaganda of the Warsaw government that was disseminated via Swedish newspapers and appealed to Polish citizens to repatriate in order to help rebuild the devastated homeland. One of the main platforms of these counterpropaganda campaigns was the newspaper Wiadomości Polskie (“Polish News”), which had been published by the PKP since 1940 and now offered staunch resistance to the agitation of the new regime, calling upon the Poles in Sweden to boycott the repatriation program. The editorship of the newspaper was formally held by a Swedish baroness in order to circumvent the restrictions imposed by the ban on political activity. The editor responsible for another major organ, the newspaper Polak (“Pole”), was Daniel Cederberg, the former pastor of the Swedish Sailor’s Church in Gdynia who during the war actively supported the clandestine communication between Sweden and occupied Poland. As an employee of the Swedish state church, Cederberg had the status of a state official, which gave the Polish envoy a reason to intervene.115 More than once, Ostrowski insinuated that the Swedish authorities were secretly cooperating with representatives of the government in exile, deliberately sabotaging the Polish legation’s efforts to conduct the repatriation mission.116 In view of the press campaign against repatriation, which according to the Polish legation had induced conservative Swedish newspapers to publish similar appeals to reject repatriation to a country under “Russian occupation,”117 the envoy requested the government to intervene. Under the impact of the Polish government’s threat to restrict coal deliveries to Sweden in case the issue was not satisfactorily solved,118 the newspaper editors voluntarily interrupted the publication, but only for a short period of time. Estonian newspapers in Sweden, which had been published regularly since the fall of 1944, were exposed to similar attacks.119 The Estonian community’s press polemicized against the Soviet repatriation mission—whose officers had arrived in Sweden already in March 1945—and harshly criticized its utterly aggressive methods. The Soviet legation repeatedly demanded a categorical ban on articulating anti-Soviet views as well as the official prohibition of all Baltic newspapers in Sweden.120 However, despite significant diplomatic pressure, which, as usual, was echoed by Swedish communists, the Swedish government refused to take any legal action on the editors.121 This firm stance had its origins in a different understanding of what political

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propaganda actually was. In 1944, an internal governmental investigation had been carried out on the initiative of a group of communist parliamentarians, who accused the Balts of spreading “fascist and anti-Russian propaganda.” The concluding report by the investigation, however, denied the accusations. The interpretation of the firsthand reports on Soviet atrocities in the occupied Baltic states was, the report stated, up to the reader. Even if the wish to return to a non-occupied country was clearly stated, in this way the writings did not qualify as “political propaganda.”122 The stance of the Swedish authorities on this issue implied an unofficial sanction of the Baltic publishing activities, from which even the Poles in Sweden benefited. Although the Soviet Repatriation Mission was officially entitled to operate on Swedish territory, the attitude of the local authorities toward the Baltic refugees was generally protective.123 This sympathetic stance has to been seen against the background of the Swedish government’s highly controversial decision to send Baltic soldiers who had fought in German uniforms during World War II back to the USSR. In January 1946, after a long series of diplomatic negotiations with Moscow, the government eventually approved the extradition of 146 Balts, mainly Latvians, who in their majority had been forcibly drafted into the Wehrmacht.124 The Soviet Union’s relentless attempts to pressure Stockholm into a formal consent on this issue had unleashed mass protests among the Swedish population in the late fall of 1945 mobilizing church dignitaries and their parishes, intellectuals, students, and humanitarian organizations. Despite numerous public demonstrations, the extradition was carried out as planned. However, the strong support among Swedish society turned into an effective shield for the 30,000 remaining civilian Baltic refugees. Subsequently, public opinion became a crucial determinant of governmental policies regarding the Baltic refugee communities.125 The Swedish government continued the practices of the war-time grand coalition, whose guiding principle had been to refuse the forced deportation of any civilian refugee seeking political asylum, even if this stance might implicitly claim that political persecution occurred in the USSR and, thus, affect Swedish-Soviet relations.126 The planned mass repatriation of the Balts back across the Baltic Sea was thus never carried out. Neither was the plan of the Soviet Estonian Repatriation Committee to relocate 29,000 Estonians from Sweden as labor forces to the industrial centers in the north-eastern parts of the Estonian SSR. Due to the unified stance of the Estonian refugee community with regard to the new political order on the opposite coast and the unofficial support of the Swedish authorities, only 182 Estonians eventually returned to their occupied homeland up to spring 1950.127 The evident deterioration of Sweden’s diplomatic relations with Moscow and Warsaw and the conflicts that evolved around the issue of repatriation



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confirm Kim Salomon’s hypothesis that the repatriation missions of the governments in the Soviet sphere of influence were a factor that considerably deepened the now looming East-West schism.128 At the same time, the controversial debates about the return to territories occupied by the Red Army additionally strained the already infected dialogue between the refugee communities and the representatives of the new order, which now turned into an intensifying ideological feud. The Last Reverberations of Concerted Cross-Baltic Resistance The determination of the Soviet and Polish authorities to forestall the establishment of anti-Soviet “propaganda headquarters” in Sweden via the repatriation of refugees was only partly driven by the wish to neutralize any form of organized counterpropaganda abroad. Another major misgiving discussed in Moscow and Warsaw concerned the eventuality that the spirit of political opposition might be exported back to the homelands via “illegal channels” across the Baltic Sea.129 The probability that refugee activists in Stockholm would succeed in establishing unnoticed communication channels with their homelands was, however, quite low. The Soviet border patrols along the coastlines of occupied Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania quite efficiently sealed off the Baltic republics from their opposite coasts, although there were still some loopholes in the net of military surveillance.130 Nevertheless, Estonian circles in Sweden did not entirely abandon the strategy of supporting resistance fighters from abroad, despite the growing risks that the couriers had to face. Members of the Estonian National Committee, who had fled the approaching Red Army in the fall of 1944, still maintained a route from Sweden to the island of Saaremaa which, together with the still functioning radio signal communication, constituted the Estonian partisans’ last link to the outside world.131 The partisan movements in the Soviet-occupied Baltic states were headed by members of the pre-war officer corps. They were very well aware of the lack of suitable leadership for an efficient underground struggle against the occupying forces, as a significant number of the key agents of war-time resistance had fled to the West. The partisan leadership used every possible channel of communication with centers of anti-Soviet activism abroad, not least in order to coordinate preparations for the eventuality of an upcoming war between the Soviet Union and the West.132 However, the main incentive behind the hazardous cross-Baltic passages to Estonia, which were organized in Stockholm and carried out on speedboats, was not primarily the delivery of arms. The dense net of surveillance off the Estonian coast and the secret police were highly efficient. Thus, the last attempt to smuggle weapons, radio

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transmitters, and other technical equipment to Estonia ended with the arrest of the couriers by the NKVD in November 1946.133 Instead, both the leadership of anti-Soviet Estonian resistance in Stockholm and other refugees, who acted on their own account, prioritized the evacuation of partisan fighters as well as friends and relatives that had stayed behind.134 The Swedish authorities were well informed about these activities due to the coastguard’s regular reports on the arrival of further refugees from occupied Estonia. Moreover, Countess Stenbock had, on behalf of the resistance movement’s representatives in Sweden, openly solicited support from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a large-scale evacuation of partisans from Estonia in order to ensure the continuity of organized resistance against the occupying forces.135 As late as August 1947, the Swedish National Security Service (Statspolisen) stated that as the Nordic summer nights turned darker again, the Estonians’ relentless efforts to break through the cordon around their homeland once more intensified.136 Thus, there were still loopholes that enabled a few refugees to reach Sweden even after the onset of the second Soviet occupation, which encouraged Soviet propaganda to label the Swedish capital a “transshipment point for fleeing citizens of the Baltic states.”137 The exchange between Sweden and Poland, by contrast, increased rather than decreased after 1945. Poland’s Sovietization was a creeping process and the Stalinist system introduced “slice by slice.”138 The establishment of an isolationist border regime in line with Soviet standards was thus delayed. Trade across the Baltic Sea started to boom again—not least due to the Swedish industries’ need for Central European coal—and brought tens of thousands of Swedish sailors to Polish harbors every year.139 Even the large-scale Swedish aid program for Poland, which had already started before the end of the war, led to a significant intensification of Swedish-Polish contacts.140 Throughout the second half of the 1940s, Swedish visitors were a common sight in the cities and towns along the Polish coastline. At least up to early 1948, the Swedish authorities even issued return visas for Polish citizens who had refused to repatriate, making it legally possible to visit the home country.141 Nevertheless, the vast majority never made use of this option due to the general distrust toward the Warsaw government and the persistent fear of repression, which was widespread among the Polish community in Sweden at the time.142 It was a mental rather than physical boundary that separated the Poles in Sweden from their homeland. This, however, did not prevent a small group of Polish regime critics in Stockholm from continuing their efforts to establish communication channels across the Baltic Sea. After the dissolution of the Home Army, the London-based government in exile developed a plan to build up a system of “correspondents” whose task it was to deliver reliable



The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949 45

information about the situation in the homeland. Soon, the Ministry of the Interior of the government in exile started to work on establishing a network of contacts in the People’s Republic of Poland. However, due to the ongoing political marginalization of the exile government, which in the eyes of a large part of the Polish community abroad and, especially, the members of the Polish Armed Forces in the West, was not able to present a credible political strategy for the future, the circles around General Władysław Anders gained increasing importance.143 Under his command, several communication channels were established between Poland and his London headquarters, which, although the informational flow was mainly directed via France and Germany,144 managed to reactivate the Polish circles in Sweden and the crossBaltic courier traffic. In the summer of 1946, the Swedish legation in Warsaw received a number of official protests from the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which insistently called attention to an allegedly lively smuggling activity organized by members of Anders’s Army. According to the complaints, a group of Polish officers from London had established a local headquarters in Södertälje, a town south of Stockholm, from where they, as was claimed, coordinated the secret transport of propaganda pamphlets and money to Poland.145 The smuggling by the couriers involved was supposedly carried out on the Swedish coal ships that connected Sweden to the harbors of Gdynia and Gdańsk, formerly Danzig. These activities were, as asserted by the Polish envoy to Stockholm, Adam Ostrowski, significantly facilitated by the willingness of Swedish captains to support the illegal traffic.146 Warsaw’s accusations were publicly echoed by “Stalin’s mouthpiece”147 in Sweden, the communist daily Ny Dag. In an article on Sweden’s involvement in the clandestine networks between the “London Poles” and the People’s Republic, Ny Dag pointed to the circles around the anti-Soviet Polish newspaper Wiadomości Polskie as the main coordinators of the courier traffic and the smuggling of propaganda material across the Baltic Sea.148 Despite its marginal impact on public opinion, the propagandistic warfare of Swedish communists against anti-Soviet refugee groups is worth careful attention, as it usually exposed the actual state of knowledge on the refugees’ clandestine activities in Moscow and the satellite capitals.149 Indeed, it seems as if the accusations brought about by Ny Dag were not unfounded. A report by the Polish counterespionage service actually identified two of the editors of Wiadomości Polskie, Tadeusz Norwid-Nowacki and Norbert Żaba,150 as key agents of the clandestine network. The conspirators were, the report continued, very well informed, apparently also on sensitive issues concerning the Polish secret police and intelligence service at the Ministry of Public Security. Apart from Colonel Brzeskwiński and further members

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of the former diplomatic corps, the document mentions the British military attaché in Stockholm, Reginald Sutton-Pratt, as one of the alleged heads of the conspiracy. The aim of the organization was supposedly the establishment of permanent radio communication between Sweden and the Polish coastal areas in anticipation of imminent war between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union.151 Further names and details regarding the instructions, propaganda material, and money that reached Poland on the Swedish coal ships were revealed during a military trial in the Polish capital in late 1947. Among the accused, who were charged with the formation of a conspiratorial cell of resistance, was a Polish translator, employed at the British embassy in Warsaw.152 However, by the time of the trial, the underground structures had already been largely paralyzed after several waves of arrests conducted by the Polish and Soviet secret police in the spring of 1947. The clandestine system of couriers and contacts established and run by General Anders’s supporters in Sweden, which can be interpreted as the last incarnation of the cross-Baltic resistance network that had connected Poland to Sweden since the outbreak of the war, ceased to exist.153 The scandal around the alleged conspiracy was only one in a series of incidents that severely strained diplomatic relations between Stockholm and Warsaw. Ever since the end of the war, the Swedish government had cast a hungry eye on the coal mining industries of Silesia,154 the former German province that had been incorporated into the post-war territory of Poland as a partial compensation for the eastern borderlands annexed by the USSR. The resumption of Swedish-Polish trade initially promised a regular supply of coal for Swedish industries but then also a fresh start of peaceful and good-neighborly relations in the Baltic Sea Region. Nevertheless, it was the unintended side effects of a functioning trade infrastructure across the Baltic Sea that caused serious diplomatic tensions in the icy atmosphere of the upcoming East-West conflict. With the reopening of the harbor of Gdynia which had suffered less destruction than the port of Gdańsk, the coastal city quickly turned into a major hub of the domestic black market, as the custom officials still lacked the means to ensure a thorough control of incoming trading vessels.155 The regular presence of Swedish sailors, a dominant group among the foreign visitors in the port of Gdynia in the immediate post-war years, fostered the development of a “flourishing illegal trade” of rare consumer goods and foreign currencies.156 However, smuggling not only brought luxury items to Poland and provided the Swedish crew members with cheap liquor and an extra income. It also opened up a loophole that enabled sufficiently solvent Polish citizens to leave the country illegally and to escape the increasingly repressive political system.157 The Warsaw government initially tried to



The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949 47

downplay the incidents, slandering as ordinary criminals those who had left the country on Swedish cargo ships with the help of crew members.158 The escape of Stefan Korboński, however, caused considerable diplomatic damage. Korboński was one of the closest allies of Stanisław Mikołajczyk, the leader of the still officially legal political opposition in Poland, who had secretly left the country with the help of the U.S. embassy in Warsaw in spring 1947. In view of the Stalinist turn in Polish politics, even Korboński started to arrange his flight to the West and was eventually evacuated on a Swedish train ferry from Gdynia in early November.159 Warsaw answered with unconcealed attacks against Swedish diplomats in Poland, especially the consul in Gdańsk who was accused of having tacitly approved the smuggling activities.160 Swedish newspapers, which had already adopted an increasingly critical tone in their reports on the political development in Poland, gave extensive coverage of the stream of political refugees arriving on the coal ships. According to the speculations of the press, the smuggling of Polish citizens across the Baltic Sea was coordinated by a clandestine underground organization in Poland.161 This suspicion was soon confirmed by the Polish authorities, which insinuated in their communication with the Swedish envoy that this organization most probably had good connections to Sweden.162 Toward the end of the decade, the traffic across the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Poland gradually came to a standstill. The Polish visa policy for foreigners was tightened, which increasingly restricted their freedom of movement in Poland.163 The growing bureaucratic obstacles induced the Swedish industries to reduce their trade with Poland and to focus on more reliable trade partners in the West.164 At the same time, the Polish coastguard was backed up by additional border patrols aiming to secure the coastline in reaction to the escape of Korboński and several other prominent politicians.165 Swedish ships were now thoroughly screened, and the custom officials’ demeanor toward the captains and crew turned increasingly aggressive.166 Therefore, it seemed increasingly impossible to keep this specific Baltic “loophole in the Iron Curtain” open, which, as the Swedish envoy to Poland, Gösta Engzell, expressed it, had “appeared as a ray of hope for many Poles in today’s difficult situation.”167 Consequently, the influx of Polish political refugees to Sweden drastically decreased.168 In view of the communist regimes’ intensified efforts at sealing off the Baltic coastlines, the small inland sea was soon under as equally strict military surveillance as the continental borderlands between the blocs.169 By the end of the decade, the escalating political tensions between East and West, which significantly grew after the Czechoslovak coup d’état in February 1948, had eventually reached even the Baltic Sea Region.

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Preparations for Ideological Warfare The fortification of the physical frontiers increased the ideological dichotomy between the societies around the Baltic rim. In view of the escalating diplomatic conflicts between East and West, the gap between the refugee communities in Sweden and the native homeland regimes continued to widen. The experiences of the ruthlessness with which the Soviet and, to a somewhat lesser degree, Polish authorities had carried out the repatriation missions, reinforced the ostentatious rejection of the new political order by an overwhelming majority of Estonians and Poles in Sweden. Moreover, they fueled the fear of infiltration. Repeated reports of Estonians being addressed in their mother tongue on the street or receiving phone calls from strangers in an attempt to lure and threaten them, triggered a veritable “spy hysteria” among the Estonian community.170 This induced most Estonians in Sweden to categorically reject any communication with official representatives of the Estonian SSR. Even the very small group of Estonians who had managed to escape in the wake of the second Soviet occupation were under general suspicion. Similar attitudes determined the stance of large parts of the Polish community toward the political refugees from the People’s Republic that reached Sweden during the early post-war years. The latent mistrust toward political asylum seekers was nourished by credible evidence that the Warsaw government made use of provocateurs disguised as political refugees.171 According to the Swedish National Security Service, the Polish Ministry of Public Security secretly trained agents in Swedish, who after their arrival in Sweden used their refugee status in order to infiltrate local Polish organizations.172 As a result, most Poles in Sweden kept a distance from the newcomers claiming political asylum, who were denounced as economic rather than political refugees and often simply labeled as “communists.”173 The aim of the Polish and Estonian refugee communities was to prevent infiltration and penetration by means of deliberate seclusion, which triggered a climate of constant suspicion that was unwittingly reminiscent of the “surveillance societ[ies]” of the socialist orbit.174 The lifting of the ban on political activity for refugees in mid-1946 accelerated the transformation of the Polish and Baltic refugee communities into well-organized diaspora societies with a distinctly anti-Soviet political leadership. As it became clear that the stalemate of 1945 would not culminate in a Third World War between the USSR and the Western Allies,175 the refugees prepared for a protracted ideological war by establishing a set of “political battle organizations.”176 The first Polish post-war organizations in Sweden, such as the Association of Former Polish Political Prisoners (Związek Byłych Więźniów Politycznych) or the Polish Refugee Council (Rada Uchodźstwa Polskiego),177 initially still lacked a specific political profile, despite their



The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949 49

strong bonds with the government in exile.178 In late 1946, however, the situation changed. The establishment of a Swedish branch of the London-based, but trans- and internationally operating Polish Ex-Combatants Association (Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantów), marked a first step toward a significant politicization of the Polish community in Sweden. This was echoed by the formation of a row of smaller associations that openly supported the political leadership in London,179 all of which were united under an umbrella organization, the Polish Union of Sweden (Zjednoczenie Polskie w Szwecji). The Polish Union was headed by former chargé d’affaires Sokolnicki and other protagonists of the Polish refugee community’s war-time activities, such as Tadeusz Norwid-Nowacki. In the summer of 1949, the Polish Consul General, Michał Jachnis, reported with concern back to Warsaw that the Polish Union constituted a gateway “for the thoughts and propaganda of ‘London.’”180 However, this wake-up call came too late. During the first post-war years, the institutional and organizational restructuring of the war refugee communities in Sweden had developed mainly along the ideological lines of the political opponents to the ruling regime in Poland.181 In contrast to France, for example, where communist sympathies among the pre-war emigrants and their descendants worked to the Warsaw government’s advantage, the efforts of spreading a positive image of the new order in Sweden went largely unheeded. The situation of the Baltic refugees in Sweden was more complicated and delicate than that of the Poles, who were backed up by their “state in exile” and the Polish Armed Forces in the West, which outnumbered the military forces of many a small state. The majority of the Baltic refugees in Europe still dwelled in German DP camps, which severely hampered their political self-organization. In Sweden, where the only noteworthy community of Estonian war refugees outside Germany resided, public protests against the ongoing Sovietization of the occupied homeland had long been muted by the restrictions that followed the host country’s course of strict political neutrality. A distinctive watershed was thus the foundation of the Estonian National Fund (Eesti Rahvusfond, ERF) in 1946.182 This organization functioned both as a center of information and a monetary fund for the continued political struggle for national liberation.183 Under the leadership of August Rei, Heinrich Laretei, and Harald Perlitz, the ERF became the core of Estonian political activism outside the homeland. The Estonian Committee, which so far had been filling that void, shifted its focus exclusively toward social and cultural activities.184 As in the Polish case, it was mainly high-ranking representatives of prewar Estonia’s state institutions that made a claim to political leadership. The question of how to secure the legal continuity of Estonian statehood outside

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the homeland had been vividly discussed since the death of Jüri Uluots, who as acting president of Estonia had appointed Otto Tief as acting prime minister in September 1944 and succumbed to a deadly disease only months after his escape to Sweden. In May 1947, representatives of the democratic political parties of the interwar period decided upon the foundation of the Estonian National Council (Eesti Rahvusnõukogu, ERN). Its steering committee comprised August Rei, Rudolf Penno, and Johannes Klesment, three of the Tief government’s ministerial officeholders, who at the time of its establishment already resided outside Estonia or managed to escape immediately afterwards.185 The National Council was thus conceived as an equal partner of other institutions that symbolized the continuity of pre-war statehood, such as the Polish government in exile with which the ERN maintained close cooperation.186 Together with the ERF, the National Council formed the political core of the Estonian diaspora in the West and the first institutional spearhead of coordinated opposition to Soviet rule outside the homeland. One of the core objectives of the ERN was the establishment of communication with centers of resistance inside the Soviet Union and the communistruled states in the satellite belt.187 The émigré leaders were well aware of the fact that their voices would go unheard unless they could prove to the international public that the political aims they represented were shared and supported by the homeland population.188 The question of legitimization was thus a decisive factor, which implied that interaction between the diaspora and the homeland was a precondition for any political activism abroad. A similar stance was reflected in the charter of the London-based Council of Polish Political Parties (Rada Polskich Stronnictw Politycznych). This organization was founded in 1949 in opposition to the exile government of President August Zaleski.189 As a coalition of political parties in exile, which structurally resembled the ERN, the Council explicitly stated that one of its major goals was to actively interact with the home country.190 Thus, the political elites among both the Polish and the Estonian diaspora communities left little doubt that they were not only determined to defend their national cause in the West. Indeed, they were also ready to challenge the boundary of the Iron Curtain in order to involve the homeland populations in their fight against Soviet hegemony over East Central and Eastern Europe. The Red Army’s takeover of the Nazi-occupied territories in Central and Eastern Europe and the subsequent extension of the Soviet sphere of influence far into pre-war German territory radically changed the landscape of power politics around the Baltic rim. During the interwar years, the young Soviet Union had been largely absent from the region after the relocation of the capital to Moscow and the formation of independent nation states along



The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949 51

the western fringes of the collapsed Russian Empire. However, having annexed the Baltic states and a large chunk of East Prussia and obtaining de facto control over Poland and a significant part of occupied Germany, the USSR had become the dominant regional power. This geopolitical setup determined both the course of Finland’s foreign and domestic policies and the practical implementation of Sweden’s neutrality doctrine during the post-war decades. The repercussions of the aggravating tensions between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union were, at least temporarily, mitigated in Europe’s northeastern corner due to the neutrality policies of Finland and Sweden. Up to the end of the decade, the Erlander government stuck to the conviction that peaceful cooperation with the communist-ruled neighbor states could soothe the escalating East-West tensions in Europe, or at least keep them out of the Baltic Sea Region.191 Based on this Swedish “bridge-building doctrine,” the relations between Warsaw and Stockholm initially developed at an amicable level, supported by the widespread sympathies for the war-torn nation among Swedish society and the positive image Sweden had gained in Poland for its remarkable commitment to deliver humanitarian aid. Regime critics among the Polish diaspora in Sweden proved able to make use of the developing trade route across the Baltic Sea for subversive activities directed against the new pro-Soviet government. This applied to the several hundred Polish political refugees who with the help of supporters in Sweden illegally left the country on Swedish coal ships. On a much smaller scale, even the Estonians in Sweden managed to occasionally perforate the military cordon around their occupied home country for the sake of evacuating further refugees showing that clandestine communication channels between the shores were not entirely cut off with the westward advances of the Red Army. It is thus difficult, among the diaspora communities in Sweden, to draw a clear line between resistance and opposition to the radical political changes in Poland and the Baltic states. The gradual cutting of the lifelines to the West of the transnationally operating resistance movements in the Soviet sphere of influence and the evolution of organized opposition among the political diaspora were processes that proceeded concurrently. The contrast between the initially outspoken pro-Soviet mood among Swedish society and the anti-Soviet stance of most Poles and Balts in the country gradually diminished as diplomatic tensions grew around the Baltic rim. In early 1949, after the failure of negotiations over a Scandinavian Defense Union with Denmark and Norway, which subsequently joined NATO, Prime Minister Tage Erlander once again reaffirmed Sweden’s strict nonalignment policy. However, in the aftermath of the coup d’état in Prague and Moscow’s following “invitation” to Finland to sign an Agreement of

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Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance immediately afterwards, the Cold War had finally reached the North.192 This had a noticeable effect on Swedish political discourses. From the fall of 1947 onwards, the values of liberal democracy and freedom figured prominently in Swedish debates on international politics, inclining Soviet and Polish propaganda to sense an organized “anti-communist campaign” fueled by “Marshallized Swedish newspapers.”193 Indeed, the Swedish Social Democratic Party now drew a distinct demarcation line between the genuinely democratic grounds of Swedish-style socialism and the authoritarian tendencies of the communist regimes. This distinction even targeted domestic communists. In a radio speech on the eve of the 1948 elections, Erlander openly stated that “[f]reedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of the press, the right to criticize a government, and equality before the law are for us priceless aspects for our future society. Our homegrown Communists have adopted a different position.”194 In view of the increasingly strained relations between the two camps in Europe, Sweden had, also in its own perception, developed into a strategic “border state toward the Soviet bloc of states,”195 which unequivocally demonstrated its commitment to the moral, ideological, and economic values of the West.196 For the following decade, the most openly anti-communist era of Swedish post-war history, Sweden thus became part of the bipolar world of Cold War Europe. This provided Polish and Baltic émigré activists with a political forum within their host society and guaranteed a certain level of public support for their anti-Soviet agenda. Moreover, they continued to profit from the ambiguity of Sweden’s neutrality doctrine, which, ever since the arrival of the first political refugees from the opposite coasts, ensured a certain level of informal support of Swedish authorities for activities directed against the communist superpower and its satellites.197 NOTES 1.  As Cecilia Notini Burch points out, the Swedish stance on the refugee issue was characterized by a “substantial unwillingness to tie itself to restrictive laws and codified regulations” such as the 1933 League of Nations Convention Relating to the International Status of Refugees, which Sweden in contrast to her Scandinavian neighbors did not sign. First in the early 1950s, the legal framework shifted to the advantage of the individual political asylum seeker after the incorporation of the United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951 into national legislation. Cecilia Notini Burch, A Cold War Pursuit. Soviet Refugees in Sweden, 1945–54 (Stockholm: Santérus Academic Press, 2014), 50, 115. 2.  Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland, 13. 3.  Wiesław Patek, “Polacy w Szwecji w latach II wojny światowej,” in Polacy w Szwecji po II wojnie światowej (Stockholm: Kongres Polaków w Szwecji, 1992), 9.



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  4.  Oscar Österberg, “Problem uznania przez Szwecję zmian w Europie Centralnej w latach 1939–1945,” in Polska—Szwecja 1919–1999, ed. Jan Szymański (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2002), 185–87.   5.  Paweł Jaworski, “Szwecja wobec sprawy polskiej w latach II wojny światowej,” in Na polsko-skandynawskich ścieżkach historii, ed. Alicja Achtelik and Damian Halmer (Rybnik-Zabrze: Stowarzyszenie Humanistyczne “Europa, Śląsk, Świat najmniejszy,” Muzeum Górnictwa Węglowego w Zabrzu, 2009), 128–29, 136.  6. Uggla, Polacy w Szwecji, 81.   7.  Kazimierz T. Matuszak, “Polski Komitet Pomocy w Szwecji,” in Polacy w Szwecji po II wojnie światowej (Stockholm: Kongres Polaków w Szwecji, 1992), 19.   8.  Janina Ćwirko-Godycka, Organizacje polonijne w Szwecji i ich działalność (Jonstorp: Wiktoriana Förlag, 1997), 7.   9.  Wilhelm Carlgren sees the de facto recognition as the climax of an unbroken line in Swedish foreign policy, which was based on general skepticism about Baltic sovereignty and a reluctance of all interwar governments to actively engage in Baltic issues. Carlgren, Sverige och Baltikum, 47–48. Whatever reasons lay behind it, the Baltic states’ loss of sovereignty was obviously seen as a fait accompli. Soon after their annexation to the USSR, the Swedish government decided to “repatriate” all members of Estonia’s Swedish minority, which had settled along the Estonian coast since the thirteenth century. Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland, 22. 10.  Kārlis Kangeris, “Sweden, the Soviet Union and the Baltic Question 1940– 1964—A Survey,” in Relations between the Nordic Countries and the Baltic Nations in the XX. Century, ed. Kalervo Hovi (Turku: University of Turku, 1998), 192–93. 11.  Dahlberg, Östersjön, 122. 12. Kangro, Estland i Sverige, 33. 13.  Jüri Ant, August Rei—Eesti riigimees, poliitik, diplomaat (Tartu: Rahvusarhiiv, 2012), 218–20. 14.  Indrek Paavle, “Regulation and Control of the Border Regime in the Estonian SSR,” in Behind the Iron Curtain. Soviet Estonia in the Era of the Cold War, ed. Tõnu Tannberg, vol. 5 of Tartu Historical Studies, ed. Eero Medijainen and Olaf Mertelsmann (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015), 396. 15.  Lewandowski, Węzeł sztokholmski, 40. 16. Uggla, Den svenska Polenbilden, 42. 17.  As the examples of Grafström and Vice Minister Boheman illustrate, there was a group of Swedish Foreign Ministry employees who informally supported the Polish legation. Nevertheless, it was too small to call it a “lobby” for the exiled government in neutral Sweden. Jaworski, “Szwecja wobec sprawy polskiej,” 136. However, their individual commitment exemplifies that the official stance was not based on a general consent among the highest ranks of Swedish state administration, which highlights the gap between the official neutrality policy and its practical implementation. 18.  Sven Grafström, Anteckningar 1938–1944, ed. Stig Ekman, vol. 14 of Historiska Handlingar (Stockholm: Kungl. Samfundet för utgivande av handskrifter rörande Skandinaviens historia, 1989), 155, 200. According to Lewandowski, the succinct formulation as well as further archival evidence clearly point out that the money was most probably not supposed to serve humanitarian aims, but to support the emerging underground resistance in Poland. Lewandowski, Węzeł sztokholmski, 39.

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19.  Lewandowski, Węzeł sztokholmski, 78. 20. Uggla, Polacy w Szwecji, 31. Rudnicki formally joined the diplomatic corps after his arrival in Sweden but worked, like Thugutt, directly under the command of the exiled government’s intelligence unit. Lewandowski, Węzeł sztokholmski, 59, 79, 82. 21.  Lewandowski, Węzeł sztokholmski, 73, 77, 83, 86. 22. Grafström, Anteckningar 1938–1944, 422–23. 23.  Letter from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, 31 December 1942, reprinted in Lewandowski, Węzeł sztokholmski, 227. 24. Grafström, Anteckningar 1938–1944, 469. 25.  Lewandowski, Węzeł sztokholmski, 46, 48. 26.  Alf W. Johansson, Herbert Tingsten och det kalla kriget. Antikommunism och liberalism i Dagens Nyheter 1946–1952 (Stockholm: Tidens Förlag, 1995), 224. 27.  Stefan Trzciński, “Polskie fale emigracyjne do Szwecji 1939–1986,” in Polacy w Szwecji po II wojnie światowej (Stockholm: Kongres Polaków w Szwecji, 1992), 61. 28. Uggla, Polacy w Szwecji, 28–29. The most famous agent involved in these activities was the Home Army fighter Zdzisław Jeziorański, better known under his war-time pseudonym Jan Nowak, which he continued to use as director of Radio Free Europe’s Polish section in Munich after the war. In an autobiographical book, published in the West, on his past as a courier, he described his frequent travel between London and Warsaw via Sweden. Jan Nowak, Kurier z Warszawy (London: Odnowa, 1978). 29.  Eugeniusz S. Kruszewski, Polski Instytut Źródłowy w Lund (1939–1972). Zarys historii i dorobek (London and Copenhagen: Polski Uniwersytet na Obczyźnie, Instytut Polsko-Skandynawski, 2001), 16. 30.  Paul Rudny, “Zygmunt Łakociński och Polska Källinstitutets arkiv i Lund 1939– 87,” in Skandinavien och Polen. Möten, relationer och ömsesidig påverkan, ed. Barbara Törnquist-Plewa, vol. 23 of Slavica Lundensia (Lund: Lunds universitet, 2007), 181. 31.  Jan Szymański, “Szwecja w polityce zagranicznej Polski 1918–1939,” in Polska—Szwecja 1919–1999, ed. Jan Szymański (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2002), 110. 32.  In view of the circumstances, resistance against the occupying regime relied on, as the three former envoys stated, “complete silence and secrecy.” Quoted in Kaarel Piirimäe, “National Self-Determination, Modernization, and the Estonian-Soviet Propaganda Contest in the Early Cold War,” in Behind the Iron Curtain. Soviet Estonia in the Era of the Cold War, ed. Tõnu Tannberg, vol. 5 of Tartu Historical Studies, ed. Eero Medijainen and Olaf Mertelsmann (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015), 40. 33.  Ant, August Rei, 229, 234. 34.  Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 33. 35.  Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland, 60. 36.  Enn Sarv, “Eesti Vabariigi kontinuiteet 1940–1945,” in Tõotan ustavaks jääda . . . Eesti Vabariigi valitsus 1940–1992, ed. Mart Orav and Enn Nõu (Tartu: Eesti Kirjanduse Selts, 2004), 39. 37.  List of potential candidates for the leading organs of the Estonian national resistance compiled by Hans Ronimois, n.d. (probably early 1943), reprinted in Orav and Nõu, eds., Tõotan ustavaks jääda . . ., 609.



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38.  Sarv, “Eesti Vabariigi kontinuiteet,” 41–42. 39.  Notini Burch, A Cold War Pursuit, 80. 40. Küng, Estland, 166. 41. Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 7. 42.  Sarv, “Eesti Vabariigi kontinuiteet,” 69. 43.  Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland, 62. 44.  Sarv, “Eesti Vabariigi kontinuiteet,” 52. 45.  Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland, 61–62. 46. Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 29. 47.  Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland, 60, 62. 48.  Most of the cross-Baltic passages actually went to Latvia on Latvian courier boats, but the Estonian missions were considered to be more effective. Lars Ericsson, “Exodus och underrättelseinhämtning. Det svenska försvaret och Baltikum, hösten 1943–våren 1945,” in Vårstormar. 1944—Krigsslutet skönjes, ed. Bo Huldt and Klaus-Richard Böhme (Stockholm: Probus Förlag, 1995), 97–99, 107–9. 49.  Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland, 62, 64–65. 50. Rei, The Drama of the Baltic Peoples, 342. 51.  Sarv, “Eesti Vabariigi kontinuiteet,” 41. 52.  Aleksander Terras, “Eesti riikliku järjepidevuse säilitamisest,” in Pool sajandit eestlust paguluses, ed. Arvo Horm (Stockholm: Teataja, 1994), 114–16. 53.  Andres Küng, Fyrtio år i Sverige. Estniska Kommittén—Esternas Riksförbund 1944–1984 (Stockholm: Estniska Kommittén, 1984), 6. 54. Rei, The Drama of the Baltic Peoples, 343. 55. Carlgren, Sverige och Baltikum, 67. After the failure of the Swedish government’s attempts to get Moscow’s approval for the evacuation of the Swedish-speaking population of western Estonia and some of the islands to Sweden during the first year of Soviet occupation, a second round of negotiations, this time with Berlin, was more successful. The German authorities allowed for the legal repatriation of more than half of the community of Estonian Swedes, although many more escaped on their own accord. Glenn Eric Kranking, “Leaving the ESSR: Sweden’s Attempts at Repatriating the Estonian-Swedes from Soviet-Controlled Estonia, 1940–1941,” Journal of Baltic Studies 46, no. 4 (2015): 468. 56.  Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland, 37, 46. 57.  Report by Inspector Otto Danielsson, Stockholm Police Department, 23 December 1944, in Riksarkivet (National Archives of Sweden, RA), UD-huvudarkivet, 1920 års dossiersystem (main archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, UD 1920), P 40, volume 76 (microfilm F035-3-32250), folder 2, p. 2. 58.  Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland, 62. 59.  Pro Memoria (confidential), 19 July 1944, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 458, f. 15. 60. Rei, The Drama of the Baltic Peoples, 343. 61.  Sarv, “Eesti Vabariigi kontinuiteet,” 68. 62. Ant, August Rei, 245. 63.  Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland, 122–23, 154. 64.  Ibid., 72–73.

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65.  Kangeris, “Sweden, the Soviet Union and the Baltic Question,” 207. 66.  Unidentified correspondent to Arvo Horm, 15 September 1944, in Eesti Rahvusraamatukogu isikuarhiivid (Personal Archives of the Estonian National Library, RR), fond 3, säilik 171 (“A. Hormi arhiiv. Kirjavahetus jm. materjalid (sorteerimata) 1944–1960-ndad aastad”), p. 1. NB: The cataloguing of the Estonian National Council’s archival collections at the Estonian National Library in Tallinn (RR, fond 3) is still in a provisional state and may thus be subject to changes. For that reason, the title of the folders where the quoted document can be found will always be given upon first mention, as their numbering might still be altered. 67.  Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland, 67–70. 68.  Osvalds Freivalds, De internerade balternas tragedi i Sverige år 1945–1946 (Stockholm: Lettiska föreningen Daugavas Vanagi, 1967), 55. 69.  Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland, 55. 70.  Jüri Uluots, who had been Estonia’s prime minister from October 1939 to June 1940, was, in accordance with the regulations set forth in the 1938 constitution of the Republic of Estonia, elected Estonia’s acting president during a secret underground meeting of the Election Council in April 1944. On September 18th, he set up an independent government with Otto Tief as prime minister. August Rei in Stockholm was appointed Foreign Minister in absentia. Terras, “Eesti riikliku järjepidevuse säilitamisest,” 116, 119. 71.  Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland, 56. 72.  Hans Beck-Friis, the Swedish envoy to Finland, to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (confidential), 3 April 1944, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 76, f. 1. 73.  Kangro, Estland i Sverige, 39. 74. Küng, Fyrtio år i Sverige, 6. 75.  Pro Memoria, 20 October 1944, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 76, f. 1. 76. Küng, Fyrtio år i Sverige, 4–6. 77.  Juhana Aunesluoma, Britain, Sweden and the Cold War, 1945–54 (Oxford: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 1. 78. Uggla, Polacy w Szwecji, 29. 79. Kangro, Estland i Sverige, 38. 80.  In view of the terror of the Soviet secret police and the lack of Western support for armed resistance, the exiled government in London, which was acknowledged by all political forces in occupied Poland except the communists, recommended the reduction of the Polish underground to a system of “passive cells.” Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 52–53. 81.  Hain Rebas, “Sverigeesternas politiska verksamhet,” in Estländare i Sverige. Historia, språk, kultur, ed. Raimo Raag and Harald Runblom, vol. 12 of Uppsala Multiethnic Papers (Uppsala: Centre for Multiethnic Research, Uppsala University, 1988), 98. 82. Kangro, Estland i Sverige, 82–83. The University of Tartu was a common denominator for several of the members of the Baltic Committee. In the mid-1920s, Nerman had been employed as a professor of archeology at the university, which had bestowed an honorary degree on Curman, one of the main driving forces of SwedishBaltic scholarly cooperation before the war. Even the chemist Harald Perlitz, one



The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949 57

of the two Estonian founding members of the Baltic Committee, held a chair at the university until his escape to Sweden. The Swedish-Baltic academic connection thus counted among the few pre-war networks that survived the outbreak of the war and could be transferred into a new context. 83.  Kristian Gerner, “Sovjetbildens struktur i Sverige efter 1941,” in Sovjetunionen och Norden—konflikt, kontakter och influenser, ed. Sune Jungar and Bent Jensen, vol. 110:1 of Historiallinen Arkisto (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1997), 154. 84.  August Rei, “Ha de baltiska folken självmant avstått från sin nationella frihet?” in Ha de rätt att leva? Inför de baltiska folkens ödestimma (Stockholm: Hugo Gebers Förlag, 1943), 63. 85.  Adolf Schück, “Balticum under hammaren och hakkorset. Två ockupationers facit,” in Ha de rätt att leva? Inför de baltiska folkens ödestimma (Stockholm: Hugo Gebers Förlag, 1943). 86. Arvo Horm, Estland fritt och ockuperat (Stockholm: Tidens Förlag, 1944), 67–68, 83–84. Horm, who had been employed at the University of Tartu, significantly profited from the still reliable Swedish-Baltic scholarly networks. Horm could enter Sweden legally thanks to the intervention of two renowned Swedish professors, who had both given up their chairs at the University of Tartu at the onset of the German attack against the USSR. Their active support and recommendations enabled Horm to quickly integrate into the new environment. See the correspondence between Horm and professors Per Wieselgren and Sten Karling, in RR, f. 3, s. 171. 87. Uggla, Den svenska Polenbilden, 26. 88.  Stefan Tadeusz Norwid, Landet utan Quisling (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1944). This book ranked as the second most sold book in Sweden in spring 1944, which illustrates the high level of interest in and awareness of the Polish question, especially during the later phase of the war. Uggla, Polacy w Szwecji, 27. 89.  Ture Nerman, one of the founders of the Swedish communist movement, was the brother of Professor Birger Nerman, who actively supported the Baltic refugee community in Sweden. 90.  Eyvind Johnson and Gunnar Almstedt, eds., Warszawa! (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1944). The 22-page annex to the book, entitled “Kända svenskar om Polen,” quoted a number of prominent Swedish intellectuals on the topic of the armed struggle of Warsaw’s population against the German occupying forces. 91.  Jaworski, “Szwecja wobec sprawy polskiej,” 131. 92. Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 20–21. 93.  Uggla, Polacy w Szwecji, 25; Ćwirko-Godycka, Organizacje polonijne w Szwecji, 19. 94.  Jaworski, “Szwecja wobec sprawy polskiej,” 130. 95.  Article quoted in Uggla, Polacy w Szwecji, 172; “Svensk statskonst,” Ny Dag, 17 May 1945. 96.  Kristian Gerner and Klas-Göran Karlsson, “Sverige och Polen i historiskt perspektiv. Bortom stereotyper,” in Sverige och Polen. Nationer och stereotyper, ed. Barbara Törnquist-Plewa, vol. 20 of Slavica Lundensia (Lund: Lunds universitet, 2000), 23. 97.  Vladislav M. Zubok and Constantin Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War. From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 34.

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  98.  Michał Bieniasz, “Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantów w Szwecji— organizacja niepodległościowa,” in Polacy w Szwecji po II wojnie światowej (Stockholm: Kongres Polaków w Szwecji, 1992), 43.  99. Anders Berge, Det kalla kriget i Tidens spegel. En socialdemokratisk bild av hoten mot friheten och fred 1945–1962 (Stockholm: Carlsson Bokförlag, 1990), 47. 100.  The influence of both Erlander and Undén on Swedish politics was unusually long-lasting. Undén served as foreign minister until 1962, while Erlander stepped down as prime minister and party leader first in 1969, when he was succeeded by Olof Palme. Nevertheless, it must be stressed that Erlander, in contrast to many left-wing social democrats of the post-war era, had never had sympathies for the communist experiment in the Soviet Union. Indeed, he can be characterized rather as a “professed anti-communist.” Olof Ruin, Tage Erlander. Serving the Welfare State, 1946–1969 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990), 290. 101.  Undén was known for avoiding consultations with his ministry officials, so that the policy he publicly advocated often contradicted the convictions of most leading officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Sverker Åström, Ögonblick. Från ett halvsekel i UD-tjänst (Stockholm: Bonnier Alba, 1992), 102–3. 102.  Stanisław Waśkiewicz, a Polish émigré in Sweden, to Zygmunt Modzelewski, the Polish envoy to the Soviet Union, 20 July 1945, in Archiwum Ministerstwa Spraw Zagranicznych [The Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, AMSZ], zespół 6, wiązka 79, teczka 1166, strona 3. The excellent connections of Sokolnicki, the exiled government’s chargé d’affaires, among Stockholm’s political elites certainly played a significant role. 103.  Report by Adam Ostrowski, the Polish envoy to Sweden, to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 18 September 1945, in AMSZ, z. 6, w. 78, t. 1165, s. 34–35. 104.  Arnold Kłonczyński, Stosunki polsko-szwedzkie w latach 1945–1956 (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2007), 36, 58. 105.  Anna Reczyńska, “Obraz Polonii i emigracji w propagandzie PRL,” Przegląd Polonijny 22, no. 1 (1996): 63. 106.  Magnus Pettersson, “Svensk-sovjetiska säkerhetspolitiska relationer 1945– 1960,” in Att skåda Sovjetunionen i vitögat. Sex studier kring svenska relationer till Sovjetunionen under det kalla kriget, ed. Kent Zetterberg, vol. 2 of Försvaret och det kalla kriget (Stockholm: Försvarshögskolan, 2004), 22. 107. Berge, Flyktingpolitik i stormakts skugga, 11. 108.  Kim Salomon, Refugees in the Cold War. Toward a New International Refugee Regime in the Early Postwar Era (Lund: Lund University Press, 1991), 33. 109. Olsson, On the Threshold of the People’s Home of Sweden, 141. 110.  Ćwirko-Godycka, Tysiącletnia polska emigracja, 26. 111.  The exact number of repatriates is hard to estimate, but it is assumed that between 5,500 and 6,700 Poles left Sweden for their home country from 1945 to 1950. Kłonczyński, Stosunki polsko-szwedzkie, 106. 112.  Claës Westring, the Swedish envoy to Poland, to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 20 June 1946, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 68 (microfilm F035-332253), f. 3, p. 1. 113.  Report on the activities of the Polish community in Sweden (annex to a letter from Michał Jachnis, the Polish consul general in Stockholm, to the Department for



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Poles Abroad at the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs), 1 April 1949, in AMSZ, z. 20, w. 5, t. 68, s. 5. 114.  Brynolf Eng, the Swedish envoy to Poland, to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (strictly confidential), 3 January 1946, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 487, f. 41, p. 1. 115.  Adam Ostrowski to Foreign Minister Östen Undén, 4 June 1946, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 68, f. 3, pp. 1–2. 116.  Pro Memoria, 6 March 1946, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 68, f. 3, pp. 1–2. 117.  Report by Tadeusz Jaworski, the Polish legation’s press attaché, to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 13 November 1945, in AMSZ, z. 6, w. 79, t. 1176, s. 21, 23. 118.  Claës Westring to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (confidential), June 20, 1946. RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 488, f. 42, p. 1. 119.  The Estonians used the same tactics as the Poles. The editor of the main Estonian press organ, Teataja (“Gazette”), was the Swedish professor Per Wieselgren, who had been employed by the University of Tartu up to his return to Sweden in the summer of 1941. Kangro, Estland i Sverige, 115. 120. Berge, Flyktingpolitik i stormakts skugga, 40. 121. Janis Zalcmanis, Baltutlämningen 1946 i dokument ur svenska utrikesdepartementets arkiv (Stockholm: Militärhistoriska Förlaget, 1983), 68. 122.  Pro Memoria, 13 November 1944, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 76, f. 2, pp. 1, 6. Although the report, signed Tede Palm, is filed as a transcript that does not reveal the original letterhead, the author is most probably Thede Palm. From 1946 onwards, he served as the head of the Swedish Armed Forces’ intelligence corps, which since 1943 had been cooperating with Baltic refugees in Sweden. 123.  According to Swedish refugee policy, repatriation was a matter of voluntary choice. Soviet repatriation officers were therefore not allowed to contact Baltic refugees directly, but they could use the forum of the Swedish press for the dissemination of proclamations and distribute information material among refugees in the transition camps. Carlgren, Sverige och Baltikum, 74–75. The Swedish authorities refused to reveal the private addresses of Baltic refugees, but the repatriation officers did not refrain from personally visiting individuals whose place of residence they had gained knowledge of in order to pressure them to return to the Soviet Union. Berge, Flyktingpolitik i stormakts skugga, 60, 68. 124.  Despite lively protests on the part of a huge variety of political and societal actors in Sweden, the government decided to extradite them together with several thousand German military internees, who had arrived at the Swedish coastline mainly from Courland, immediately after Germany’s capitulation. This topic has been covered by a wide range of publications, among them the detailed reconstructions compiled by Latvian émigrés in Sweden. See Freivalds, De internerade balternas tragedi i Sverige; Zalcmanis, Baltutlämningen 1946. 125.  In reaction to the extradition, the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter warranted the “personally unimpeachable Balts” in Sweden the future “protection of the public opinion.” Quoted in Freivalds, De internerade balternas tragedi i Sverige, 339. The significance of public opinion for handling questions concerning the Baltic refugees was reaffirmed in an internal discussion at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs two years

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later. Gösta Engzell, the Foreign Ministry’s director-general for Judicial Affairs, to Rolf Sohlman, the Swedish envoy to the Soviet Union (strictly confidential), 16 March 1948, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 79, f. 9, pp. 1–2. 126. Berge, Flyktingpolitik i stormakts skugga, 21, 64. Baltic civilians in Sweden were granted a collective status as political refugees protecting them from forced extradition to the occupied homeland, which is particularly interesting given the fact that Sweden had officially recognized the annexation of Estonia and her Baltic neighbor states into the USSR in 1940. Notini Burch, A Cold War Pursuit, 96. However, the recurring pattern of neutral Sweden’s maneuvering under first German and subsequently Soviet pressure during World War II had shown that a firm stance in one issue usually required concessions in another. Although the civilian Baltic refugees were subject to special protection, the boats on which the majority of them had escaped to Sweden were not. Even the boats that had been built during the German occupation after July 1941 and thus did not constitute part of the nationalized goods over which the Soviet Union claimed ownership, were committed to Soviet authorities and returned empty back across the Baltic Sea. Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland, 137–44, 146. 127. Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 12, 16. 128. Salomon, Refugees in the Cold War, 95. 129.  Pro Memoria, 11 December 1944, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 76, f. 2, p. 3. 130.  “Report on the situation in Estonia in the light of letters that have been smuggled to Sweden,” 1 July 1945, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 458, f. 15. 131.  Ericsson, “Exodus och underrättelseinhämtning,” 119–20. After the onset of the Soviet reoccupation in September 1944, Estonian resistance had developed into partisan warfare. The resistance fighters withdrew into the country’s vast forests and bogs, which earned them the name metsavennad (“forest brothers”). 132.  Dalia Kuodytė, “The Contacts between the Lithuanian Resistance and the West,” in The Anti-Soviet Resistance in the Baltic States, ed. Arvydas Anašauskas, 5th ed. (Vilnius: Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, 2006), 82. 133.  Mart Laar, “The Armed Resistance Movement in Estonia from 1944 to 1956,” in The Anti-Soviet Resistance in the Baltic States, ed. Arvydas Anašauskas, 5th ed. (Vilnius: Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, 2006), 222. 134.  Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 81, 85–86. 135.  Pro Memoria (secret), 23 March 1945, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 77, f. 3, pp. 1–2. 136.  Pro Memoria of the Swedish National Security Service to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (secret), 25 August 1947, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 78, f. 8, pp. 1–2. 137.  “Pravda Says Estonians Front U.S. Spy Ring in Sweden,” The Washington Post, 7 August 1947. 138.  Antoni Z. Kaminski and Bartłomiej Kaminski, “Road to ‘People’s Poland’: Stalin’s Conquest Revisited,” in Stalinism Revisited. The Establishment of Communist Regimes in East-Central Europe, ed. Vladimir Tismaneanu (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2009), 211. 139.  Gösta Engzell, the Swedish envoy to Poland, to Foreign Minister Undén, 24 February 1949, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 69 (microfilm F035-3-32250), f. 5, p. 3.



The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949 61

140.  Staffan Söderblom, the Swedish envoy to the Soviet Union, to Foreign Minister Christian Günther, 30 December 1944, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 486, f. 38, p. 3. The Swedish transport of relief supplies that reached Lublin on December 1st, 1944 was the very first foreign relief action for the devastated country. 141.  Report by Czesław Bobrowski, the Polish envoy to Sweden, for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 17 November 1949, in AMSZ, z. 8, w. 4, t. 59, s. 13. 142.  Report by Michał Jachnis on the first half year of 1950, 31 July 1950, in AMSZ, z. 20, w. 5, t. 68, s. 65. 143.  Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 51, 54, 66. 144.  Ibid., 68. 145.  Claës Westring to Sven Grafström, the director-general for Political Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 20 June 1946, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 68, f. 3, p. 2. 146.  Claës Westring to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (confidential), 10 August 1946, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 488, f. 43, p. 1. 147. Freivalds, De internerade balternas tragedi i Sverige, 111. 148.  Telegram from Rolf Sohlman to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 28 August 1947, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 68, f. 3, p. 2. 149.  The correlation could be observed already during World War II. See Andræ, Sverige och den stora flykten från Estland, 63, 84. 150.  Żaba, who later became one of the most active protagonists of Polish émigré political activity, had left his position at the Polish legation in Helsinki together with envoy Sokolnicki during the war. After a short-term employment at the British legation in Stockholm, he worked as the Polish legation’s press attaché until its dissolution in July 1945. Arnold Kłonczyński, “Prasa szwedzka wobec wydarzeń w Polsce w świetle polskich raportów dyplomatycznych z lat 1945–1956,” in Polska—Szwecja w XX wieku, Wpływy i inspiracje, ed. Jan Szymański (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2007), 78. 151.  Information note on the activities of the “Organization for the Fight against Communism” (Organizacja Walki z Komunizmem) on Swedish territory (most probably written by an official of the Ministry of Public Security), 8 November 1946, in Archiwum Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej—Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu [Archive of the Institute of National Remembrance—Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation, AIPN], BU 0236/72.61–62. 152.  Telegram from the Swedish legation in Warsaw to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 6 December 1947, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 488, f. 44. 153.  Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 60, 64. 154.  Kłonczyński, Stosunki polsko-szwedzkie, 28. 155.  Jerzy Kochanowski, Jenseits der Planwirtschaft. Der “Schwarzmarkt” in Polen 1944–1989, vol. 7 of Moderne Europäische Geschichte (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2013), 167, 177. 156.  Claës Westring to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (strictly confidential), 3 October 1945, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 487, f. 40, p. 2. 157.  Protocol of the interrogation of the suspect Jerzy Śmiechowski by First Lieutenant Kędzior from the Ministry of Public Security, 22 November 1947, in AMSZ, z. 8, w. 28, t. 371, s. 8.

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158.  Kłonczyński, Stosunki polsko-szwedzkie, 63. 159.  Protocol of the interrogation of the suspect Jerzy Śmiechowski by Second Lieutenant Laszkiewicz from the Ministry of Public Security, 7 November 1947, in AMSZ, z. 8, w. 28, t. 371, s. 3. 160.  The Swedish consul in Gdańsk, Torsten Bergendahl, was indeed well informed on the smuggling of political refugees to Sweden via the port of Gdynia. Although he personally considered that the primary task of Swedish captains was to coordinate the coal deliveries to Sweden and not to interfere in Poland’s domestic affairs, his words reveal a strong sympathy for the captains and sailors who were determined to help “with open eyes.” Torsten Bergendahl to Claës Westring, 13 September 1947, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 68, f. 4, p. 2. 161.  The Swedish legation in Warsaw to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 27 January 1948, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 68, f. 4, p. 1. 162.  Report by Gösta Engzell for the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (confidential), 11 February 1949, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 69, f. 5, p. 1. 163.  Kłonczyński, Stosunki polsko-szwedzkie, 133, 233. 164.  Political report by Czesław Bobrowski for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2 November 1949, in AMSZ, z. 8, w. 4, t. 61, s. 26. 165.  Report by Gösta Engzell for the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (confidential), 21 February 1949, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 69, f. 5, p. 2. 166.  Gösta Engzell to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2 January 1950, in RA, UD 1920, HP 80, vol. 114, f. 1, p. 1. 167.  Gösta Engzell to Östen Undén (confidential), 14 December 1949, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 490, f. 49, p. 4. 168.  In 1948, 631 Polish refugees reached Sweden, either by their own means, mostly on fishing cutters, or as stowaways on Swedish coal ships and passenger ferries. Due to a tightening of the Polish border regime, their number dropped to 380 in 1949, while only 80 refugees arrived in 1950. Kłonczyński, Stosunki polskoszwedzkie, 120. Another reason for the sudden decrease of the number of defected Polish citizens were the Swedish authorities’ own measures to stop the flow of incoming escapees, which included tougher sanctions against shipping companies whose vessels were used to smuggle Poles across the Baltic Sea. Notini Burch, A Cold War Pursuit, 139. 169.  Bernd Henningsen, “Østersøregionens politiske og kulturelle betydning,” in Mare Balticum. Østersøen—myte, historie, kunst i 1000 år, ed. Michael Andersen et al. (Copenhagen: Nationalmuseet, 2002), 154. 170.  “Förföljda balter lämnar Sverige,” Dagens Nyheter, 5 June 1948. These incidents caught the spirit of the time and were widely covered especially by the conservative Swedish press. An incident that in many ways determined the future attitude of Estonian refugees toward their co-nationals in the Estonian SSR was the alleged kidnapping of two Estonian boys, who were lured by a Soviet Estonian “provocateur” and his tales of prospective career opportunities in the homeland to board a ship to Leningrad, from where they never returned. “Estpojkarna förledda av ung provokatör. Kidnappad bror slog sig ut ur båthytten,” Stockholms-Tidningen, 31 May 1948; “Stor Sovjetaktion i Sverige mot den baltiska ungdomen,” Dagens Nyheter, 3



The Topography of Resistance and Opposition around the Baltic Rim, 1939–1949 63

June 1948. The general fear of infiltration was not entirely unfounded. The archives of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Alien Commission reveal at least two cases of Estonian citizens who lost their refugee status and were expelled due to their secret cooperation with intelligence officers of the Soviet embassy and their disclosure of insider information about the Estonian refugee community in the Swedish capital. Notini Burch, A Cold War Pursuit, 224–26. 171.  Protocol of a meeting of the Aliens Appeals Board of Sweden, 4 February 1948, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 68, f. 4, p. 14. 172.  Report by the Swedish National Security Service’s branch in Norrköping, 15 February 1949, in RA, UD 1920, vol. 69, f. 5, p. 1. 173.  Report by Michał Jachnis on the second half year of 1949, 31 January 1950, in AMSZ, z. 20, w. 5, t. 68, s. 45. 174.  Rana Mitter and Patrick Major, “East Is East and West Is West? Towards a Comparative Socio-Cultural History of the Cold War,” in Across the Blocs. Cold War Cultural and Social History, ed. Rana Mitter and Patrick Major (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2004), 12–13. 175.  During the first post-war years, many refugees, similarly to the partisan fighters in the Soviet sphere of influence, were convinced that their homelands would soon be liberated by the Western Allies and prepared for a new war. This was the background of the formation of the largest organization of the Polish diaspora, the Polish Ex-Combatants Association (Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantów, SPK). The initial aim of the association, which gathered mainly members of the Polish Armed Forces in the West, was the maintenance of an effective network between the former military units in order to ensure immediate concerted action after the expected outbreak of World War III. Uggla, Polacy w Szwecji, 106. Also among the Estonians in the West, corresponding measures were taken by former members of the armed forces, especially in the United States, which formed a separate phalanx of émigré activism by propagating the formation of a volunteer corps in view of an anticipated armed conflict with the Soviet Union. See the translated version of a circular letter that was disseminated among Estonians in Stockholm in spring 1948, sent as an attachment of a letter of the Department of the Interior of the Swedish Armed Forces to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 16 June 1948, in RA, UD, P 40, vol. 79, f. 9. 176.  Rebas, “Sverigeesternas politiska verksamhet,” 98. 177.  Both organizations were founded in the first half of 1946, when the renunciation of political activism was still an obligatory guideline for any collective and individual activity of refugees from Sweden’s opposite coasts. 178.  Report by Michał Jachnis, 30 July 1949, in AMSZ, z. 20, w. 5, t. 68, s. 17. 179.  The Swedish branch of the SPK had its head office in Lund, which, like neighboring Malmö, hosted a large Polish community with distinct sympathies for the government in exile. Report by Michał Jachnis, sent as an attachment to a letter to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1 April 1949, in AMSZ, z. 20, w. 5, t. 68, s. 1. 180.  Report by Michał Jachnis, 30 July 1949, in AMSZ, z. 20, w. 5, t. 68, s. 20. 181.  Report by Michał Jachnis, 1 April 1949, in AMSZ, z. 20, w. 5, t. 68, s. 1. 182.  Rebas, “Sverigeesternas politiska verksamhet,” 98.

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183.  Report entitled “Eesti Rahvusnõukogu konverents Stockholmis 18. juunil 1949. a.—Ettekannete teesid,” presenting the major theses addressed during a conference of the Estonian National Council, 18 June 1949, in RR, f. 3, s. 75 (“E.R.N. algperiood, A. Rei arhiiv”), p. 6. 184. Küng, Fyrtio år i Sverige, 9. 185. Kangro, Estland i Sverige, 86; Rebas, “Sverigeesternas politiska verksamhet,” 101. 186.  Information letter on the foreign policy activities of the ERN entitled “Eesti Rahvusnöukogu [sic] Välispoliitiline Tegevus,” n.d. (after January 1949), in RR, f. 3, s. 75, p. 2. 187.  Statute of the Estonian National Council, n.d., in RR, f. 3, s. 75, p. 1. 188. Untitled typed manuscript marked “Usalduslikult—Mitte trükiks avaldamiseks” (confidential, not for publication), 20 May 1948, in RR, f. 3, s. 80 (“ERN materjalid”), p. 2. 189.  Anna D. Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann, The Exile Mission: The Polish Political Diaspora and Polish Americans (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2004), 110. 190. Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 31. 191.  Kent Zetterberg, “Sverige på världsarenan—Några linjer i Östen Undéns syn på det internationella systemet, Sovjetunionen och den internationella politiken 1919–1965 och vägen mot den aktiva svenska utrikespolitiken,” in Att skåda Sovjetunionen i vitögat. Sex studier kring svenska relationer till Sovjetunionen under det kalla kriget, ed. Kent Zetterberg, vol. 2 of Försvaret och det kalla kriget (Stockholm: Försvarshögskolan, 2004), 82. 192.  Ulf Bjereld and Ann-Marie Ekengren, “Cold War Historiography in Sweden,” in The Cold War—and the Nordic Countries. Historiography at a Crossroads, ed. Thorsten B. Olesen (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2004), 153. 193.  Report by Czesław Bobrowski for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 11 August 1948, in AMSZ, z. 6, w. 80, t. 1204, s. 39; Swedish translation of an article entitled “About the Wheel of History,” Novoe Vremia, 8 June 1949, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 531, f. 113, p. 1. 194.  Quoted in Ruin, Tage Erlander, 70. 195.  Report by the Swedish legation in Moscow for the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, most probably written by the military attaché, 22 March 1948, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 528, f. 102, p. 1. 196. Birgit Karlsson, Handelspolitik eller politisk handling. Sveriges handel med öststaterna 1946–1952, vol. 66 of Meddelanden från ekonomisk-historiska institutionen vid Göteborgs universitet (Gothenburg: Göteborgs universitet, 1992), 131, 236. 197.  A note in the diary of Sven Grafström, one of the diplomats who throughout the war and afterwards openly sympathized with the occupied nations’ representatives in Sweden, perhaps most concisely paraphrases the widespread stance behind the scenes of Swedish politics toward these issues, illustrating the dichotomy between realpolitik and factual political sympathies. On July 25th, 1947 he commented on Baltic opposition against Soviet rule after a discussion with Foreign Minister Östen



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Undén about Sweden’s policy toward the Balts: “Behind my statement . . . lies of course the feeling that these Balts are fighting a fully legitimate resistance struggle of a kind that we here should not condemn, although we should ensure that the activity in our country will not assume such forms that will affect us negatively.” Sven Grafström, Anteckningar 1945–1954, ed. Stig Ekman, vol. 15 of Historiska Handlingar (Stockholm: Kungl. Samfundet för utgivande av handskrifter rörande Skandinaviens historia, 1989), 820.

Chapter Three

“Cold Warfare” at the Edge of the Iron Curtain

ÉMIGRÉ POLITICS IN THE TIME OF A GLOBAL “WAR OF IDEOLOGIES” Despite the dramatic rise of East-West tensions after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, which triggered massive armament in the West, the military conflict remained a proxy war. In Europe, there were no signs of a transition from cold to hot war, which many anti-Soviet émigrés and partisan fighters in the communist orbit still regarded as the only path to liberation from the “Soviet yoke.” Instead, Europeans on both sides of the Iron Curtain geared up for a permanent state of simmering conflict, as, to quote John Lewis Gaddis, “what was thought to be unendurable became endurable.”1 At the peak of the early Cold War, the heavily militarized East-West frontier appeared almost as a borderland between different civilizations. Appalled by the communist takeover in China and the subsequent war in Korea, Western opinion makers declared that the events in East Asia unveiled the inherently aggressive, expansionist nature of Communism, which by far exceeded Moscow’s hegemonic ambitions in Europe. The totalitarianism discourse and literary works such as George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 contributed to demonizing Stalin and the Kremlin as allegories of an ideology that filled the shoes of fascism as a fundamental threat to Western civilization.2 A firm stance against Communism in all its incarnations turned into a “prevailing fundamental agreement” that left lasting marks on the Western societies and their self-perception.3 The Truman Doctrine, announced in March 1947 in reaction to Stalin’s expansionist moves in southeastern Europe, heralded the onset of the U.S. containment policy vis-à-vis the USSR.4 Especially for the Balts, Washington’s decisive stand against the Soviet Union was a ray of hope, which was 67

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reinforced by General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1952 proclamation of the Baltic nations’ right to “return to the community of free people.”5 Not only Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians, but also refugees from the satellite states and even Ukrainians and Belarusians lined up behind the new course of U.S. foreign policy. The shared ideological convictions and political aims of Central and Eastern European émigrés and the spearheads of U.S. “cold warfare” against the Soviet bloc developed into a closely intertwined set of mutual dependencies and benefits. Political émigrés from behind the Iron Curtain were considered to be useful allies by anti-communist organizations such as the National Committee for a Free Europe in New York, which was secretly financed by the CIA,6 or the Assembly of Captive European Nations, the Committee’s offshoot founded five years later.7 Émigré organizations delivered regularly updated, firsthand reports on repression and political terror in the Stalinist societies of Central and Eastern Europe, which constantly fueled the vigor of a united Western front against Communism. The close cooperation with the U.S.-sponsored associations, on the other hand, provided the political leadership of the diaspora communities with the nimbus of Washington’s support and consent. The Anti-Communist Turn in Neutral Sweden From the early 1950s onwards, an analogous pattern of political cooperation between émigré activists and anti-communist forces developed even in neutral Sweden. Compared to the belligerent tone of leading “cold warriors” in the West, Swedish anti-Communism was rather tempered and subdued by the tradition of seeking a cross-party consensus in foreign policy issues.8 However, with the onset of the controversial debates on Sweden’s relation to NATO, the domestic political discourse turned polemical and sharpened the profile of the social democratic government’s main critics. The Farmers’ League, the stronghold of parliamentary opposition, defended the vision of a “flexible” neutrality policy that allowed for a stronger and more straightforward commitment to the Western camp. Bertil Ohlin and Jarl Hjalmarson, the chairmen of the Liberal People’s Party and the Rightist Party,9 represented a similar position. They demanded that neutrality should not exclude the option of cooperating with NATO and that a public discourse on Soviet policies should not be suppressed due to concerns about Sweden’s credibility as a non-aligned state.10 This critical stance toward the neutrality doctrine was popularized and amplified by Herbert Tingsten, the influential executive editor of the country’s leading daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter. Sweden’s “anti-communist number one” openly rejected neutrality as an option and became one of the most influential Swedish opinion makers during the early Cold War years.11 He did not



“Cold Warfare” at the Edge of the Iron Curtain 69

mince words when commenting on the political order behind the Iron Curtain, which he described in one of his early editorials as a kind of “red Nazism.”12 In this way, he fundamentally contributed to the increasingly negative tone of Swedish media reports on communist Europe.13 Tingsten, Ohlin, and Hjalmarson, the most prominent supporters of the Western option in Cold War Sweden, set the course for a pronouncedly anticommunist political agenda, which significantly contributed to the “Westernization” of Swedish foreign policy discourses at the height of the Cold War. Their commitment to unequivocally pro-Western and anti-communist views proved highly compatible with the political credo of the émigré leaders from behind the Iron Curtain, the only other significant anti-communist camp in neutral Sweden. As elsewhere in the West, the compatibility of political convictions and aims triggered the development of ideological kinship alliances. The cooperation with the leading troika of Swedish anti-Communism gave the political leadership of the diaspora communities a voice in domestic debates. For the major protagonists of Sweden’s pro-Western camp, on the other hand, the political cooperation with crown witnesses of Soviet atrocities sharpened their ideological profile and strengthened their rejection of an overly compliant stance regarding the Soviet Union and its allies. The shift in Sweden’s political climate marked the end of the wave of procommunist moods that had dominated the tone of foreign policy debates up to the late 1940s. Traditional anti-Russian sentiments, which in the interwar years had taken the shape of a deep-rooted anti-Bolshevism that contributed to strengthening pro-German sympathies among the bourgeoisie during World War II, made a strong comeback.14 In particular, the political leaders of the Baltic refugee communities, which constituted Sweden’s largest diaspora from behind the Iron Curtain, were able to capitalize on this, not least due to their contacts among the Swedish intelligentsia that reached back to the interbellum.15 The list of supporters of the Baltic Committee, which closely cooperated with the ERN and other leading émigré organizations, was soon extended by outstanding protagonists of the anti-communist camp in Sweden. Apart from Ohlin and Hjalmarson, the leaders of the parliamentary opposition, and the executive editor of Dagens Nyheter, Herbert Tingsten, the group of active supporters included a range of prominent politicians and famous writers such as Eyvind Johnson and Vilhelm Moberg. Among the sympathizers were also some of Sweden’s leading journalists and the Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, Helge Jung.16 In a controversial speech in 1950, the latter had given proof of the gap between Sweden’s official stance and the prevailing attitude among the military by openly supporting the idea of Swedish participation in a Western-led preventive war against the USSR in case of an immediate military threat.17

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The considerable support of conservative forces turned the Baltic Committee, once a small joint association of Baltic refugees and a number of Swedish intellectuals, into one of the most important organizations of its kind in post-war Sweden. It developed into a meeting place for a kaleidoscope of prominent political and societal actors, whose stand toward the post-war fate of the Baltic nations was identical to Washington’s.18 This was a clear statement addressed to the social democrats, whose attitude toward the Baltic war refugees had been ambiguous and half-hearted.19 The Baltic émigré leaders could thus count on the political and moral support of parts of the bourgeoisie, military circles, and conservative intellectuals. These were exactly the segments of society that the Soviet envoy to Sweden had warned Foreign Minister Östen Undén about as the most “untrustworthy” part of the Swedish public.20 Access to the conservative elites provided Baltic émigrés with a forum for anti-communist opinion-making that, although it never developed into more than an echo of the trenchant “cold warfare” in the NATO states, caused considerable diplomatic trouble for the Swedish government. In summer 1959, Stalin’s successor Nikita Khrushchev cancelled his planned state visit to Sweden due to a series of public demonstrations and publishing campaigns that had been organized by the Baltic Committee together with a group of anti-communist associations in Stockholm.21 Informally, the Soviet leadership let Foreign Minister Undén know that it was the Swedish government’s passivity in view of the “poisoned atmosphere” of anti-Soviet moods and the personal insults against the Soviet Communist Party’s First Secretary himself that had induced Khrushchev to call off the trip.22 By the early 1950s, neutral Sweden figured as an “American satellite” in communist Europe’s propaganda war with the West, which was unleashed by the anti-Western turn in Soviet foreign policy.23 The Kremlin brought the satellites into line with its own world view, according to which Western European Social Democracy played the role of a willing “tool of ‘U.S. imperialism.’”24 Consequently, even the social democratic government of Sweden was denounced as an active supporter of the “imperialist camp.” The communist propaganda machinery systematically defamed Swedish neutrality, drawing suggestive parallels between the Swedish government’s appeasement policy toward Nazi Germany during the war and its increasingly accentuated pro-Western orientation.25 Seen from the perspective of Moscow and Warsaw, Sweden had transformed from a bridge between the blocs into a gateway for and center of “American war propaganda in Scandinavia.”26 Although the harsh tone toward Sweden went in line with the general deterioration of East-West relations, the existence of diaspora communities with a pronounced anti-communist leadership on Swedish soil additionally fueled the propagandistic attacks. In view of Sweden’s liberal refugee policy, the



“Cold Warfare” at the Edge of the Iron Curtain 71

country was vilified by communist propaganda as a “promised land for the fascist dregs,” that is for political refugees from Poland and the Soviet Baltic republics, who lived in “servile prosperity,” nourished by the “alms of their Swedish protectors.”27 The growing discord in the diplomatic relations between Sweden and her communist neighbors was echoed by a small propaganda war carried out between Swedish newspapers on the one hand and the Polish and Soviet press on the other. At the peak of the early Cold War, journalistic attacks and counterattacks formed virtually the only noteworthy level of communication between Sweden and her opposite coasts. Even Sweden’s trade with the Eastern bloc, initially seen as the basis for peaceful cooperation and coexistence in the Baltic Sea Region, stagnated.28 Among the major reasons for the freezing of commercial relations with the East were the firm entrenchment of the Swedish economy into the trade system of the Western hemisphere and the obligations that close economic cooperation with the United States and its allies entailed. In December 1951, the Swedish government agreed to cooperate with the CoCom, the NATO states’ Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Strategy Export Controls, which controlled and limited the transfer of strategic goods to Eastern bloc countries in exchange for military assistance on the part of Washington.29 At the Peripheries of the Cold War Front Lines The East-West frontier that cut across the Baltic waters was not built of concrete and brick, neither was it secured with barbed wire and minefields as it was along the continental borders. Instead, it materialized in the military fortification of the coastlines of the communist-ruled states, which “encompassed the countries like prisons.”30 A safety buffer zone and a dense chain of watchtowers secured the coastline of the People’s Republic of Poland, which had been considerably extended by the incorporation of pre-war Germany’s northeastern provinces.31 According to the testimony of a Polish refugee who escaped to Sweden in 1952, the monitoring expanded to the coastal forests, especially around Gdynia and Gdańsk. Warsaw was eager to sabotage escape attempts and to forestall conspiratorial movements of Western spies, whose smuggling into Poland by sea the regime obviously feared. The refugee claimed that in comparison with the strictly monitored Polish shores, the Swedish coastline was an easy target for communist forces that aimed to infiltrate the country through their own couriers and informants,32 although the military surveillance of the Swedish coastal waters had increased considerably since the turn of the decade.33 The situation along the coast of the Soviet Baltic republics resembled the case of the Polish shores. In the USSR, however, the fortification of the maritime

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borders took on a dimension that mirrored the paranoia of Stalin’s rule and the Kremlin’s distinct mistrust toward the Baltic nations. By 1950, the local administration and border patrols of the Estonian SSR had managed to establish a virtually impenetrable cordon of military surveillance that sealed off the altogether 3,000 kilometers in total of Estonian beaches.34 Due to Estonia’s sensitive geographical location in the vicinity of Sweden and Finland, her numerous islands and most of the coastal districts were transformed into restricted areas that were closed to civilians. A ten- to fifty-meter-wide raked sand strip was fenced off with barbed wire, while the wider coastal exclusion zone reached as far as five kilometers inland. The local population was allowed to reside in the coastal villages with a special permit, but not to go near the sea itself.35 An additional cordon was set up by the Soviet National Security Agency. The organization, from 1954 onwards commonly known as the KGB, established a network of informants that monitored all groups with access to the sea and, hence, the Soviet frontier. From the mid-1950s, the recruitment of agents was considerably intensified, so that by the end of the decade, a dense network of several hundred covert informants, mainly of Russian origin, monitored Estonian sailors and the fishermen sailing the inshore waters on behalf of the fishing kolkhozes.36 Thus, within a decade, Estonia and its inhabitants, for whose history and cultural identity the geographical location at the shoreline had been a crucial factor, had virtually been cut off from the Baltic Sea. The Estonians were compelled to turn their back on what had always been a bridge to the West. As a Soviet republic along the western fringes of the USSR, their country had been degraded to a peripheral economic “hinterland of Leningrad.”37 In view of the extraordinary efforts that the Soviet authorities invested in the hermetic closure of the Baltic maritime borders, it became virtually impossible to escape the Soviet Union by sea.38 The few cases of attempted escape where Estonians were involved took place in the wild and scarcely populated borderlands of Karelia. However, even those who managed to cross the border were sent back by Finnish authorities before they reached Swedish territory.39 Only a smaller number of citizens of the People’s Republic of Poland and, to a lesser degree, the German Democratic Republic succeeded in escaping via the Baltic Sea during the Cold War. The number of Poles seeking asylum in Sweden steadily decreased from the late 1940s onwards and reached insignificant dimensions by the mid-1950s. Although still 123 Poles had made it to Sweden in 1951, the 1955 statistics mention only three refugees, which mirrors the efficiency of Warsaw’s border regime along the Polish shores.40 An episode that took place in the fall of 1953 illustrates the extraordinary determination with which the Polish authorities endeavored to prevent citizens from leaving the country illegally. The escape of two Poles heading on a float for Bornholm was thwarted on the open sea



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in a manhunt that involved a small army of more than one hundred soldiers, eight military aircrafts, sixteen coast-guard cutters, four cars, and two dogs.41 Any successful escape of a Pole to Sweden was thus considered a sensation by the Swedish press, whose coverage of such incidents further increased the tensions between Warsaw and Stockholm.42 The Baltic Sea had, to use a frequent metaphor of the early Cold War era’s émigré discourses, thus turned into a “moat behind prison walls.”43 Moreover, it developed into a setting for openly confrontational encounters. After a series of incidents on Swedish ships in Soviet and Polish territorial waters and harbors and on vessels from the opposite coast in Sweden, which involved sharpened controls and raids by the coastguards,44 the tensions culminated in the only armed Cold War confrontation between the states around the Baltic rim, known as the “Catalina affair.” Since the beginning of the 1950s, the radar monitoring system along the coastlines of the Soviet Baltic republics had been the target of signals intelligence-gathering operations, conducted by the Swedish National Defense Radio Establishment in cooperation with the Swedish Air Force.45 In June 1952, one of the aircrafts involved was shot down by the Soviet military, resulting in eight casualties. Even the Catalina flying boat that searched for the aircraft was shot down off the Estonian coast. This time, however, the crew could be rescued. The facts were publicly denied by both Swedish and Soviet authorities, but the incident cast long shadows over Swedish-Soviet relations and fueled anti-Soviet resentment in Sweden for years to come.46 At the peak of the Cold War, the Iron Curtain lived up to its name. The advantages of geography and neutrality, which Polish and Baltic émigrés in Sweden had been able to use for their purposes up to the early post-war years, had lost their significance. In view of the increasing impermeability of the East-West frontier, the main focus of all émigré political activity shifted from conspiratorial operations inside communist Europe to concerted propagandistic attacks against the Soviet bloc. During the first half of the 1950s, this aspect of diaspora politics fostered the establishment of close bonds with the centers of “cold warfare” in North America and Western Europe, whose aim was to coordinate a joint anti-communist crusade. These alliances strengthened the position of émigrés who had direct access to the main ideological headquarters of Western anti-Communism and accelerated the political marginalization of the activists among the Polish and Baltic communities in neutral Sweden. During the war, the core of Polish political activists around the legation in Stockholm had played merely a supporting role in the transnational resistance networks, serving as a Northern subordinate branch of the exiled government. Even if Sweden had temporarily functioned as a major hub for the communication between the “state in exile” and the Polish resistance, all forms of

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political action against the German occupiers and, after summer 1944, the communist phalanx, were coordinated from Great Britain. For years to come, Sweden remained a periphery of Polish émigré politics in the West, whose uncontested political and intellectual centers were located in London, Paris, and Washington.47 The majority of Poles in Sweden reaffirmed their loyalty toward “Polish London,” but the vigor of their political leaders weakened.48 By the end of the 1940s, the monetary support of the British legation, one of the preconditions that fostered the development of an active and strident core of Polish anti-communist opposition in Sweden, had dried up. Moreover, signs of fatigue spread among the Polish diaspora in view of Stalin’s tightening grip on the states in the satellite belt. A return to the homeland in the nearest future thus appeared increasingly utopian for the large majority of Poles in Sweden. Instead, they faced the need to establish professional careers in their new country of residence and to create the financial basis for a permanent life abroad. Therefore, a significant number of prominent émigré leaders, among them several pre-war diplomats, announced their withdrawal from political activity. By the early 1950s, the already small circle of politically active Polish émigrés in Stockholm had dwindled to a handful.49 The precarious financial situation of many war refugees from Central and Eastern Europe decelerated the vigor of all émigré activity in the West. The Estonian community in Sweden was no exception.50 Nevertheless, the émigré leaders in Stockholm successfully defended their political and moral authority among the Estonian diaspora scattered across the Western hemisphere. After all, Sweden hosted the largest number of leading representatives of pre-war Estonia’s political and cultural elites that had managed to escape the approaching Red Army in 1944.51 Also, a considerable number of the Estonian resistance fighters who had maintained communication between the Nordic capitals and the partisan underground during the war remained in the country, as did the representatives of Estonia’s last non-Soviet government, who, as members of the ERN’s steering committee, represented the continuity of Estonian statehood. However, while Sweden for years had been the major seat of organized Estonian political and cultural activity outside the occupied homeland, the situation changed when the German DP camps were liquidated and tens of thousands of Balts were free to leave West Germany for other countries. The subsequent mass exodus led to the establishment of significant Estonian communities overseas. Émigrés in North America in particular soon claimed political leadership as the main stronghold of anti-Soviet Estonian activism in the West.52 August Rei, who as the foreign minister of the Tief government was the uncontested leader of Estonian émigré politics in Sweden, repeatedly claimed that the establishment of the Estonian National Council in 1947 rendered the



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formation of a government in exile redundant.53 However, from early 1952 onwards, émigré activists in North America, mostly sympathizers of the authoritarian pre-war regime of Konstantin Päts, challenged the legitimacy of the ERN as a legal successor to the pre-war Republic.54 In an attempt to defend Stockholm’s status as the political heart of the Estonian diaspora, Rei secretly appointed a government in exile in Oslo in January 1953, with himself as acting president and Aleksander Warma, the former Estonian envoy to Helsinki, as foreign minister.55 As expected, the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately declared that the government would not be recognized in Sweden and that it was not entitled to engage in political activity on Swedish soil.56 Thus, both Rei and his colleague Heinrich Mark were quick to assure that the government in exile was supposed to merely exist on paper and that its function was mainly symbolic. It was not only the Swedish authorities that challenged Rei’s Oslo coalition. With the establishment of a competing government in exile in West Germany only two months later, led by Alfred Maurer, a former state official in Päts’s Estonia, the struggle for the “imaginary position of power”57 reached a point of culmination. Although Maurer’s government in exile was dissolved after his death one year later, the schism between Päts’s supporters and the democratic faction had widened. The rivalry became evident during August Rei’s first visit to the United States in 1957, when local émigré activists sabotaged his communication with U.S. officials, informing them that Rei was not entitled to speak for the Estonian diaspora as a whole in foreign policy issues. They even insinuated that his escape from Moscow via Riga in 1940, while most of the diplomatic corps already had been arrested by the NKVD, casted more than a shadow of doubt on his credibility.58 Although Rei was backed up by the majority of Estonians in Sweden, the democratic camp’s gradual marginalization within the broader transnational network of anti-communist opinion-making was irreversible. The Power of the Word: Reports from the Crow’s Nest During the 1950s, émigré political activity relied almost exclusively on the power of words. Campaigns lobbying for the sake of the “captive nations” continued the war-time efforts to solicit political and moral support in the West. Émigré activists now focused mainly on debunking official propaganda that emanated from the capitals of communist Europe, and defaming the Soviet bloc as a set of ruthless regimes of tyrants and usurpers that ruled over “enslaved” peoples. The counterpropaganda campaigns frequently drew on the rhetoric of Western “cold warfare” in order to embed the political émigré struggle into the broader ideological, value-based alliance of transnational

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anti-Communism stressing the organic belonging of the homeland societies to the world of Western civilization that unitedly stood up against the Soviet threat.59 In Sweden, also, political diaspora activism based its strategies on the rhetoric of a unified Western struggle against a totalitarian system. The anticommunist turn in Swedish public opinion set the scene for a series of antiSoviet campaigns that left lasting marks on domestic foreign policy debates. One of the most active organizations in this field was the Estonian National Fund which developed into the Estonian diaspora’s most vigorous political organ with branches in Denmark, West Germany, and Great Britain as well as in North America.60 Initially, its campaigns focused mainly on the annexation of the Baltic states and the “Red Year” between June 1940 and June 1941. Estonian émigrés in Sweden had a fundamental advantage over the North American diaspora community, as they possessed a rich collection of documents on the first Soviet occupation, which had been smuggled across the Baltic Sea by couriers and refugees during the German occupation. At a secondary level, the publishing activities of the ERF were aimed at highlighting the economic and social achievements of pre-war Estonia, stressing small nations’ right to independence.61 This narrative challenged the Swedish pre-war debates on the alleged “political immaturity” of the Baltic states; an argument that had considerably influenced the Swedish government’s decision to de facto recognize the incorporation of the Baltic states into the USSR in 1940. As Cold War tensions rose, the focus shifted to the present. During a press conference in June 1950, representatives of the ERN stated that they considered it to be their “duty to inform the world” of the ongoing events in Soviet Estonia and the neighboring Baltic republics. Despite the scarcity of reliable information, the political leadership of the Estonian diaspora outlined a strategy for disseminating the fragmentary information that was at their disposal on deportations, mass arrests, and the impact of Soviet rule on the national economy and culture.62 From 1946 onwards, the ERF had been spreading information about current events via the bulletin Newsletter from Behind the Iron Curtain and a publication series entitled East and West. But it was the programmatic shift of 1950 that led to a significant “revitalization of the ideological struggle,”63 which triggered fervent publishing activity. Ten years after its foundation, the ERF could look back on 394 newsletter editions as well as 27 books and brochures.64 A large part of this productivity was down to the work of Aleksander Kaelas, chief editor of the ERF and chairman of the ERN’s Information Commission, who, according to Aleksander Warma, possessed “the largest and profoundest collection of material on the situation in Soviet Estonia.”65 His book Human Rights and Genocide in the Baltic States, distributed among the delegates of the United Nations’ General Assembly in



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1950, was considered the Baltic émigré publication that had gained the largest influence over leading decision-makers in the West.66 Compared to the vigorous publishing activities of the ERF, the contribution to the Polish emigration’s anti-communist lobbying campaigns by émigré activists in neutral Sweden was much smaller in scale. Accordingly, their political writings seldom reached beyond the limits of the local press. The fervently anti-communist troika of Tadeusz Norwid-Nowacki, Norbert Żaba, and Wiesław Patek,67 who had all been affiliated with the Polish legation during World War II, formed an exception. The three journalists, who maintained excellent contact among the émigré population in London, contributed significantly to shaping the Swedish perception of communist Poland during the 1950s.68 As an officially accredited representative of the government in exile, Norwid-Nowacki topped Warsaw’s list of state enemies in neutral Sweden, which in the Polish press earned him a variety of vilifying attributes, such as “the dark figure from Stockholm’s demimonde.”69 Together with Żaba, he edited the Stockholm-based newspaper Wiadomości Polskie, working at the same time as a correspondent for Dziennik Polski i Dziennik Żołnierza (“The Polish Daily and Soldier’s Daily”), which was the principal organ of “Polish London.” Patek, on the other hand, cooperated with the main newspaper of the group following General Anders, Orzeł Biały (“White Eagle”), while Żaba worked as a Scandinavian correspondent for the British press.70 Due to the active support by Sweden’s anti-communist elites, the trio’s reports on developments behind the Iron Curtain reached out to the Swedish public as well. These were disseminated mainly via the press, sporadically also via other channels, such as the Swedish Institute for International Affairs, which regularly recruited émigrés for its publication of reports on the ongoing events in communist Europe.71 Norwid-Nowacki and Żaba initiated close cooperation with the liberal newspaper Stockholms-Tidningen as experts on Central and Eastern European issues.72 According to the Polish press attaché in Stockholm, this initiated a distinct anti-communist turn in the newspaper’s coverage of the developments in the Soviet bloc.73 Patek’s views, on the other hand, gained considerable influence due to his work for the Malmö-based Sydsvenska Dagbladet and the conservative Svenska Dagbladet.74 The direct personal connections between Polish émigré newspapers in Stockholm and London and the main organs of the liberal and conservative press in Sweden illustrate the ability of émigré activists to make their voices heard in contemporary political debates. Swedish newspapers now served as echo chambers of the ongoing propagandistic struggle between the political diaspora and the homeland regime.75 Although the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs regularly issued official protests against the fact that political refugees were given the opportunity to exert influence on Swedish public opinion,76

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the Swedish authorities did not interfere, citing, as usual, the traditions of freedom of speech. However, this assertive stance also reflected the conviction among parts of the state administration that the émigrés’ “antidemocratic agitation,” as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Warsaw preferred to put it, revealed “a whole lot of truth.”77 The credibility of the counterpropaganda campaigns relied on the extensive knowledge of ongoing processes in the communist orbit. Thus, the publishing activities were only the tip of the iceberg of émigré political activity during the first half of the 1950s. At another, less visible level, considerable energy was invested in attempts to surmount the safety cordon around the Soviet bloc, which blocked the free flow of information. The émigrés’ answer to this challenge might have been best described by Johannes Klesment, one of the Tief-government’s three ministers in Sweden. At the ERN’s 1951 congress, he stated that it was the mission of the Estonians in the free world to adopt the tactics of general staff during an armed conflict. As the underground resistance in Soviet Estonia was unable to transmit direct instructions to the political émigré leadership, the wishes and aspirations of the homeland society had to be deduced on the basis of a thorough analysis of all available sources.78 Hence, open source intelligence operations that were based on the principle of “reading between the lines” became the backbone of émigré politics. Similar efforts of decoding the opaque world of life under Soviet rule were carried out by a wide range of actors in the West, among them the hosts of Sovietologists and Kremlinologists, who, on behalf of Western governments and intelligence units, focused on the “scrupulous contextual analysis” of communist state propaganda.79 In order to coordinate the efforts of collecting reliable information about the situation in the occupied Baltic states, the ERN established a separate subsection that stayed out of the public eye. Under the leadership of Arvo Horm, the ERN Büroo became a major center for the gathering and dissemination of information about the situation in Estonia.80 Since the end of the war, Estonians in Sweden had been collecting testimonies from refugees, which were completed by firsthand reports from informants stationed in Finland.81 These activities stretched to Germany’s western occupation zones, where Estonian correspondents from Stockholm established contacts with released German prisoners of war who had spent at least part of their time in the USSR as forced laborers in Estonia.82 Up to the late 1940s, interviews with eyewitnesses constituted the main source of uncensored information on the impact of the Soviet occupation on life in Estonia.83 However, as the East-West conflict intensified and the Iron Curtain grew to be increasingly impermeable, firsthand reports from inside the Soviet Union became rare. Although the interrogation program was temporarily revitalized as a second wave of return-



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ing prisoners of war reached West Germany in the mid-1950s,84 the émigré activists were forced to develop alternative strategies. The few available firsthand accounts thus served mainly as complementary sources that allowed the émigrés to cross-check facts and data obtained through the careful analysis of the official propaganda, a task that was considerably easier to accomplish in close vicinity to the USSR. Soviet Estonian radio broadcasts, which could be intercepted in Stockholm, gave a fairly good understanding of the situation on the “home front.”85 Equally important were issues from the Soviet press, which were eagerly collected by the ERN Büroo and the ERF.86 Among the newspapers the émigrés managed to gather were party publications, but also titles that were harder to obtain such as the cultural weekly Sirp ja Vasar (“Hammer and Sickle”), professional journals such as Nõukogude Õpetaja (“The Soviet Teacher”), and the childrens’ magazine Säde (“Sparkle”).87 The analysis of radio broadcasts and the Soviet press required, as did the reading of the few letters that passed the extremely rigid censorship,88 a good overall understanding of the situation in Estonia. With their correspondingly trained experts, the ERN and the ERF developed into one of the main centers of wellinformed expertise on Soviet Baltic issues in the West. By the late 1940s, the political campaigns of Estonian émigré organizations throughout the Western hemisphere had become primarily based on information gathered by the “bandit headquarters” of the diaspora in Stockholm, as the Kremlin’s organ Pravda put it.89 The significance of the Swedish connection can be illustrated by the role played by Estonians in Sweden for the investigations by the so-called Kersten Committee, an initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives that reexamined the background of the Baltic states’ annexation under the leadership of Charles J. Kersten. Up to the spring of 1954, the ERN, ERF, and other Estonian organizations in Sweden had delivered around 150 written testimonies, documents, and written reports. Among them was a list compiled by the Soviet occupation authorities, which had been smuggled to Sweden during the war and featured the names of almost 60,000 murdered or deported victims.90 On the basis of the evidence provided by Balts all over the world, the Kersten Committee reaffirmed the unlawfulness of the Baltic states’ incorporation into the Soviet Union. This strengthened the U.S. government’s firm line of non-recognition and confirmed the status of the only diplomats of pre-war Estonia that were still in office: envoy August Torma in London and consul Johannes Kaiv in New York.91 The concluding report by the Kersten Committee reflected the unifying credo of Baltic émigrés and the “cold warriors” in the West: that “peaceful coexistence,” a motto embraced by the Kremlin soon after Stalin’s death, was only a smoke screen, designed to create a time slot that allowed the USSR to raise a “generation of fanatics” and expand its military power

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to a degree that would allow Moscow to extend its “communist colonial system” westwards.92 The information-gathering activities of Polish émigrés largely resembled the strategies of the Estonians. In Sweden, it was mainly the staff of the newspaper Wiadomości Polskie that regularly monitored the press of the People’s Republic of Poland.93 Moreover, they systematically interviewed Polish refugees, whose testimonies, therefore, also found their way into the liberal and conservative Swedish press.94 With the foundation of Radio Free Europe’s Scandinavian branch in Stockholm in 1951, these activities were efficiently coordinated with similar operations in other parts of Western Europe. Under the auspices of the Free Europe Committee, the RFE constituted as much a radio broadcast station as a research center on the political, social, and economic development behind the Iron Curtain. In contrast to the BBC or the Voice of America, which delivered news from a Western perspective, the RFE aspired to serve as a true alternative to national state radio stations in the satellite belt, delivering uncensored reports on domestic issues that had leaked out to the West.95 Political refugees and émigrés from the states targeted by the RFE were the “key players of this ‘Cold War of the ether,’” who delivered the needed material on which the broadcasts were based and retransmitted them back behind the Iron Curtain in their mother tongue.96 With the help of a vast network of contributors recruited among the Central and Eastern European diasporas in the West, RFE thus aimed at weakening the Soviet grip on the region by mobilizing “indigenous anti-Communist elements” in state socialist Europe.97 The Polish section of the RFE, which played a key role in the strategic agenda of the broadcasting station, was, from the spring of 1952 onwards, led by Jan Nowak-Jeziorański, who during the war years had served as a courier between the Polish resistance and the exiled government. While the activities and broadcasts of the RFE were coordinated in the Munich headquarters, the fieldwork was carried out in several local branches. The Stockholm office was led by Michał Lisiński, who as an internee in occupied Norway had managed to escape to Sweden in July 1944.98 As elsewhere in the cities where the RFE’s Polish section had established regional branches, the staff of the Stockholm office focused on gathering a maximum of information on current developments and moods in Poland. Profiting from Stockholm’s geographical proximity to communist Europe, they built up a center of currently updated information on the developments behind the Iron Curtain, and this was eagerly consulted by the Swedish media.99 Thus, Lisiński and his confidants, among them Norbert Żaba and General Witold Szymaniak, who both had been members of the diplomatic corps in Stockholm during the war, joined the list of state enemies of the People’s Republic of Poland. A short con-



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versation with the employees of “Freies Europa,” as Warsaw’s propaganda persistently labeled the broadcasting station,100 could be enough to initiate an espionage trial that resulted in harsh sentences, as the case of two convicted Polish sailors who had visited Stockholm in the mid-1950s proved.101 Even the political leadership of the Estonian community in Stockholm saw broadcasting as a most efficient way of compensating for the lack of direct communication with the occupied homeland. Via radio transmissions, the émigré activists aimed at giving the political emigration a voice in occupied Estonia and strengthening the homeland population both morally and ideologically. Keeping up passive resistance meant to “blow at the weakest point of the enemy,” as August Rei put it in a programmatic essay advocating the dissemination of “propaganda of truth and freedom” via radio broadcasts.102 In May 1950, the ERN turned to the Voice of America with a formal request to start broadcasting in Estonian. The petition was favored by the broadcasting station’s leadership. From June 1951 onwards, Estonians in the USSR were thus able to receive Western transmissions in their mother tongue.103 Over the course of time, the ERN developed a close cooperation with the broadcasting station, not only by contributing with constantly updated reports on Soviet Estonia, but also by offering advice for the broadcasting agenda and contributing with recorded speeches addressed directly to the Estonian people.104 Intelligence Operations across the Baltic Sea At the peak of the early Cold War, Western intelligence services resorted to openly accessible sources in order “to create a more complete picture of the capabilities and intentions” of the communist states.105 Thus, it is hardly surprising that the extensive information-gathering activities on the part of émigré organizations from behind the Iron Curtain caught their attention. Although the efforts of penetrating the strictly monitored cordon around communist Europe were still mainly confined to signals intelligence operations with aircrafts and balloons,106 the intelligence services of Great Britain and the United States displayed great interest in cooperating with émigré activists in order to expand their knowledge about the ongoing political and social processes in the state socialist countries. Geographical proximity to communist Europe was an advantageous factor and significantly contributed to turning Sweden into a strategically located outpost of Western intelligence activity. Thus, Stockholm became, together with other frontier cities of Cold War Europe, such as West Berlin and Vienna, one of the key nodes in a clandestine network set up in 1951; a network established in cooperation between British and U.S. intelligence units and the

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Council of Polish Political Parties, the main camp of opposition against the government in exile in “Polish London.” Considerable energies and financial resources were invested in the recruitment of informants among Western diplomats and Polish citizens that were entitled to travel between Poland and the West. Valuable sources were, in particular, Polish sailors, who were regular visitors in Western harbors and could deliver firsthand information about everyday life, the role of the Church, and prevailing moods among society. However, at an early stage, the agents of the Department of Security (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa), the main tool of Stalinist Poland’s counterespionage, managed to infiltrate the network, which led to its dissolution in late 1952.107 The cooperation between Western intelligence services and Baltic émigrés, by contrast, was not confined to gathering information. Based on the conviction that it was possible to import social unrest that would strengthen the anti-Soviet partisan movements, intelligence officials in the West developed plans for smuggling Baltic spies behind “enemy lines,” envisioning “long-term, complex ‘secret army’ type operations that attempted to harness the local population into extensive guerrilla forces.”108 According to Alfons Rebane, a former Estonian military commander, who after the war served as a British intelligence agent and was responsible for the program’s Estonian section, the aim was to build up a task force of at least 20,000 men that could be quickly mobilized in case of an anticipated war between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union.109 The conspiracy was, however, based on a fundamental misconception, rooted in the lack of understanding of the totality of surveillance and control in the USSR. Not only the British Secret Intelligence Service, SIS, and the CIA, but also the Swedish Armed Forces’ intelligence corps, which had cooperated with Baltic refugees during the war, mistakenly assumed that the Baltic territories could still be used as a gateway into the Soviet orbit. In 1947, the intelligence corps of the Swedish Army resumed its communication with Baltic refugees.110 Seen from a national security perspective, the Soviet Baltic republics remained an area of strategic interest, not least because they hosted considerable Red Army units in the immediate vicinity of Swedish territorial waters. Swedish intelligence officers started recruiting suitable candidates among the local Baltic population, who were intended to be smuggled across the Baltic Sea after passing through a thorough training program that was organized in close cooperation with the British SIS.111 Inside the USSR, the infiltrators were expected to establish a network of informants, who would transmit information of political and military significance to Sweden via radio signals. A key figure involved in these plans was the former Estonian officer Arkadi Valdin, who, like his Latvian and Lithuanian counterparts, was a direct subordinate of Thede Palm, the head of the Swed-



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ish Armed Forces’ intelligence corps.112 Valdin maintained close contact with the SIS and, most probably, the CIA,113 organizing also both the training of the selected candidates in a Stockholm suburb and their clandestine passage to Estonian territory.114 The political leadership of the Estonian diaspora community was, however, neither informed nor consulted on this matter. The intelligence services acted primarily in the name of Swedish and Western security issues and were less interested in the émigrés’ political struggle for the restoration of independence. Against this background, the former military elites of the pre-war republics in the West were, due to their expertise and experience, definitely more attractive partners for cooperation. The secret operations eventually failed due to the efficiency of the surveillance apparatus that protected the Soviet borderlands from Western intrusion. Instead of opening up a gateway for Western intelligence services into Soviet territory, the infiltration program unwittingly turned into an effective tool for the KGB’s counterespionage section. Baltic operatives that had managed to land on the Soviet Baltic coastlines were either immediately killed or imprisoned, while others were turned into double agents who actively engaged in the KGB’s disinformation campaigns.115 After a failed evacuation effort, which resulted in the death of all involved agents that were intending to leave Estonia for Sweden in September 1951, the Swedish intelligence corps completely withdrew from the infiltration operations.116 The engagement of the SIS, by contrast, continued up to the mid-1950s, as did the activities of the CIA which specialized in parachuting spies into Soviet territory. Among them were also two Estonians who had been recruited in Sweden, educated in West Germany and the United States, and finally airdropped over the USSR as late as in May 1954.117 It took the SIS and the CIA, but also the involved Baltic émigrés, years to realize that even seemingly successful operations were merely a chimera.118 The KGB fabricated the legend that one of the Estonian spies had succeeded in establishing contacts with a (fictional) resistance movement, the Estonian Liberation Committee (Eesti Vabaduskomitee). One of the KGB’s “stage wins” was the infiltration of an agent into Sweden who, impersonating a courier of the Committee, managed to win Valdin’s confidence.119 The myth of the Liberation Committee was successfully used to misinform the British intelligence service, until the Soviet press triumphantly revealed the counterintelligence operation as a propagandistic victory over the West in 1956.120 This embarrassing exposure marked a decisive caesura that drew a line under the efforts to support and trigger armed resistance from abroad and terminated the conspiratorial alliances between Baltic émigrés and Western intelligence services. The circles around Arkadi Valdin were highly compromised by the scandal, although nothing indicates that the infiltration of Valdin’s secret network by

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the KGB actually caused any damage.121 The Estonian diaspora community’s political leaders, by contrast, remained largely untouched by the events. Their reactions to the news of the alleged existence of an underground resistance movement that had succeeded in establishing contacts with the West had been totally reserved from the very beginning.122 Apparently, their understanding of the situation in the USSR was sufficient to realize that successful infiltration was highly unlikely, which determined their own strategies of communicating with the homeland. In view of the fact that any physical penetration of the Iron Curtain seemed virtually impossible in the early 1950s, political émigrés from Central and Eastern Europe as a rule preferred to make use of the possibilities that technology offered. Ironically, it was the communist propaganda machinery that provided the necessary prerequisites for the transmission of anti-communist broadcasts across the Iron Curtain. In the course of large-scale programs of technological modernization, the authorities organized the mass dissemination of radio receivers for propagandistic purposes, which, however, considerably facilitated the interception of Western broadcasts.123 It was this aspect of post-war modernization in the East that paved the way for an “unprecedented programme of psychological warfare in Central and Eastern Europe,”124 which remained the main field of émigré politics for years to come. With the onset of the 1950s, the political struggle of Central and Eastern European émigrés entered its second decade. In view of the unfolding Cold War and the increasingly evident diplomatic tensions between East and West, the émigré activists joined forces with the camp of the “cold warriors” with whom they shared a fervent anti-communist stance. These networking processes under the roof of Western “cold warfare” significantly shaped the ideological credo and strategies of the counterpropaganda campaigns targeted at the communist regimes in Europe. Even in neutral Sweden, leading Polish and Baltic émigrés forged political alliances with liberal and conservative forces whose approach to Sweden’s neutrality doctrine was critical. At the height of Cold War tensions, oppositional émigré activism thus focused on establishing a common front with politicians and political parties that provided the necessary forum for lobbying activities intended to counterbalance the smoke-screens of communist propaganda.125 At the same time, Western radio broadcasting stations joined forces with émigrés in order to sabotage the communist regimes’ determination to monopolize information services, persistently penetrating the informational Iron Curtain that surrounded the Stalinist regimes. In view of the hermetic isolation of the communist states from the outside world, which was upheld by strict military surveillance and an efficient counterintelligence apparatus, any attempts at establishing durable oppositional networks across the East-West frontier were doomed to fail. Thus, the advan-



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tages of operating in considerable geographical proximity to the homeland seemed to be less relevant in the early 1950s. However, even as the Cold War was at its coldest, geography still mattered, not least because the gathering of reliable information about the ongoing events behind the Iron Curtain was a major objective not only of émigré activists but also of intelligence officers and Sovietologists throughout the Western hemisphere. It was therefore the émigrés operating close to their homelands, in particular, that had the potential to accomplish the mission of being the West’s “eyes and ears toward the East.” In this respect, both the Polish activists who formed a rather peripheral Scandinavian outpost of “Polish London” and the Estonian émigré leaders in Stockholm profited from the “incomparably better opportunities of collecting valuable information and data” that the neutral country offered.126 It was the proximity to the occupied homeland, as Arvo Horm reaffirmed in his speech on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the ERN’s foundation, that predestinated Sweden as the only suitable headquarter for the Estonian National Council.127 Indeed, the geographical factor turned out to be crucial for both the Estonian and Polish political activists in Sweden with the onset of the post-Stalinist era and the Khrushchev Thaw. The experimental sanctioning of limited East-West interaction in the Baltic Sea Region was a foretaste of the fields of cooperation and exchange between the shores that would open up from the late 1960s onwards under the impact of European détente. THAWING THE BALTIC: FIRST ENCOUNTERS ACROSS THE “SEA OF PEACE” The death of Josif Vissarionovich Stalin on March 5th, 1953, marked a decisive turning point with significant consequences both within and outside the Soviet Union. Stalin’s uncompromisingly ideological war-mongering and doctrinaire xenophobia gave way to a more pragmatic stance in both domestic and foreign policy issues. The onset of a gradual reform process within the Soviet bloc loosened the communist regimes’ suffocating grip on their citizens and paved the way for a careful rapprochement between East and West: the “first détente.”128 With the famous Secret Speech, delivered by Stalin’s successor Nikita Khrushchev during the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956, the new Kremlin leadership irrevocably dissociated itself from the worldview and doctrines that had dictated the political agenda during the previous decades. The era of the “harsh and hazardous climate” of Stalinism,129 which had virtually paralyzed the societies under its rule, was followed by what Poles called odwilż and Estonians sulaaeg: the Thaw.

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The Thaw and Its Repercussions around the Baltic Rim No sooner had Khrushchev delivered his Secret Speech than Bolesław Bierut, the Stalinist hardliner from Warsaw who had attended the Party Congress in Moscow, suffered a fatal heart attack. His successor, Edward Ochab, proved to be unable to channel the tendencies toward emancipation and social unrest in Poland, which eventually culminated in the workers’ riots of Poznań in June 1956. Their violent suppression and Ochab’s general incapability of restoring a stable order led to his replacement by Władysław Gomułka, a rehabilitated victim of Stalin’s anti-Titoist purges, who quickly turned into a symbol of the Poles’ hope for reforms toward a “national Communism.” With Gomułka’s appointment as general secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party, the relations between Moscow and Warsaw entered a phase of renegotiation which heralded a shift toward a more open-minded political and cultural climate in Poland. The signals from Warsaw were clear enough: the Kremlin’s ideological supremacy was broken, at least in the satellite belt. The Polish transition to a post-Stalinist order was thus essentially a peaceful one, despite the bloody “pacification” of the Poznań protests. A Soviet invasion of the kind that revolutionary Hungary experienced did not occur. In the USSR itself, the period of the Thaw was much chillier, especially for the Balts, who felt only an echo of the spirit of reform that had captured the Soviet Russian heartland. In Estonia, the few native leaders within the political and administrative apparatus had been removed before Stalin’s death and replaced by ethnic Russians or “Yestonians.”130 Ivan Käbin, the head of the Estonian Communist Party, belonged to the latter category and adapted only slowly to the new post-Stalinist climate. The central and most significant change seen from the perspective of Soviet Estonian society was, therefore, first and foremost the end of political terror.131 This was, however, no minor improvement to life in the Estonian SSR. Unlike in Poland, where de-Stalinization led to an officially sanctioned, rising level of access to Western culture,132 the USSR’s isolationist policy largely persisted. Nevertheless, the Thaw had a lasting impact on the Kremlin’s position regarding foreign policy. The shift to a less confrontational course considerably affected diplomatic relations in the Baltic Sea Region, which turned into a test area for Khrushchev’s new ideology of “peaceful coexistence.” Toward the mid-1950s, the biting tone that for long had characterized Sweden’s relations with its communist neighbor states turned milder. The harsh condemnation by the communist press of the neutral country as an “American satellite” and a lackey of the “imperialist camp” had been replaced by more favorable voices, which stressed the significance of Sweden’s neutrality doctrine as a peace-preserving factor in the Baltic Sea Region.133 The responses from Stockholm were positive. Prime Minister Tage Erlander made his first



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official visit to the Soviet Union in spring 1956, which was soon followed by the decision to elevate both the Soviet and the Polish legations in Sweden to embassy status.134 However, conservative and military circles remained highly suspicious of Moscow’s new strategy of promoting the Baltic Sea Region as a “zone of eternal peace,” which was developed in reaction to the remilitarization of West Germany.135 Indeed, information from within the Kremlin walls indicated that Khrushchev’s real intentions were of a “neutralization” of the Scandinavian countries according to the model of Finnish-Soviet relations.136 The “Sea of Peace” rhetoric, embedded in the broader context of Moscow’s disarmament campaign and supported by East German and Polish propaganda, followed a clearly strategic goal: NATO forces were to be kept out of the Baltic Sea basin, which would thus have been turned into a “Soviet mare clausum.”137 The parallels with Stalin’s tactics of expanding as far as possible the security belt around the USSR were obvious and triggered strong protests. According to the Swedish opposition leader Hjalmarson, there was no doubt that the Nordic countries were exploited to “function as an echo chamber for the symphony of peace” of communist propaganda.138 Although there was little Scandinavian support for and trust in this sudden “charm offensive,” there were explicit signals of an East-West rapprochement. The impact of the Thaw was noticeable first and foremost in Poland, which was de facto “no longer a fully totalitarian state.”139 De-Stalinization led to a gradual opening up of Polish society to intensified economic and cultural contact with the West. The strict surveillance of the fortified Polish coastlines, a heritage of the Bierut era, was also relaxed.140 This liberalization of the border regime paved the way for a renaissance of regional tourism. In August 1956, a first group of Polish tourists set course for Stockholm on the cruise ship M/S Mazowsze,141 which established a permanent tourist route between Sweden and Poland. Soon, even individual tourists were allowed to cruise the Baltic waters. Indeed, trips on private sailing boats to Sweden became popular as one of the cheapest and easiest ways to travel to the West.142 In addition, Poland received a growing number of foreign visitors, among them members of the Polish diaspora in the West. They were nevertheless strictly monitored by a large number of intelligence agents who, as far as possible, maintained control over the visitors’ activities and encounters on Polish soil.143 Poland thus constituted an exception within the Soviet bloc as it was the only country where “the curtain was left ajar.”144 The Soviet Union, by contrast, was still to a large extent the “fortress country”145 it had been under Stalin, in spite of Khrushchev’s less belligerent foreign policy. However, the first breaches began to show in the safety cordon that for more than a decade had isolated the Baltic peoples from the outside world. Postal censorship was liberalized, allowing the Balts to

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maintain written correspondence with relatives abroad to a larger degree than before.146 At the same time, the ban on foreign travel was partly lifted. Limited travel to the West became a tool of post-Stalinist “public diplomacy,” or, to put it bluntly, propaganda. Carefully selected members of the privileged castes of artists, musicians, and writers were expected to act as a counterweight to the anti-communists’ attacks against the Soviet Union as a “totalitarian system.”147 This was also the task of the first groups of Soviet Estonians who in the summer of 1956 left Leningrad for a Baltic cruise to the Nordic countries, the first non-communist states where Balts were permitted to travel.148 At the same time, the regime allowed selected foreigners to catch a first glimpse of life in the Estonian SSR. Official delegations of athletes and representatives of communist youth organizations were invited to Estonia, almost all of them from Finland and, to a much smaller degree, Sweden.149 In order to minimize the risks of uncontrolled encounters, the KGB established a special department which, similar to its counterpart within the Polish intelligence corps, the Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Służba Bezpieczeństwa MSW), shadowed both foreign delegation members and its own citizens abroad.150 Although Western influences were no longer seen as a “mortal threat” to Soviet rule,151 they were obviously considered contagious enough to justify a high level of vigilance. Divide and Rule The experimental, but still very limited, exchange between the societies in the East and West signaled the dawn of a new era in post-war Europe. There were, as the nascent rapprochement between the blocs illustrated, alternatives to the confrontational political course of the early 1950s. The first gaps that appeared in the Iron Curtain with the onset of the Thaw heralded a decisive turn for relations between the diaspora communities in the West and their communist-ruled homelands; relations which up to then had been virtually non-existent. Instead of continuing the propagandistic attacks against those who had refused to repatriate after the end of the war and thus deepening the ideological division between diaspora and homeland, the communist governments now officially sanctioned and encouraged the resumption of dialogue. The conciliatory attitude toward the diaspora communities was characterized by openly demonstrated goodwill, but the terms of this rapprochement were to be dictated by the regimes themselves. In July 1955, Bierut publicly turned to the Polish communities in the West with an appeal to return to the homeland.152 His initiative was soon echoed by an open letter signed by forty-eight prominent intellectuals, who condemned the continuation of life in voluntary exile of tens of thousands of Poles as a “waste of forces” that were due to the



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fatherland.153 These appeals fired the starting shot for a propaganda campaign that, although it was presented as a “spontaneous initiative ‘from below,’” was in fact orchestrated by the Polish Security Service.154 Under the code name Kraj (“Fatherland”), the authorities prepared a flood of radio broadcasts and bulletins, disseminated by the diplomatic representations and the merchant fleet or directly sent by mail to émigré households. The campaign was, at its core, a last reverberation of the state-organized repatriation programs. However, just as a decade earlier, the siren calls from Warsaw mostly faded away without any noteworthy echo. Although the return of a handful of prominent émigré intellectuals was undoubtedly a propagandistic victory, the overall number of repatriates did not exceed a few hundred.155 Aware of the unwillingness of the large majority of émigrés to return to a communist-ruled Poland, the regime modified its strategy. Its main tool was the Association for Cooperation with the Polish Emigration “Polonia” (Towarzystwo Łączności z Wychodźstwem “Polonia”), established in September 1955. The organization, which was directly subordinate to the Politburo and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, propagated the idea of a return to Poland as a patriotic duty, but endeavored at the same time to establish friendly relations with those who refused to repatriate. According to internal considerations, the rather apolitical masses of diaspora Poles could be used as a kind of “Trojan horse,”156 which in the course of time would undermine the legitimacy of their “reactionary” political leaders, in the propagandistic offensives usually branded as either “traitors,” “spies,” or “scoundrels.”157 The Warsaw government’s attempts to drive a wedge between political émigré leaders and the diaspora communities at large were partly successful. Although most émigrés remained unwilling to cooperate with the representatives of the communist order, there were segments among the Polish diaspora that turned out to be more receptive to Warsaw’s new tunes, even in Sweden, where many Poles still supported “Polish London.” One of the reasons was the strong nostalgia for the homeland that spread among the émigrés.158 This tendency was mirrored by the steadily growing number of applications for “consulate passports.” These documents were issued by the diplomatic representations of the People’s Republic of Poland and facilitated personal contact and travel to the homeland.159 Moreover, the percentage of economic refugees among the Poles in Sweden had, as elsewhere in the West, considerably grown since the turn of the decade. This fueled Warsaw’s plans to reduce anti-communist moods among the diaspora to a thin layer of “political varnish.”160 It was the Polonia, the community of largely apolitical co-nationals abroad, which formed the main target group and gateway for propagandistic appeals of patriotic solidarity and peaceful cooperation.161

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The Estonians in the West, by contrast, were, like the Latvians and Lithuanians, much more uniform in their stance toward the political order in their occupied homeland. The fervent anti-Soviet stance was a kind of “ideological glue” that unified the transatlantic diaspora community, which had remained highly homogeneous since 1944. Repatriation remained a very marginal phenomenon even after Stalin’s death. The very small group of Estonians that repatriated consisted exclusively of elderly people, which provoked a cynical comment from a Soviet embassy secretary in Stockholm who stated that the Estonian SSR obviously served merely as a “funeral parlor” for émigré repatriates.162 Repatriation propaganda thus played a minor role in the KGB’s attempts to split the diaspora community in order to neutralize the political damage that anti-Soviet émigré activity had caused. Instead, the strategists in Moscow and Tallinn increasingly focused on the enlightenment of the “misinformed” masses of Estonians abroad.163 Films, bulletins, and books on the achievements and successes of Communism in Estonia were distributed particularly among Estonian émigrés in Sweden, the “headquarters” of nationalist counterpropaganda.164 On the initiative of the KGB, a broad set of strategies was elaborated already in 1957,165 but it was not until three years later that encounters between émigrés and carefully selected Soviet citizens were officially orchestrated. With the foundation of the Society for the Development of Cultural Ties with Estonians Abroad (Väliseestlastega Kultuurisidemete Arendamise Komitee, VEKSA), modeled on the Soviet Russian organization Rodina (“Fatherland”),166 the authorities established a forum for limited exchange across the Baltic Sea. Like its Polish counterpart, VEKSA was also introduced as a grassroots initiative, reflecting the “genuine will” of the Estonian population to build bridges to their co-nationals in the West, although the organization was directly subordinate to the Soviet Estonian KGB.167 The conciliatory tone of the communist regimes nevertheless encountered strong resistance among the Central and Eastern European diaspora communities in the West. The majority of émigrés and political refugees condemned any cultural exchange with their communist-ruled homelands as an “implicit acceptance” of the political status quo.168 The anti-communist leadership of “Polish London” introduced the so-called “codex of the political émigré,” obliging anyone considering himself a political refugee to refrain from contact with representatives of the Warsaw government, even in cultural or trade-related matters.169 The Polish Ex-Combatants Association, for instance, a major social force especially among the Polish community in Sweden, firmly rejected the “consulate passports” and considered even one-time visits to the Polish embassy as a violation of unwritten rules.170 While Warsaw’s new policy achieved considerable success in West Germany, France, and



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Belgium, the Poles in Sweden were thus, in general, considered a “nut hard to crack.”171 The same applied to the Estonians, whose stance was equally orthodox toward the “Kremlin’s henchmen in Tallinn.”172 In the late 1950s, an informally uttered suggestion to at least consider establishing a minimum level of cooperation between émigré scholars and colleagues in Soviet Estonia was sufficient to unleash a storm of public indignation among the Estonian community.173 Estonian Émigré Activism during the Khrushchev Thaw The polemical and harsh tone with which many émigrés reacted to Soviet efforts to foster a peaceful dialogue between diaspora and homeland covered the underlying complexity of the Estonian diaspora’s stance toward the home country. The firm rejection of any form of communication with the Soviet regime was primarily directed against the “Russian occupiers” and their local collaborators, not Soviet Estonian society as a whole. Private correspondence, for instance, was an invaluable link to the fatherland and enabled émigrés to take part in the lives of relatives and friends they had left behind.174 Therefore, private visits to the Estonian SSR were not as categorically condemned as trips by prominent émigré scholars or artists, which were considered to be acts of treason that played into the hands of Soviet propaganda.175 Moreover, the willingness of the Soviet authorities to allow for restricted encounters between émigré and homeland Estonians was by some circles seen as a strategic advantage. The approach of the Estonian National Council in Stockholm, for instance, was rather pragmatic and unorthodox compared to the prevailing attitudes among the diaspora community, especially in North America. Seen from the perspective of the political émigré leadership in Sweden, the official sanctioning of limited East-West contact established an unprecedented gateway into the Soviet realm. Thus, while the émigré press started an “effectless polemic, out of touch with everyday life . . . the ERN Büroo silently continued its work,” adapting its political agenda to the opportunities that the new course of rapprochement offered.176 The onset of the Thaw revolutionized the strategies of penetrating the informational Iron Curtain, which since the early 1950s had developed into an increasingly important element of émigré political activity in the West. One of the methods used to challenge the rigid censorship apparatus was the symbiotic cooperation between Western broadcasting stations and émigrés. From April 1956 onwards, the so-called “Mailing Project,”177 which based on an alliance between the CIA-funded Free Europe Committee and activists from behind the Iron Curtain, developed a parallel strategy of triggering processes of “gradual democratization” in the Soviet bloc.178 By mass mailing

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Western books to the communist states, the strategists behind the program hoped to overwhelm the censorship authorities and ensure that broad circles of authority officials, journalists, intellectuals, and writers gained access to non-communist literature.179 Although these activities were mainly targeted at the satellite states, the program was soon expanded even to the occupied Baltic states. Due to the active engagement of the ERN, Stockholm became, together with Copenhagen, the major hub of the Baltic section of the “Mailing Project.”180 Additionally, Estonian activists in Sweden were involved in campaigns of ballooning leaflets and other printed counterpropaganda behind the Iron Curtain,181 which added to the overriding goal of “combining the spoken word of radio broadcasts and of the written word for effective propaganda.”182 However, it was the development of regional tourism across the Baltic Sea that opened up an entirely new field of oppositional activism and contributed to reconsolidating the strategic significance of Sweden at the forefront of the Estonian cause in the West. In the spring of 1955, the Soviet authorities drafted a resolution that reformed the rigid travel regime of the Stalin era and considerably facilitated traveling abroad for Soviet citizens. Sweden was among the first non-communist countries to be included in the list of potential tourist destinations.183 Thus, for the first time since the beginning of the Soviet occupation, even Estonians could legally travel abroad, primarily to the neutral Nordic neighbor states. Around eighty tourists from Soviet Estonia visited Stockholm in the summer of 1956, while an even larger number traveled to the Finnish capital.184 Apart from a handful of refugees who had managed to escape from the island of Saaremaa on a kolkhoz-owned fishing boat in 1955,185 these visitors were the first Estonians on Swedish soil that could deliver firsthand information about life in the Estonian SSR. The leadership of the ERN was determined not to miss this opportunity, although the first efforts to communicate with the visitors were still unelaborated and based on spontaneous action. The Soviet cruise liner M/S Pobeda with Estonian passengers on board arrived in early July, the announcement of which reached the émigrés via Soviet radio broadcasts shortly before the ship entered Stockholm’s harbor. A small group of activists, among them Arvo Horm, hurried to the port to receive the visitors, equipped with a pile of newspapers and a selection of émigré publications from the office of the ERN. As the tourists turned out to be more than willing to accept the offered printed matter, Horm hastily returned to his office on his bicycle in order to bring additional copies. Apart from disseminating literature about Estonian life in the West, the émigrés succeeded in exchanging some basic information on the fate of prominent Estonians, despite the omnipresent Russian “politruks,” the Soviet regime’s political chaperones that followed every tourist group abroad.186



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Although the visitors from the Estonian SSR showed a vital interest and willingness to communicate, the émigrés were highly aware of the fact that the tourists belonged to the loyal intellectual and administrative elites of the Soviet system and that all of them were most probably party members.187 They also understood that hardly anyone would dare to take émigré literature back across the Soviet border.188 However, the visitors were primarily seen as compatriots, despite their political loyalties to and involvement in the Soviet system. As they at least seemed to read the publications they had obtained on the spot, there was, as the émigrés reasoned, a chance that they would share the content among those who were unlikely to get a travel permit.189 This pragmatic attitude mirrored a significant change in the émigré approach to the homeland. The failure of the uprisings in Hungary and Poland and the destruction of partisan networks all over the Soviet bloc had quashed all hopes of being able to change the geopolitical status quo in Central and Eastern Europe by triggering resistance from below. Instead, the leaders of the political diaspora now targeted their counterpropaganda at those who earlier had been branded as collaborators: the established intellectual and cultural elites who made up the numerous cogs in the wheel of the communist system.190 The establishment of a regular tourist route between Leningrad and Stockholm, a result of post-Stalinist reforms and the reformulation of the Kremlin’s policy toward the Nordic states, took the émigrés by surprise. Thus, the ERN Büroo initially focused primarily on gathering as much factual information as possible from the Estonian members of visiting Soviet tourist groups in the summer months of 1956.191 However, by the onset of the tourist season in the following year, the émigrés had developed more coordinated strategies. While the ERF had so far been publishing information material for a Western audience, its publications increasingly targeted even visitors from the Estonian SSR. The purpose of the numerous brochures printed from 1957 onwards was to inform Soviet Estonian tourists not only of the political, social, and cultural achievements of the diaspora,192 but also about the émigré perspective on Estonia’s recent history, based on the available evidence and oral testimonies.193 The successful distribution of brochures among tourists from the Estonian SSR proved that there were gaps in the dense net of control and surveillance. Despite the alertness of the KGB agents who accompanied the tourists abroad, an increasing number of incidents proved that it was possible to escape the elaborate system of security measures. Indeed, in 1957, the Soviet Estonian KGB complained of “politically and morally doubtful individuals” who, after having passed the selection process for the travel permit abroad, used their trip in order to establish contacts abroad, carry out tasks for third persons, or to speculate with currency and goods.194

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The majority of Soviet Estonians allowed to travel to the non-communist orbit could, however, be regularly encountered in the streets of Helsinki. Thus, the ERN soon expanded its activities to Sweden’s eastern neighbor country. The Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church in Exile was the first émigré organization to discover the Finnish capital as a “neutral ground” for encounters with church representatives from the homeland and a strategic bridgehead for the systematic sending of parcels of religious publications to Estonia.195 At least from 1958 onwards, even the ERN regularly sent its own representatives to Helsinki in order to distribute and collect information from Soviet Estonian visitors.196 The KGB reports of the time confirm that such exchange was possible and that these new forms of interaction did not slip under the radar of the Soviet intelligence forces.197 For the first time since the war years and despite political dependency on the Kremlin, Finland regained her significance as a strategic toehold in the anti-Soviet struggle of the Estonian émigrés in neighboring Sweden. The geographical proximity to the Estonian SSR was not the only factor that cemented the crucial importance of Finland in Estonia’s post-war history of anti-Soviet opposition from 1956 onwards. It was also the commitment of Finnish citizens, the first Western foreigners to visit Soviet Estonia in significant numbers, which enabled both diaspora and homeland Estonians to use the Finnish-Soviet friendship as a loophole through which to pass the Iron Curtain. Although it took yet another decade and a considerable expansion of tourism across the Gulf of Finland to establish more reliable channels of uncontrolled communication between Estonia and the West, attempts to outwit the Soviet security measures were already occurring during the second half of the 1950s. Despite the considerable human resources that the KGB appointed for the surveillance of foreign visitors in Tallinn,198 informants regularly reported on suspicious encounters between Soviet citizens and Finnish visitors.199 Especially worrying from the Soviets’ point of view, was the case of the Tartu student Mart Niklus, later known as one of the leading figures of the Soviet Estonian dissident movement. On several occasions in 1956 and 1957, Niklus succeeded in establishing contact with visiting Finnish scholars and sportsmen both in Tartu and in Leningrad, whom he could convince to smuggle pictures and unpublished articles back to Finland.200 According to Niklus’s explicit wishes, the Finnish mediators would forward the evidence to Estonian émigrés in Sweden, since publication of the compromising material in Finland herself was not possible due to the Finnish media’s self-censorship. Further dissemination of the obtained evidence to the émigré press and leading newspapers in Scandinavia and the United States was thus organized by Estonian activists in Stockholm. Niklus’s photographs were more effective than any émigré publication at unmasking the Soviet propa-



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ganda of prosperity and optimism as “Potemkin villages.” Besides bearing witness to the poor quality of Soviet-type construction projects (one of the official flagships of propaganda), the photographs showed the ubiquitous jamming stations and street scenes with drunken Russian soldiers, visualizing Estonian life under “foreign rule.”201 Mart Niklus’s successful attempts to approach foreign visitors for the smuggling of anti-Soviet material to the West were seen as convincing proof that there was, after all, a spirit of mute opposition in Soviet Estonia. However, although the case showed that there were indeed individuals willing to cooperate with the political emigration, the émigré leadership in Stockholm consciously refrained from expanding its activities to Soviet territory, mainly in order to minimize the omnipresent risk of KGB infiltration. In fact, like the émigré circles in Stockholm, even Soviet Estonian intelligence had recognized the strategic potential of a restricted exchange of tourists across the Baltic Sea, especially for counterintelligence operations that aimed at infiltrating émigré structures. The Estonian KGB sent its own agents to Sweden, where they posed as tourists with an articulated interest in establishing contact with members of the diaspora community. At times, this strategy proved successful. One of the agents who visited Stockholm in August 1957 apparently succeeded in gaining the trust of Johannes Mihkelson, the head of the Estonian Social Democratic Party in Exile, and returned with insider information on the government in exile and the ERN’s systematic attempts to persuade Estonian visitors to defect.202 Any conspiratorial activity on Soviet territory was thus, as most émigrés became convinced, all the more likely to fail. It seems as if not all émigré associations shared these concerns, however. According to the available documents of the Soviet Estonian KGB, the Estonian National Congress in Sweden (Rootsi Eestlaste Esindus, REE), which represented the anti-parliamentarian camp and thus figured as the main political adversary of the ERN, followed its own vision of how to exploit the changes brought about by the Khrushchev Thaw. The reports claim that the organization’s chairman, Igor Belokon, formed a conspiratorial circle that, with the support of prominent émigrés such as former envoy Laretei, planned to establish an information network with old friends and acquaintances in the homeland via Finnish couriers and Soviet Estonian visitors.203 During the Khrushchev era, however, such clandestine networks were doomed to fail in a system that had developed surveillance to perfection. Consequently, Belokon’s secret correspondence was, according to KGB officials, intercepted by counterintelligence forces, which, according to standard practice, recruited the addressees as their own informants.204 The circles around the ERN, by contrast, were highly aware of the efficiency of the Soviet counterintelligence apparatus. Therefore, the ERN confined its activities to encounters with

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Estonian visitors on Swedish and Finnish territory. After years of isolation from the homeland, the Estonians in Sweden once again profited from their geographical proximity to the Soviet Union, which catapulted them into the strategic forefront of the political struggle of the transatlantic Estonian diaspora. In post-Stalinist Europe, space definitely mattered again. From “Polish London” to “Polish Paris”: Changing Attitudes toward National Communism In contrast to the ERN activists in Stockholm, “Polish London,” the political heart of the Polish diaspora, maintained a rather reserved stance toward the new opportunities of interacting with the homeland. As the People’s Republic opened up its borders in the spirit of the Polish October, the government in exile was still shaken by a major political scandal that had proved the efficiency of Warsaw’s intelligence apparatus. In 1955, the newly appointed prime minister in exile, Hugon Hanke, had defected to Poland, where the propaganda machinery triumphantly unmasked his identity as an informant of the Polish Security Service. The incident deepened the general mistrust toward representatives of the “other Poland” and widened the gap between the government in exile and the rather apolitical masses among the diaspora that proved to be more receptive toward the new tones from Warsaw. The conservative circles around August Zaleski, the president in exile, thus failed to capitalize on the opportunities that the Thaw provided. Instead of seeking direct interaction with the home country, Zaleski’s camp deliberately limited its political activities to open source intelligence operations.205 At that point, the marginalization of the government in exile as a mere “symbol of legality . . . and continuity of prewar authority”206 was already becoming increasingly obvious. A more dynamic approach could be observed among the leadership of the Provisional Council of National Unity (Tymczasowa Rada Jedności Narodowej), an umbrella organization that united the various factions of the rival political camp of “Polish London.” Gathered around General Anders and other critics of the president in exile, these circles were less orthodox in their attitude toward interaction with citizens of the People’s Republic. Like the ERN activists in Stockholm, the Council’s representatives were convinced that direct encounters with visitors from the home country could foster a freer flow of uncensored information between the blocs. This approach led to close cooperation with the Polish section of Radio Free Europe in Munich, which allowed the Provisional Council access to the treasure of accumulated information on communist Poland that formed the backbone of radio transmissions from the Polish section. The RFE had by then developed a sophis-



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ticated system of gathering information from various sources, including the systematic interception of Warsaw’s radio broadcasts and the interrogation of refugees and visitors, carried out by a network of correspondents at strategic spots in Western Europe.207 The Polish October swept away the mainstays of the informational blockade that had surrounded the country under the rule of Bierut. For a short period, Poland opened up its borders to Western journalists and launched the most liberal travel policy of the satellite belt, allowing insights into life under communist rule that Baltic émigrés could only have hitherto imagined. In contrast to Soviet citizens, Poles were allowed to travel individually and could, since Warsaw’s foreign residencies lacked stationary intelligence officers, move relatively freely during their stay abroad.208 At the same time, Polish migration to the West reached a scale that would be exceeded only by the mass emigration of the early 1980s.209 Thus, the RFE activists availed themselves of a current stream of both informants and potential new staff members with an intimate knowledge of the ongoing developments in communist Poland.210 By the late 1950s, Poles could be encountered all over Western Europe, but Sweden was obviously among the most attractive destinations, at least for those who dreamt of a better life in the West. According to several sources and testimonials, the neutral country was often referred to in the People’s Republic as a “paradise,” not least because of its generous asylum policy.211 Indeed, although the mainly economic incentives of most refugees could easily be perceived, the Swedish Alien Commission almost never denied political asylum.212 Thus, with the liberalization of travel to capitalist countries, the number of Polish asylum seekers rose dramatically to several hundred a year. In 1958, as much as one tenth of all Polish tourists who visited Stockholm that summer as passengers on the tourist liner M/S Mazowsze defected.213 It is hard to estimate to what degree the high defection rate was related to the activities of the local RFE employees, who, in the same way as the circles around the ERN Büroo, were eager to establish personal contact with compatriots visiting the Swedish capital.214 However, it is documented that the leader of RFE’s Stockholm office, Michał Lisiński, together with his colleague, Łukasz Winiarski, systematically persuaded Polish tourists to defect, assisting them with the necessary formalities and recruiting future staff members from within their ranks.215 Nevertheless, the scope of their action seems to have been, as in the case of the Estonian émigrés, limited to Sweden, since the subversive infiltration of Polish society was obviously still considered to be almost impossible to carry out. Indeed, the Polish Security Service constituted a highly efficient system, whose counterintelligence operations were targeted especially at the RFE, both at the central office in Munich and its

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local branches in frontier cities such as West Berlin, Vienna, or Stockholm.216 The first successful strategies to establish direct exchange with oppositional circles in communist Poland were thus elaborated in the relatively remote French capital, which so far had not figured prominently among the main targets of Polish counterintelligence operations. In view of the spirit of East-West rapprochement and coexistence that dominated the political climate of the era, the Polish exile government’s claim to a return to the geopolitical status quo of the pre-war era seemed increasingly unrealistic, and this accelerated its political isolation.217 Soon, the small but influential circle around Jerzy Giedroyc and his monthly journal Kultura in Paris developed into the major counterweight to the ideological orthodoxy of “Polish London.” In the fall of 1956, Kultura openly supported Gomułka, expressing the hope that “Polish Titoism” might contribute to a gradual course of democratization in the People’s Republic.218 It was the emerging independent intelligentsia especially who fostered the belief among the Parisian émigrés in the success of national emancipation behind the Iron Curtain. The climate of liberalization in post-Stalinist Poland gave birth to a new generation of leftist intellectuals. Among the most prominent groups were the Catholic circles around the newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny (“General Weekly”) or the several hundred members of the Warsaw-based Club of the Crooked Circle (Klub Krzywego Koła), a “forum in which like-minded intellectuals could meet to exchange and modify their ideas.”219 At the peak of the Thaw, communist Poland’s critical intelligentsia had the opportunity to get acquainted with the political thinking of the emigration’s Paris wing, as Kultura and other publications of Giedroyc’s renowned publishing house could be legally purchased in Poland from spring 1956 to early 1957.220 It was Kultura’s political realism in key questions of Poland’s post-war fate, such as the westward shift of the country’s borders and relations with the USSR, which enabled the circles around Giedroyc to find a common language with non-conformist intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain.221 The encounters of the young Polish post-war intelligentsia with the progressive émigré circles in Paris was the catalyst of a development that fostered initial, implicitly political contacts between diaspora and homeland; contacts which proved to be durable enough to resist the challenges of re-established censorship in early 1957. Hanna Rewska, Giedroyc’s confidant and Kultura’s most important correspondent in Poland, continued her cooperation with Paris, partly with the help of a secretary from the French embassy. She organized the smuggling of Kultura across the East-West border, which led to her arrest and trial in 1958. Nevertheless, communication across the Iron Curtain continued unabated. In a secret report written in 1963, the Polish Security Service stated



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that around four hundred Poles maintained regular correspondence with Kultura employees, although the rougher political climate had, by that time, forced many progressive intellectuals to leave the public scene.222 The controversial question of how to relate to the new possibilities of interacting with the homeland left visible traces in the political landscape of the Polish emigration, marking the definitive end to the traditional consensus among the anti-communist faction.223 Broad sections of the Polish diaspora embraced the unprecedented possibilities of travel to the homeland, and applications for consular passports increased at Polish embassies. The backward-looking ideological orthodoxy of the Polish “state in exile” was therefore fighting a losing battle, as its traditional ideological weapons proved to be inappropriate in the context of the post-Stalinist Thaw. A one-sided trust in the alliance with the “cold warriors” in the West and the belief that political change could occur only by means of active resistance from below were not adequate political responses to the ongoing changes within and outside the home country. Thus, the status of “Polish London” as the Western world’s main platform of political opposition to the Warsaw government was on the wane. Seen against this background, the strategy of the circles around Kultura to integrate the new opportunities of communication and exchange into a long-term oppositional agenda was a major paradigm shift. This change is mirrored in the internal evaluations of the Polish authorities during the late 1950s. They witnessed a clear shift of attention toward the Polish émigrés working for Kultura and Radio Free Europe, especially their figureheads Giedroyc and Nowak-Jeziorański, who inherited the role the government in exile had once played as the main target of propagandistic attacks from Warsaw.224 For the Polish political diaspora in Sweden, the radical reformulation of the oppositional agenda by leading figures of the Polish emigration in Western Europe signaled a crucial watershed. As loyal supporters of “Polish London,” the political associations of the war refugee generation increasingly fulfilled a merely symbolic function. Their dogmatic rejection of contact with the homeland regime and the incoming masses of largely apolitical economic refugees increased the polarization of the Polish community in Sweden. The strategies developed by the Polish section of Radio Free Europe and Kultura heralded a redefinition and reconfiguration of oppositional politics, which significantly determined the oppositional networks that emerged between Sweden and Poland throughout the following decade. The de-Stalinization processes in the Soviet bloc triggered a chain of events whose repercussions reached far beyond the communist orbit. The “fortress mentality” of the post-war years was replaced by a reform agenda which

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indicated that the post-Stalinist leaders were willing to give up the claim of maintaining total control of all forms of East-West interaction and allowed for a controlled opening up to the West. At the same time, however, the year 1956 also marked a major drawback for oppositional forces on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The Hungarian revolution was brutally suppressed in front of a passive Western public, proving that any change in the near future to the political status quo in Central and Eastern Europe was illusionary. In view of the lifting of the cordon around the communist half of Europe, émigré political activity had to readjust its strategies, which entailed new opportunities and challenges. A continued struggle against the communist order from abroad required a proper apportioning of political realism and pragmatism. Thus, it was the circles keeping a critical distance from the glorification of an already distant pre-war reality that proved to be able and willing to coordinate their oppositional activities with the actual needs and demands of the homeland societies. Meanwhile, the nationalist right-wing became stuck in an increasingly anachronistic line of thinking. The conservative circles of “Polish London,” which consistently experienced a high level of support among the war refugee generation in Sweden, defended the Polish nation’s right to return to a status quo that had been irretrievably lost with the Yalta agreements. Jerzy Giedroyc and his supporters among the Polish intelligentsia in the West, by contrast, were able to acknowledge that contemporary Poland was essentially different from the country it had been before the war. This acceptance facilitated the establishment of a persistent dialogue with non-conformist intellectuals in the People’s Republic. Similarly, it was not the Estonian emigration’s rightist wing, which upheld the authoritarian heritage of the Päts regime and had a strong base of sympathizers in the Sweden-based organization REE, that developed a finer instinct for the changes behind the Iron Curtain. Rather it was the ERN, as representative of the former democratic opposition, that had learned the lessons from the failed revolution in Hungary and targeted the elites of Soviet Estonian society, treating them in the first place as compatriots with similar patriotic feelings. What the progressive wings of the Estonian and Polish emigration had in common was their determination to apply a similar strategy to the efforts of the communist regimes to split the unity among the diaspora, and to win the hearts and minds of the non-conformist elites behind the Iron Curtain. The neutral Nordic states gradually regained their significance as strategic bridgeheads between the blocs, especially in the minds of the Estonians. Regular encounters between émigrés and Soviet Estonian visitors in Stockholm and Helsinki marked the first breaches in the ramparts that Stalin had established around the Soviet empire. The Baltic Sea once again bridged the



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gap between Estonia and the outside world, not least due to the unofficial support from Finland, which formed a stark contrast to the Finnish government’s officially pro-Soviet course. Crucial also was the possibility of receiving Finnish television, from which the population of northern Estonia could profit from the 1960s onwards. These new forms of cross-Baltic entanglements formed the basis for a durable and, in the context of the Soviet Union as a whole, unique connection to the West.225 Indeed, by the early 1960s, Soviet Estonian newspapers had decried the harmful influences of the “bourgeois propaganda” that had already reached the country via radio, correspondence, individual contacts, and tourism.226 While the Baltic émigrés represented those in the Central and Eastern European diaspora with the least direct connections behind the Iron Curtain, the Polish communities in the West maintained the closest and broadest contacts to the homeland from the mid-1950s onwards. The exceptional freedom of travel allowed for a lively traffic of tourists and travelers on private visits between Poland and the West. Also, the route across the Baltic Sea became much-frequented, especially due to the rather apolitical stance of the masses of economic refugees in Sweden. The majority were eager to establish close bonds with the homeland, which proved that Warsaw’s propagandistic appeals to patriotic feelings were heeded. Even the Polish staff of Stockholm’s RFE office rejected the ideological constraints of the old guard of war refugees. Like their colleagues in Vienna, Brussels, or Bonn, they were eager to establish direct contacts with Polish visitors, who delivered valuable firsthand information. However, in contrast to the Estonian case, where the neutrality and vicinity of Finland and Sweden considerably determined the forms of unofficial interaction between Estonia and the West, the Swedish connection was by no means unique. Informational exchange and personal contact between diaspora and homeland Poles could be established both in Poland itself and wherever Polish citizens were traveling. Even émigrés with a critical attitude toward communist rule could interact with the homeland relatively easily, as illustrated by Giedroyc’s contact with Warsaw. In the Polish case, the establishment of oppositional contacts across the Iron Curtain was, unlike during the war and early post-war years, not so much dependent on geographical vicinity, but on the ability of the émigrés to adapt to the conditions and attitudes in the homeland society. However, in view of the totality of systemic change in the Soviet orbit after 1944 and the trauma of repression and political terror that the population had experienced, a decade was enough to generate a gap between diaspora and homeland that was hard to bridge. One of the main reasons was the rather general disillusionment with the West that spread behind the Iron Curtain after the failed upheavals in Hungary and Poland. On the one hand, Moscow’s

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brutal suppression of the revolution on the streets of Budapest had convinced the communist-ruled societies of the futility of popular uprisings and armed resistance. However, it was, on the other hand, the West’s passivity that had had an even larger impact on the shape that future opposition would assume in communist Europe. The year 1956 thus not only led to the resumption of communication between the communist orbit and the West, but also to the latter’s demystification. Rumors of the “White Ship,” a symbol of the anticipated invasion of the Western Allies, who would bring liberation from the Russians, had survived long into the post-war period in Soviet Estonia.227 Nevertheless, the surrender of most of the remaining “forest brothers,” who had continued their armed resistance in the forests and bogs, showed that the hope for Western help and support had been extinguished.228 Also, the Poles had stopped watching out for the armies of General Anders seated upon his “White Horse,”229 as they were never to appear on the horizon. The Western governments had unequivocally proven that they would not risk military conflict with Moscow for the sake of the “captive nations.” Seen from the perspective of the peoples behind the Iron Curtain, this passivity confirmed the “treason of Yalta,” which inevitably tinged the feeling toward the anticommunist émigré activists as well. Their refusal to acknowledge the limited scope of action of the homeland population and the continued adherence to the imagined power of the “state in exile” accelerated the émigrés’ loss of moral support from their home countries. Even non-conformist sections of the Polish intelligentsia expressed a firm conviction that Poland’s future fate depended solely on decisions and action taken in the country itself.230 An increasing number of reports from Soviet Estonia implied that the general tendency was similar. One of the Stockholm emigration’s informants summarized the prevailing moods thus: “The discourses of the exile politicians and the sermons of the pastors transmitted by the Voice of America are superfluous—one does not want to listen to them, as they do not contain anything valuable.”231 In view of the alienation between diaspora and homeland, a concerted opposition against communist rule required not only functioning channels of communication, but also a fundamental reconfiguration of the political emigration’s visions for the future of their communist-ruled home countries. However, this process first started with the generational shift, which coincided with major political changes in Cold War Europe. NOTES 1. Gaddis, We Now Know, 113. 2.  Abbott Gleason, Totalitarianism. The Inner History of the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 82, 108–11.



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  3.  Renate Meyer-Braun, Löcher im Eisernen Vorhang. Theateraustausch zwischen Bremen und Rostock während des Kalten Krieges (1956–1961). Ein Stück deutsch-deutscher Nachkriegsgeschichte (Berlin: Trafo Verlag, 2007), 9.   4.  Melvyn P. Leffler, “The Emergence of an American Grand Strategy, 1945– 1952,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Volume I: Origins, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 76–77.   5.  Speech by U.S. presidential candidate Eisenhower in front of the American Legion in late August 1952, quoted in a report of the Swedish legation in Moscow for Foreign Minister Undén, 1 September 1952, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 542, f. 144, p. 1.  6. Richard Cummings, Cold War Radio. The Dangerous History of American Broadcasting in Europe, 1950–1989 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2009), 9. The National Committee for a Free Europe, which later was renamed the Free Europe Committee and oversaw the broadcast service of Radio Free Europe, was well aware of the numerous political conflicts and intrigues within the Central and Eastern European diaspora communities in the West. Consequently, the political émigrés were downgraded to a mere supporting role with only limited influence on the political agenda of the Committee. Simo Mikkonen, “Exploiting the Exiles: Soviet Émigrés in U.S. Cold War Strategy,” Journal of Cold War Studies 14, no. 2 (2012): 101, 106.   7.  Juta Ristsoo, “Mälestused väliseesti tegevusest,” in Sõna jõul. Diasporaa roll Eesti iseseisvuse taastamisel, ed. Kristi Anniste, Kaja Kumer-Haukanõmm, and Tiit Tammaru (Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2008), 187.   8.  Swedish political discourses of the 1950s were dominated by debates on the neutrality doctrine and on the degree of concessions to the USSR. Anti-communist positions were, at least on the party level, only implicitly stated, mainly taking the disguise of pro-Western statements. Ruin, Tage Erlander, 258.   9.  While Ohlin was the fiercest opponent of the social democratic government’s domestic policies, Hjalmarson became the most prominent critic of Foreign Minister Undén’s political course. Stefan Ekecrantz, Hemlig utrikespolitik. Kalla kriget, utrikesnämnden och regeringen 1946–1959, vol. 12 of Sverige under kalla kriget (Stockholm: Santérus Förlag, 2003), 165. 10. Ruin, Tage Erlander, 258. 11. Johansson, Herbert Tingsten och det kalla kriget, 316. 12. Leader in Dagens Nyheter, 6 June 1947, quoted in Johansson, Herbert Tingsten och det kalla kriget, 55. 13.  Kłonczyński, “Prasa szwedzka wobec wydarzeń w Polsce,” 77. Together with some of Sweden’s most important newspapers, Dagens Nyheter provided a forum for unveiled anti-Soviet attacks and support for a Swedish NATO membership. This opposition was so vociferous that it was not always backed up even by the parliamentary opposition. Harto Hakovirta, East-West Conflict and European Neutrality (Oxford, NY: Clarendon Press, 1988), 103. 14.  According to Kristian Gerner and Klas-Göran Karlsson, the centuries-old phenomenon of rysskräcken (“fear of the Russian”), was a core aspect of Swedish nation building. Gerner and Karlsson, Nordens medelhav, 289.

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15.  Despite the fact that, apart from the Estonians, also several thousand Latvians and some hundred Lithuanians settled in Sweden, the public debates and the media of the time did not distinguish between the home countries of the refugees, treating them collectively as balterna (“the Balts”) and thus as one diaspora community. 16. Kangro, Estland i Sverige, 83. 17.  Kłonczyński, Stosunki polsko-szwedzkie, 74. 18.  Hjalmarson publicly demanded that the Swedish government should turn the solution of the Baltic question and the resurrection of Baltic independence into a prerequisite of bilateral relations with Moscow, stressing the right to national selfdetermination, which almost literally echoed the 1952 speech of Eisenhower. See the fragments of Hjalmarson’s speech quoted in Freivalds, De internerade balternas tragedi i Sverige, 424. 19.  The ambiguous attitudes of Swedish social democrats toward the Balts had already become obvious during the heated debates on the extradition of the Baltic soldiers in 1946. The Swedish Labor Movement and the trade unions, the powerful base of the Social Democratic Party, initiated campaigns in support of the Soviet stance, which culminated in public appeals to the government to extradite the entire Baltic community back to the Soviet Union. Kangeris, “Sweden, the Soviet Union and the Baltic Question,” 206. 20.  Zetterberg, “Sverige på världsarenan,” 81. 21.  Birger Nerman, För Balticums frihet. Baltiska Kommittén 1943–1968 (Stockholm: Baltiska Kommittén, 1969), 16. 22.  Pro Memoria from Foreign Minister Undén (strictly confidential), 22 July 1959, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 129, f. 7, p. 2. In response to Soviet pressure, the Swedish government excluded Hjalmarson, the chairman of the Rightist Party and one of the protagonists of the anti-Khrushchev campaign, from the Swedish delegation to the United Nations. This disputable maneuver became later known as the “Hjalmarson affair.” 23.  Gösta Engzell to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2 January 1951, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 492, f. 54. 24. Berge, Det kalla kriget i Tidens spegel, 57. 25.  Andreas Linderoth, Kampen för erkännande. DDR:s utrikespolitik gentemot Sverige 1949–1972, vol. 9 of Studia Historica Lundensia (Lund: Lunds universitet, 2002), 55. 26.  The Swedish legation in Moscow, signed Kronvall, to Östen Undén, 13 December 1950, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 536, f. 128, p. 1. It is interesting to note that both the Soviet press and Soviet diplomats made a clear distinction between the Swedish government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which mirrors the, at times, widely diverging interpretation of Swedish neutrality among government representatives on the one hand and Swedish diplomats on the other. During the “spy scandals” of the early 1950s, the Swedish government was thus usually spared from attack. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by contrast, faced accusations of fueling anti-Soviet sentiments in the Swedish press. Rolf Sohlman to Prime Minister Erlander, 13 June 1952, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 542, f. 142, p. 17.



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27.  Swedish translation of an article entitled “Under the Flag of ‘Neutrality,’” Literaturnaya Gazeta, 20 May 1950, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 534, f. 121, p. 2. 28.  Roman Siuda, “Główne kierunki polityki handlowej Szwecji w latach 1945– 1980,” Studia Scandinavica (Zeszyty Naukowe Wydziału Humanistycznego Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego) no. 11 (1988): 86. 29.  Jussi M. Hanhimäki, Scandinavia and the United States: An Insecure Friendship (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997), 40. 30.  Ivan Berend, Central and Eastern Europe, 1944–1993. Detour from Periphery to Periphery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 83. 31.  Stola, “PRL: Kraj przymusowych migracji czy ‘przywiązania do ziemi?’” 33. 32.  Report of the Swedish National Security Service, signed by Nils Österblom (secret), July 1952, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 493, f. 59, pp. 1, 4. 33.  Report by Michał Jachnis on the second half year of 1949, 31 January 1950, in AMSZ, z. 20, w. 5, t. 68, s. 40. However, although the degree of militarization along the shores of Poland and the Soviet Union was much higher, the Swedish armament policy was still efficient enough to establish quite a dense net of surveillance along the country’s coastlines. After all, the concept of Sweden’s armed neutrality implied that the military, especially with respect to the country’s air force and strong navy, almost responded to the needs of a “military great power.” Falk Bomsdorf, Sicherheit im Norden Europas. Die Sicherheitspolitik der fünf nordischen Staaten und die Nordeuropapolitik der Sowjetunion, vol. 6 of Aktuelle Materialien zur internationalen Politik (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1989), 92. 34.  Virkko Lepassalu, Riigipiir (Tallinn: Pegasus, 2010), 48. 35.  Sigrid Rausing, History, Memory and Identity in Post-Soviet Estonia. The End of a Collective Farm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1. 36.  Indrek Jürjo, preface to Aruanne Riikliku Julgeoleku Komitee 2. Vastuluureosakonna tööst 1954–1955, ed. Jüri Ojamaa and Jaak Hion, vol. 2 of Ad Fontes (Tallinn: Eesti Riigi Arhiivi Filiaal (Parteiarhiiv), 1997) 6. 37.  Aigi Rahi-Tamm, “Küüditamised Eestis,” in Kõige taga oli hirm. Kuidas Eesti oma ajaloost ilma jäi, ed. Sofi Oksanen and Imbi Paju (Tallinn: Eesti Päevalehe AS, 2010), 88. 38.  It is estimated that there were no more than fifteen cases of successful escape from Soviet Estonian territory from 1947 to 1989. Jaak Pihlau, “Merepõgenemised okupeeritud Eestist,” Tuna 4, no. 2 (2001): 68. After 1957, only two escapes took place in the Baltic waters. Indrek Paavle, “Kuidas ära hoida ‘nõukogudevastaste elementide karistamatu lahkumine’ ENSV territooriumilt? Piirirežiimi regulatsioon ja kontroll Eesti NSV-s,” Tuna 15, no. 2 (2012): 88. 39.  Lepassalu, Riigipiir, 13–19. 40.  Letter of the Swedish Alien Commission to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (strictly confidential), 26 February 1955, in RA, UD 1920, R 58, vol. 39, p. 2. 41.  Dariusz Stola concludes that it was statistically easier to become a government minister than an émigré in the early 1950s. Stola, “PRL: Kraj przymusowych migracji czy ‘przywiązania do ziemi?’” 29, 33.

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42.  The often spectacular escapes by Poles in the early 1950s stoked up the already critical tone of Swedish news coverage, which repeatedly fueled diplomatic conflicts. Even more polarizing was Sweden’s asylum policy, which can be illustrated by a noteworthy incident which took place in 1951. Twelve Polish mutineers had managed to gain control over their ship and arrested its officers. They steered the vessel into the port of Ystad, where they applied for political asylum. In the eyes of the Swedish authorities, the sailors’ opposition toward the regime outweighed the unlawful mutiny, which, despite harsh protests from Warsaw, protected them from extradition and legal prosecution. “12 Poles Granted Asylum,” The New York Times, 14 August 1951. 43.  Undated report on the 5th Congress of the ERN, 14 February 1954, in RR, f. 3, s. 77 (“ERN materjalid”), p. 1. 44.  Incidents of this kind were common matters of diplomatic dispute along with other sensitive issues such as “hostile” media reports and Sweden’s refugee policy. After a series of Swedish “encroachments” on Polish ships, Poland’s Vice Foreign Minister, Stefan Wierblowski, did not hesitate to insinuate a secret cooperation between the U.S. intelligence service and the Swedish Police. Eric von Post, the Swedish envoy to Poland, to Östen Undén (confidential), 17 October 1951, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 492, f. 56, p. 2. 45.  The Swedish signals intelligence program based on secret cooperation with Washington and London in exchanging technical equipment and data on the situation along the Soviet Baltic coastlines, which severely infringed Sweden’s neutrality. Lars Ulfving, “Långa skuggor—Raoul Wallenbergfallet och DC-3-nedskjutningen,” in Att skåda Sovjetunionen i vitögat. Sex studier kring svenska relationer till Sovjetunionen under det kalla kriget, ed. Kent Zetterberg, vol. 2 of Försvaret och det kalla kriget (Stockholm: Försvarshögskolan, 2004), 124, 127. 46. Ekecrantz, Hemlig utrikespolitik, 175. 47.  This was no exception that applied exclusively to the Polish community in Sweden. Also among the significant group of Polish émigrés in West Germany, for instance, there was only little proof of independent political activity up to the 1970s. The few political manifestations of West Germany’s Polish diaspora were both inspired by and closely consulted with political circles in “Polish London.” Krzysztof Ruchniewicz, “Polska emigracja niepodległościowa w Niemczech 1945–1989,” Przegląd Polonijny, 27, no. 3 (2001): 40, 44. 48.  However, the growing political schism within the Polish émigré community was also noticeable in Sweden. A small group of local supporters of Mikołajczyk, who, since his voluntary return to Poland, had been defamed as a traitor by the “London Poles,” formed a phalanx that was opposed to the dominant sympathies among the Poles in Sweden. Nevertheless, the two camps were united in their hostile attitude toward the Warsaw regime. Report by the Polish legation in Stockholm for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the period from November 1st to December 15th, 1950, in AMSZ, z. 8, w. 13, t. 185, s. 71. 49.  Report by Michał Jachnis on the second half year of 1949, 31 January 1950, in AMSZ, z. 20, w. 5, t. 68, s. 51. 50. Kangro, Estland i Sverige, 66.



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51. Raimo Raag, Eestlane väljaspool Eestit. Ajalooline ülevaade (Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 1999), 93. 52.  Several thousand Estonians from Sweden followed the masses of émigrés across the Atlantic Ocean, so that the Estonian community in Sweden shrank to around 22,000 members. The United States hosted the major of these Estonian emigrants (30,000), while another considerable community settled in neighboring Canada (18,500). Only around 6,000 Estonians remained in West Germany, while a mere 5,000 chose Great Britain as their country of residence. Thus, the Estonian community in Sweden remained the major stronghold of the Estonian diaspora in Western Europe. Raag, Eestlane väljaspool Eestit, 76. 53.  Enn Nõu, “Eesti pagulasvalitsus 1944–1988,” in Tõotan ustavaks jääda . . . Eesti Vabariigi valitsus 1940–1992, edited by Mart Orav and Enn Nõu (Tartu: Eesti Kirjanduse Selts, 2004), 109. 54.  The government of Otto Tief, which had been appointed amidst the turmoil of war, represented only the democratic parties that had been prohibited since 1935. Rei’s adversaries stated that, according to the 1938 constitution, the continuity of pre-war statehood could only be secured by an election council that represented high officials of the Päts government. Rebas, “Sverigeesternas politiska verksamhet,” 101. 55.  In view of Sweden’s de facto recognition of Estonia’s annexation in 1940 and with respect to the neutrality doctrine, the Estonian émigré politicians considered it more appropriate to establish the government in exile in the neighboring NATO state Norway. Nõu, “Eesti pagulasvalitsus,” 123, 125–26. The government in exile was officially named “Government of the Republic of Estonia in exile” signaling that it was based on the Tief government, which was appointed in Tallinn in September 1944. This thus gave a government that had gone into exile status as a legal body. Hellar Grabbi, “Poliitikud paguluses ja pagulaspoliitikud. Mälestusi Eesti Vabariigi Valitsusest eksiilis ja teistest,” Akadeemia 23, no. 2 (2011): 187. 56.  Vahur Made, “Eesti eksiilivalitsus: riigi järjepidevuse hoidmise vastuoluline projekt,” in Sõna jõul. Diasporaa roll Eesti iseseisvuse taastamisel, ed. Kristi Anniste, Kaja Kumer-Haukanõmm, and Tiit Tammaru (Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2008), 84. 57.  Rebas, “Sverigeesternas politiska verksamhet,” 101. 58.  August Kärsna, president of the Estonian National Committee in the United States, and Juhan Vasar from the Estonian World Council to George M. Humphrey, Secretary of the Treasury in Washington, D.C., 7 and 8 May 1957, in RR, f. 3, s. 78 (“ERN materjalid (sorteerimata)”). A major reason for the astonishingly harsh attacks against Rei was doubtlessly also the fact that he, with his political background in Estonian social democracy, was considered too “red” by the right-wing circles in North America. Ant, August Rei, 8. 59.  This reorientation is clearly visible in the ERF’s 1950 action program, which in large parts is quoted in Rebas, “Sverigeesternas politiska verksamhet,” 107–8. 60.  Manuscript entitled “Vaba Eestluse koostöö organisatoorne struktuur ja selle reaalsed alused” on the structure of the cooperation between the different Estonian émigré organizations, 1953, in RR, f. 3, s. 77, p. 5.

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61.  Rebas, “Sverigeesternas politiska verksamhet,” 106. The period of independence was a recurrent topic of émigré publications throughout the post-war era, which served the purpose of illustrating the decline of living standards at all levels under Soviet rule. Thus, the border between political and historical literature was blurred due to the parallel activities of both professional historians and political activists in this field. Erik Thomson, Estnische Literatur. Ihre Verflechtung in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Lüneburg: Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 1973), 68. 62.  Report on a press conference of the ERN, 10 June 1950, in RR, f. 3, s. 75, p. 2. 63.  Rebas, “Sverigeesternas politiska verksamhet,” 107–8. 64. Kangro, Estland i Sverige, 85. 65.  Aleksander Warma to the ERF, 1 October 1958, in RR, f. 3, s. 188 (“ERF materjalid a. 1952–1965 (tegevuskavad ja–aruanded, majanduslikud aruanded, ettekannete tekstid, kirjavahetus, ERF väljaanne ‘ERF Teated,’ ‘Sõnumid’)”). Kaelas’s publications displayed an astonishingly accurate picture of the situation in Soviet Estonia. His books, among them, first and foremost, Okupeeritud Eesti, published in Stockholm by the ERF in 1956, are still today used as a valuable secondary source for historical research on the first decades of Soviet rule in Estonia. 66. “PM (promemoria)—Eesti Rahvusnõukogust ja opositsioonist selle vastu,” n.d. (most probably 1950), in RR, f. 3, s. 81 (“Materjalid ERN tegevusest”), p. 3. 67.  Patek had been employed at the Stockholm legation from 1943 up to its takeover by the Warsaw government in the summer of 1945 and had figured among the closest confidants of former envoy Sokolnicki. 68. Uggla, Den svenska Polenbilden, 85. 69.  “Emigracyjny ‘Dziennik Polski’ namawia emigrantów do współpracy z wywiadem USA przeciwko Polsce,” Express Wieczorny, 10–11 May 1959. 70.  Pro Memoria, 5 November 1951, in RA, UD 1920, R 58, vol. 39, p. 2; Report by Lucjan Szulkin-Lessel, the Polish press attaché in Stockholm, for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 10 June 1949, in AMSZ, z. 8, w. 4, t. 66, s. 63. 71. See the series Världspolitikens dagsfrågor, for example Wiesław Patek’s booklet entitled Polen under Gomulka, vol. 10 of Världspolitikens dagsfrågor (Stockholm: Utrikespolitiska Institutet, 1959). 72.  The newspaper demonstrated a very benevolent stance toward refugees from behind the Iron Curtain. From late 1944, an Estonian insert entitled StockholmsTidningen Eestlastele (“Stockholms-Tidningen for Estonians”), one of the central Estonian press organs in Sweden, was already being published several times a week, edited by émigrés without any editorial interference from the Swedish staff. Kangro, Estland i Sverige, 115. 73.  Report by Lucjan Szulkin-Lessel for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 24 August 1949, in AMSZ, z. 8, w. 4, t. 66, s. 65. 74.  Kłonczyński, “Prasa szwedzka wobec wydarzeń w Polsce,” 79. Articles published in the anti-communist Polish press in the West, such as Wiadomości Polskie, could thus be almost literally reproduced in leading Swedish newspapers. Report by Lucjan Szulkin-Lessel for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 10 June 1949, in AMSZ, z. 8, w. 4, t. 66, s. 63.



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75.  An illustrative example was the public discourse on the Poznań protests of June 1956, the first uprising in communist Poland. The differing interpretations of how the riots started led to a spiteful debate between leftist and conservative newspapers in Sweden. While the regime’s official interpretation of the events, accusing a small circle of armed resistance fighters of having provoked the riots, was reflected in the coverage of Sweden’s leading social democratic newspapers and, of course, the organs of the Swedish communists, the interpretation of the émigrés, who saw the protests as a spontaneous sign of discontent among the Polish workers, was reflected in the liberal and conservative press. Uggla, Den svenska Polenbilden, 83. 76.  Note of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Gösta Engzell, 7 April 1950, in AMSZ, z. 8, w. 12, t. 182, s. 7. 77.  Gösta Engzell to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (confidential), 4 January 1950, in RA, UD 1920, R 58, vol. 39. However, in the same letter, Engzell warned the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Stockholm that the influence of anticommunist Polish émigrés on Swedish news coverage might be contrary to Sweden’s national interests. It was, he stated, “not fortunate that the refugees [were] allowed to abuse the right of asylum for such political propaganda, which obviously impairs our relations [with Poland].” 78.  Manuscript of Johannes Klesment’s speech held on April 29th, 1951, during the Third Congress of the ERN in Stockholm, in RR, f. 3, n. 7, s. 77, p. 1. As a matter of fact, the same method was applied by the KGB, which eagerly followed the émigré press in order to gain insight into the diaspora community’s institutional structures and moods. As only very few KGB officers in Estonia and even fewer in Moscow understood Estonian, selected articles were translated into Russian. Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 40. 79.  Gregory Gleason, “The ‘National Factor’ and the Logic of Sovietology,” in The Post-Soviet Nations. Perspectives on the Demise of the USSR, ed. Alexander J. Motyl (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 12. 80.  The ERF financed the activities and organized the dissemination and publication of the information gathered by the ERN Büroo. Annual conclusive report on the Estonian National Council’s activities entitled “Ülevaade Eesti Rahvusnõukogu tegevusest 1952,” 19 December 1952, in RR, f. 3, s. 79 (“ERN materjalid (sorteerimata)”), p. 6. 81.  “Tusentals balter nu i sovjetryska läger,” Aftonbladet, 14 August 1945. 82.  “Memorandum to the Council of Foreign Ministers in Paris on Soviet Deportations in Occupied Baltic States by Estonian National Council,” 1946, in RR, f. 3, s. 75, p. 3. 83.  Annual conclusive report on the Estonian National Council’s activities entitled “Ülevaade Eesti Rahvusnõukogu tegevusest 1952,” 19 December 1952, in RR, f. 3, s. 79, p. 6. 84.  Chronicle of the foreign-policy activities of the ERN from 1947 through 1962 entitled “Eesti Rahvusnõukogu välispoliitilise tegevuse kroonika,” compiled by the Estonian National Council, Stockholm 1965, reprinted in ERN 1947–1997. 50 aastat poliitilist võitlust (Stockholm: Eesti Rahvusnõukogu, 1997), 25.

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  85.  Soviet Estonian radio transmissions were often cited as sources in the Estonian émigré press. See, for example, the Swedish translation of an article entitled “Ett säreget lantbruk i Sovjetestland,” Välis-Eesti, 2 September 1945, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 77, f. 5.   86.  Aleksander Kaelas, one of the key protagonists of the ERF, stated already in 1956 that he possessed an almost complete collection of the major Soviet Estonian daily newspaper Rahva Hääl (“The Voice of the People”) reaching back as far as 1951. Aleksander Kaelas to Arvo Horm, 24 November 1956, in RR, f. 3, s. 85.  87. See, for example, the quotations and sources used in the monthly reports of the ERN on the situation in Soviet Estonia, edited by Aleksander Kaelas and published from 1959 onwards, in RR, f. 3, s. 87 (“ERN kuurepordid olukorrast Nõukogude Eestis, juuni 1960–dets. 1962”).   88.  “Baltiska immigrantorgan rullar sig i sovjethets,” Ny Dag, 2 September 1945.   89.  Swedish translation of an article entitled “Det vitgardistiska nästet i Stockholm,” Pravda, 6 August 1947, in RA, UD 1920, P 40, vol. 78, f. 8, p. 1.   90.  Report on a press conference of the ERN, 13 February 1954, entitled “Fria esternas verksamhet 1944–1954,” in RR, f. 3, n. 7, s. 77.   91.  The Swedish ambassador to the United States to Östen Undén, 13 August 1954, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 605, f. 4, p. 1; Imbi Paju, “Valel on pikad jäljed,” in Kõige taga oli hirm. Kuidas Eesti oma ajaloost ilma jäi, ed. Sofi Oksanen and Imbi Paju (Tallinn: Eesti Päevalehe AS, 2010), 194.   92.  The Swedish ambassador to the United States to Östen Undén, 13 August 1954, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 605, f. 4, p. 2.   93.  Michał Lisiński, “Organizacje polskie w Szwecji 1945–1970,” in Polacy w Szwecji po II wojnie światowej (Stockholm: Kongres Polaków w Szwecji, 1992), 27.  94. Uggla, Den svenska Polenbilden, 74.  95. Krzysztof Pszenicki, Tu mówi Londyn. Historia Sekcji Polskiej BBC (Warsaw: Rosner & Wspólnicy, 2009), 24.   96.  Friederike Kind-Kovács, “Voices, Letters, and Literature Through the Iron Curtain: Exiles and the (Trans)Mission of Radio in the Cold War,” in Cold War History 13, no. 2 (2013): 193, 195.  97. Cummings, Cold War Radio, 6–7.   98.  Ćwirko-Godycka, Organizacje polonijne w Szwecji, 13.   99.  Kłonczyński, “Prasa szwedzka wobec wydarzeń w Polsce,” 90. 100. Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 236. 101.  Eric von Post to the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 28 February 1955, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 652, f. 68. 102.  Manuscript entitled “How to Avert the Soviet Danger,” written by August Rei, n.d. (after June 1951), in Arbetarrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek [The Labor Movement’s Archive and Library, ARAB], arkivnummer 2268, volume 5, folder 4, p. 7. 103.  The programs of the Voice of America compensated for the lack of engagement of the RFE in Estonian broadcasting. In 1952, the U.S. State Department rejected the proposals of Estonian émigrés to involve the Free Europe Committee into activities that targeted the population in the Estonian SSR. Toomas Mattson, “Raadio Vaba Euroopa,” in Sõna jõul. Diasporaa roll Eesti iseseisvuse taastamisel, ed. Kristi



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Anniste, Kaja Kumer-Haukanõmm, and Tiit Tammaru (Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2008), 216. 104.  Report on the ERN’s activities entitled “Översikt över Estniska Nationalrådets (ERN) verksamhet,” January 1952, in RR, f. 3, s. 75, p. 5; Chronicle of the foreign-policy activities of the ERN from 1947 through 1962 entitled “Eesti Rahvusnõukogu välispoliitilise tegevuse kroonika,” compiled by the Estonian National Council, Stockholm 1965, reprinted in ERN 1947–1997. 50 aastat poliitilist võitlust (Stockholm: Eesti Rahvusnõukogu, 1997), 25. The efficiency of the broadcasting campaigns was hard to measure, especially for the Balts in the West. Unlike the case of the RFE, which received letters from listeners in the satellite states and systematically interviewed refugees and tourists from behind the Iron Curtain via its local offices, Western broadcasting stations received virtually no feedback from inside the Soviet Baltic republics. Preliminary insights were gained by the interrogation of a handful of newly arrived refugees and some of the circa 100 elderly Estonians who had received permission to permanently reunite with their families in Sweden in the late 1950s. For examples of such interviews, dating from 1959 and 1960, see ARAB, arkivnr. 2268, vol. 3, f. 1; RR, f. 3, s. 87. 105. Scott C. Monje, The Central Intelligence Agency. A Documentary History (Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 2008), xix. This applied also to neutral Sweden, where the National Security Service engaged in activities that resembled those of the émigrés to a large extent. The compilation of facts and data on all aspects of life behind the Iron Curtain was as central to the intelligence services’ activities as to those of the émigrés, as revealed in one of its reports, entitled “About the Actual Social, Political, and Military Situation in Poland” and based on the interrogation of two Poles that had managed to escape to Sweden. Pro Memoria of the Swedish National Security Service (secret), 17 October 1951, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 492, f. 56. 106. Gaddis, The Cold War, 72. Signals intelligence (SIGINT) constituted the dominant strategy of Western intelligence services during the Cold War and was applied far more often than intelligence operations that used human sources (HUMINT). Christopher Andrew, “Intelligence in the Cold War,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Volume II: Conflicts and Crises, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 417. 107. Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 150–53. However, although Stockholm played a significant role as Northern Europe’s “window to the East,” the most important outpost of the information-gathering activities of “Polish London” was West Germany, Europe’s Cold War front state per se. 108.  Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand. Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London: John Murray, 2001), 165. 109.  Laar, “The Armed Resistance Movement in Estonia from 1944 to 1956,” 234. 110.  Ericsson, “Exodus och underrättelseinhämtning,” 121. 111. Ekecrantz, Hemlig utrikespolitik, 203, 206. 112.  Annual report by the 4th Department of the Soviet Estonian branch of the KGB for the year 1956, 12 January 1957, reprinted in Aruanne Riikliku Julgeoleku Komitee 2. ja 4. osakonna tööst 1956. aastal, ed. Jüri Ojamaa and Jaak Hion, vol. 8 of Ad Fontes (Tallinn: Rahvusarhiiv, 2000), 115.

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113.  The information originates from documents of the KGB, which was thoroughly well informed on the Western intelligence services’ plans to smuggle Baltic spies by sea from Sweden via Finland into the Soviet Union and the network that lay behind them. Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 118. 114.  Annual report by the 2nd Counterintelligence Department of the Soviet Estonian branch of the KGB for the period between April 1954 and April 1955, n.d., reprinted in Ojamaa and Hion, eds., Aruanne 1954–1955, 55. 115. Ekecrantz, Hemlig utrikespolitik, 203. This mirrored the experiences of the British SIS with the infiltration of spies into Poland. An underground resistance organization called Wolność i Niezawisłość (“Freedom and Independence”) intensified its contacts with Western intelligence services in 1947. However, from 1948 onwards, the organization was successfully infiltrated by Polish counterintelligence forces, which used the opportunity of acting in the name of the alleged resistance fighters, deliberately misinforming the British and U.S. intelligence services for several years. Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 65–66. 116.  Annual report by the 2nd Counterintelligence Department of the Soviet Estonian branch of the KGB for the period between April 1954 and April 1955, n.d., reprinted in Ojamaa and Hion, eds., Aruanne 1954–1955, 16. Soon after the end of the Cold War, the topic of the Swedish intelligence service’s involvement in the infiltration efforts received greater public attention. As the Baltic spies faced either death or long imprisonment in the USSR, the episode has, together with the extradition of the Baltic soldiers, been added to Sweden’s moral debts to the Baltic nations. For a detailed account on this Swedish-Baltic conspiracy, written from the perspective of an Estonian agent, see Peter Kadhammar, De sammansvurna (Stockholm: Fischer, 1999). 117. Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 116. 118.  Ibid., 102. 119.  For details see the chapter “Vastuluuretegevus välismaal” (“Counterintelligence Abroad”) of the annual report by the 2nd Counterintelligence Department of the Soviet Estonian branch of the KGB for the period between April 1954 and April 1955, n.d., reprinted in Ojamaa and Hion, eds., Aruanne 1954–1955, 63–72. 120.  Jaak Pihlau, “Raadiomängud Eestis Teise maailmasõja ajal ja järel IV,” Tuna 12, no. 2 (2009): 103. 121.  Annual report by the 2nd Department of the Soviet Estonian branch of the KGB for the year 1956, 12 January 1957, reprinted in Ojamaa and Hion, eds., Aruanne 1956, 51. 122.  Annual report by the 2nd Department of the Soviet Estonian branch of the KGB for the year 1957, 17 January 1958, reprinted in Aruanne Riikliku Julgeoleku Komitee 2. ja 4. osakonna tööst 1957. aastal, ed. Jüri Ojamaa and Jaak Hion, vol. 10 of Ad Fontes (Tallinn: Rahvusarhiiv, 2002), 63. 123.  In Poland, the number of radio receivers amounted to 200,000 in 1945. Three years later, the number had more than doubled, and in 1956, around 3,300,000 wirelesses enabled the population to listen not only to the domestic broadcasting stations, but also to the Western channels. Pszenicki, Tu mówi Londyn, 94.



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124.  Mark Pittaway, “The Education of Dissent. The Reception of the Voice of Free Hungary, 1951–56,” in Across the Blocs. Cold War Cultural and Social History, ed. Rana Mitter and Patrick Major (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2004), 97. 125.  It should be remembered that the lobbying campaigns were never uncontested in the West, especially due to the lacking possibilities of verifying the information that the émigré activists presented. “Thousands of eyewitness reports” could thus, as Rein Taagepera stated, “be dismissed as ‘rumors,’ unless recast in an unemotional scholarly style and complemented by as many scraps of official (i.e., Soviet) statements as possible. This was beyond the ability of the first generation in exile.” Rein Taagepera, “Western Awareness of Soviet Deportations in Estonia,” in Soviet Deportations in Estonia: Impact and Legacy, ed. Kristi Kukk and Toivo Raun (Tartu: Tartu University Press, 2007), 105. This attitude reflected the general mistrust that the socalled Sovietologists and Kremlinologists had to face. The gathering of information from a variety of largely unverified sources reduced this specific field of Cold War area studies to “an art of interpolation developed by necessity out of the paucity of objective evidence (not unlike medieval history)” in the eyes of many contemporary observers. Robert V. Daniels, “Soviet Society and American Soviet Studies: A Study in Success?” in Rethinking the Soviet Collapse. Sovietology, the Death of Communism and the New Russia, ed. Michael Cox (London and New York: Pinter, 1998), 116. 126.  Untitled manuscript on the émigrés’ role in “anti-communist enlightenment,” undated, 1955 or 1956, in ARAB, arkivnr. 2268, vol. 4, f. 4, p. 4. 127.  Manuscript of Arvo Horm’s speech entitled “10 aastat Eesti Rahvusnõukogu,” reprinted in the brochure “Eesti Rahvusnõukogu VI Kongress, 16.-17. novembril 1957. a. Stokholmis,” in RR, f. 3, s. 78, p. 2. 128.  Juhana Aunesluoma, Magnus Petersson, and Charles Silva, “Deterrence or Reassurance?” Scandinavian Journal of History 32, no. 2 (2007): 183. 129. Rei, The Drama of the Baltic Peoples, 353. 130.  This derogatory term refers to the heavy Russian accent (“e” pronounced as “ye”) of a group of ethnically Estonian communists who, after having spent their entire or most of their life in the USSR, were brought back to Estonia as loyal cadres together with the victorious Red Army. Küng, Estland, p. 122. 131.  Olaf Mertelsmann, “Sovetiseerimise mõistest,” in Kõige taga oli hirm. Kuidas Eesti oma ajaloost ilma jäi, ed. Sofi Oksanen and Imbi Paju (Tallinn: Eesti Päevalehe AS, 2010), 32. 132.  Anthony Kemp-Welch, Poland under Communism. A Cold War History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 67. 133.  Bo Petersson, Sovjetunionen och neutraliteten i Europa. Sovjetiska kommentarer om Finlands, Schweiz’, Sveriges och Österrikes neutralitetspolitik 1955–1988 (Stockholm: Utrikespolitiska Institutet, 1989), 31. 134.  Kłonczyński, Stosunki polsko-szwedzkie, 320. 135.  G. Hamilton, the Swedish ambassador to Poland, to Östen Undén, 25 July 1957, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 656, f. 78. 136.  Note from the Polish embassy in Moscow to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 27 March 1957, reprinted in Polskie Dokumenty Diplomatyczne 1957, ed.

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Krzysztof Ruchniewicz and Tadeusz Szumowski (Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2006), 173. Findings in the archival collections of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs suggest that this plan can be dated back at least to 1953. Jukka Nevakivi, “Sovjetunionen, Finland och nordiskt samarbete 1945–1963,” in Sovjetunionen och Norden—konflikt, kontakter och influenser, ed. Sune Jungar and Bent Jensen, vol. 110:1 of Historiallinen Arkisto (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1997), 125. 137.  Gerner and Karlsson, Nordens medelhav, 246. 138.  Jarl Hjalmarson, “Vår plikt,” in Friheten möter Chrusjtjov, ed. Ivo Iliste, Arvo Horm, and Birger Nerman, vol. 6 of Brännande Östersjöproblem (Stockholm: Baltiska Kommittén, 1959), 6. 139.  Paweł Machcewicz, Rebellious Satellite: Poland 1956 (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2009), 8. 140.  H. Hallberg, the Swedish consul in Gdańsk, to Östen Undén, 21 July 1956, in RA, UD 1920, HP 1, vol. 654, f. 74. 141.  “Uciekli ze statku ‘Mazowsze,’” Dziennik Polski i Dziennik Żołnierza, 31 August 1956. 142.  Pro Memoria of the Swedish National Security Service, 23 September 1957, in RA, SÄPO (the archive of the Swedish Security Service, Säkerhetspolisen), P 5550, p. 3. 143.  Ryszard Terlecki, preface to Aparat bezpieczeństwa wobec emigracji politycznej i Polonii, ed. Ryszard Terlecki, vol. 19 of Monografie (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2005), 8. 144.  “O emigracji na kongresie PZPR,” Dziennik Polski i Dziennik Żołnierza, 24 March 1959. 145.  Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire. The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 276. 146.  Back in 1955, the KGB counted 11,000 Soviet Estonian citizens who had exchanged letters with relatives in the United States, while 10,640 and 22,500 had maintained postal contacts with émigrés in Great Britain and West Germany respectively. Annual report by the 2nd Counterintelligence Department of the Soviet Estonian branch of the KGB for the period between April 1954 and April 1955, n.d., reprinted in Ojamaa and Hion, eds., Aruanne 1954–1955, 16, 19. 147. Zubok, A Failed Empire, 103. 148.  Manuscript entitled “Balti rahvad ootavad abi väljaspoolt,” 1956 or 1957, in RR, f. 3, n. 7, s. 85, p. 1. In 1956, 605 Estonians were allowed to travel abroad (the statistics do not distinguish between socialist and capitalist states). Annual report by the 2nd Department of the Soviet Estonian branch of the KGB for the year 1956, 12 January 1957, reprinted in Ojamaa and Hion, eds., Aruanne 1956, 37. In Poland, on the other hand, as many as 177,000 trips abroad were counted in the same year, which in percentage terms also reflects a huge discrepancy. Stola, “PRL: Kraj przymusowych migracji czy ‘przywiązania do ziemi?’” 34. 149.  Annual report by the 2nd Department of the Soviet Estonian branch of the KGB for the year 1957, 17 January 1958, reprinted in Ojamaa and Hion, eds., Aruanne 1957, 53.



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150.  Annual report by the 2nd Department of the Soviet Estonian branch of the KGB for the year 1956, 12 January 1957, reprinted in Ojamaa and Hion, eds., Aruanne 1956, 37. 151. Zubok, A Failed Empire, 316. 152.  Reczyńska, “Obraz Polonii i emigracji w propagandzie PRL,” 45. 153.  Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 234. 154.  Sławomir Cenckiewicz, “Udział aparatu bezpieczeństwa PRL w drugiej kampanii reemigracyjnej (1955–1957),” in Aparat bezpieczeństwa wobec emigracji politycznej i Polonii, ed. Ryszard Terlecki, vol. 19 of Monografie (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2005), 259, 266. 155.  Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann, The Exile Mission, 203; Cenckiewicz, “Udział aparatu bezpieczeństwa PRL w drugiej kampanii reemigracyjnej,” 276. 156.  Lencznarowicz, “Rola Towarzystwa ‘Polonia’ w polityce PRL wobec Polonii w krajach zachodnich,” 59. 157.  Reczyńska, “Obraz Polonii i emigracji w propagandzie PRL,” 65. 158.  Eric von Post to Östen Undén (partly confidential), 12 December 1955, in RA, UD 1920, R 58, vol. 39, p. 2. 159.  Bieniasz, “Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantów w Szwecji,” 45. 160.  Transcript of a broadcast of the Kraj radio station entitled “Jedność kraju i emigracji,” 19 December 1956, in Open Society Archives [HU OSA], 300-50-01, folder 118.4, 1955–1956, box 501, p. 1341. 161.  Accordingly, the Towarzystwo “Polonia” was renamed the Association for Cooperation with Polish Communities (= Polonia) Abroad in 1959, replacing the more politically charged term wychodźstwo (“exile”). 162. Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 199. 163.  Ibid., 22. 164.  Annual report by the 2nd Department of the Soviet Estonian branch of the KGB for the year 1957, 17 January 1958, reprinted in Ojamaa and Hion, eds., Aruanne 1957, 80. 165. Ivo Juurvee, “Idabloki eriteenistuste võitlustest külma sõja ajaloorindel Andrus Roolahe ja Julius Maderi näitel,” Ajalooline Ajakiri no. 1–2 (2009): 55–56. 166. Raag, Eestlane väljaspool Eestit, 108. 167. Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 203–4. 168.  Paper of the Central and Eastern European Commission entitled “Statement of Policy on East-West Cultural Exchanges,” March 1955, in ARAB, arkivnr. 2268, vol. 6, f. 3, p. 11. 169.  Rafał Habielski, Życie społeczne i kulturalne emigracji, vol. 3 of Druga Wielka Emigracja 1945–1990 (Warsaw: Biblioteka “Więzi,” 1999), 242–43. 170. Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 265. 171.  Untitled article signed “Bywalec,” Dziennik Polski i Dziennik Żołnierza, 23 April 1956. 172.  Information brochure entitled Eestlastele kodumaalt, 1957, in RR, f. 3, n. 7, s. 78, p. 10. 173.  Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 39.

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174.  Jaak Maandi stressed this duality as crucial to the understanding of the Estonian diaspora community’s attitude toward Soviet Estonia during the entire Cold War era. Interview, Tallinn, Estonia, 21 September 2011. 175. Kangro, Estland i Sverige, 65. 176.  Aktsioonid suunatakse Idasse ja kodumaa suunas, ERN Bulletin no. 13, March 1957, in RR, f. 3, s. 78, p. 2. 177. For the hitherto most comprehensive study on the topic, see Reisch, Hot Books in the Cold War. 178.  Arvo Horm to Elizabeth Judas, 7 April 1960, in Rahvusarhiiv [National Archives of Estonia, ERA], 5008.1.57.12. 179.  Alfred Reisch, “Ideological Warfare during the Cold War: The West’s Secret Book Distribution Program behind the Iron Curtain,” Military Power Revue der Schweizer Armee no. 3 (2008): 44–46. 180.  However, as the organizers were aware of the fact that the campaign might clash with Sweden’s neutrality doctrine, they kept the activities within a limit that would not attract too much attention from the Swedish authorities. Reisch, Hot Books in the Cold War, 25. 181.  While the campaigns of lofting balloons filled with anti-communist propaganda toward the satellite states had already started in 1951 and were largely finished by the mid-1950s, the Estonians in Sweden applied this strategy mainly during the second half of the decade. Arvo Horm to Eero Omri, 28 August 1961, in ERA 5008.1.56.77. 182.  Reisch, “Ideological Warfare during the Cold War,” 45. 183.  Anne E. Gorsuch, All This Is Your World. Soviet Tourism at Home and Abroad after Stalin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 10–11. 184.  Aktsioonid suunatakse Idasse ja kodumaa suunas, ERN Bulletin no. 13, March 1957, in RR, f. 3, s. 78, p. 2. 185.  Information brochure entitled Kaaslastele kodumaalt, most probably 1957, in RR, f. 3, s. 85, pp. 9–10. 186.  Report by Harry Kiisk entitled “Märkmeid eestlaste külaskäigust Stockholmi N. Liidu laev ‘Pobedaga,’” 11 July 1956, in RR, f. 3, s. 85, pp. 1–4. However, these “politruks,” as a rule KGB agents, turned out to be less attentive than expected, which might be explained by the fact that the first delegation to visit Sweden comprised representatives of the Soviet Estonian elites. As Kiisk stated in a later report, some of the visitors even visited the private homes of émigrés, which implies that the first contact between the representatives of the émigré and homeland elites on Swedish soil could develop in a relatively relaxed atmosphere. Report by Harri Kiisk entitled “Informatsiooniks. Suhtlemisest raudeesriide-taguste maadega,” 11 November 1957, in RR, f. 3, s. 85, p. 2. 187.  As Anne Gorsuch points out, the opportunity to visit capitalist countries was reserved for a tiny Soviet elite with a “squeaky clean past [and] well-massaged connections with party and trade union hierarchies.” Anne Gorsuch, “From Iron Curtain to Silver Screen: Imagining the West in the Khrushchev Era,” in Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, ed. György Péteri (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), 154.



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188.  Report by the ERN Büroo entitled “Esimene grupp turiste okupeeritud Eestist saabus Rootsi” (strictly confidential), 11 July 1956, in RR, f. 3, s. 85, p. 4. 189.  Information brochure entitled Kaaslastele kodumaalt, most probably 1957, in RR, f. 3, s. 85, p. 16. 190.  The approach of the ERN in Stockholm mirrored the change of strategy among anti-communist institutions such as the Free Europe Committee, which in the second half of the 1950s increasingly focused on influencing the non-conformist elites behind the Iron Curtain through person-to-person contacts and by providing them with Western publications. Kind-Kovács, “Voices, Letters, and Literature through the Iron Curtain,” 198. 191.  Circular letter distributed by the ERN, 24 July 1956, in RR, f. 3, s. 85. 192. See, for example, the brochure Eestlastele kodumaalt, which focuses on the Estonian diaspora in Sweden, or the more comprehensive publication Eestlased välismaal, published by the ERF in 1957, which gives a detailed account of Estonian life abroad and includes a list of Western radio stations that broadcasted in Estonian, in RR, f. 3, s. 188. 193.  Information brochure entitled Kaaslastele kodumaalt, most probably 1957, in RR, f. 3, s. 85, p. 2. The distribution of brochures among Estonian visitors was an early predecessor of the hand-to-hand book distribution operations of the Free Europe Committee, which from the early 1960s onwards organized the dissemination of non-communist literature among tourists from behind the Iron Curtain. The Swedish branch of the campaign, established in 1962, specifically focused on Baltic visitors. Reisch, Hot Books in the Cold War, 126, 257. 194.  Annual report by the 2nd Department of the Soviet Estonian branch of the KGB for the year 1957, 17 January 1958, reprinted in Ojamaa and Hion, eds., Aruanne 1957, 72. 195.  Riho Saard, “‘Rõõmustame selle üle . . .’: Usulise ja teoloogilise kirjanduse saatmine Soomest Eestisse 1950.–1980. aastatel,” Akadeemia 16, no. 4 (2004): 846. 196.  Aleksander Warma, vice chairman of the ERN’s Foreign Commission, to the ERF, 1 October 1958, in RR, f. 3, s. 188. 197.  Annual report by the 2nd Department of the Soviet Estonian branch of the KGB for the year 1958, 14 January 1959, reprinted in Aruanne Riikliku Julgeoleku Komitee 2. ja 4. osakonna tööst 1958. aastal, ed. Jüri Ojamaa and Jaak Hion, vol. 14 of Ad Fontes (Tallinn: Riigiarhiiv, 2005), 76. 198.  In order to control the 298 foreigners who visited the Soviet Estonian capital in 1957, the Estonian KGB recruited more than one hundred informants. Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 193. 199.  Annual report by the 2nd Department of the Soviet Estonian branch of the KGB for the year 1957, 17 January 1958, reprinted in Ojamaa and Hion, eds., Aruanne 1957, 56. 200.  Annual report by the 2nd Department of the Soviet Estonian branch of the KGB for the year 1958, 14 January 1959, reprinted in Ojamaa and Hion, Aruanne 1958, 50–51. 201. Aleksander Kaelas, ed., Soviet-Occupied Estonia 1959. Monthly Reports (Stockholm: Estonian National Council, 1960), 21.

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202.  Annual report by the 4th Department of the Soviet Estonian branch of the KGB for the year 1957, 18 January 1958, reprinted in Ojamaa and Hion, eds., Aruanne 1957, 191–92. 203.  Report from Major Vertman of the Estonian KGB’s First Department (strictly confidential), 14 March 1959, reprinted in Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 312. 204. Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 146–47. 205. Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 207, 242. 206.  Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann, The Exile Mission, 110. 207. Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 242–43. 208.  Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield. The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 249. 209.  Stola, “PRL: Kraj przymusowych migracji czy ‘przywiązania do ziemi?’” 34. 210. Pszenicki, Tu mówi Londyn, 191. 211.  Pro Memoria of the Swedish National Security Service, 23 September 1957, in RA, SÄPO, P 5550, p. 4. 212.  The Swedish Alien Commission to King Gustav VI Adolf, 2 April 1960, in RA, UD 1920, R 58, vol. 40, p. 4. 213.  The cruiser, which could host up to a hundred tourists, moored eight times in the harbor of Stockholm in 1958. During that summer, eighty-two passengers refused to return to Poland, at one occasion even several dozen at a time. Trzciński, “Polskie fale emigracyjne do Szwecji,” 63. 214.  “Emigracyjny ‘Dziennik Polski’ namawia emigrantów do współpracy z wywiadem USA przeciwko Polsce,” Express Wieczorny, 10–11 May 1959. 215.  Report by the Swedish National Security Service, written at the request of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (secret), 1 June 1964, in RA, UD 1920, R 58, vol. 40, pp. 16–17, 40. 216.  Paweł Machcewicz, “Walka z Radiem Wolna Europa (1950–1975),” in Aparat bezpieczeństwa wobec emigracji politycznej i Polonii, ed. Ryszard Terlecki, vol. 19 of Monografie (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2005), 38. Polish intelligence officers aimed to recruit émigré visitors from Sweden, who were temporarily staying in Poland, as informants that were intended to infiltrate the RFE’s Stockholm office. Report by the Swedish National Security Service, written at the request of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (secret), 1 June 1964, in RA, UD 1920, R 58, vol. 40, pp. 13, 17, 23. 217. Habielski, Życie społeczne i kulturalne emigracji, 256. 218.  Małgorzata Ptasińska-Wójcik, “Inwigilacja Instytutu Literackiego przez Służbę Bezpieczeństwa w czasach Gomułki,” in Aparat bezpieczeństwa wobec emigracji politycznej i Polonii, ed. Ryszard Terlecki, vol. 19 of Monografie (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2005), 106. 219. Kemp-Welch, Poland under Communism, 138. 220.  Ptasińska-Wójcik, “Inwigilacja Instytutu Literackiego przez Służbę Bezpieczeństwa,” 109. 221. Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 261.



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222.  Ptasińska-Wójcik, “Inwigilacja Instytutu Literackiego przez Służbę Bezpieczeństwa,” 113, 149. 223.  Habielski, Życie społeczne i kulturalne emigracji, 265. 224.  Reczyńska, “Obraz Polonii i emigracji w propagandzie PRL,” 67. 225.  Matti Klinge, Bałtycki Świat, Polish edition of The Baltic World (Helsinki: Otava, 1998), 164. 226. Monthly report on the situation in Estonia entitled “Olukord okupeeritud Eestis,” August 1962, in RR, f. 3, s. 87, p. 3. 227.  Meike Wulf, “Locating Estonia: Perspectives from Exile and the Homeland,” in Warlands. Population Resettlements and State Reconstruction in the Soviet-East European Borderlands, 1945–50, ed. Peter Gatrell and Nick Baron (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 236–37. 228.  Mart Laar, “1949. aasta märtsiküüditamine ja relvastatud vastupanuliikumine,” in Kõige taga oli hirm. Kuidas Eesti oma ajaloost ilma jäi, ed. Sofi Oksanen and Imbi Paju (Tallinn: Eesti Päevalehe AS, 2010), 319. 229.  Andrzej Friszke, Paweł Machcewicz, and Rafał Habielski, “Zakończenie— Próba bilansu,” in Rafał Habielski, Życie społeczne i kulturalne emigracji, vol. 3 of Druga Wielka Emigracja 1945–1990 (Warsaw: Biblioteka “Więzi,” 1999), 308. 230.  Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 234. 231.  Undated report entitled “Un interview avec l’ingénieur K., arrivé en Suède de l’Estonie soviétique au milieu du décembre 1960,” in ARAB, arkivnr. 2268, vol. 3, f. 1, p. 1.

Chapter Four

In Search of a Common Language

EUROPEAN DÉTENTE AND ITS REPERCUSSIONS AROUND THE BALTIC RIM The spirit of peaceful coexistence, which was born out of the Khrushchev Thaw and introduced a new tone of goodwill and cooperation into the strained relations between Moscow and Washington, in the end turned out to be a temporary phenomenon. The failure of East-West negotiations on the strategic nuclear armament policies of NATO and the Warsaw Pact spurred military competition between the blocs, which culminated in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war. In view of the uncontrolled dynamics of the escalating crisis and due to a “mutual fear of nuclear force,”1 both camps considerably modified their confrontational course. The signing of the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, which set the course for efficient armament control, eventually triggered a “real process of détente.”2 The changes in the geopolitical climate were perceptible, especially in Europe, which by the mid-1960s, as Poul Villaume and Odd Arne Westad put it, “was growing out of the straightjacket that World War II had imposed on it.”3 Despite the shock of the Soviet invasion in Czechoslovakia in 1968, which awakened memories of the brutal suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and marked a severe setback in the relations between Moscow and her satellites, diplomatic relations between the East and West improved. In Cold War historiography, there is a certain disagreement among experts in the field over the term “détente” itself, which, as Michael Cox expressed it, means “rather different things to different people.”4 Seen from the perspective of the history of diplomacy and international relations, the onset of the era of détente is generally dated to the major turn in U.S. foreign policy in 1969, which improved Washington’s relations with the Soviet Union and the 121

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People’s Republic of China during the Nixon and Ford administrations. Détente was, however, as Jussi Hanhimäki rightly stresses, first and foremost “a European [emphasis in original] project.”5 Already in the early 1960s, Western Europe had shown clear signs of emancipation from its North American ally, which then considerably affected the relations between the two halves of the divided continent. Moscow of course still held the satellite states in a firm grip, if necessary by forcible means. But Stalin’s menacing shadow had faded, which dispelled the worst fears of an imminent Soviet threat.6 NATO and U.S. military forces did no longer appear as Western Europe’s only life assurance, which fostered the development of a separate political agenda, especially in the North. From a European point of view, the era of détente thus denotes, in the first instance, the relatively peaceful “breather between the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and the reinvigoration of tensions that followed the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.”7 With the onset of European détente, exchange and interaction between states, societies, and individuals on both sides of the Iron Curtain could blossom to an extent that by far exceeded the cautious experiments of the Thaw years. As East-West rapprochement progressed, official and unofficial interaction across the Baltic Sea grew exponentially. The spirit of détente, the political swing to the left in Western Europe, and, of course, the neutral status of Sweden and Finland aligned the stars favorably for the development of a dense net of lively interaction between the shores. In particular, the tourist infrastructure was considerably expanded. From the early 1970s onwards, even economic cooperation between the blocs started to flourish, while the governments around the Baltic rim, at the same time, agreed on fostering societal and cultural exchange as well. Paradoxically enough, it was during this era of unprecedentedly vital communication between the neutral Nordic states and their communist-ruled opposite coasts that the political leadership of the Polish and Estonian diaspora communities in Sweden faced a fundamental crisis. The ageing ranks of political activists experienced the fate of all émigré leaders: the gradual loss of support from a more assimilated, younger generation. Also, Western moral support for the émigrés’ political agenda significantly dwindled. The alienation between the political emigration and the homelands steadily grew, which counteracted the strategic advantages of the Swedish connection for the establishment of oppositional networks between East and West. Thus, with the onset of European détente, émigré political activity entered a decisive phase of transition. Policies of East-West Rapprochement in the European North At the beginning of the 1960s, the Nordic states started to reassess their foreign policies regarding the Warsaw Pact states. The Finnish-Soviet “note



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crisis,” triggered by a Soviet diplomatic note sent to the Finnish government in the fall of 1961, in which Moscow demanded bilateral military consultations in view of West Germany’s arms policy, was a wake-up call for the Nordic governments. Principally Finland and Sweden, but also the NATO members Denmark and Norway, actively engaged in political debates about the future of Nordic neutrality and nuclear disarmament, especially in the Baltic Sea Region, eager as they were to keep East-West tensions out of Europe’s “quiet corner.”8 The dramatic aggravation of the superpower conflict in 1962 had a long-lasting impact especially on Stockholm’s foreign policy, which took a radical turn away from its de facto pro-Western course of the 1950s. The transformation of the traditional defensive line, represented by Foreign Minister Östen Undén, toward the self-confident course of the socalled “active foreign policy” became apparent in the early 1960s.9 One of the preconditions for the readjustment of Sweden’s foreign policy strategies was the generational shift within the governing Swedish Social Democratic Party, which put an end to the continuity of personnel in post-war national politics. In 1962, Undén left his post after seventeen years, while Prime Minister Tage Erlander, who had led the government and the Swedish Social Democratic Party for almost a quarter of a century, was succeeded by his considerably more radical protégé Olof Palme in 1969. A new generation of social democrats with a pronouncedly leftist profile propagated the “doctrine of small states” and took a critical stance toward both superpowers, which ended the so far prevailing consensus in foreign policy issues across the political spectrum in Sweden. The new government supported radical liberation movements in Africa and Latin America, but also in Vietnam, which turned the Vietnam War into an important catalyst for the reformulation of Sweden’s foreign policy course.10 Prime Minister Palme’s openly displayed sympathies for the Viet Cong partisans caused a substantial diplomatic rift in the relations between Sweden and the United States. Palme’s comparison of the U.S. Air Force’s bombings in Vietnam with Guernica, Katyn, Treblinka, and other lieux de mémoire of crimes against humanity eventually induced Washington to recall the U.S. ambassador to Stockholm in 1972. From then on, it was no longer the social democrats but the conservative and liberal forces in Sweden that repeatedly referred to the country’s obligation to remain neutral, calling for more cohesion in the government’s responses to the international situation.11 However, the parliamentary opposition failed to adapt to the prevailing ideological spirit of the late 1960s, which also affected the conservative faction’s political allies; the émigré activists from behind the Iron Curtain. Palme admitted quite frankly that the slogan “no peace without freedom” did not apply to all suppressed nations. The head of Swedish social democracy was generous in his support of the Third World in rebellion, but tended to overlook the situation in

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communist Europe. Conservative criticism, which denounced Sweden’s new political mission to be a “moral great power” as hypocritical, was fended off and accused of triggering a “crusade against the Soviet Union” and interfering in Soviet internal affairs.12 Official communication between Sweden and her communist neighbors expanded in view of the rapidly changing geopolitical climate of Cold War Europe. From the mid-1960s onwards, the neutral country gradually resumed its function as a “bridge builder.” This turn in Sweden’s Ostpolitik was closely observed, especially in Poland, where the “constructive role” of both Nordic neutrals for the process of European détente was met with considerable approval.13 Sweden quickly gained special status among Poland’s Western partners,14 which led to the rapid evolution of Swedish-Polish contacts at various levels. Prime Minister Tage Erlander’s first state visit to Poland in 1967 was followed by a multitude of encounters between politicians, parliamentarians, delegates of youth organizations, and intellectuals, and even the coastguard units from both countries started to cooperate. Warsaw’s antiSemitic campaign of 1968, a veritable witch-hunt in which Poland’s Jewish minority served as a scapegoat for the government’s legitimation crisis, of course provoked numerous manifestations of open disgust in Sweden. However, the tensions turned out to be temporary. The political, economic, and cultural networking processes between Sweden and Poland soon recovered and moved toward a peak from 1970 onwards.15 After decades of simmering conflict, the decisive “first steps across the abyss” had been taken.16 The Kremlin’s answer to European détente, by contrast, was more reserved. Unlike most of the satellite states, the USSR continued in large part to maintain her isolationist policy under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev, who succeeded Khrushchev as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in October 1964. However, in the peripheral Baltic borderlands of the USSR, the spirit of détente was still perceptible. Just as during the years of the Khrushchev Thaw, the Baltic Sea Region became an experimental field of careful reforms aimed at liberalizing the Soviet border regime. A decisive catalyst for the development of East-West rapprochement around the Baltic rim was, in this context, the specificity of the relations between Moscow and Helsinki and, especially, the kinship between Finns and Estonians. Since the late 1950s, the Finnish president Urho Kekkonen, who due to his engagement in promoting Finnish-Estonian contacts during the interwar era had gained the reputation of an Estophile,17 had been using the Finnish-Soviet friendship in order to promote a gradual rapprochement between Finland and Soviet Estonia.18 In 1964, Kekkonen finally obtained the Kremlin’s permission for an informal trip to the Estonian SSR on his way back from an official state visit to Poland and delivered a well-remembered speech in Estonian at the Univer-



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sity of Tartu.19 Seen from the perspective of the political emigration, the fact that a Western European head of state visited Soviet Estonia was a serious setback to their efforts to prevent Western governments from officially recognizing the annexation of the Baltic states.20 For the inhabitants of the Estonian SSR, by contrast, Kekkonen’s visit marked a crucial watershed that turned the isolated “hinterland of Leningrad” into a frequently visited and, compared to other Soviet republics, even cosmopolitan, “window to the West.” During the Thaw years, only handpicked official delegations, exclusively from the neutral neighbor states or non-European countries, were able to visit Tallinn. This persisted up to 1960, when the capital of Soviet Estonia finally opened up to Western tourists.21 Nevertheless, traveling to the Estonian SSR was still a complicated undertaking, as visitors had to take the route via Helsinki and Vyborg further on to Leningrad, from where, guided by the official Soviet travel agency Inturist, they reached Tallinn. However, following Kekkonen’s visit to Estonia, traveling was considerably facilitated by the establishment of a direct ferry connection between Tallinn and Helsinki. The Finnish president’s long-term efforts to lobby for a Finnish-Estonian rapprochement were thus crowned with success. Nevertheless, an expansion of communication and exchange across the Gulf of Finland could only develop on the Kremlin’s terms. In return for Brezhnev’s concessions, Helsinki had to reassess her official approach to the Estonian diaspora. At the peak of the Cold War, relations with the Estonian community in Sweden had, in a sense, compensated for the lack of communication with Estonia itself, and the Finnish press and publishing houses regularly offered émigré writers a forum for their works. However, under the new conditions, the cultural links to the Estonian diaspora became a controversial issue. After his return from the Estonian SSR, Kekkonen invited a number of Finnish Estophiles to his summer residence, urging them to limit their contacts with Estonian émigrés, which had long irritated Moscow, and to focus on the cooperation with representatives of Soviet-ruled Estonia instead.22 Eventually, in July 1965, the first direct ferry connection between Finland and Estonia since the pre-war era was inaugurated. The medieval city of Tallinn, whose architectural heritage unmistakably revealed the traditionally close connections to Western Europe, turned into what critical voices labeled a “Potemkin village” of Soviet propaganda: a picturesque tourist attraction with a comparably high standard of living, intended to serve as a living example of the Soviet Union as a prosperous and modern society.23 During the summer season of 1968, 24,000 tourists traveled the route between the capitals of Finland and Soviet Estonia.24 The overwhelming majority of Western visitors were Finns, many of whom were mainly interested in consuming cheap alcohol on the trip, which earned the Helsinki-Tallinn-

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ferry the name “the vodka express.”25 However, the facilitated communication between Estonia and the West not only attracted foreigners. Among the visitors from abroad was also a rising number of Estonians living in the West, mainly representatives of the younger generation who had few living memories of the homeland. Their number amounted to 800 in 1965, increasing to 1,000 in the following year.26 Most of them came from nearby Sweden, but toward the end of the 1960s, also Estonians from overseas started to make use of the opportunity to visit the homeland.27 The reversed stream of Soviet Estonian visitors to the new home countries of their relatives was of course smaller in scale due to the restrictive Soviet travel policy and the high visa fees, which deterred many Soviet Estonians from traveling abroad. However, in the second half of the 1960s, several hundred Estonians visited their friends and relatives in the West every year. Due to the geographical proximity, Sweden became the number one destination for those who had obtained a travel permit.28 After two decades of almost total isolation, family and friendship ties between Estonians on both sides of the Iron Curtain could be re-established. “Cold Warfare” at a Crossroads The leadership of the ERN in Stockholm quickly realized the potential of the ferry connection, which “made it practically possible to send materials, informations [sic], tourists, observers, etc.” to Soviet Estonia.29 All private interaction between diaspora and homeland, including family visits, was de facto political. By liberalizing the border regime, the Soviet authorities thus implicitly allowed a much larger number of Soviet Estonians than before to become acquainted with the political stance of the emigration. This reinforced the effects of the émigré leadership’s continuous efforts to disseminate anti-Soviet counterpropaganda via Western broadcasts and writings among the population of the Estonian SSR.30 The question of visiting the occupied homeland was, however, a matter of controversial debate. The at times highly polemical discourse, which touched upon the core of the Estonian diaspora’s self-perception as a community of political refugees, had already started in 1961, when the famous Estonian composer Eduard Tubin decided to accept an official invitation to go from Stockholm to Tallinn where one of his ballets was to be performed.31 Tubin’s visit to the Estonian SSR was collectively condemned and the composer himself thrown out of his students’ fraternity,32 which in view of the importance of fraternities and sororities in Estonian society marked a severe act of social exclusion. The so-called “Tuldava affair” a few years later was grist to the mill of those who favored a radically isolationist stance. The brilliant linguist Juhan Tuldava, the son of an



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Estonian diplomat who had been deported by Soviet authorities in 1941, had come to Sweden via Finland as a political refugee in the late 1950s. Tuldava was given a warm welcome by the Estonian community, especially by the right-wing camp of the REE.33 The ERN and particularly August Rei, however, remained suspicious, and with good reason, as it turned out. Eventually, Tuldava was unmasked by the CIA as a KGB agent who had been sent to Sweden in order to infiltrate émigré circles, which caused one of the major spy scandals in the history of the Estonian diaspora.34 The steadfast isolationist stance of a majority of émigrés was thus rooted in the still widespread fear of infiltration, and also in the refusal to implicitly recognize the occupation regime by applying for a visa at a Soviet embassy for visiting the Estonian SSR. Up to the perestroika years, the issue of visiting the homeland remained a highly disputed topic. A similar conflict loomed among the Polish diaspora in the West. The generation of war refugees still adhered to their “codex of the political émigré” and severely condemned private visits to communist Poland. For many younger Poles in the West, however, this ideological orthodoxy appeared increasingly anachronistic, not least because the Polish government in exile eventually lost its last vestiges of international recognition in 1963.35 They distanced themselves from what they perceived was backward-looking rigidity, almost literally echoing the argumentation of the communist Polish press of the time: “Feeling the homeland from a distance on the basis of atavism or knowledge of its past,” the conformist Catholic newspaper Słowo Powszechne stated, “belongs rather to the domain of poetry than practice. Today, the same is true for the Polish émigrés who left the country in 1939 or 1945. They want to pass themselves off as experts on what is happening in Poland. [But] they keep forgetting that it soon will be a quarter of a century that separates us from the outbreak of the war.”36

The determination of many Poles in the West to maintain close bonds with the homeland was mirrored in the establishment of organizations that actively supported the modernization and reconstruction programs in the People’s Republic. In Sweden, local committees lobbied for financial support through the Polish government’s prestige projects, such as the opening of a thousand new schools on the occasion of the Polish Millennium in 1966 or the reconstruction of the destroyed Royal Castle in Warsaw.37 These activities manifested the widespread ambition of large parts of the rather apolitical Polonia to actively contribute to the homeland’s future development. Especially among the younger generation, the dynamic process of industrial modernization and the reconstruction of the war-torn cities in communist Poland evoked a certain respect and even admiration, which obviously defied the fiery countercampaigns of the conservative wing of the political emigration.38

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Seen from the perspective of the homeland regimes, the growing generational divide and the crumbling of the unified anti-communist front among the diaspora communities was a favorable development. In the early 1960s, the Soviet embassy in Stockholm could report to Tallinn that the emerging split within the Estonian community was strong enough to take much of the wind out of the sails of the “struggling exile.”39 The Polish government, on the other hand, actively tried to reinforce the marginalization of the self-proclaimed political leadership of the Polish diaspora by consequently applying terms like “reactionary” and “archaic” to the protagonists of émigré politics. It was in the Warsaw government’s best interest to reduce the “state in exile” to a marginal group of “political dinosaurs.”40 Indeed, time seemed to be on the side of the rulers of the People’s Republic. As the 1960s came to an end, the émigré struggle entered its fourth decade. Many of the prominent figures of the political emigration, who had earned their reputation and authority due to their pre-war achievements and the merits of their commitment to the national cause during World War II, had either retired from the political stage or died.41 The death of General Anders in London in May 1970 eventually brought down the final curtain on the era of charismatic émigré leaders and marked a decisive watershed in the history of Polish political diaspora in the West.42 The political leadership of the Estonians in the West was facing very similar challenges, although the Hoover Institution still considered the transnationally operating front of Estonian émigré activists to be the most vivid of its kind in terms of lobbying and publishing activities. In a report on émigré political activity in the Western hemisphere, compiled in the late 1960s, the three Baltic diaspora communities were listed as the most fervent advocates of regime change in the homeland, followed by the Ukrainians, Portuguese, and Greeks.43 However, even the political vigor of the Estonian activists was not inexhaustible. The hope for a withdrawal of the Soviet occupying forces from Estonia and the resurrection of a sovereign nation state had faded. This severely affected the fighting spirit, as a letter of Arvo Horm to Eero Omri, one of the North American partners of the ERN, illustrates: “You should also not forget that we here are very tired. The emigration is disintegrating, weary, aged, and we have a lot of trouble holding the whole enormous organization together and to finance it in such a damned neutral, sleeping country as Sweden, so that we, at times, are depressed and downright desperate.”44 Throughout the 1960s, the level of political activity among Estonians in Sweden continuously declined. As in the case of the Poles, it was not only the change of the international political climate, but also the consequences of ageing and death among the ranks of the political émigré leadership. With August Rei, the head of the ERN and the government in exile, and



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Aleksander Kaelas, one of the most recognized experts on the political and economic development in Soviet Estonia, the anti-communist faction lost two of its leading spearheads. Rei’s successor Aleksander Warma, who, like Rei himself, had played a key role in anti-Soviet opposition outside Estonia after 1940, held the post of “Prime Minister in duties of the President of the Republic of Estonia” until his death in 1970, when he was replaced by Tõnis Kint, chief editor of the émigré newspaper Teataja. The recruitment of younger Estonians able to fill the gaps developed into a major challenge. The generation of middle-aged émigrés was already poorly represented among the leadership of Estonian émigré organizations, while the youth was almost entirely absent.45 Crucial to the future of the Estonian anti-Soviet lobbying activities in Sweden was also the fact that many of the prominent Swedish supporters of the Baltic cause had died by the early 1970s. Among them were Sigurd Curman, a loyal ally of the Balts and one of the key agents of the evacuation program in 1944, and Birger Nerman, the longstanding head of the Baltic Committee and one of the most ardent advocates of the Baltic nations’ right to sovereignty in Sweden. With the passing away of the old guard of Swedish politicians and intellectuals, whose sympathy for the cause of the Baltic peoples’ liberation was rooted in personal connections across the Baltic Sea dating from the pre-war era, the bedrock of the alliance between Estonian émigrés and influential circles among Swedish society was undermined. The émigré leadership understood that the lack of political commitment among the younger generation was not the only challenge to the continuation of their political mission. In view of the profound social revolutions that affected not only the West but also the communist orbit, it had become significantly harder to mobilize public support for the occupied Baltic states. This was mirrored in the continuous decline of donations from Scandinavia, on which the publishing and lobbying activities depended to a large extent. It thus became increasingly difficult for the Estonian diaspora’s political elites to overcome the economic hardships that the maintenance of a vast and well-organized body of political organizations involved.46 The experiences of the Estonian émigré leadership in Sweden were symptomatic for the years when leftist currents were at their highest. In view of the new set of values and radical ideologies with which the New Left swept across the Western societies, the political diaspora communities from behind the Iron Curtain faced a steadily declining level of support and sympathy for their struggle against the communist homeland regimes, especially from the younger generation. The late 1960s thus marked the inexorable decline of the highly institutionalized, transnational anti-communist front that had developed in line with the growing superpower tensions in the 1950s. The phalanx

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of messianic anti-Communism, behind which many Central and Eastern European émigrés had lined up, steadily crumbled away. Opinion-makers in the West promoted the “de-demonization” of the Soviet Union, even in the United States, the heartland of strident opposition to Soviet expansionism. Intellectuals and scholars who had visited the country contributed considerably to the revision of stereotypes about life under Communism, turning the “older images of totalitarianism, with their tableaux of terrorized and atomized populations,” into obsolete remnants of the past.47 By the end of the 1960s, the “cold warriors” were largely discredited in the West,48 not least due to the more dubious aspects of “cold warfare” that had been uncovered by investigative journalists. In 1967, the U.S. magazine Ramparts, one of the organs of the New Left, exposed the farreaching entanglements between U.S. intelligence and numerous youth and student organizations, which the CIA had been supporting financially for propagandistic reasons since 1952.49 Already one year earlier, The New York Times had reported on the CIA’s close involvement with the Paris-based Congress for Cultural Freedom, an association of conservative and liberal leftist intellectuals, unveiling a whole network of “screen foundations” that fueled anti-communist propaganda under the pretext of culture.50 The public exposure of the underlying transatlantic structures of anti-communist opinion-making terminated the CIA’s involvement in the broadcasting activities of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty and put an end to much of the U.S.-financed activity in the field. Subsequently, 600 anti-communist organizations in Europe were dissolved.51 This had of course an additional negative impact on the political work of the émigré activists, who at the same time lost their status as the Western governments’ “desired partners.”52 The West’s explicit willingness to find a modus vivendi with the communist states considerably strengthened the prospects of “survivability for the post-1945 geopolitical settlement,”53 which émigrés from behind the Iron Curtain had precisely been fighting against since the days of World War II. The ongoing political radicalization of youth in the second half of the 1960s had a significant impact on the tone of political discourse even in the neutral Nordic states. Young radicals in Finland developed a level of adoration for the USSR and her political system that, as the Finnish diplomat and politician Max Jakobson pointed out, in its lack of critical thinking could only be compared to the pro-Soviet moods of the 1930s, when many prominent Western intellectuals praised the Soviet experiment as the dawn of a new era.54 The Finnish case was, however, an exception.55 The youth of Western Europe did in its vast majority not turn to the Soviet Union for political



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inspiration, although the leading theorists of the social revolution, many of whom belonged to the cream of French Marxist intellectuals, undeterredly continued to claim that the USSR already was many steps ahead the liberal regimes of the West.56 Also, in Sweden, the breakthrough of the New Left did not strengthen the camp of the pro-Soviet lobby, in spite of the pronouncedly anti-American tone of Swedish political discourses of the time. Communism had, by the late 1960s, developed into a highly polycentric ideology, which offered the protest generation a wide variety of political idols and heroes to choose from. Hence, the wave of leftist sympathies had, paradoxically enough, an “anti-communist” dimension insofar as it triggered harsh attacks against the Soviet and, thus, European incarnation of Communism. Due to its support for sundry communist factions all over the world, the New Left could allow for a general criticism of “cold warfare,”57 which did not spare the Soviet Union and her interpretation of “really existing socialism.” Especially after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, the motherland of Communism became widely discredited among young Swedes as a “country of social fascism and state capitalism.”58 The predominantly critical stance toward the power politics of the Kremlin did, however, not generate any noticeable solidarity with the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, although first signs of organized societal opposition behind the Iron Curtain became visible with the onset of the Prague Spring in 1968. “Sweden should not collaborate with such rightist movements. Besides, I consider the freedom in Czechoslovakia and Hungary to be sufficient,” as Per Gahrton, one of the young Swedish liberals who opted for a “leftist liberalism,” put it.59 Seen from the perspective of the political emigration, it was a paradox that Communism, which, as Arvo Horm claimed, gradually developed into an “outdated, degenerate ideology” among the masses of disillusioned citizens behind the Iron Curtain, was “retaining its old positions and even gaining new ground by its clever, subversive tactics” in the West.60 In view of the pro-leftist currents that pervaded large parts of Swedish society and media, the conservatives, the traditional supporters of anti-communist émigré activism, lost political authority and influence. Moreover, the rather benevolent attitude of the social democratic governments under Tage Erlander regarding the Polish and Baltic émigrés vanished with the party’s ideological shift to the left. The decision of the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League (Sveriges socialdemokratiska ungdomsförbund) to support the Finnish initiative of excluding the sister organization of Estonian émigrés from the International Union of Socialist Youth in 1969 can be seen as symptomatic of the changed approach to émigré activism even among social democrats in neutral Sweden.61

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Competing Definitions and Understandings of Political Opposition The core of the Polish and Estonian political emigration in Sweden was confronted with a whole set of structural obstacles in an age of radical political and social change. As the Soviet bloc gradually opened up to the West, the émigrés faced an even greater challenge to their political agenda: the feeling of estrangement between the diaspora and homeland societies. For a younger generation of Balts and Poles in the USSR and the People’s Republic, the denial of the Yalta agreements and their geopolitical repercussions was deemed anachronistic, as was the idealization of the pre-war past. The rapid political and ideological transformation of the societies in Moscow’s sphere of influence according to the Soviet model had yielded a generation educated in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism which was a “major vehicle for indoctrination and conformist mentality.”62 Political discontent of course continued to exist in state socialist Europe, but the era of active resistance was over. The various shades of oppositional thinking were deeply rooted in the ideological framework and aspirations of the communist system itself. They found expression in a revisionist turn which, juxtaposing the ideal of a democratic socialism with the political reality in the Soviet bloc, aimed at “trying to bring the socialist project back to its roots.”63 Striving for a better, but nonetheless “socialist future,”64 the oppositional concepts of the new generation of reformers did thus not challenge the communist order per se. The proverbial Polish spirit of resistance transformed into a new form of public intellectual criticism which first and foremost sought a dialogue with the ruling elites. In the 1960s, the majority of regime critics among the Polish intelligentsia were, as a rule, not determined to overthrow the system, but to reform it according to “a less political, more philosophically radical, or more concrete Marxism.”65 This new language of opposition was highly incompatible with the political mindscape of the anti-communist emigration. The political credo of the war refugee generation was largely based on the pre-war traditions of right-wing nationalism, fervent Catholicism, and a landscape of political parties that had ceased to exist in communist Poland. Seen from the perspective of the homeland, this fundamental ideological divergence turned the Polish émigré organizations in Western Europe and North America into an anachronistic remnant of the Second Republic, which corresponded to the verdict of many younger-generation Poles in the West.66 As the hitherto hermetically sealed off Soviet Union gradually opened up to the outside world, even diaspora Estonians realized how different contemporary Estonia was from the society they remembered before their escape more than two decades previously. Up to the mid-1950s, there had been an unspoken consensus between Estonians on both sides of the Iron Curtain that



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only a Western attack on the USSR and a subsequent World War III would bring liberation from the yoke of Soviet or, as it was widely perceived, Russian rule. In Estonia and the neighboring Soviet Baltic republics, however, these hopes were crushed by the disappointment of the failed Hungarian Revolution, accelerating the dissolution of the remaining partisan units in the swamps and forests of the occupied Baltic territories. National resistance took increasingly passive forms and retreated into the realm of anti-Soviet anecdotes, songs, and a determination to preserve linguistic and cultural heritage.67 The belief that war was the only adequate answer to the challenges of Russification and Sovietization survived considerably longer among the political diaspora in the West.68 However, the fragmented information that leaked out to the West indicated at an early stage that major social changes were imminent in the Estonian SSR. In the course of the 1960s, Estonia was transformed from a conquered and defeated collective victim of Soviet expansionism into an increasingly dynamic society, which was determined to reach a compromise on national issues within the Soviet system. While the Estonian diaspora stood united in its categorical condemnation of Soviet rule, the homeland society started to adjust to the given conditions. After the dark years of Stalinist terror, a certain degree of careful optimism could be felt in Estonia. The Soviet Estonian government in Tallinn proved that limited national emancipation was possible even within the USSR. The percentage of native Estonians among party and administrative cadres considerably increased,69 thus boosting the trust of younger citizens, in particular, in the Kremlin’s willingness to respect their national identity. A new generation, which knew little of the atrocities of the war years, joined the spearhead organizations of the party state, embracing the opportunities of personal advance within the system.70 The “consumer boom” of the late 1960s, which saw rising living standards and allowed even the average Soviet citizen to enjoy moderate consumption of clothes and commodities,71 seemed to confirm this optimistic outlook. Therefore, the “Komsomol generation of the ‘Golden Sixties’”72 developed a rather pragmatic and conformist attitude that made it possible to leave behind the heritage of the interwar period, a common point of reference for the older generation both at home and in voluntary exile. With the generational shift of the 1960s, the gap between diaspora and homeland widened. Among the community of Estonian war refugees in the West, the images of life in Soviet Estonia as an endless suffering of an enslaved and terrorized population, based on personal memories of the time of the first Soviet occupation, still prevailed. Any kind of conformist behavior was thus stigmatized as collaboration, and led to the widespread conviction that the Estonian diaspora constituted the only surviving “nationally healthy” part of the Estonian people, whereas the compatriots at home had turned into

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communists.73 This extreme position was prevalent mainly among the North American diaspora which, in contrast to the diaspora community in Sweden, lacked the experience of direct interaction with the homeland. However, ideas of that kind were also echoed in Sweden, especially among the elderly and the sympathizers of the REE faction, which represented a similarly strict stance toward the home country and all kinds of direct contact across the Baltic Sea. There is a general consensus among Cold War historians that it was West Germany’s Ostpolitik that played the decisive key role as a “bridge between superpower and European détente.”74 However, although the pathbreaking significance of West German foreign policy toward the Eastern neighbor states is uncontested, especially in view of Bonn’s official confirmation of the post-1945 drawing of political boundaries in Central Europe, it is worth looking at the roots of European détente from a different angle. Both Finland and Sweden developed their own version of Ostpolitik from the mid-1960s onwards, which considerably contributed to soothing the tensions between the blocs around the Baltic rim. Urho Kekkonen’s ambition to negotiate autonomous relations between Finland and Estonia with the Kremlin, which led to the re-establishment of a regular ferry connection between Helsinki and Tallinn, marked a revolutionary step, although its significance might have gone rather unnoticed on the continent. Even the shift in Sweden’s foreign policy toward peaceful East-West cooperation paved the way for an increasing flow of people, goods, and information across the Iron Curtain, which by then had little in common with the deadly efficient boundary that straddled the Baltic Sea at the peak of the Cold War. As Jussi Hanhimäki states, this Nordic version of rapprochement had a decisive impact on the foundations of German Ostpolitik, which was implemented during Willy Brandt’s chancellorship from 1969. Hanhimäki specifically identifies the Swedes, with whom the social democrat Willy Brandt had a special connection due to his wartime asylum in Stockholm, as a driving force behind the reconfiguration of West Germany’s foreign policy course regarding the satellite states. Sweden and its Nordic neighbors were thus the “midwives to European détente.”75 Although the genesis of détente in Europe calls for further research, the Baltic Sea Region still stands out as a setting where important impulses for a reframed approach to political, economic, and cultural interaction between the blocs were developed. Seen from the perspective of the Polish and Estonian diaspora communities in Sweden, the liberalization of border regimes on the opposite coasts challenged the very core of the “codex of the political émigré.” The possibilities of uncontrolled private encounters and family reunions were of course welcome side effects of the rapprochement between the East and West. On



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the other hand, they undermined the traditional line of non-recognition, thus playing into the hands of the homeland regimes. However, the protagonists of émigré political activity in Sweden understood that the era of classical “cold warfare” was past. The rise of a political counterculture in the 1960s radically changed the tone of political discourse in Sweden and other regions of the West. This significantly affected the scope of moral, political, and financial support of émigré campaigns targeted at the homeland regimes. The pronounced willingness of the younger cohort of Poles and Estonians in Sweden to make use of the facilitated opportunities to visit the homeland additionally weakened the position of the anti-communist hardliners. However, it was predominantly the increasing ideological gap between the representatives of the pre-war order and the homeland societies that called for a thorough and radical reformulation of political strategies for a continued struggle against the geopolitical status quo. It was a second generation of émigré activists that proved capable of managing the challenge to find a common language with oppositional circles in the homeland. Regime critics on both sides of the Iron Curtain eventually developed strategies that made good use of both the new opportunities of communication across the Baltic Sea and the spirit of European détente for their own political purposes. THE RECONFIGURATION OF OPPOSITIONAL POLITICS IN EAST AND WEST In hindsight, the beginning of the end of the geopolitical post-war order in Central and Eastern Europe can, paradoxically, be traced to the era of détente which overall was an interlude of remarkably peaceful coexistence of East and West. Unexpectedly, the destabilization and deconstruction of the state socialist system started from within. At the peak of the pro-leftist euphoria of a rebelling Western youth, which in a spirit of social revolution challenged the ideological superstructure of Western policymaking, Soviet-type Communism suffered what in the long term would turn out to be a mortal blow. In August 1968, Brezhnev authorized the Warsaw Pact forces to invade Czechoslovakia where the reform-minded First Secretary of the Communist Party, Alexander Dubček, had launched a liberal political course in search of “socialism with a human face.” Moscow’s brutal suppression of the Czechoslovak experiment caused enormous damage to the official ideology, from which it would never recover. The Prague Spring came to symbolize the inherent inability of the communist system to reform itself. Reform Communism was dead and buried and with it the spirit of conformism and fatalistic realism that had characterized a whole post-war generation. In this context,

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the words of Polish dissident Adam Michnik have relevance beyond the Polish case: “It was in 1968 that we understood we were up against a totalitarian, absolutely ruthless power which stifled elementary human values before our very eyes.”76 The Origins of Anti-Communist Dissent on Sweden’s Opposite Coasts The emergence of a new form of societal opposition, which developed in various national incarnations throughout communist Europe from the late 1960s onwards, did not happen overnight. It was rather a slow and gradual process that had started several years earlier when the domestic conditions in the state socialist countries were still relatively stable. The earliest core of this “parallel polis [emphasis in original]” was to be found in the Soviet Union of the Thaw years,77 where the spirit of the Khrushchevian reformist experiments triggered the first careful manifestations of opposition. While the USSR had proven to be immune to the armed guerrilla warfare on its western peripheries, the political leadership became increasingly nervous in view of the non-conformist tendencies among the Russian heartland’s educated strata, especially the literary avant-garde. The widespread dissemination of the book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich reflected these “momentous changes . . . on the Soviet home front.”78 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s reckoning with Stalinism, which depicted the opaque world of the gulag, the institutionalized system of forced labor camps in the vast, scarcely populated areas of the Soviet Union’s immense territory, had been legally edited at the peak of de-Stalinization in 1962. It turned out to be one of the literary works that most efficiently fueled the “explosion of popular discontent” in the late Khrushchev era, bringing into focus the repeated violations of civil rights in the USSR and thus permanently damaging the legitimacy of the communist government.79 However, with Nikita Khrushchev’s dismissal in the fall of 1964, Soviet domestic policies took a radical and restorative turn. Under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev, the Kremlin launched a “conservative resurgence” that displayed a determination to return to the stability of Stalin’s days, manifested in a partial rehabilitation of the “Father of Nations” and a stricter censorship policy, which forced the critical public discourse to go underground.80 In the mid-1960s, a new kind of political agent entered the stage. Popular discontent with Brezhnev’s neo-Stalinist course was increasingly politicized inside the Soviet Union and found its first open manifestation in a public meeting held in Moscow’s Pushkin Square in December 1965. Around two hundred people gathered in order to protest the show trial



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against the writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, who were accused of having smuggled anti-Soviet material abroad for publication. For the first time, citizens of a communist state openly demanded the observance of civil rights on the grounds of socialist law itself, directly referring to the constitution. Thus, the Moscow protest went down in history as the starting shot for a new kind of societal opposition, which based its criticism of the regime on the fundamental divergence between the official legal commitments of the socialist state and their practical implementation. The defenders of civil rights, many of whom belonged to the cultural and scientific intelligentsia, became commonly known as “dissidents,” not only in the West. The term was even used by Soviet propaganda itself instead of the “Russian equivalent inakomysliashchii—probably as part of an official attempt to portray such people as stooges of the West.”81 The Soviet leadership soon understood that the rather small circles of active dissidents were only the tip of the iceberg and that oppositional thinking had spread to other strata of Soviet Russian society. A growing skepticism increasingly replaced the spirit of societal optimism of the early 1960s and reached central Soviet institutions. This illustrated the pervasive power of a new oppositional culture that eventually merged into a “single coherent and vigorous intellectual current.”82 The formation of the Action Group for the Defense of Human Rights in 1969 marked a first high point in this new era of social activism in the USSR. For the first time, non-governmental circles were able to establish a loose network of oppositional forces, which publicly criticized the Communist Party.83 The involved activists introduced a new language to the domestic oppositional discourse, reframing it as a “human rights cause.”84 Their argumentation was based on highly moral values and was unwittingly supported by the constitutional and legal framework of the Soviet Union itself. Thus, the first human-rights movement in the communist orbit developed a force that had the potential to strike at the very foundations of the legitimacy and stability of Soviet rule. The nucleus of Soviet dissent emerged out of the intellectual environment of Moscow and Leningrad, the traditional centers of the Russian intelligentsia. Soon, however, the ideas spread from the metropolises to the countryside and from the Russian heartland to the Soviet peripheries.85 Ironically, it was the labor camps as institutions of punishment for those who had leaped from the conformist masses that functioned as major channels for the propagation of oppositional thinking. The camps were meeting places for a pan-Soviet kaleidoscope of actors with a highly critical attitude toward the system, which paved the way for the evolution of the first oppositional networks to go beyond the borders of individual Soviet republics. Enn Tarto, one of the central key figures of the first generation of Soviet Estonian dissent, recalled that

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fundamental principles and strategies of nationally framed opposition, which gradually started to emerge from the late 1960s onwards in the non-Russian republics along the western borders of the USSR, were jointly elaborated by political prisoners with different national or ethnic backgrounds.86 The nationalist activists among the camp inmates agreed on the oppositional Russian intelligentsia’s strategy of referring both to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and the legal framework of the Soviet constitution as a point of departure for their criticism of the prevailing conditions in the USSR. As the dissident ideas reached the Estonian SSR toward the turn of the decade, the spirit of opposition left lasting marks on the debates among the republican intelligentsia.87 Compared to the spirit of unrest that swept over the satellite belt, the situation in the Soviet Baltic republics was still relatively stable at the time. In Poland, traditionally the most restive country among Stalin’s territorial wartime conquests, the evolution of oppositional moods among society had gone much further. There was a seething discontent especially among the intelligentsia, which increasingly dared to openly question the founding myths of the People’s Republic and, thus, the historical truths of the Marxist-Leninist interpretation of the past. While Warsaw’s official propaganda still clung to the mantra of a historical Polish-Russian friendship, the growing number of émigré publications that reached Poland illegally revealed a different picture. Indeed, during the Thaw, the influential, Paris-based editor Jerzy Giedroyc had shown a vivid interest in reaching out to communist Poland. Since the late 1950s, a system of various smuggling channels had secured a regular stream of émigré publications to Poland. Most of the smuggled literature was derived from the publishing house Instytut Literacki (“Literary Institute”) in Maison-Laffitte, outside Paris; an institution which also edited the monthly journal Kultura. The impact of these publications on the political climate in Poland was crucial, as they were the only Western publications that were widely available among the educated. The mass dissemination of Kultura, a major forum for critical historical debates, undermined the government’s efforts to suppress a public debate on hushed up events in Poland’s recent history. Moreover, it fostered the development of new political and ideational concepts which were strongly influenced by ongoing discourses among émigré intellectuals. Therefore, Kultura can be seen as a breeding ground for the intellectual opposition that emerged in Poland in the 1960s.88 Initially, the oppositional dynamics found a largely peaceful outlet in the prevailing spirit of reform Communism, until the events of March 1968 put an end to the belief in the possibility of reforming the communist system from within. The Warsaw student riots of 1968 were symptomatic of the general climate of increasingly articulate opposition against the relapse into methods



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of harsher authoritarian rule all over communist Europe. The unrest in the heart of the Polish capital led to Poland’s most serious political crisis since 1956 and thus marked a decisive watershed in the country’s post-war history. Even the diaspora was directly affected by the repercussions of the protests, especially the Polish community in nearby Sweden. The most visible effect of the political turmoil on the opposite coast was the increased influx of Polish asylum seekers to the neutral country. Polish emigration to Sweden had, since the mid-1950s, been characterized mainly by economic motives. However, with the new wave of émigrés from 1968 onwards, this trend was broken. From 1968 to 1971, several thousand Polish citizens of Jewish origin were granted political asylum, followed by a second wave of mostly non-Jewish Poles who reached Sweden in the aftermath of the 1970 workers’ protests.89 The arrival of thousands of political refugees from the home country constituted a challenge to the established political diaspora. As eyewitnesses to the accelerating crisis of the People’s Republic, they had a distinctly oppositional political profile which, however, crucially differed from the antiCommunism of the old guard. But in spite of the mixed reactions that their arrival provoked, the newcomers triggered a renaissance of émigré political activity on Swedish soil. The Warsaw government’s anti-Semitic or, as Gomułka himself labeled it, “anti-Zionist” campaign which lay behind the mass exodus of much of the remaining Polish Jewry, had its roots in the Arab-Israeli conflict that reached a peak with the Six-Day War in June 1967. Poland willingly adopted the proArab stance of the Kremlin and initiated a propaganda crusade against the fully assimilated Jewish minority, which was identified as a “fifth column” of supporters of the “Israeli aggressor.” The First Secretary of the Polish Communist Party gave free rein to the Minister of the Interior, the hardliner General Mieczysław Moczar, who firstly carried out purges among the armed forces.90 As it turned out, this was only a prelude to the much more vigorous anti-Semitic propaganda offensive of the following spring. In early March 1968, a theater performance in Warsaw provoked an avalanche of public protests. The classical drama Forefathers’ Eve, written by the great Polish romanticist and national hero Adam Mickiewicz during the era of Poland’s partition, regained its former explosive political force due to the strong appeals to patriotic and anti-Russian sentiments. In view of the surprisingly dynamic transfer of revolutionary moods from the stage to the audience, which culminated in the first street demonstration since 1956, the authorities opted for a radical preventive measure and banned the play. But this crude act of censorship did not solve the problem. By contrast, it provoked a storm of indignation among Warsaw’s intellectual elite, which led to further public protest meetings over the following days. The dismissal

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of two students from the University of Warsaw, Adam Michnik and Henryk Szlajfer, both of partially Jewish origin, was the final straw.91 Students and professors organized a mass meeting, defending the freedoms of speech and assembly by referring to their firm entrenchment in the People’s Republic’s constitution; a move which mirrored the strategy applied by the Russian dissidents. The arrival of heavily armed militia units, however, quickly dissolved the meeting and clearly signaled that the government was determined to adhere to its belief in violence as an all-purpose remedy to maintain public order.92 Dozens of students and even some of the professors, among them the Marxist philosopher Leszek Kołakowski, were expelled from the university. Strikingly, many of them had a Jewish background, which, as Tony Judt has pointed out, “was no coincidence.”93 The motif of the “fifth column” returned and led to purges in a large number of official institutions and authorities. “Zionist” had become the mot du jour in 1968 Poland, closely linked to and practically synonymous with attributes like “oppositional,” “dissident,” and “anti-communist.”94 The officially sanctioned discrimination induced around 13,000 Polish citizens of Jewish descent to leave the country, which amounted to half of the remaining Jewish population in communist Poland. As the “anti-Zionist campaign” was mainly targeted at the intelligentsia, the vast majority of those who were forced to leave the country were highly educated and settled in Poland’s urban areas before their emigration.95 Gomułka did not hide the fact that the Polish government supported and even actively encouraged Jewish emigration, which thus proceeded legally and with the sanction of the authorities. The required passports, otherwise not always easy to obtain, were distributed en masse, but for the Jews they were in fact one-way tickets to the West. Having left the country, they were automatically deprived of their Polish citizenship and thus stateless. However, only a minority reached Israel, the officially declared destination at the time of their departure from Poland. Many Polish Jews eventually migrated to Western Europe, mostly to France, Italy, or Sweden, depending on which embassy they had contacted prior to their departure.96 The Swedish embassy in Warsaw displayed unconditional moral support for Jews who were willing to leave the country since the Swedish parliament had agreed to grant political asylum to two thousand families of “aggrieved refugees.”97 Eventually, an estimated number of five thousand Polish Jews arrived in Sweden.98 By expelling its Jewish citizens, the Warsaw regime had thus bargained on getting rid of a significant stratum of a potentially oppositional intelligentsia. However, due to Sweden’s solidarity with the persecuted minority, a high percentage of it ended up in Poland’s immediate neighborhood, which over the course of the next decade became an important asset for oppositional circles in Poland itself.



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It soon turned out that the strategy of labeling Jews and the intelligentsia, in particular, as anti-Polish elements did not lead to domestic stability. Although the government initially succeeded in playing off the working class against the intellectuals, it was the workers that set off the next wave of mass protests. The demonstrations started in mid-December 1970, only a week after Gomułka’s government had achieved its greatest foreign policy success: the signing of the so-called Treaty of Warsaw by the People’s Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany, which de facto implied a West German recognition of the current Polish borders. It was the government’s decision to dramatically raise food prices shortly before Christmas that precipitated the country’s next major crisis. The situation escalated as the militia and the army fired into the peaceful crowds of protesters in Gdynia, Poland’s major port city, causing dozens of casualties. But the repeated use of naked violence finally cost Gomułka his position. The former spearhead of the “Polish road to socialism” was hastily replaced by his down-to-earth comrade Edward Gierek who, not least due to his working-class background and resulting credibility, but also at the cost of far-reaching financial concessions, succeeded in temporarily restoring the workers’ confidence in the regime.99 Nevertheless, the wave of mass emigration to the West continued. In 1971 alone, 2,500 Polish asylum seekers arrived in Sweden, followed by an approximate number of one thousand every year up to 1974.100 The “New Emigration” and Its Oppositional Agenda The influx of several thousand political refugees from the People’s Republic of Poland to Sweden radically altered the composition of the relatively small diaspora community. The new generation of political asylum seekers were received with a certain distrust by the established old guard of war refugees, who steadfastedly adhered to their traditional loyalty toward “Polish London,” not least due to the constant, widespread fear of communist provocation and targeted infiltration.101 Soon, there were rumors going around that most of the Jewish immigrants had been party officials and functionaries of the Office of Public Security, which indeed was not pure invention.102 This atmosphere of suspicion induced the Polish Refugee Council, the old emigration’s umbrella organization, to modify its statute in order to prevent the new generation of refugees from dominating it.103 However, it turned out that the immigrants from communist Poland were fairly indifferent toward the established émigré institutions. Having been raised and socialized in a country that had very little in common with the pre-war republic, a political heritage that was still cherished among the older generation of émigrés, the newcomers displayed similar reactions to

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the old guard as those of many of their contemporaries who had grown up in the diaspora.104 Although the Jewish refugees, in particular, nursed a deep grievance against the state that had expelled them, there were no signs of convergence of their hostile attitude toward the regime in Warsaw and the traditional anti-Communism of the war refugees. On the one hand, only a minority among the newly arrived refugees actively engaged in political issues after their arrival in Sweden.105 Those who did, on the other hand, preferred to establish close ties within their own group and focused on networking with Western agents instead of trying to melt into the established structures of the émigré society.106 The “new emigration” (nowa emigracja), as the community of Poles who immigrated from 1968 onwards was called, considerably revitalized Swedish discourses on the political development in communist Poland. The Swedes developed a distinct interest in the Warsaw government’s antiSemitic campaign, which was reflected in the lively debates among Swedish journalists and publicists on the roots of Poland’s internal unrest.107 As eyewitnesses to the state-sponsored witch-hunt and its repercussions on the social climate in the country, the Polish Jews in Sweden turned into important sources of firsthand information. Their reports triggered highly critical coverage of the topic in the Swedish press as well as on national radio and television.108 The dominant tone of the Swedish media thus increasingly challenged the spirit of rapprochement that still characterized official Swedish-Polish relations.109 Even the immigrants themselves actively used their background knowledge in order to revitalize the critical intellectual examination of Poland’s present and future in the West. As most of the refugees of the post-1968 Jewish immigration wave settled down in Sweden’s few metropolitan areas, old pre-existing networks remained largely intact. Due to the financial support they received, not least from the Swedish Social Democratic Party, a new generation of activists could thus continue the oppositional discourses that had developed among the intelligentsia of the People’s Republic of Poland in neutral Sweden in the 1960s.110 The subsidies enabled Polish-Jewish circles in Stockholm and Uppsala to start a lively publishing enterprise with its own regularly edited journals, among them Przegląd (“Review”), which was published by the Association of Polish Jews in Sweden and which heavily attacked the regime in Warsaw, and the Uppsala-based quarterly Aneks (“Annex”). The latter gained huge popularity and developed into one of the most influential Polish journals in the West.111 With its broad focus on the political and ideological development in Poland and behind the Iron Curtain in general, Aneks drew direct inspiration from Kultura, which also co-financed the first editions.112



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The divergent reactions of various camps among the long-established political emigration to the new generation of oppositional activists from Poland reflected two fundamentally different approaches to contact with the communist-ruled homeland.113 The circles around Kultura in Paris had already at an early stage distanced themselves from the ideological dogmatism of “Polish London.” It was not without reason that the Warsaw government’s official propaganda by the late 1960s had proceeded to ridicule the bloated apparatus of the “state in exile,” while it continued unabated with its vigorous attacks against the “ideological sabotage” of Kultura’s editor Giedroyc and NowakJeziorański, the head of the RFE’s Polish section in Munich.114 Kultura and Radio Free Europe were considered to be significantly more dangerous enemies, as they represented circles with a pronouncedly pragmatic approach to the political reality in communist Poland. Accordingly, it was the RFE’s Stockholm office that first reached out to the representatives of the “new emigration” soon after their arrival in Sweden. Lisiński and his colleagues knew how to use their expertise and firsthand knowledge as an invaluable asset. According to a Polish counterintelligence report, a number of newly arrived immigrants were immediately recruited in order to conduct interviews with Polish tourists, sailors, and political asylum seekers in Sweden on behalf of Radio Free Europe.115 Seen from the perspective of the Warsaw government, these kinds of oppositional diaspora-homeland alliances constituted a much more serious threat than the polemical attacks of the government in exile. By the end of the 1960s, the dynamics of anti-communist opposition among the Poles in the West had moved from “Polish London” to “Polish Paris.” For Giedroyc, the uninterrupted dialogue between diaspora and homeland compatriots formed a key aspect of opposition to the communist regime, at least as far it was supposed to matter on either side of the Iron Curtain. This fundamental credo formed the bedrock of the increasing transnationalization of Polish opposition, in which the Swedish connection, especially, came to play a crucial role. By the onset of détente, it had already become difficult to unequivocally separate émigré and homeland opposition, as Giedroyc’s oldest networks beyond the Iron Curtain dated back to the second half of the 1950s. In spite of an impressive and efficient counterintelligence apparatus, the Warsaw government never fully succeeded in locating and cutting off these clandestine connections.116 There was thus a steady stream of émigré publications that found their way from Paris to the People’s Republic where they were illegally disseminated and passed on from hand to hand. It is hard to estimate the dimension of the smuggling activities, although it is almost certain that a “substantial part of [Kultura’s] circulation”117 was allocated for distribution behind the Iron Curtain. The effects, however, were indisputable. The intellectual forum that Giedroyc

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provided for selected, but not exclusively Polish, émigré writers and publicists was a crucial source of inspiration that to a large degree determined the evolution of oppositional thought in Poland. As the “March emigration” of 1968 occurred, the diaspora community witnessed the arrival of a “large group of intellectuals raised in the home country on publications from the Literary Institute in Paris that had been smuggled into Poland.”118 In view of these strong entanglements between Kultura and the non-conformist Polish intelligentsia, it was only natural for Giedroyc to plead in favor of the integration of “new people from the home country” into the structures of émigré political activity in the West.119 Kultura did not represent a specific organization or institution, and neither did it involve a fixed group of actors. It rather stood as a synonym for an intellectual and political current that united a very loose network of Polish émigré intellectuals in different countries and on different continents. Jerzy Giedroyc himself was thus by no means the founding father of a specific school of political thinking. His role as Kultura’s editor was rather that of a mediator and moderator of a transnational intellectual discourse on the history, politics, and future of the societies behind the Iron Curtain. The Literary Institute in Maisons-Laffitte, a town on the outskirts of Paris, and the small permanent staff, consisting of Giedroyc himself, the artist Józef Czapski, and the couple Zygmunt and Zofia Hertz, constituted the central node where all these threads came together. With the mass exodus of a post-war generation for which Kultura had been a highly recognized intellectual and moral authority, the journal’s position was considerably strengthened in the larger context of Polish émigré politics. Even in Sweden, otherwise a stronghold of the conservative faction of “Polish London,” the number of subscriptions skyrocketed with the arrival of several thousand second-generation émigrés. It was also on the initiative of the newcomers that the Society of Friends of Kultura (Towarzystwo Przyjaciół “Kultury”), a supporting organization and official representation of the journal in Sweden, was founded in Stockholm. The chairman of the Society was Norbert Żaba, one of the pioneer activists of the established political emigration. With the ideological and intellectual currents of Kultura as a common denominator, a first step toward bridging the generational gap and the abyss of differing political visions between the Polish emigration in Stockholm and the more pragmatic Parisian camp had been taken. Most political émigrés in Sweden, however, maintained a rather reserved attitude toward the “new emigration” and the progressive visions of Kultura. As a result of major political controversies within the conservative faction, a number of prominent émigré activists were thrown out of the Polish Refugee Council at the beginning of the 1970s, including Wiesław Patek, the offi-



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cial delegate of the government in exile, and Norbert Żaba.120 The Society of Friends of Kultura, on the other hand, was excluded from the Center of Polish Organizations for Independence (Ośrodek Polskich Organizacji Niepodległościowych), the umbrella organization for all anti-communist émigré associations in Sweden.121 The established circles of political émigrés thus missed the chance to forge alliances with a group that represented and still maintained contact with oppositional forces in communist Poland. In the aftermath of this “clash of generations,” the old guard of anti-communist émigrés secluded itself, thus becoming an increasingly marginalized community with distinctly clerical, militarist, and nationalist traits. Nonetheless, Polish émigré political activity in Sweden was considerably revived after a long period of decline due to the arrival of a huge number of younger immigrants who replaced the missing second-generation cohort of émigré activists. Reassessing the Non-Recognition Dogma: A New Chapter of Estonian Political Activism in the West While both the social composition of the Polish diaspora and the balance between political and economic refugees shifted continuously throughout the different waves of Polish post-war immigration to Sweden, the Baltic communities remained highly homogeneous during the Cold War. In spite of the gradual opening up of the Soviet Union to the Western orbit, it was still virtually impossible to emigrate, both legally and illegally. The few Estonians that settled in Sweden after 1944 were mostly pensioners that had been allowed to join their relatives during the short-lived family reunification program of the late 1950s. However, the generational shift of the mid-1960s brought a younger group of political actors to the scene that formed a cohort of second-generation activists. The Estonian diaspora in the West maintained an exceptionally strong attachment to the community’s ethnic heritage, mother tongue, and cultural traditions. This remarkable “persistence of the diasporic identity,”122 which was decidedly political, also spread to the new generation born and raised in Western Europe, North America, or Australia. The evolution of the political strategies and the ideological frame of reference of the younger generation bore a striking resemblance to the processes that revitalized the Polish political diaspora from 1968 onwards.123 Seen from the perspective of the generation that succeeded the veterans of anti-communist “cold warfare,” the outcome of a quarter of a century of unconditional commitment to the cause of national liberation was sobering. By the late 1960s, there was no reason to hope that Estonians or their Baltic neighbors would regain their independence in a near future. With the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces, the hopes for a

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change of the geopolitical status quo in Central and Eastern Europe receded even further into the distance. A political strategy based solely on the nonrecognition of the annexation by the United States and its Western allies thus seemed increasingly fruitless.124 In view of the unfolding promises of détente, Washington showed clear preference for a rapprochement with Moscow over fighting for the freedom of the Baltic peoples. Given the radical changes of the political climate in East-West relations, a growing number of younger Estonian intellectuals in the West were convinced that the methods applied by the war refugees had to be critically reassessed and that the traditional symbiosis between U.S. politics and the Baltic diaspora no longer held true. As the second-generation activist Jaak Maandi stated in his programmatic speech in Stockholm in 1967, there was no reason to revise the long-term aim of the political struggle for Estonian independence. It was the strategy that had to be adapted to the changing conditions.125 This trend was especially evident in the United States and Canada.126 In protest against the ideological dogmatism and the “predominance of antiintellectual attitudes” among the fervently anti-communist North American émigré leaders,127 a group of young, radical Estonian intellectuals established the so-called Forest University (Metsaülikool). The annual summer camp took place in Canada and provided an open forum for unbiased debates on the future of the Estonian diaspora in the West and current developments in the homeland.128 From its beginning onwards, the Forest University succeeded in developing an alternative, pronouncedly intellectual and liberal environment, striking a chord among young Estonians even in Sweden and Australia where branches of the Forest University were established.129 The initiative provided a forum for new ideas and a breeding ground for, at times, radical proposals which challenged the traditional mantra of non-recognition as the raison d’être of life in voluntary exile. A faction of young diaspora intellectuals set their hopes on a gradual “satellization” of Soviet Estonia within the USSR and on a transformation of the system toward a kind of “socialism with a human face.”130 However, the majority of Estonians in the West categorically rejected concepts such as the “Estonian Paasikivi line” which was developed by the Estonian-American political scientist Rein Taagepera and found some limited support also among prominent first-generation émigrés such as former envoy Laretei in Sweden.131 Indeed, as Esmo Ridala, the representative of the ERN in Helsinki, stated in a letter to Stockholm, “[e]very kind of ‘satellization’ and ‘Estonian Paasikivi lines’ are a step toward a concession to Communism. This is a question where there cannot be any compromise.”132 The new pragmatic line of realpolitik put the issue of visiting Soviet Estonia back on the agenda. A majority of diaspora Estonians categorically defended the isolationist course, rejecting even art and literature from Soviet



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Estonia as “‘tainted’ and collaborationist.”133 Conservative voices repeatedly warned of the dangers that a visit to the USSR implied. According to Soviet law, Baltic war refugees and their offspring were considered Soviet citizens, a status which would subject them to local jurisdiction on Soviet territory.134 Many younger diaspora Estonians, who had no or only vague memories of the first Soviet occupation, did not share the older generation’s inherent fear of the communist system and challenged this orthodox stance.135 As early as 1960, the historian Aleksander Loit from Uppsala had kickstarted a public debate in the journal Vaba Eesti (“Free Estonia”), arguing that it was the task of the diaspora community to strengthen the bonds with the homeland. By visiting Soviet Estonia, he stated, Estonians in the West had actually more to win than to lose.136 Andres Küng, one of the most vigorous second-generation activists in Sweden, unconditionally supported this view, arguing that the political émigré leadership had been too preoccupied with the refugee perspective, neglecting the fact that the majority of Estonians still lived in the Sovietoccupied home country.137 Closer ties with the centers of Estonian culture in the West, Küng claimed, would, in the long term, counterweigh the effects of Russification and Sovietization. Moreover, a constant stream of visitors from the ranks of the diaspora community would help to undermine the censorship system by fostering an unhampered flow of unbiased information.138 In the eyes of many second-generation activists, this overall goal justified far-reaching compromises such as the cooperation with VEKSA, the Society for the Development of Cultural Ties with Estonians Abroad. Since the early 1960s, VEKSA had been courting diaspora Estonians, aiming at driving a wedge between the “elite,” the protagonists of émigré political activity, and the “progressive part” of the Estonian diaspora community. Despite its wellknown enmeshment with the KGB, VEKSA was tolerated as an “inevitable communication channel.”139 The young radicals in Sweden, whose stance was considerably influenced by their geographical proximity to the occupied homeland, could count on the support of a number of prominent voices among the war refugee generation. “You there,” as émigré writer Karl Ast, the former press attaché of the Estonian legation in Stockholm, wrote to Sweden from New York in 1968, “[should] do whatever is possible to establish ties to the homeland in order to get to know and understand the people at home.”140 By then, the Estonian diaspora in Sweden had every reason to closely monitor the ongoing processes on the opposite coast. In 1968, the first evidence of nationalist opposition leaked out to the West in the form of a pamphlet signed “The representatives of the technical intelligentsia of Tallinn.” The authors warned of a renaissance of Stalinism and demanded the right for non-Russian republics to secede from the USSR.141 Against this background, even August Koern, the

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former envoy to Denmark and Foreign Minister in Exile, publicly appealed to the diaspora community to travel to the Estonian SSR more frequently. The first signs of a reawakening Estonian nationalism, he argued, were something that should be observed from up close.142 The position of the ERN in Stockholm was more ambiguous. Since the mid-1950s, the ERN leaders had stressed the vital importance of direct encounters between diaspora and homeland Estonians, but on the condition that they should not take place on Soviet territory.143 On the other hand and in contrast to many older émigrés in Sweden, they did not categorically condemn those who decided to visit the homeland.144 However, due to the ERN’s hesitant stance, it eventually failed to find a common language with the progressive camp of younger activists, a fact which became obvious with the foundation of the Baltic Institute in 1970. The Institute was founded by a group of Baltic scholars in Stockholm in order to promote and foster research on Baltic topics. It was initially closely linked to the Baltic Committee and to Arvo Horm, one of the key figures both in the Committee and the ERN.145 However, it soon became apparent that the younger scholars were eager to prevent the Institute from becoming a flagship of the anti-Soviet struggle, especially in view of their ambition to develop professional networks with academic institutions and scholars in the Soviet Baltic republics. Confronted with the Baltic Institute’s programmatic agenda, Horm eventually backed out.146 Thus, he failed to connect the Baltic Committee and the ERN to a network that a decade later would play a major role in the development of close links between the two Baltic shores. The younger cohort of political activists among the Estonian diaspora thus adapted a similar strategy to the Polish “new emigration” by avoiding any engagement in the anti-communist battle organizations of the established political emigration. Although the unorthodox strategies of many secondgeneration activists remained controversial, these, nevertheless, had a decisive impact on the overall discourse of the Estonian diaspora in the West. The foundation of the traditional adherence to a line of categorical non-recognition of the 1940 annexation—which a priori excluded all forms of voluntary cooperation with the homeland authorities—was shattered, as the first Estonian World Festival in Toronto, ESTO 72, illustrated. The encounter between thousands of diaspora Estonians from all over the globe strengthened and revitalized the cooperation between the scattered communities and consolidated common political visions. One of the resolutions adopted in Toronto reaffirmed that “Estonians in the occupied home country and in the free world constitute an indivisible unity,” echoing the argumentation of many younger activists. In the future, the document further stated, the Estonians in the West would also have to take the homeland society’s opinions and viewpoints into



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account and to a much larger degree than before.147 With the clearly outlined ambition to bridge the abyss between diaspora and homeland, the Estonian communities in the West thus paved the way for a gradual convergence between oppositional strategies on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The 1960s were an era of revolutionary changes and turning points in many respects. Both the ruptures in Cold War politics and the dynamics of social upheaval among the youth on both sides of the Iron Curtain challenged the structure of political power distribution, the alliances, loyalties, and visions for the future that had developed during the first half of the Cold War. To a large extent, this applied to the field of émigré political activity as well. As the Western governments were aiming for a long-term arrangement with the communist states and the geopolitical status quo of post-war Europe, the ideological convictions and strategies of the war refugee generation seemed increasingly anachronistic. The inability of many first-generation activists to dissociate themselves from the doctrine of non-recognition and to acknowledge the profound changes that had occurred in the homeland since the end of the war increasingly isolated and marginalized the established centers of the political emigration in the West. By the turn of the decade, first-generation Polish and Estonian émigrés in Sweden were alienated from the societies of their countries of origin, retaining, at the most, an, as William Safran would put it, “collective vision or ‘myth’ of the homeland.”148 The loss of moral support from the homeland societies, from Western public opinion, and even from the new generation of diaspora activists turned the spearheads of the anti-communist emigration into political paper tigers. The gradual political stabilization that occurred in the field of East-West relations was counteracted by the rising societal discontent in the satellite states and the USSR. Both the March events in Warsaw and the first public demonstrations against the repeated violation of basic civil rights in the Soviet Union indicated that a new kind of opposition was developing, determined to unmask the communist governments’ hypocrisy by referring to the fundamental contrast between ambition and reality within the system. At the same time, the ideological framework of émigré political activity underwent a profound transformation. A younger generation of diaspora activists, whose political thinking was considerably shaped by the political and social climate of the time, entered the stage. Communication and exchange between the diaspora and homeland societies, which, with the onset of European détente, developed to a much larger degree than before, were now seen as potential elements of opposition and not collaboration. In contrast to the Soviet Union, Poland had been, since the Thaw years, a comparably open society which allowed for a quite lively exchange with the

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capitalist West. Therefore, it was the Poles who were the first to prove that oppositional thought on both sides of the Iron Curtain could converge. In this context, the Polish émigré journal Kultura played a central role in the formation of an intellectual opposition in Poland which increasingly blurred the borders between diaspora and homeland opposition. With the onset of a new wave of mass emigration to Western Europe in 1968, these entanglements produced a lively network with a multitude of hubs in the East and West. Many of the newly arrived émigrés from Poland proved capable of forging alliances with progressive intellectual circles among the long-established Polish emigration with whom they shared a common political language. Due to their familiarity with the system in communist Poland and their private networks within the country, the dynamics of Polish émigré activism turned into a considerable threat to the regime in Warsaw, especially following the settlement of a large number of political refugees in neighboring Sweden. The “new emigration” formed a counterpart to the largely apolitical masses of the Swedish Polonia who made frequent use of the well-developed infrastructure across the Baltic Sea and maintained close contact with state-sponsored organizations in Poland. Hence, the alliance of the “new emigration” with the Paris-based camp of Kultura put Sweden on the map of the emerging transnational structures of oppositional cooperation between the blocs. The Estonian case represented the other extreme. In spite of the exceptional role of Tallinn as one of the few meeting points between the Soviet orbit and the capitalist West, the Estonian SSR, as a whole, was still largely isolated from the outside world. Both the rigid border regime and the persistent widespread refusal among the Estonian diaspora to visit Estonia reduced the interaction between diaspora and homeland communities to a minimum. Uncontrolled interaction was restricted to sporadic private visits, a fact which limited the scope of any potentially subversive exchange. In view of the scarcity of Western impulses, the decisive incentives and inspirations for a nationally framed opposition to Soviet rule in Estonia came from the Soviet Russian heartland where the first dissident structures had emerged among the nonconformist intelligentsia. The thorough reformulation of oppositional politics among the diaspora openly challenged the isolationist option, thus setting the stage for a gradual convergence of homeland and diaspora opposition. The younger generation’s agenda of supporting the compatriots at home in their struggle against Russification and Sovietization on their own terms heralded a new level of cooperation, based on a general consensus of patriotism. The journalist and writer Andres Küng, born in Sweden to Estonian parents, was not only a prime example of how seemingly apolitical visits to Estonia could be used for oppositional purposes but also of how a change of paradigms affected Swedish responses to diaspora politics. In the early 1970s,



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Küng traveled as a tourist to Estonia using the opportunity to conduct interviews with people on the streets, intellectuals, and even state officials.149 The visits resulted in a range of publications which stood out as the first books written after the war by an Estonian native speaker who had actually visited Soviet Estonia.150 Despite their outspokenly anti-Soviet undertone, Küng’s books aroused considerable public attention in Sweden and were translated into several Western European languages. The positive echo of Küng’s accounts of life under Soviet occupation proved—similarly to the remarkable public interest in the reports of the eyewitnesses to the anti-Semitic excesses of the Warsaw regime—that a generally critical attitude toward state socialism still existed in Sweden. The prospects of potential societal support among the Swedes and the by the late 1960s already well-developed infrastructure between Sweden and her opposite coast turned into crucial preconditions for a new form of oppositional networks, which started to connect the Baltic shores from the mid-1970s onwards. NOTES   1.  Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War, 237.  2. Angela Romano, From Détente in Europe to European Détente. How the West Shaped the Helsinki CSCE, vol. 44 of Euroclio, ed. Michel Dumoulin, Eric Bussière, and Antonio Varsori (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2009), 59.   3.  Poul Villaume and Odd Arne Westad, “Introduction. The Secrets of European Détente,” in Perforating the Iron Curtain. European Détente, Transatlantic Relations, and the Cold War, 1965–1985, ed. Poul Villaume and Odd Arne Westad (Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010), 7.   4.  Cox, “The 1980s Revisited or the Cold War as History—Again,” 13.   5.  Jussi M. Hanhimäki, “Détente in Europe, 1962–1975,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Volume II: Conflicts and Crises, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 198.   6.  Robert D. Schulzinger, “Détente in the Nixon-Ford Years, 1969–1976,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Volume II: Conflicts and Crises, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 374.   7.  Jussi M. Hanhimäki, “Conservative Goals, Revolutionary Outcomes: The Paradox of Détente,” Cold War History 8, no. 4 (2008): 504.   8.  Hanhimäki, Scandinavia and the United States, 103–4, 114.   9.  Marie Demker, Sverige och Algeriets frigörelse 1954–1962. Kriget som förändrade svensk utrikespolitik, vol. 1 of Sverige under kalla kriget (Stockholm: Santérus Förlag, 1996), 10. 10.  Sten Ottosson, Sverige mellan öst och väst. Svensk självbild under kalla kriget, vol. 11 of Arbetsrapport/Forskningsprogrammet Sverige under kalla kriget (Stockholm: Utrikespolitiska Institutet, 2001), 30.

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11. Ruin, Tage Erlander, 287. 12. Åström, Ögonblick, 137. 13.  Bernard Piotrowski, “Szwecja w polskiej polityce zagranicznej. Od odzyskanej niepodległości do wydarzeń sierpniowych 1980 roku,” in Polska—Szwecja 1919–1999, ed. Jan Szymański (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2002), 204. 14.  Kłonczyński, Stosunki polsko-szwedzkie, 45. 15.  Piotrowski, “Szwecja w polskiej polityce zagranicznej,” 205, 207. 16.  Karl Schlögel, Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit. Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik (Munich and Vienna: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2003), 430. 17.  Max Jakobson, Bokslut (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2003), 296. 18.  Heikki Rausmaa, “Soome välispoliitika ja Eesti iseseisvuse taastamine,” in Sõna jõul. Diasporaa roll Eesti iseseisvuse taastamisel, ed. Kristi Anniste, Kaja Kumer-Haukanõmm, and Tiit Tammaru (Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2008), 90. 19.  Paju, “Valel on pikad jäljed,” 193. 20.  “The visit of a foreign head of state, even an unofficial one, implies, according to common practice, something that comes very close to a lawful recognition of the visited country’s status and government. But in the case of the three former Baltic republics, it has to be remembered that the Western powers have still not recognized their annexation to the Soviet empire and that hundreds of thousands of exiled Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians, who consider themselves to alone represent their nations’ expressed democratic will of state, have been living on free Nordic soil for twenty years. For them, the president’s visit in Tallinn must be a distress.” Fragment of an article entitled “Toppturism på gott . . . och mindre gott,” published in the Finnish newspaper Åbo Underrättelser on the topic of Kekkonen’s Estonian visit. Quoted in Esmo Ridala, the unofficial representative and informant of the ERN in Helsinki, to Arvo Horm, 5 March 1964, in RR, f. 3, s. 37 (“Kirjavahetus Esmo Ridala jt. Soome korrespondentidega 1964–1977”), p. 2. 21.  The Soviet opening to Western tourists mirrored a general tendency that could be observed all over the communist orbit from the beginning of the Thaw onwards. On the one hand, the development of a tourism infrastructure for Western visitors behind the Iron Curtain was a reaction to the easing of East-West tensions in Europe. On the other hand, however, the communist governments quickly understood that the promotion of tourism was a way to “generate badly needed revenue, especially hard currencies.” Giustino, “Conclusion,” 257. Tourism to the Estonian SSR from the West was, however, strictly limited to Tallinn. Tartu, the seat of the republic’s only university, and Pärnu, the famous resort town on the Baltic Sea, could be visited only with a special permit and required the presence of an employee of either VEKSA or the Soviet state travel agency Inturist. Raag, Eestlane väljaspool Eestit, 108. 22.  Sirje Olesk, “Pagulased ja kodumaa. Kirjad Soomest,” Tuna 14, no. 2 (2011): 131. 23.  Tauno Tiusanen, “Külm sõda, Soome ja Eesti,” in Kõige taga oli hirm. Kuidas Eesti oma ajaloost ilma jäi, ed. Sofi Oksanen and Imbi Paju (Tallinn: Eesti Päevalehe AS, 2010), 233; Gorsuch, All This Is Your World, 61. 24.  Report by Esmo Ridala for the ERN, 7 December 1968, RR, f. 3, s. 37.



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25. Küng, Estland, 13. 26. Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 222. 27.  Transcript of a broadcast by the Soviet Estonian radio, 4 January 1969, cited in a report entitled “Nõukogude Eesti raadiosaated (Eesti infokeskus Rootsis) jaan.– juuni 1969,” n.d., in RR, f. 3, s. 92 (“Nõukogude Eesti raadiosaated (Eesti infokeskus Rootsis) jaan.–juuni 1969”), p. 6. 28.  Nachrichten aus dem Baltikum no. 38, December 1967, p. 34, in ERA 5008.1.96. 29.  Report entitled “World Congress for Peace, National Independence and General Disarmament, Helsinki, July 10–15, 1965,” August 1965, p. 7, in ERA 5010.1.93. The ferry connection also served to fulfill the more urgent needs of the population in Soviet Estonia. In the second half of the 1960s, reports mention the role of the incoming visitors as suppliers of basic consumer goods such as shoes, fabrics, and tools, which were highly coveted items in the Soviet economy of scarcity. Nachrichten aus dem Baltikum no. 38, December 1967, p. 34, in ERA 5008.1.96. 30.  “[T]he most important thing, probably, was that those who got out of Estonia, they had always the opportunity to talk with Estonians in Sweden and to read books and so on. So they took those things with them in their head. And insomuch some [visitors, L.F.S.] came from Sweden to Estonia and talked with their relatives, they possibly talked in private. But that remained within a small circle, as people were doubtlessly afraid.” Interview with Enn Nõu, Tallinn, Estonia, 10 September 2011. 31.  Aleksander Loit, “Kulturförbindelser mellan Sverige och Estland efter andra världskriget,” in Estländare i Sverige. Historia, språk, kultur, ed. Raimo Raag and Harald Runblom, vol. 12 of Uppsala Multiethnic Papers (Uppsala: Centre for Multiethnic Research, Uppsala University, 1988), 71. 32.  Interview with Aleksander Loit, Uppsala, Sweden, 14 December 2011. 33.  Lepassalu, Riigipiir, 251. 34.  Interview with Enn Nõu. Back in Estonia, Tuldava wrote a book on his experiences, using the pen name Artur Haman. The main aim of the publication, which was distributed abroad as an insert of Kodumaa (“Homeland”), a propaganda magazine that the Soviet authorities sent out to émigré households, was to slander the émigrés as lackeys of Washington. See Artur Haman, Sõbrad ja vaenlased. Mälestuskilde (Tallinn: Kodumaa väljaanne, 1967). 35.  Shain, The Frontier of Loyalty, 29. 36.  “Książe Andronnikow,” Słowo Powszechne, 20 November 1963. 37.  Elżbieta Later-Chodyłowa, “Szwecja,” in Polska diaspora, ed. Adam Walaszek (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2001), 229. 38.  Transcript of a broadcast by the radio station Radio Warszawa entitled “Gawęda Henryka Podolskiego,” 17 September 1964, in HU OSA, 300-50-01, f. 118.41, 1961–1964, b. 504, p. 48. 39.  Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 213. 40.  Reczyńska, “Obraz Polonii i emigracji w propagandzie PRL,” 69. 41. Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 355. 42. Habielski, Życie społeczne i kulturalne emigracji, 279. 43.  Press briefing of the ERN entitled “Saabumas läbirääkimiste ajastu—Miks Rootsi on nihkunud vasakule? Osavõturohke ja elevate vaidlustega ERN aastakoosolek,” 16

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December 1969, in RR, f. 3, s. 10 (“ERN üldkogu aastakoosolekuga seotud materjalid, 13. dets. 1969”), p. 3. 44.  Arvo Horm to Eero Omri, 15 October 1961, in ERA 5008.1.56.86. 45.  Undated report entitled “Om estniska organisationer i den fria världen,” in ERA 5010.1.23.4. 46.  Extract of an article from an unnamed Estonian émigré newspaper in Sweden entitled “Muutunud maailm, noorte kaasatõmbamine Eesti Rahvusnöukogu [sic] arutlusis,” 8 December 1971, in ERA 1608.2.934.77. 47. Gleason, Totalitarianism, 6. 48. Berge, Det kalla kriget i Tidens spegel, 213. 49.  Joël Kotek, “Youth Organizations as a Battlefield of the Cold War,” in The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe 1945–1960, ed. Giles Scott-Smith and Hans Krabbendam (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 168. 50.  Ingeborg Philipsen, “Out of Tune: The Congress for Cultural Freedom in Denmark, 1953–1960,” in The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe 1945–1960, ed. Giles Scott-Smith and Hans Krabbendam (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 237. 51.  Chronicle of the foreign-policy activities of the ERN from 1963 through 1982 entitled “Eesti Rahvusnõukogu välispoliitilise tegevuse kroonika II,” compiled by the Estonian National Council, Stockholm 1982, reprinted in ERN 1947–1997. 50 aastat poliitilist võitlust (Stockholm: Eesti Rahvusnõukogu, 1997), 91. 52.  Paweł Machcewicz, Emigracja w polityce międzynarodowej, vol. 2 of Druga Wielka Emigracja 1945–1990 (Warsaw: Biblioteka “Więzi,” 1999), 216. 53.  Gaddis, The Cold War, 198. 54. Jakobson, Bokslut, 45. 55. Pro-Soviet currents among the Finnish student movement marked an interesting contrast to the general trend among leftist student circles in Western Europe which, as a rule, identified themselves as Maoists, Eurocommunists, anarchists, or new-left pacifists. Although the adherents to Brezhnev’s Soviet Union were a minority, they exerted considerable influence on the course of political debates among Finnish youth and student organizations. Matyska, “Transnational Spaces between Poland and Finland,” 265. 56.  Tony Judt, Marxism and the French Left. Studies in Labour and Politics in France 1830–1981 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 208. 57.  The “Cold War conception of the world” as a dichotomy of two competing systems was generally dismissed by the Swedish leftist movements of the 1960s as a symptom and feature of the hegemony of the bourgeoisie. Martin Wiklund, “Kalla kriget som motbild i 60-talsvänsterns berättelse,” in Hotad idyll. Berättelser om svenskt folkhem och kallt krig, ed. Kim Salomon, Lisbeth Larsson, and Håkan Arvidsson (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2004), 252. 58.  Kent Zetterberg, preface to Att skåda Sovjetunionen i vitögat. Sex studier kring svenska relationer till Sovjetunionen under det kalla kriget, ed. Kent Zetterberg, vol. 2 of Försvaret och det kalla kriget (Stockholm: Försvarshögskolan, 2004), 9. 59.  Claes Arvidsson, Ett annat land. Sverige och det långa 70-talet (Stockholm: Timbro Förlag, 1999), 62, 71. Gahrton’s comment echoes the general rejection of the Prague Revolution of 1968 by many Western socialists, who dismissed the ideals of



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the revolting masses as indicators of “petty-bourgeois ideologies.” Judt, “The Dilemmas of Dissidence,” 233. 60.  Manuscript entitled “APACL [Asian Peoples’ Anti-Communist League] XII Conference in Seoul, Korea: Report by Mr. Arvo Horm, Observer from Sweden,” 1966, in ERA 5010.1.93; p. 1. 61. Küng, Estland, 187. 62. Zubok, A Failed Empire, 177. 63.  Robert Brier, “Entangled Protest. Dissent and the Transnational History of the 1970s and 1980s,” in Entangled Protest. Transnational Approaches to the History of Dissent in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, ed. Robert Brier, vol. 31 of Einzelveröffentlichungen des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Warschau, ed. Eduard Mühle (Osnabrück: fibre Verlag, 2013), 18. 64. Judt, Die Geschichte Europas, 479–80. 65. Gleason, Totalitarianism, 171. 66. Habielski, Życie społeczne i kulturalne emigracji, 309. 67.  Sofi Oksanen, preface to Kõige taga oli hirm. Kuidas Eesti oma ajaloost ilma jäi, ed. Sofi Oksanen and Imbi Paju (Tallinn: Eesti Päevalehe AS, 2010), 15. 68. Minutes of the general meeting of the ERN, 27 March 1960, in ERA 5008.1.10.2. 69. Küng, Estland, 123. 70.  Hank Johnson and David A. Snow, “Subcultures and the Emergence of the Estonian Nationalist Opposition 1945–1990,” Sociological Perspectives 41, no. 3 (1998): 481. 71.  Natalya Chernyshova, Soviet Consumer Culture in the Brezhnev Era, vol. 90 of BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies, ed. Richard Sakwa (London: Routledge, 2013), 2. 72. Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 249. 73.  Ibid., 248. 74.  Hanhimäki, “Conservative Goals, Revolutionary Outcomes,” 504. 75.  Hanhimäki, Scandinavia and the United States, 129–30. According to Alexander Muschik, it was the Swedish consul general in West Berlin, Sven Backlund, who arranged the first meetings between Willy Brandt (the then foreign minister and vice-chancellor) and the Soviet ambassador to East Berlin. Moreover, it is Sweden’s Foreign Minister Torsten Nilsson, in particular, who gains much of the credit for lobbying for and recommending Brandt’s policies to the ambassadors of communist states accredited to Stockholm. Alexander Muschik, “Headed Towards the West: Swedish Neutrality and the German Question, 1949–1972,” Contemporary European History 15, no. 4 (2006): 532. 76.  Quoted in Maria Borowska and Jakub Święcicki, introduction to Kamp för demokrati. Artiklar och ställningstaganden från den polska demokratiska rörelsen, ed. Maria Borowska and Jakub Święcicki (Stockholm: Tidens Förlag, 1979), 16. 77. Anthony Kemp-Welch, “Eastern Europe: Stalinism to Solidarity,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Volume II: Conflicts and Crises, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 227. 78. Zubok, A Failed Empire, 163.

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79.  R. G. Pikhoia quoted in Moshe Lewin, The Soviet Century (London and New York: Verso, 2005), 184; Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest. Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 108. 80.  Robert D. English, Russia and the Idea of the West. Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 108. 81.  Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, 307. 82. English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 107. 83.  Arvo Pesti, introduction to Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987. Dokumentide kogumik, ed. Arvo Pesti, vol. 17 of Ad Fontes (Tallinn: Riigiarhiiv, 2009), 12. 84.  Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2010), 134. 85.  Pesti, introduction to Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 11. 86.  Interview with Enn Tarto, Tallinn, Estonia, 22 September 2011. Sentenced for nationalist activities, Tarto served his second term of imprisonment in a labor camp in the Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic from 1962 to 1967. There, he established close personal contacts with representatives of the slowly emerging nationalist opposition in the other Baltic republics and with members of the numerous Finno-Ugric communities inside the Russian SFSR, who strove for national autonomy. Like Mart Niklus, who had started his oppositional career by organizing the smuggling of unpublished articles and photographs to the West via Finnish visitors in 1956, Tarto became an important mediator between the Baltic dissident movements from the late 1970s onwards. 87. John Hiden and Patrick Salmon, The Baltic Nations and Europe. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the Twentieth Century (London and New York: Longman, 1994), 135. 88. Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 7, 354. 89.  Elżbieta Later-Chodyłowa, “Polonia w krajach skandynawskich,” in Polonia w Europie, ed. Barbara Szydłowska-Ceglowa (Poznań: Polska Akademia Nauk, 1992), 616. 90.  Dariusz Stola, Emigracja pomarcowa, vol. 34 of Prace migracyjne (Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Społecznych, Uniwersytet Warszawski, 2000), 2. 91.  Michnik and Szlajfer had been interviewed about the public protests by Le Monde’s correspondent in Poland who passed the information to Radio Free Europe. The uncensored version of the events thus reached a considerable part of the Polish public by being transmitted back into the country. 92.  Kemp-Welch, “Eastern Europe,” 223. 93.  Judt, Die Geschichte Europas, 488. 94.  Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland. Volume II: 1795 to the Present (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 588. The breadth of the term “Zionism” allowed the Warsaw regime to apply it to a variety of oppositional manifestations. Up to the early 1970s, Radio Free Europe also was frequently referred to as a “Zionist” institution. Machcewicz, “Walka z Radiem Wolna Europa,” 51. 95. Stola, Emigracja pomarcowa, 11–12. 96.  Trzciński, “Polskie fale emigracyjne do Szwecji,” 63.



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  97.  Ludomir Garczyński-Gąssowski, “Organizacje polskie w Szwecji 1971– 1989,” in Polacy w Szwecji po II wojnie światowej (Stockholm: Kongres Polaków w Szwecji, 1992), 32.   98.  Later-Chodyłowa, “Szwecja,” 227.   99.  Kemp-Welch, “Eastern Europe,” 228–29. 100.  Later-Chodyłowa, “Polonia w krajach skandynawskich,” 616. 101.  Trzciński, “Polskie fale emigracyjne do Szwecji,” 64. 102.  A relatively high percentage of the Jews who left Poland in the aftermath of the 1968 crisis had indeed been occupying higher positions within the administrative state apparatus, but only around 5 percent of all Polish-Jewish émigrés had actually been employed in the central organs of state administration, i.e. the Ministry of the Interior, the Foreign Ministry, and the Office of Public Security. Stola, Emigracja pomarcowa, 12. 103.  Garczyński-Gąssowski, “Organizacje polskie w Szwecji,” 32. 104.  This was a general pattern that occurred in several countries where refugees from communist Poland were confronted with representatives of the established émigré society. Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 398. 105.  Interview with Ryszard Szulkin, Stockholm, Sweden, 12 December 2011. 106.  Trzciński, “Polskie fale emigracyjne do Szwecji,” 64. 107.  See, for example, the publication of the publicist and writer Alvar Alsterdal, who in a detailed and bestselling account revealed the internal mechanisms of the party apparatus and the anti-Semitic campaign it had launched. Alvar Alsterdal, Antisemitism, Antisionism: Exemplet Polen (Stockholm: Aldus/Bonnier, 1969). 108.  Report by the Polish Ministry of the Interior on the activities of “subversive centers and groups” on Scandinavian territory, 26 February 1972, in AIPN BU 418/17.236. 109.  Report by the 1st Department of the Polish Ministry of the Interior entitled “Dotyczy niektórych elementów sytuacji operacyjnej w Szwecji,” 24 September 1971, in AIPN BU 0665/124.3, 6. 110.  Ibid., AIPN BU 0665/124.3. 111.  Aneks was edited by a group of sociologists from Warsaw, who established the Polish Society of Science at Uppsala University. Eugeniusz Smolar, who together with his brother Aleksander had founded the journal, left Sweden for Great Britain in 1975 in order to work for the Polish section of the BBC. Thus, Aneks took its permanent seat in London. 112.  Later-Chodyłowa, “Polonia w krajach skandynawskich,” 626. 113.  However, the negative reactions to the Jewish immigrants from Poland certainly also reflected the rightist and anti-Semitic traditions of the pre-war era, which were still alive among the Polish emigration in Sweden and for a time even dominated the tone of the émigré newspaper Wiadomości Polskie. Garczyński-Gąssowski, “Organizacje polskie w Szwecji,” 41. 114.  Reczyńska, “Obraz Polonii i emigracji w propagandzie PRL,” 67. 115.  Report by the Polish Ministry of the Interior on the activities of “subversive centers and groups” on Scandinavian territory, 26 February 1972, in AIPN BU 418/17.234.

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116.  Ptasińska-Wójcik, “Inwigilacja Instytutu Literackiego przez Służbę Bezpieczeństwa,” 184. 117.  Transcript of an interview with the author of a book about Kultura, broadcasted in Polish national television, 21 December 1968, in HU OSA, 300-50-01, f. 118.41, 1965–1968, b. 504, p. 48. In the interview, it was estimated that around 1,500 issues of Kultura reached Poland every month (the actual number must have been much higher). 118.  Garczyński-Gąssowski, “Organizacje polskie w Szwecji,” 33. 119.  “Instytut w Maisons Laffitte (4): Za konwencjonalną fasadą,” Perspektywy, 11 February 1977. 120.  Garczyński-Gąssowski, “Organizacje polskie w Szwecji,” 32. 121.  Matuszak, “Polski Komitet Pomocy w Szwecji,” p. 15. 122.  Rainer Bauböck, “Cold Constellations and Hot Identities: Political Theory Questions About Transnationalism and Diaspora,” in Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods, edited by Rainer Bauböck and Thomas Faist (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010), 315. 123.  For comparative purposes, the term “second generation” will be used in both cases. “Generation” is thus understood in a broader sense in order to describe a “social group shaped by common historical experiences.” Wulf, “Locating Estonia,” 235. Even if the political activism of the younger generation of Estonians in the West was not built upon shared memories from the pre-war era and the overwhelming majority never had set a foot on Estonian soil, their political mission was nourished by a collective feeling of displacement and having been forced to grow up outside the fatherland due to the repercussions of a foreign, illegitimate occupation. 124.  Manuscript of Aleksander Warma’s opening speech at the general meeting of the ERN, 2 December 1967, in RR, f. 3, s. 78, p. 1. 125.  Manuscript of Jaak Maandi’s speech entitled “Seisukohti välistegevuse taktikas,” held at the general meeting of the ERN, 2 December 1967, in ERA 5008.1.11.138. 126.  Arvo Horm to Esmo Ridala, 22 December 1965, in RR, f. 3, s. 37, p. 2. 127.  Rein Taagepera, “The Struggle for Baltic History,” Journal of Baltic Studies 40, no. 4 (2009): 454. 128. Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 248. 129.  Interview with Jaak Maandi. 130.  Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 250. 131.  Taagepera referred to the Finnish president Juho Kusi Paasikivi, Kekkonen’s predecessor in office, who set the course for Finland’s specific course of post-war neutrality, the “Paasikivi-Kekkonen line.” 132.  Esmo Ridala to Arvo Horm, 8 March 1969, in RR, f. 3, s. 37, p. 1. 133.  Tiina Kirss, “Branches of the Cleft Oak: Homeland-Diaspora Literary Relations in Estonia,” World Literature Today 72, no. 2 (1998): 318. 134.  Press briefing of the ERN, 22 November 1971, in RR, f. 3, s. 79, p. 10. 135.  Interview with Jaak Maandi. 136.  Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 216. 137.  Küng, Estland, 194.



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138.  Press briefing of the ERN, 2 January 1975, in RR, f. 3, s. 78, p. 12. 139.  Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 230, 237, 251. 140.  Karl Ast to Raimond Kolk, 7 May 1968, in Eesti Kirjandusmuuseumi Eesti kultuurilooline arhiiv [The Estonian Cultural History Archives of the Estonian Literary Museum, EKM EKLA], fond 337, säilik 10, p. 1. 141. Küng, Saatusi ja saavutusi, 185. 142.  Manuscript of August Koern’s speech entitled “Nõukogude uus agressioon ja meie välisvõitlus,” 3 November 1968, in ERA 4931.1.124, p. 5. 143.  Interview with Enn Nõu. 144.  Grabbi, “Poliitikud paguluses ja pagulaspoliitikud,” 204. 145.  Loit, “Kulturförbindelser mellan Sverige och Estland,” 78. 146. Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 262. 147.  Report on a conference held by the ERN during ESTO 72 entitled “ERN Konverents Torontos, 13. juulil 1972—Teesid,” in RR, f. 3, s. 78, p. 3. 148.  Quoted in Madelaine Hron, “The Czech Émigré Experience of Return After 1989,” The Slavonic and East European Review 85, no. 1 (2007): 49. 149. Küng, Saatusi ja saavutusi, 5. 150. Küng, Estland, 8.

Chapter Five

The Transnationalization of Opposition around the Baltic Rim

UNDERMINING DÉTENTE FROM BELOW With the onset of Richard Nixon’s presidency in 1969, the United States considerably toned down the ideological and moral dimension of geopolitics. It was thanks, in particular, to Nixon’s National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and his realpolitik approach that the U.S. government proceeded to treat the Soviet Union as “an ordinary state with reasonable national goals and interests.”1 The signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Agreement, known as the SALT I treaty, by Brezhnev and Nixon in Moscow in May 1972, marked the peak of superpower détente. This power-balancing process in the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union was a crucial precondition for the Western European states to regain agency in the field of East-West diplomacy. A pivotal point was the programmatic turn in Bonn’s foreign policy toward communist Europe. The shift in West Germany’s handling of the unsolved territorial and border issues under Chancellor Willy Brandt and his social democratic-liberal coalition government paved the way for German Ostpolitik, which has been labeled the “very heart of détente” in Europe.2 The signing of bilateral agreements between West Germany and the governments of the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union in the early 1970s significantly contributed to fostering a pan-European dialogue by putting a “symbolic end to World War II.”3 It was the rapprochement between the two Germanies that came to serve as a blueprint for a new kind of East-West diplomacy. It seemed as if a chance to bridge the gap between the communist and the capitalist camp eventually had come within reach.

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The Baltic Sea Region at the Peak of European Détente With the beginning of the multilateral preparatory talks in Espoo, Finland, in November 1972, which paved the way for the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the rapprochement between East and West was heading toward its zenith. Delegations from thirty-three European states as well as the United States and Canada engaged in a large-scale, multilevel process that was supposed to lay the foundations for a “new kind of Europe, one no longer exclusively dominated by East-West rivalries.”4 Although North American states were involved, the CSCE was, and remained, basically a European project, aimed at finding a modus vivendi through the “intensification of peaceful interaction.”5 The choice of Finland as the main site and host of the negotiations was an unambiguous signal, given that the Finnish government had repeatedly been criticized in the West for pursuing a compliant political course vis-à-vis Moscow during the past decades. However, times had changed and the West was determined to come to terms with the Soviet bloc. The ideological dogmatism that for long had characterized the stance of many Western governments had the potential to jeopardize the success of this diplomatic breakthrough. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that idealist principles such as “justice” or “human rights” did not figure, at least initially, on the agenda which, first and foremost, reflected the top priority of most Western European states: to facilitate the flow of people, goods, and information across the bloc border.6 The CSCE served as a key vehicle for European détente which fostered a “‘people first’ approach” and promoted the expansion of East-West cooperation to all levels of social, cultural, and economic life.7 By the early 1970s, substantial progress had already been reached in the field of trade between the blocs. Commercial East-West contacts were flourishing, especially as the satellite states were in dire need to reform their economies after the decades of rapid industrialization and Soviet-type modernization.8 Poland, the biggest national economy of the satellite belt, showed a particular interest in expanding its trade ties westwards, not least in order to decrease its economic and, thus, political dependence on Moscow.9 Edward Gierek, the general secretary of the Polish Communist Party, was determined to modernize the country’s industries through giant foreign investments and the mass import of Western technologies, which in turn were supposed to be financed by favorable credits from the West. The normalization in Warsaw’s relations with West Germany opened up the opportunity of intensifying cooperation with the other non-communist neighbors,10 especially with Sweden. Sweden’s neutrality doctrine was doubtlessly a beneficial key factor, as it turned the bilateral cooperation into a “politically safe” undertaking. Warsaw assumed that the Swedish government would stick to a “neutrality at any price”



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policy which seemed to lower the risk of unwanted foreign interference in Polish internal affairs.11 Sweden was also highly interested in expanding the bilateral commercial relations. Trade ties with the Eastern bloc countries promised great economic potential, from which Sweden’s export-oriented industries would be able to profit.12 Hence, Swedish-Polish trade across the Baltic Sea experienced a renaissance from the turn of the decade onwards, promising to secure Sweden’s supply of cheap fuel and to satisfy the Polish demand for machines and technical equipment, industrial objects, and highquality copper.13 In bridging the abyss between NATO and Warsaw Pact Europe, the neutral states played a key role which went far beyond the intermediary function they would assume in the framework of the CSCE.14 Already since the late 1960s, the Palme government’s foreign policy had been increasingly focused on decolonization. Early on in his tenure as prime minister, Olof Palme made clear that he saw Sweden’s mission as that of a defender of human rights and international justice in the Third World and not in the Soviet bloc. As far as the state socialist countries in Europe were concerned, the Swedish government displayed an “unsentimental realism,” prioritizing security issues and economic cooperation.15 By giving priority to the increasing gap between North and South, Stockholm expressed the firm conviction that the dichotomies of the Cold War, and, thus, the Cold War itself, had been overcome by the process of European détente.16 The Swedish prime minister underlined this approach during a meeting with Poland’s minister of defense, Wojciech Jaruzelski, in September 1972. Referring to Radio Free Europe’s Stockholm office, which had caused significant diplomatic irritation during the past two decades, Palme stated that this “anomalous” phenomenon had to be buried as a remnant of the Cold War.17 Soon, the two governments signed an agreement on increased cooperation in the fields of culture, science, and education. The document was supposed to enhance networking processes between research institutions, trade unions, and youth organizations in the spirit of détente.18 At the same time, Poland started official negotiations with the European neutrals about the abolishment of the visa constraint in order to foster cross-border mobility. In 1973, a direct ferry connection was established between Helsinki and Gdynia, while Finnish citizens were unilaterally entitled to enter Poland without the obligatory visa.19 In the following year, Poland and Finland concluded a bilateral agreement on visa-free mobility up to three months.20 Palme and Gierek signed a similar treaty, which considerably facilitated traveling between the two countries and marked the peak of Swedish-Polish détente. The expansion of tourism infrastructure across the Baltic Sea had an impact on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Already in 1973, one year before the lifting of the visa requirement, the number of Swedish citizens traveling to

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Poland amounted to more than 43,000. During the same year, 13,000 Poles visited Sweden after having been carefully screened by the Polish authorities which ultimately granted the approval for individual trips abroad.21 From the summer of 1974 onwards, Polish citizens could even take up legal temporary employment during their stay in the country. This triggered a stream of thousands of seasonal workers to Sweden, in particular students or young university graduates who used the summer break to work in the fruit harvest.22 The sheer dimension of the passenger traffic went, of course, far beyond the monitoring abilities of the authorities. Yet, the Warsaw government did not consider its new policy of openness to be an immediate threat. Trusting in the soothing effects of the Gierek era compromise between state and society, the regime considered the risks to be manageable.23 The riots on the Polish coastline in December 1970 had indeed been a warning signal, especially as they marked the most severe outburst of working-class discontent since 1956. But Gierek proved to be able to learn from the faults of his predecessor. His determination to open up the country to the West reflected a willingness to make far-reaching concessions to society. Giving up the ambition of maintaining totalitarian control, the government counted on the stabilizing effects of economic growth and rising living standards financed by Western loans.24 The strategy of securing social peace and thus reducing politically motivated unrest was indeed successful, at least up to the mid-1970s. Frustration was still widespread in Polish society but it remained largely tacit as it lacked the potential to mobilize large-scale opposition across class borders. The nonconformist intellectual elites were still paralyzed by the wave of persecution that had followed the March events of 1968 and which had prevented the educated strata from actively supporting the protesting workers in 1970.25 Despite Poland’s impressive record of anti-communist uprisings since the end of the war, Polish society remained largely atomized. Even in neighboring Sweden, despite the impetus of the “new emigration,” the level of organized oppositional activism among the Polish diaspora was still relatively low, especially after the dissolution of RFE’s Stockholm office in 1972.26 Public demonstrations in front of the Polish embassy still occurred occasionally, but any attempts to coordinate collective action on a larger scale remained unsuccessful.27 Norbert Żaba, who maintained close contacts with Giedroyc in Paris, was one of the few first-generation émigrés to continue his active political engagement. As the chairman of the Society of Friends of Kultura, he organized regular meetings and discussions on the current political development in Poland. However, activities of this kind were generally rare in the early 1970s.28 Seen from the perspective of the Warsaw government, the increased exchange between the Polish diaspora in Sweden and citizens of the People’s Republic did thus not cause major concern. By



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contrast, it was the Warsaw government that seemed to profit most from the developing infrastructure across the Baltic Sea. Since the onset of the Gierek era, Warsaw had made considerable efforts to strengthen the bonds with the apolitical masses of the Polish diaspora, aiming its propaganda primarily at the intelligentsia and the youth abroad.29 Because of the advantages of its geographical location, the favorable visa policy for travel across the Baltic Sea, and its largely apolitical character, the Swedish Polonia soon had the closest and most frequent contacts to the home country among the Polish communities in the West.30 The CSCE negotiations were widely perceived as the flagship of détente and a major success of Western Ostpolitik. Indeed, increasingly permeable borders, and a freer flow of people, goods, and information heralded a brighter future for the crisis-torn continent. The advocates of the course of rapprochement in the West expected the CSCE to have a stabilizing effect not only on the future course of international relations in divided Europe but, at least in a long-term perspective, also for the societies in the communist orbit. As the more optimistic observers pointed out, the liberalization of travel restrictions had, in particular, the potential to foster greater transparency in the communist states, leading to a process of gradual democratization. However, the catchphrase of “change through rapprochement” did not remain unchallenged. While the Western governments were mainly interested in opening up the existing borders in Europe, the USSR saw the CSCE negotiations primarily as a means to legitimize the division of the continent into separate spheres of influence, as the international recognition of the state borders in Central and Eastern Europe still belonged to the pending questions of the post-war era. Accordingly, the preparations for the Helsinki Conference met with considerable resistance especially from conservative circles in the West. Politicians and journalists frequently invoked the memory of what many antiSoviet and anti-communist circles in the West had labeled the “treason of Yalta.” As a New York Times columnist stated, the participation of the United States in the CSCE talks was equivalent to putting “Washington’s seal of approval on the Russian conquest and domination of Eastern Europe.” In other words, the CSCE was nothing less than a “Super Yalta.”31 Deep mistrust of the Kremlin’s intentions mobilized strong opposition among the Central and Eastern European diaspora communities in the West. In particular, the Balts, who for decades had been lobbying for a continuation of the Western line of non-recognition, reacted strongly. The Estonian exile government in Stockholm argued that the CSCE process benefited first and foremost the communist states insofar as a successful conclusion of the multilateral negotiations eventually would contribute to consolidating the geopolitical status quo in Europe.32 Similar concerns were raised by leading

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representatives of “Polish London” the majority of whom still defended Poland’s right to its lost eastern territories. Hence, the government in exile sent its unaccredited representative from Stockholm, Wiesław Patek, one of the anti-communist veterans of Sweden’s Polish community, to regularly attend the Helsinki meetings.33 The Estonian diaspora was represented by, among others, Andres Küng from Malmö and the ERN’s unofficial representative in Finland, Esmo Ridala. Their task was primarily to disseminate information material on the fate of the Baltic nations since 1940 and to establish personal contacts with the delegates.34 The border issue thus proved to be a highly delicate aspect of the CSCE process. Once again it drew attention to the fact that the territorial borders in Central and Eastern Europe had not been determined by negotiations between independent governments but by the Red Army’s military advances westwards. In particular, the annexation of the Baltic states, which was still a controversial topic in Western foreign policy discourse, was put back on the agenda, and not only in the West. In Estonia, a short boat trip away from Helsinki, a small group of oppositional activists decided to make their voices heard in the debates about the possible geopolitical repercussions of the CSCE. In the long term, this decision marked the starting point of a gradual convergence of diaspora and homeland opposition to Soviet rule, as will be examined in detail below after a closer look at the origins of the dissident movement in Soviet Estonia. The Genesis of the Soviet Estonian Dissident Movement While the domestic situation in Poland slowly stabilized during the early years of Gierek’s time in office, the Soviet leadership was increasingly confronted with the long-term effects of de-Stalinization leading to “first significant cracks in the Soviet home front.”35 Moscow’s diplomatic successes on the international stage were in sharp contrast with the situation at home where societal opposition steadily grew. This induced Brezhnev to fall back on trusted methods such as a tightening of his neo-Stalinist course and censorship regulations in particular. Under the leadership of Yuri Andropov, the KGB regained its traditional role as the regime’s main tool of repression. Shaken by the Czechoslovak experience of 1968, the Kremlin had learned its lesson. To a larger degree than before, the secret police apparatus now focused on the monitoring of Soviet society.36 From the late 1960s onwards, one of Andropov’s preferred methods of coping with political non-conformism was forced psychiatric treatment conducted in close cooperation with a “network of psychiatric hospitals.”37 After human-rights issues became a central issue of the CSCE negotiations and the Western governments made it clear



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that Moscow had to make concessions in that direction, the KGB proceeded to adopt more sophisticated strategies, forcing dissidents to emigrate and depriving them of citizenship.38 Initially, the Kremlin and its security agency focused mainly on Soviet Russia, the stronghold of regime criticism and dissent in the Brezhnev era. Soon, however, societal discontent and organized opposition spread to the peripheries of the empire as well. In 1968, the Estonian branch of the KGB established a special subdivision whose task it was to monitor nationalist tendencies among the Soviet Estonian intelligentsia.39 Already at this early stage, increasing state surveillance thus also affected the non-Russian republics revealing the Kremlin’s fear of unrest outside Moscow and Leningrad. Up to then, the situation in Estonia had not caused significant concerns among the Soviet leadership. As a result of the Brezhnev compromise, the Estonians had been able to maintain a certain level of national autonomy. Yet, it eventually turned out that these concessions were not enough to compensate for the failures of the planned economy and Soviet migration policy. As Soviet citizens throughout the multinational empire, the inhabitants of the Estonian SSR had to cope with a chronic lack of consumer goods and housing space. However, as in neighboring Latvia, these shortcomings took on an additional, national dimension. As mobility within the USSR was officially supported and promoted, a current stream of industrial workers and professionals from the Soviet Russian heartland reached the comparatively flourishing Baltic republics where living standards were higher than in other parts of the Soviet Union. The undue preference awarded to these work migrants in the supply of housing and other services triggered anti-Russian sentiments among the local population.40 Initially, the few nationally framed protests that occurred before the early 1970s appeared rather harmless. In 1969, the members of two conspiratorial youth leagues were sentenced to imprisonment for anti-Soviet agitation,41 recalling the 1950s trials against schoolboys involved in similar activities. The convicts’ idealization of Nazi Germany as the main enemy of the “Russians” during World War II revealed that the historical memory of the war years was still alive even among the “Komsomol generation.” However, such incidents could still be downplayed as an example of rebellious youthfulness rather than one of authentic nationalist opposition. Two years later, antiSoviet leaflets circulated in the Estonian SSR signed by a group that identified itself as the National Committee (Rahvuskomitee) with reference to the war-time resistance against the German occupiers.42 One of these pamphlets denouncing the ongoing Russification processes reached the ERF in Stockholm where it was disseminated as the first proof of nationalist opposition in Soviet Estonia.43 By then, the situation had fundamentally changed. In the early 1970s, members of the Soviet Estonian intelligentsia became engaged

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in oppositional activities. They differed from the convicted juveniles both in education and their access to networks that connected them to like-minded circles in other Soviet republics.44 Soviet Estonian dissent started as a local offshoot of the intellectual opposition in Moscow and Leningrad. One of the key figures of this transfer of oppositional thinking was Sergei Soldatov, an Estonian-born university lecturer of Russian origin, who maintained close contacts with Russian dissidents. The freedom of travel within the Soviet Union considerably facilitated the communication between center and periphery. Information traveled quickly between Moscow and Tallinn allowing non-conformist circles in Estonia to take an active interest in the intellectual debates among the Russian dissidents. Publications of samizdat provenance, as the illegal small-scale reproduction of uncensored texts was called in the USSR, regularly reached Estonia.45 Among these was the underground periodical Chronicle of Current Events which provided information on human-rights violations in the Soviet Union and had its own correspondents in Tallinn.46 With the foundation of the Democratic Movement of the Soviet Union (Nõukogude Liidu Demokraatlik Liikumine, NLDL) in the fall of 1969, the first genuinely Estonian dissident organization was born, which included a considerable number of ethnic Russian members.47 The protagonists of the NLDL initially formulated their critical thoughts largely within the standard Marxist-Leninist framework and did not openly question the Soviet system itself, as was the case of other non-Russian dissidents in the USSR.48 Soon, however, their vision of what reforms were necessary became increasingly incompatible with the ideological underpinnings of Soviet Russian dissent which was starting to show a “growing conservative Russian nationalism.”49 These diverging views triggered an ideological split which accelerated the nationalization and radicalization of opposition in Soviet Estonia. The Tallinn-based Democratic Movement of the Soviet Union was a shortlived underground organization, not least due to the lack of support from dissident circles in Moscow and Leningrad. In the summer of 1970, a number of ethnic Estonians left the NLDL in order to establish their own organizations: the Estonian National Front (Eesti Rahvusrinne, ERR) and the Estonian Democratic Movement (Eesti Demokraatlik Liikumine, EDL). The ERR, led by Kalju Mätik and Arvo-Gunnar Varato, was ethnically more homogeneous than the EDL whose leading figures were Mati Kiirend and the Ukrainian Artjom Juškevitš. In spite of some minor differences, the political visions of both groups were rather similar. They took a strong stance against the steadily growing influx of non-Estonian immigrants and the creeping Russification of Estonia. Both the ERR and the EDL were involved in the translation and reproduction of Russian samizdat and tamizdat.50 The dissidents even produced



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their own underground newspapers which were among the first Estonian samizdat publications and were issued in Estonian and Russian. Because of KGB vigilance, the activists limited the dissemination of dissident writings to a small intellectual audience in Tallinn and Tartu.51 Any attempts to reach out to larger segments of Soviet Estonian society or even to involve diaspora organizations in the West would have made it considerably easier for the KGB to keep track of their conspiratorial activities. Thus, the Estonian communities in the West remained for a long time unaware of the existence of the two underground organizations. There had indeed been a marginal note on a dissident organization called the Estonian National Front in the Russian Chronicle of Current Events which was regularly smuggled into the West. But this had only led to speculations among the diaspora community, as it was virtually impossible to verify the substance of the information.52 Following the news on the preparation of the CSCE negotiations in nearby Finland, the Estonian dissidents radically changed their strategy. The decisive catalyst was the issue of the official recognition of the territorial borders in Europe which had already led to protests among émigré organizations in the West. Like many Western critics and émigré Balts, Poles, Czechoslovakians, and Romanians, who all stood up for the case of territories annexed by Stalin in 1939 and 1940, the Estonian dissidents interpreted the targeted multilateral agreement on security and cooperation in Europe de facto as formal Western recognition of Soviet occupation. In view of the forthcoming negotiations in Finland, the Soviet Estonian activists thus decided to take action and to make their protest heard in the West.53 In the summer of 1972, a small group of Estonian scholars in the circle of the historian Tunne Kelam drafted a memorandum in close cooperation with the leadership of the ERR and the EDL.54 The document, which was dated October 24th, 1972, shortly before the official opening of the CSCE talks on the Aalto University campus in Espoo, was addressed to the General Assembly of the United Nations, to whose predecessor organization Estonia had once belonged. “Estonia,” the memorandum stated, “formerly an internationally recognized sovereign state and member of the League of Nations since 1921 was, as the other Baltic states, forcefully deprived of its sovereignty and turned into a colonial territory.” The signing organizations demanded a referendum on Estonia’s independence under the auspices of the UN, the restoration of sovereignty and a democratic order in Estonia, the liquidation of the Soviet “colonial administrative apparatus” and the withdrawal of Red Army divisions from Estonian territory.55 In contrast to other existing published Soviet dissident appeals in the West, the document thus openly demanded the abolition, rather than reformation of the Soviet system. However, it took two years for the memorandum and an accompanying letter, addressed to UN

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Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, to reach Stockholm. Seen from its eastern shores, the Baltic Sea was still an almost insurmountable barrier in the early 1970s. Smuggling Channels across the Baltic Sea To date, there is still no satisfactory explanation for the late arrival of the memorandum to Stockholm and on how it reached the West in the first place.56 It is of course in the nature of clandestine networks to rest upon very loose structures and a widely ramified system of intermediaries who are reliant on highly decentralized and conspiratorial forms of communication. Against this background, a short examination of the possible scenarios will have to be sufficient at this point. Of specific interest is first and foremost the “Finnish bridge” (soome sild), a metaphor for the close kinship between Finns and Estonians that has been a recurring theme in poetry and literature and which in the post-war period reappeared in the physical guise of the ferry connection to Helsinki.57 The proximity to Finland and interaction across the Gulf had always had a crucial impact on Estonian history, and the Cold War era was no exception. It was because of the ferries that Tallinn developed into a central node of unofficial informational exchange between the Soviet Union and the West.58 At the high tide of European détente, Sweden and Finland played a key role as “neutral buffer zones” between the blocs. Their status as “friendly neighbors” allowed for the establishment of direct traffic connections with both Poland and Soviet Estonia, thus fostering the mobility of the Baltic Sea Region’s inhabitants and the exchange across the shores. However, the ferries that cruised the Baltic waters were not only a visible symbol of European détente. They also considerably contributed to undermining it. Already at an early stage, Polish émigré activists in Sweden had understood the strategic advantages of the maritime transport infrastructure and how to use it for their own purposes. The connection via the Baltic Sea made the risky crossing of the borders of Warsaw Pact transit countries dispensable, which significantly facilitated the smuggling of banned Western literature into the People’s Republic. Norbert Żaba played a key role as one of the main organizers of the illegal transfer of forbidden books to communist Poland.59 For these purposes, Żaba closely cooperated with the Polish-Jewish activists who gravitated around the journal Aneks in Uppsala and the local branch of the Society of Friends of Kultura in southern Sweden.60 One of his closest allies and a pioneer in the field of smuggling between Sweden and Poland was Andrzej Koraszewski in Lund, who had left Poland together with his Jewish wife in 1969.61 Ever since the war years, the university town of Lund had



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been a small but important center of Polish intellectuals and activists including well-known representatives of the Polish community such as university lector Zygmunt Łakociński and Countess Ludwika Broel-Plater. Because of its proximity to the port of Ystad directly connecting the Polish seaside town of Świnoujście to Sweden Lund and its Polish community gained strategic importance. The smuggling of literature was basically a continuation of the U.S.-financed “Mailing Project” of the Thaw years, although voluntary couriers by then were recruited among Polish tourists visiting Lund. Over the course of time, the transport traffic reached such dimensions that the same route was used for smuggling Western literature to Czechoslovakia and the Lithuanian SSR as well.62 The direct ferry connection to the West was at least equally significant in the case of Soviet Estonia. Of course, Poland and Estonia represented different ends of the spectrum. On the one hand, the number of travelers across the Gulf of Finland was incomparably smaller than that between Sweden and Poland. On the other hand, the possibilities of smuggling illegal goods, such as Western literature, were much more limited due to the meticulous screening during entry and departure by the KGB in the port of Tallinn. The significance of the ferry connection for the exchange of oral information, by contrast, is uncontested. Seen from this angle, every private family visit to the homeland and vice versa successfully undermined the informational blockade. These mutual visits were also important, of course, for the compensation of the weak supply of consumer goods in Soviet Estonia. Unfortunately, the immediate consequences of this regular flow of uncensored information are empirically difficult to assess, as is the impact of the reception of Finnish television in northern Estonia.63 However, there is plenty of evidence indicating that the smuggling of written material and especially books via the Baltic ferries occurred on a larger scale already in the first half of the 1970s. In 1972, a secret undercover investigation, carried out by the Estonian branch of the KGB, confirmed the fears of the Soviet authorities. The final report stated that information could flow relatively freely between Tallinn and the West, in particular because of the willingness of foreign visitors to smuggle private letters and messages out of the country.64 Vaino Väljas, at the time secretary at the Central Committee of the Estonian Communist Party, raised similar concerns in an article published in a Soviet party organ. He sharply criticized the political diaspora in the West and its ingenuity in finding ways to smuggle anti-Soviet literature to Estonia, claiming that they used, among others, “specially briefed tourists” as couriers.65 Initially, it was first and foremost Bibles and religious books that found their way to Estonia via Helsinki. This was a common pattern in the smuggling activities between the West and the Soviet Union commonly organized and

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carried out by the so-called “Eastern Missions,” that is missionary organizations that aimed at supplying Christian believers behind the Iron Curtain with spiritual literature.66 Religious life in Estonia was, as elsewhere in the Soviet Union, largely suppressed. The Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church in Exile, by contrast, whose headquarters had been moved from Stockholm to Toronto, played a prominent role in the life of the diaspora. In 1968, it published the Bible in a new Estonian translation which was noted with great interest in Soviet Estonia and triggered smuggling activities across the Baltic Sea. Estonian pensioners at times tried to smuggle a copy into Estonia on their way back from family visits to Sweden, but it was also the case that visiting Estonians from the West became active. This induced second-generation activist Andres Küng to proclaim the smuggling of banned literature as the new “mission” of the Baltic diaspora, invoking the historical smuggling routes of Lithuanian newspapers in Latin script from East Prussia to tsarist Lithuania during the worst days of nineteenth-century Russification.67 Yet, it was mostly Finns who lay behind the illegal import of Bibles and Christian journals to Estonia, turning Tallinn into one of the central gateways for the organized smuggling of spiritual literature into the USSR. A network of Finnish Baptists was closely involved with the Wurmbrand Mission, a U.S.-based organization that supported Christian believers in communist Europe. From the early 1970s onwards, Finnish couriers regularly blended in with the masses of tourists in order to smuggle banned religious writings across the Gulf of Finland.68 The land route via the Finnish-Soviet border to Leningrad was also used in order to smuggle further material by car. The Finnish Baptists brought items into the country not only in Estonian but also in Russian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Georgian, thus supplying large parts of the communist empire.69 A Finnish-Soviet agreement on controlling illegal imports and exports, signed in March 1976, gives some indication of the dimension of these clandestine activities. The document explicitly mentions Bibles as an example of “anti-government and anti-socialist literature” whose smuggling into the Soviet Union was to be prevented by the Finnish authorities.70 An open letter to the Estonian diaspora, smuggled out of the Estonian SSR in the same year, reinforces this impression. The diaspora church’s new Bible translation had gained considerable authority in Soviet Estonia and was widely popular throughout the republic. The same applied to other spiritual and secular émigré literature such as the Catholic journal Maarjamaa, edited by the Estonian priest Vello Salo, and Andres Küng’s anti-Soviet publications.71 From 1974 onwards, the Finnish Baptists occasionally agreed on smuggling written records out of the country on behalf of their Estonian contact persons in Tallinn. Some of them maintained direct communication with Estonian émigré organizations in Stockholm, which led



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to the establishment of an important channel for the transfer of messages authored by Estonian dissidents to the West.72 As it was practically impossible to smuggle typed documents out of the country, they were usually photographed on microfilms, which became a practical and easily concealable medium for the transfer of samizdat and uncensored reports on the situation in Soviet Estonia to the West.73 Although solid evidence is lacking on how the 1972 Memorandum to the United Nations reached Sweden, both the actors involved and researchers who have written on the topic agree that it was most probably the Finnish Baptist network that took care of smuggling the document out of the country. According to an initial plan, proposed and carried out by the former NLDL activist Sergei Soldatov, the memorandum was apparently supposed to reach the West via Russian dissident circles in the Soviet capital which at the time were the most common channel for smuggling Soviet samizdat writings out of the USSR.74 Moscow was the key node for the exchange of information between Soviet dissidents and the outside world as it was the only Soviet city with a significant community of Western citizens—mostly diplomats and correspondents—with whom the Russian dissidents maintained close contacts. The underground journal Chronicle of Current Events, for instance, was usually brought out of the country via Western journalists.75 Indeed, an article written by a Russian dissident in September 1973 and later reprinted in a tamizdat bulletin in the West confirms that oppositional circles in Moscow were informed of the memorandum and its content a whole year before it eventually reached a Western public.76 It is assumed that the Moscow connection nevertheless failed due to the clearly anti-Russian tone of the memorandum, which was not supported by the protagonists of Soviet Russian dissent.77 Thus, the more probable scenario is the testimony given by the Baptist Ants Tomson from Tallinn, who stated that he received the memorandum from Soldatov’s hands in the fall of 1974 and delivered it to his brethren in faith from Helsinki. Finnish couriers eventually took care of sending the document to the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church in Stockholm, from where it was disseminated in the West.78 The Memorandum to the United Nations marked a watershed for diasporahomeland relations and paved the way for coordinated oppositional action across the Baltic Sea. Estonian activists in the West saw the memorandum as an ultimate proof that parts of Soviet Estonian society had already joined the “free Estonians” in a common struggle against the “Soviet yoke” thus boosting the anti-Soviet lobbying activities in the West.79 Initially, some doubts concerning the validity of the document nevertheless remained. It was virtually impossible to verify the existence of the ERR and the EDL, the dissent organizations that had signed the memorandum, and the fear of becoming the

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victim of a targeted KGB provocation was still widespread. One of the first people to acknowledge the credibility of the memorandum was the Catholic priest Vello Salo, the former editor of Radio Vatican’s Estonian broadcasts. The U.S.-based political scientist Rein Taagepera, whom he had consulted on this issue, supported Salo’s view and opted for immediate publication.80 Subsequently, the ERF in Stockholm forwarded the memorandum and the attached letter to the United Nations and disseminated thousands of printed copies in Sweden and other parts of Western Europe.81 The Baltic Appeal to the United Nations, a joint Baltic initiative that aimed at regularly informing the UN headquarters in New York on Baltic issues, took over the task of disseminating the document in North America.82 Up to the signing of the CSCE’s Final Act, four further appeals and open letters from Soviet Estonia reached Stockholm with the instruction for forwarding to the appropriate institutions.83 The last document that was smuggled out of Estonia in the run-up to the Helsinki summit of summer 1975 was a joint declaration of Estonian and Latvian dissidents addressed to the governments of the participating states. Together with a statement of support for the Baltic cause by Andrei Sakharov and other prominent Moscow dissidents,84 the document lent additional credibility to the news about the emergence of an organized nationalist opposition in Estonia and highlighted its interconnectedness with similar circles in other Soviet republics. Human Rights on Paper and in Practice In the end, the political campaigns organized by Estonian and other Baltic activists against the CSCE summit had “little discernible impact.”85 On August 1st, 1975, the delegates of the participating states solemnly signed the Final Act, a multilateral agreement that touched upon “virtually every aspect of Pan-European security,” in the Finlandia Hall in central Helsinki.86 Much to the disdain of oppositional activists on both sides of the Iron Curtain, the document affirmed the inviolability of borders in Europe in its first “basket,” as the Final Act’s four parts were referred to. Yet, this did not imply a deviation on the part of the United States and other NATO members from the previous line of non-recognition concerning, among others, the fate of the Baltic states as reinforced by a passage that conceded the possibility of territorial changes by peaceful means. This was one of the concessions that the Kremlin had to make to the Western European partners in exchange for a de facto recognition of the political status quo in post-war Europe.87 Ultimately, however, it was the Helsinki Final Act’s third basket on the “free movement of people, family reunification and visits, and informational, cultural, and educational openness” that had a more decisive impact on the



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future development of East-West relations.88 This clear political commitment to the essential values of human rights, as expressed in both the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, reflected the increasing attention that the topic had received in Western Europe in particular in the course of the CSCE negotiations.89 The 1973 publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s monumental account of the Stalinist labor camps in Russia’s Siberian hinterlands, The Gulag Archipelago, had left a great “moral and emotional impact” on Western discourses on the Soviet system, not least as the author was arrested and expelled shortly after the book was published in the West.90 The “Gulag effect” doubtlessly influenced also the formulations of the Helsinki Accords, although Solzhenitsyn’s dissident epos, ironically enough, had not found an editor in Finland.91 Some of the communist satellite states had indeed raised serious concerns about the recognition of the third basket which in internal discussions was labeled a Western “Trojan horse.”92 Moscow, however, brought its allies into line. The Kremlin was convinced that a concession on this issue would not have any significant impact on internal affairs of the communist states. Indeed, there were no signs that heralded any radical change in Soviet domestic policies during the months that followed. By contrast, the regime considerably tightened its reins, especially in the Soviet Baltic republics. In October 1975, the Estonians witnessed the biggest political trial since Stalin’s days in Tallinn, only eighty kilometers away from the city where Brezhnev had demonstrated his commitment to human rights two months earlier by signing the Helsinki Final Act. Already in late 1974, shortly after the Estonian dissidents’ Memorandum to the United Nations had been published in the West, the KGB started a major crackdown on the dissident movement, searching dozens of apartments and interrogating hundreds of witnesses.93 The leadership of the democratic opposition was decapitated as both the ERR leaders Mätik and Varato and the heads of the EDL, Kiirend and Juškevitš, were arrested. Shortly afterwards, the same fate befell Sergei Soldatov. The authors of the memorandum were accused of having systematically disseminated anti-Soviet propaganda. One of the central charges was related to the dissidents’ alleged contacts with Estonians in the West, a fact which had made the memorandum’s dissemination via the “bourgeois and exile press” and “anti-Soviet radio stations” possible.94 The dissidents had been well aware that the publication of the memorandum in the West would entail a wave of repression. Therefore, they had agreed not to circulate the document in Estonia itself until it had been published abroad.95 The long time span between the drafting of the appeal and its arrival in Sweden thus stalled the KGB offensive and enabled the dissidents to continue their activities for two more years.96 However, following the conviction of the dissident leadership

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to several years of imprisonment, oppositional activity significantly declined in Estonia.97 In the end, however, the regime’s harsh reaction to the first signs of organized opposition in Estonia backfired. The Tallinn trial unmistakably proved the memorandum’s authenticity and confirmed the existence of a secretly operating nationalist opposition in the Estonian SSR. For the Estonian community in the West, this marked a decisive watershed and considerably revitalized the struggle for national liberation from abroad for which the Helsinki Final Act had almost become a “tombstone,” as Tunne Kelam put it.98 Estonian activists in the West could now refer to concrete names and faces behind the anonymous dissident organizations.99 Thus, they were able to efficiently counter the attacks of leftist circles in the West that regularly denounced the Baltic activists as “war hawks” with no ideological support in their homelands. Their information campaigns now focused increasingly on the fate of the political prisoners. This shift allowed them to relate to the current discourse on human rights and national self-determination thus lending additional justification to their struggle. As the agenda of Estonian political activity in the West touched upon highly topical issues, it could not be reduced to a somewhat utopian striving for a return to the status quo ante 1940 anymore.100 The Tallinn trial cast a long shadow also in Estonia. While the dissident organizations had been largely unknown during their active period, the news following the arrests and the subsequent trial contributed to popularizing the dissidents’ political activities and visions.101 In some cases, the trial had a mobilizing effect, in spite of the regime’s obvious determination to persecute any forms of nationalist Baltic dissent. Lagle Parek and Eve Pärnaste, for example, who both belonged to the inner circle of a new generation of dissidents, recall that it was the 1975 trial that induced them to become involved in oppositional activities.102 Pärnaste knew Mati Kiirend, one of the accused, and attended the public sessions of the trial about which she drafted a written report for Kiirend’s friends. Extracts of her report were later transmitted back to Estonia via Western radio broadcasts proving that the document had been successfully smuggled out of the Soviet Union.103 Evidently, the imprisonment of the dissident movement’s leadership did not affect the courier traffic between Tallinn and Stockholm. Already by late 1975, the ERF had received two detailed reports on the October trial, which immediately went to publication.104 By the mid-1970s, the connection across the Baltic Sea had thus become an efficient and reliable channel for the clandestine transfer of information between Estonia and the West. European détente and the preparations of the CSCE summit which embodied the peak of East-West rapprochement in Europe not only fostered a consider-



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able expansion of the physical infrastructure between the Baltic shores but also compelled the communist governments to establish grassroots-level contacts with Western societies. As a result of these circumstances, a de facto unrestricted flow of information developed between the blocs. In the shadow of the expanding maritime transport infrastructure between the Baltic shores, even contacts of a more subversive kind started to blossom. The developing communication between Estonians in the West and dissident homeland activists thus counted among the unintended corollaries of the rapprochement between the neutral Scandinavian states and the communist-ruled countries on the opposite coasts. The loss of totalitarian control was the price that the communist regimes had to pay for the decrease of Cold War tensions in Europe and for the benefits deriving from increased technological and economic cooperation with Western states. The transnationalization of opposition in divided Europe proceeded gradually. In the case of Poland, this process had started already in the late 1950s as the result of a comparatively liberal border regime, which, despite temporary restorative measures in times of social unrest, was unique in the Soviet bloc. As East-West interaction steadily increased from the mid-1960s onwards and allowed for a largely unrestricted transfer of ideas, Polish oppositional thought in the East and the West continued to converge paving the way for close cooperation between diaspora and homeland activists. In the Estonian case, by contrast, any verified information about oppositional activities in the Estonian SSR had long been lacking in the West. The political leadership of the Estonian diaspora thus designed its agenda vis-à-vis the homeland on the base of assumptions until the dissidents’ memorandum finally proved that an organized underground opposition with a lively interest in cooperation with co-nationals abroad had emerged. The Estonian nationalist opposition had its intellectual roots in the Russian dissident movement with which it shared common strategies and structures. However, with the decision to interact with the West via the Estonian community in Stockholm, the dissidents proved that they were acutely aware of the anti-Soviet activism among the diaspora community. Western radio broadcasts and tourism were important bearers of information, and there is also reliable evidence that a large number of émigré publications were circulating in Soviet Estonia by the early 1970s. Yet, it is difficult to assess to what degree the dissidents consciously adapted their political strategies to that of their compatriots abroad. Nevertheless, it is striking that the memorandum and, for instance, Andres Küng’s influential publications on life in the Soviet Baltic republics shared not only references to colonial discourse but also an almost identical vision of national liberation via a referendum under the auspices of the United Nations.105 These obvious parallels notwithstanding, it is difficult to

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assess the extent of cross-fertilizing tendencies between anti-Soviet circles in the West and the Estonian SSR before the mid-1970s. In contrast to the Polish diaspora-homeland networks, Estonian transborder cooperation depended on and was determined by the specific geopolitical constellation in the Baltic Sea Region. The port of Tallinn constituted Estonia’s own “window to the West” and especially to Finland whose bridging function was indispensable for the further development of uncontrolled communication across the Soviet border. In the course of the second half of the 1970s, the cross-Baltic networking processes between diaspora and homeland activists took the decisive step toward concrete and coordinated oppositional action. Soon after the conclusion of the CSCE negotiations, it became obvious that the formal recognition of human rights in the Helsinki Final Act by the governments of the Soviet bloc in fact was a “time bomb.”106 A rapid rise in oppositional manifestations behind the Iron Curtain and a considerably sensitized Western public constituted the precondition for the decision of both Polish and Estonian diaspora activists to engage in the evolving structures of opposition and dissent in their homelands. OPPOSITION AND HUMAN RIGHTS DISCOURSE IN POST-HELSINKI EUROPE The Helsinki Accords had a long-lasting effect on both East-West relations and the power balance between the communist governments and the societies they ruled over. Designed as a “‘living’ document,” the Final Act marked merely the beginning of a dynamic process that was to be accompanied and supervised by regular follow-up conferences.107 In view of this long-term arrangement and the monitoring mechanisms that oversaw the adherence to the terms agreed on, human-rights issues acquired unprecedented relevance in the field of international relations. During the course of the CSCE preparations, Western European delegates driven by the agenda of the European Community had shown increasing determination to promote the issue of human rights and to assign them a key role in the negotiations with the representatives of the Soviet bloc as expressed in the Final Act. The signing of the Helsinki Accords thus marked a turn in the practices of East-West diplomacy and a departure from the “traditional norm of non-intervention in domestic affairs,” given that the way a state treated its own citizens now became a legitimate matter of concern for other states.108 Nevertheless, the Western European governments continued to keep a low profile and avoided using the topic of human-rights violations in the communist states in negotiations on foreign policy fearing that they might jeopardize the achievements of East-West rap-



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prochement. It was Washington, rather, that took the leading role in putting pressure on the Kremlin in this respect. Jimmy Carter, elected president of the United States in the fall of 1976, did not refrain from openly addressing human-rights violations behind the Iron Curtain. The Carter government’s return to a foreign policy course with a strong moral dimension was met with considerable approval in the United States where détente had been increasingly criticized as a process that mainly benefited the Soviet Union.109 Seen from the Soviet perspective, the growing Western engagement in human-rights issues was alarming, and Brezhnev soon sensed signs of “psychological warfare.”110 His concerns were justified, not least as the establishment of numerous Helsinki Committees in Western Europe and the United States offered a safety net for regime critics on the home front. Soon oppositional activities behind the Iron Curtain increased. Already in May 1976, a first independent monitoring group was formed in the Soviet capital. The Group to Assist the Implementation of the Helsinki Agreements in the USSR, commonly referred to as the Moscow Helsinki Group, aimed at monitoring the compliance to the promises of a freer “movement of people and ideas between East and West in areas such as tourism, the reunification of families and access to printed and other media” that the Soviet government had officially committed to by signing the Final Act.111 As this new form of dissident activity spread to the more peripheral republics, the Soviet leadership understood that it had underestimated the signal effect of the third basket. By early 1977, similar groups had been established in Georgia, Armenia, Lithuania, and Ukraine, where dissidents systematically filed reports on human-rights violations for a Western public.112 Yet, it was in the satellite belt that oppositional societal self-organization made a decisive historical breakthrough. The June Riots and Their Aftermaths: The Genesis of the Workers’ Defense Committee In the run-up to the Helsinki summit, the Polish government had been outspokenly critical of Brezhnev’s nonchalance toward the Final Act’s passages on human rights and the danger of “ideological infiltration” they might entail.113 However, the repercussions of Gierek’s political miscalculations in the country itself soon appeared as a much more substantial threat to the regime. So far, the government had relied upon the seemingly stabilizing effect of rising living standards financed by Western loans. But the reactions to the authorities’ decision to drastically raise basic food prices in June 1976 clearly illustrated the fragility and limits of this strategy. As it became more and more obvious that the Poles had been living in a “false sense of welfare,”114 public discontent rapidly erupted into a wave of strikes and street protests. In Ursus,

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an industrial district in the outskirts of Warsaw, and in the provincial towns of Radom and Płock, the situation escalated, triggering an unprecedented level of societal opposition. The workers’ protests were brutally crushed by police forces and this episode would be remembered as one of the major watersheds in Poland’s post-war history. It led to the formation of the Committee for the Defense of Workers (Komitet Obrony Robotników, KOR) based on the model of the Moscow Helsinki Group. KOR’s primary task was to provide help and assistance to those who had suffered persecution in the wake of the June protests. However, the Committee soon developed into a central node of human-rights activism in the People’s Republic of Poland, explicitly legitimizing its activities by making reference to the constitution and the Helsinki Final Act.115 The founders of KOR represented different factions and generations of Poland’s non-conformist intelligentsia. Among them were prominent activists of the pre-war Socialist Party which, after the forced incorporation into the Communist Party in 1948, had continued to exist as the Polish Socialist Party in Exile, and representatives of both the Catholic intelligentsia and the secular left. Jacek Kuroń, a Warsaw historian who since the Thaw years had been involved in oppositional activities, and Adam Michnik, one of the protagonists of the March events in 1968, became the leading theorizers.116 Soon, KOR developed into a heterogeneous network that united under a common roof student activists from 1968, young believers, participants of the June riots, and former university lecturers who had been expelled from their work.117 The overarching philosophical foundation of KOR made reference to a “community in humanist values . . . based on a synthesis of Catholic and socialist humanism.”118 For the first time in Polish post-war history, the two main strands of intellectual opposition associated, on the one hand, with the Church and, on the other, with Marxism, merged into a common struggle. The Marxism of the reformist intellectuals in the People’s Republic was deeply rooted in humanistic traditions and less tinged by the revolutionary rhetoric making it compatible with the social doctrine of the Catholic Church and its focus on the “natural rights” of humanity.119 This consolidation of societal dissent paved the way for the “convergence of independent groups with the interests of the working class” that Michnik had propagated in one of his essays.120 With the emergence of common oppositional manifestations across class borders, the atomization of society was gradually overcome. Bridging the gap between the intelligentsia and the working masses first and foremost called for a functioning system for the dissemination of relevant information. Within a short time, KOR succeeded in establishing a reliable network of informants making it possible to systematically compile evidence on the violation of human rights by the police and unfair political trials in



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the wake of the June riots.121 This information was regularly spread via the typed samizdat bulletin Biuletyn Informacyjny modeled on the Soviet Russian Chronicle of Current Events. In September 1977, KOR was renamed the Committee for Social Self-Defense (Komitet Samoobrony Społecznej “KOR”), as it from then on aspired to cover all forms of human-rights violations in the country.122 During this rapidly advancing process of societal selforganization, further oppositional camps became visible. The founders of the Movement for the Defense of Human and Civil Rights (Ruch Obrony Praw Człowieka i Obywatela, ROPCiO), for instance, were close to the nationalist right. But although their ideological background largely differed from KOR’s ideal of a democratic socialism, their political strategies were similar. With its determination to “watch over the observance of civil liberties . . . and [to] cooperate in defence of human rights with external bodies,” ROPCiO also developed into a kind of Helsinki Watch Group in Poland.123 The convergence of these very different forces into a closely interconnected opposition movement constituted a threat for the regime, especially as its protagonists, similarly to the Soviet Russian dissidents, systematically unmasked the shallow official rhetoric by referring to the legal framework that the state leadership publicly appealed to. As new autonomous forms of societal organization emerged, samizdat practices became increasingly professional in Poland. The opposition movement developed a vast underground infrastructure with several illegally functioning publishing houses. The biggest of them was NOWA, the Independent Publishing House (Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza), which reproduced Western literature and émigré publications as well as domestic prose and poetry that otherwise would remain unpublished as a result of the censorship regulations.124 The sheer scale of the clandestine book production marked a watershed in the history of opposition in the Soviet bloc. With the development of a “parallel public sphere,”125 which emerged through the “second circulation” (drugi obieg), as samizdat was referred to in Poland, uncensored information could be disseminated throughout the country. Western radio broadcasts thus lost their traditional significance as the most vital threat to the communist regime’s legitimacy and forced the Polish intelligence service to almost completely reformulate its defense strategies.126 The Mobilization of the “New Emigration” in Sweden The leadership of the new semi-public opposition in communist Poland had an ambiguous attitude toward the political emigration. “Polish London” and its numerous political factions and internal conflicts did not, as a rule, receive much attention in the underground press. This skepticism, however,

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was mutual. Many representatives of the war refugee generation categorically rejected any opposition movement in the home country that did not recognize the authority of the government in exile.127 Yet, the attitude of many secondgeneration émigrés, and especially those who had left Poland after 1968 and thus were familiar with the intellectual milieus that KOR had grown out of, differed considerably from the orthodoxy of the older émigrés. The so-called “new emigration” still maintained personal networks in the home country as a result of the relative permeability of the Polish borders, and unequivocally stated that the choice of ideological guidelines and suitable strategies was left to the opposition movement itself. The shared experiences and similarity of political visions paved the way for fruitful cooperation across the Iron Curtain. In this context, Sweden’s role was decisive in bridging the abyss between oppositional forces in the East and the West. The formation of an organized Polish opposition movement had a highly stimulating effect on the members of the “new emigration” in Sweden, who immediately started to organize far-reaching assistance for the home country. Soon after the formation of KOR, a number of émigrés established a small but efficient campaign group in support of the human-rights activists in the People’s Republic. Two of the most important nodes of this developing network were Jakub Święcicki and Maria Borowska, both of whom represented the non-Jewish faction of the post-1968 emigration in Sweden.128 Święcicki had arrived in Stockholm only four years earlier, while Borowska had left Poland in the aftermath of the anti-Semitic campaign together with her Jewish husband. Initially, Borowska and Święcicki aimed at operating within the framework of the Center of Polish Organizations for Independence, the umbrella organization for the established political emigration. But most of the Center’s member organizations had their ideological roots in the 1940s and maintained close bonds with “Polish London,” a situation which soon led to a clash of opinions. In order to avoid any conflict which potentially could arise from cooperating with war veterans and other highly conservative first-generation activists, the younger émigrés decided to establish their own structures for the organization of constructive and efficient support for the Polish opposition movement.129 The support for KOR from Sweden was channeled through a loose network of actors which included, alongside Borowska, Święcicki, and his wife Elżbieta, also Ryszard Szulkin, Aleksander Orłowski, Józef Dajczgewand, and Kazimierz Gruszka, to mention just some of the most important names. Their major ambition was to secure the unrestricted flow of updated news on the political development in Poland. The most valuable source was the leadership of KOR itself, whose firsthand reports often reached the West via émigré channels. The informants in Warsaw not only delivered reliable information



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about KOR but also about other oppositional organizations such as ROPCiO or the Students’ Solidarity Committees (Studenckie Komitety Solidarności) which had been established in response to the alleged political murder of a Cracow student by security service agents in May 1977.130 Jacek Kuroń’s Warsaw apartment turned into a veritable information center, not least for Western correspondents in Poland.131 Most of the information was disseminated via his private phone. One of Kuroń’s main contacts abroad was Eugeniusz Smolar, the co-founder of Aneks, who, since leaving Sweden in 1975, worked for the Polish section of the BBC in London. However, the Stockholm-based activists also maintained regular communication with the leadership of KOR.132 The contents of appeals and other documents issued by the opposition movement were regularly transmitted over the phone, after which the texts were immediately typed and copied. Copies were directly sent to the Swedish press, Radio Free Europe in Munich, Smolar in London, and Giedroyc in Paris.133 Although Giedroyc’s Literary Institute was the uncontested center for the reproduction of documents of the Polish opposition movement in the West,134 émigré activists in Sweden edited their own brochures in Polish and Swedish and a series of publications entitled “Polski samizdat.”135 The lobbying activities of the new emigration in support of KOR had a crucial and long-lasting impact on Swedish public opinion. To a larger degree than other Polish communities abroad, such as the British one, the émigrés in Sweden proved to be able to establish durable networks among their host society.136 Via close cooperation with key actors and organizations of the political and cultural sphere, they eventually succeeded in undermining the Swedish government’s course of rapprochement from below. What was important in this context was the change of the political climate in the mid1970s. With the election of the first non–social democratic government since 1932 in October 1976, the high tide of the New Left was irrevocably over in Sweden. The pronouncedly leftist Prime Minister Palme was succeeded by Thorbjörn Fälldin, the leader of the Center Party, which entered into a coalition with the Liberal People’s Party. This shift in the political landscape determined the ways in which the advocates of oppositional forces behind the Iron Curtain could exercise influence on Swedish public opinion. Since the onset of the 1960s, the conservative faction had appeared as a sinking ship. Many émigrés and second-generation activists with a Central and Eastern European background thus actively engaged in the political campaigns of the liberal camp which, in the second half of the 1970s, offered a forum for lobbying activities that successfully drew the public’s attention to human-rights issues in state socialist Europe. The Liberal Party’s Youth League (Folkpartiets ungdomsförbund, FPU) served as a suitable vehicle for a broader popularization of the aims of

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the Polish opposition. The Youth League was more flexible than the party leadership and less bound to the ongoing prevailing governmental course of East-West rapprochement. In 1976, FPU’s national committees of Poles, Balts, and Czechs merged into the Eastern European Solidarity Committee (Östeuropeiska Solidaritetskommittén, ÖESK).137 In a number of brochures dedicated to the June riots and the formation of KOR, the Committee published documents issued by the opposition movement and firsthand reports about the situation in Poland in Swedish. For the Swedish reader, these publications marked the first intertextual encounter with the Polish opposition. The publications were enriched by articles that severely criticized the lack of knowledge about general developments behind the Iron Curtain in Sweden.138 Triggered by the high level of activism among its own members, the following year FPU started a nationwide campaign against the “last dictatorships of Europe,” shifting their earlier focus on right-wing regimes in Southern Europe toward the communist regimes in the East.139 Nevertheless, social democracy was still the dominant force in the field of opinion-making in Sweden, in spite of the interlude during which the party was forced into opposition. The supporters of KOR were well aware of the fact that Western socialists ranked among the “most important allies” of the opposition movements behind the Iron Curtain, as the Czech émigré Zdeněk Hejzlar put it.140 But the general attitude toward KOR was still ambiguous among Swedish social democratic circles which regularly criticized the Polish oppositional leadership of being overly critical of its government.141 The émigré activists thus aimed, first of all, to convince the party elites to support the opposition movement, a strategy that soon turned out to be successful. As the assistant of Olof Palme’s advisor Sten Johansson—a sociology professor at the University of Stockholm and editor of the social democrats’ theoretical party organ Tiden—Maria Borowska had direct access to one of the key actors of Swedish social democracy. On her recommendation, Johansson traveled to Warsaw in the fall of 1976, where Borowska had arranged meetings with leading representatives of KOR via her vast contact network in the Polish capital.142 In 1977, Johansson traveled to Poland a second time, now as an officially invited guest of KOR. During his visit, he gave a lecture on the current problems of Swedish social democracy at one of the illegal sessions of the “Flying University,” the underground educational structure that offered courses beyond the ideological doctrine.143 Moreover, he attended a meeting in Kuroń’s private apartment in Warsaw where he forwarded Palme’s personal greetings triggering particular enthusiasm among his Polish hosts. Due to his direct connection to Palme, Johansson came to play an important mediating role. He could deliver firsthand accounts on the activities and aims of the Polish opposition and forward their requests for official recognition by



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Sweden’s social democracy directly to the party leader.144 Initially, these new forms of cross-Baltic encounters were not institutionalized. Nevertheless, their impact on the perception of the Polish opposition in Sweden proved to be crucial. In order to facilitate their intermediary activities between Polish oppositional groups and the political sphere in Sweden which traditionally relied on the interaction between highly institutionalized organizations rather than on individual networks, the Polish émigré activists adopted a more formal organizational structure.145 In May 1978, they established the Contact Group of the Polish Democratic Movement in Sweden (Polska Demokratiska Rörelsens Kontaktgrupp i Sverige). The proclaimed aim of KOR’s official representation in Sweden was to “contribute to establishing contacts between [the opposition] and Swedish society on the terms of the Polish democratic movement.”146 Over time, their mediating efforts developed into a pattern of regular Polish-Swedish encounters. Prominent oppositional activists, among them Jan Józef Lipski, Adam Michnik, Jacek Kuroń, and other leading KOR members, were invited to Sweden for consultations and debates with representatives of Sweden’s political sphere, often under the guise of academic conferences.147 Thus, vivid intellectual exchange developed between Polish opposition leaders and Sweden’s political elites. These encounters involved a variety of actors and organizations, among them leading trade union members, the Social Democratic Party, and the Swedish Pen Club, as well as journalists and Members of Parliament.148 The remarkable commitment of a small number of Polish activists thus highly influenced the development of personal contacts below the governmental level. Ironically enough, it was the Polish government’s officially declared willingness to foster societal interaction across the Baltic Sea that contributed to the development of a transnational platform for oppositional thinking. While their efforts to foster cross-Baltic elite networks bore their first fruit, Borowska and Święcicki used their connections to the Swedish media to reach a wider public.149 One of their major successes in this field was the cooperation with Gunnar Fredriksson, a prominent publicist who worked for the social democratic daily Aftonbladet. Following Borowska’s suggestion, Fredriksson traveled to Cracow shortly after the election of the city’s cardinal, Karol Wojtyła, to the papacy, and was received by several prominent opposition leaders. His visit resulted in a much-noticed series of articles on the Polish opposition, which, in the long term, had a lasting impact on the tone of Swedish media reports on communist Europe.150 At the same time, the émigrés started their own attempts to actively influence Swedish public opinion. Thanks to their close contact with Tiden’s editor Sten Johansson, they were able to obtain considerable financial and organizational support for

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a Swedish publication devoted to the Polish opposition movement. In their book, Borowska and Święcicki presented a representative selection of translated samizdat documents and eyewitness accounts from Gierek’s Poland. The volume, entitled Kamp för Demokrati (“Fight for Democracy”), received considerable attention and excellent reviews in the press, changing much of the Swedish perception of the Polish opposition.151 Earlier reports on Catholic-chauvinistic, fanatically anti-Russian, and, most of all, anti-Semitic views among anti-communist circles in Poland had cemented a negative image of Polish resistance to Communism in Sweden.152 However, by presenting the liberal and social democratic forces around KOR, the émigré activists helped to diminish the power of popular stereotypes. Comparisons between the Polish opposition and the Swedish traditions of popular movements and societal self-organization were a useful means of promoting open support for the organized regime critics in Poland.153 It was, thus, not only the dissemination of information and Polish samizdat texts in the West that mattered, but also the cultural translation process which broke down mental boundaries and facilitated the development of a rising level of support among Swedish society. “Printing Support” from Neutral Sweden: The Transnational Features of Polish Samizdat The lively interaction between Swedish intellectuals and politicians and Polish opposition leaders amounted to one of the major achievements of the émigrés’ lobbying activity. Their mediating function provided a solid ground for Swedish support and created important Western contacts for the Polish opposition of the pre-Solidarity era. However, there was another, less visible quality to the emerging networks across the Baltic Sea; an aspect that was at least equally important for the opposition movement in the People’s Republic. Although the moral backing of the West provided invaluable support, practical aid from abroad was indispensable for a functioning system of political opposition. The underground publishing houses, in particular, were highly dependent on technical support from the West. An efficient samizdat apparatus presupposed a regular supply of equipment, such as stencil duplicators especially, which enabled the opposition to reproduce texts on a mass scale in a simple way. As the domestic market did not offer any of the necessary devices, the duplicators, the spare parts, and other necessary equipment had to be smuggled from Western Europe.154 Thus, a large-scale support program was elaborated by a network of émigré activists with nodes in Paris, London, and the United States. The organization of the clandestine transport, however, was mainly the task of émigré circles in Sweden which



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turned Poland’s neutral neighbor country into a central hub for illegal transborder traffic.155 Paris, the “Capital of Eastern European dissidence,”156 had been, since the Thaw years, a major stronghold of Polish oppositional thought in the West. As the seat of Kultura and the Literary Institute, the city retained its relevance as an intellectual center of opposition even after the foundation of KOR with which Jerzy Giedroyc and his assistants maintained close contact. However, unrestricted communication between Paris and Warsaw presupposed a functioning network of intermediaries. As the Baltic waterways formed an important and convenient connection between Poland and the West, Sweden developed into an indispensable strategic link between the Polish opposition and leading émigré circles and institutions. The communication between the Literary Institute in Paris and the underground publishing house NOWA, for instance, was entirely carried out via Swedish couriers and Giedroyc’s Stockholm contact Norbert Żaba.157 It was most probably this connection that eventually led to the development of the highly efficient network that organized the smuggling of printing equipment across the Baltic Sea. As Jakub Święcicki, one of Żaba’s closest associates among the “new emigration,” recalls, it was a request by NOWA’s co-founder and head Mirosław Chojecki that was the starting point. On Chojecki’s request, Święcicki arranged the first illegal transport of a portable stencil duplicator to Poland and thus set off an activity that soon would develop into an undertaking of larger proportions.158 Most of the financial means came from donations of the Polish diaspora in North America and Western Europe. The money was usually transmitted by intermediaries, such as Eugeniusz Smolar in London and Jerzy Giedroyc in Paris, into the hands of the émigré activists in Sweden. However, Swedish donors also contributed to securing a financial basis for the illegal crossBaltic traffic. Apart from the local Polonia, Swedish university students and scholars donated money, as did the ÖESK, the Central and Eastern European branch of the FPU.159 The money was not only used for the purchase of technical equipment, which at times was made in Paris or London, but also for paying the couriers. One of the cheapest ways was the use of voluntary couriers among the ferry passengers, usually journalists or representatives of Swedish student or youth organizations traveling to Poland for official meetings and conferences. Trotskyite circles, who often played the role of “key actors in the face-to-face contacts with dissidents” in the Soviet bloc,160 were among the most reliable allies of the émigré activists in Sweden. For larger transport operations, special couriers had to be recruited and vehicles to be acquired leading to a significant part of the budget being used.161 Thanks to regular communication via smuggled and coded messages, the illegal traffic of technical equipment from Sweden to Poland could be

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tailored to the concrete needs of the opposition.162 In general, Swedish tourists and visitors were used for the transfer of written purchase orders to the corresponding addressees.163 In Sweden, the émigrés organized the requested equipment upon consultation with Giedroyc and Smolar. Another reliable channel was, according to one of the involved activists, the Swedish ambassador to Poland, Knut Thyberg, a fact which sheds an interesting light on the potential involvement of Swedish officials in the illegal cross-Baltic flow of information and goods.164 In 1979, Jakub Święcicki, one of the main coordinators of the smuggling activities, was granted an entry permit by the Warsaw government for the first time since he emigrated. Under the pretext of a family visit, he met with representatives of the opposition. During his stay in Warsaw, the staff of NOWA demonstrated how the techniques of underground printing functioned and what kind of material was indispensable in order to facilitate future ordering procedures.165 It is possible to reconstruct one of the smuggling transport operations following one of the few unlucky incidents which occurred when one of the couriers, a Swedish student named Björn Gunnar Laquist, was stopped in his car after he had left the ferry in the port of Gdańsk in December 1979. During the interrogation that followed, he named as his contact person in Sweden the Estonian émigré activist Ülo Ignats, who together with Jakub Święcicki was one of the leading figures of the Eastern European Solidarity Committee.166 In the trunk of Laquist’s car, the Polish customs officials found a portable mimeograph designated for NOWA in Warsaw, ribbons for the rotating drum, two pressure rollers, and a quartz lamp.167 However, the range of devices that were smuggled on the Baltic ferries was much broader. Among the items listed on the purchase orders that reached the émigré activists from the home country, all kinds of equipment needed for the mass reproduction of texts could be found. The printing houses requested everything from chemicals, solvents for ink production, and color ribbons for typewriters to bookbinding glue, paper cutting machines, woven mesh for silk screen printing, and simple staple fasteners.168 Other equipment that was smuggled on request of the Polish opposition included cameras, slide films, batteries, and audiocassettes which were used for the audiovisual documentation of illegal lectures, public demonstrations, and the repeated incidents of police brutality.169 While the transport of technical equipment was usually planned and conducted in Stockholm, émigré circles in Lund extended the organized smuggling of banned literature to the People’s Republic. Besides Andrzej Koraszewski, the driving force behind this activity was Józef Lebenbaum, a journalist from Łódź who had left Poland in the wake of the anti-Semitic campaign. Via Lund, the underground publishing houses were supplied with books for massscale reprinting,170 mostly obtained from Paris via Żaba, while the “Flying University” received titles for its “Libraries of Forbidden Literature.”171



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The significance of this very practical side of support activity cannot be underestimated. Mirosław Chojecki estimates that most of the technical devices that reached Poland before 1980 were smuggled via Sweden. NOWA, for instance, worked exclusively with technical equipment from Sweden,172 but sporadic transport operations were also conducted on the ferries between West Germany and Poland and by car from France.173 Even smaller printing offices profited from the “printing support” (pomoc poligraficzna) as this illegal traffic across the Baltic Sea was referred to, especially the Students’ Solidarity Committees.174 The Swedish connection also played an increasingly important role for the regular supply of Western books. By 1980, the illegal transport operations from Lund, which largely relied on cooperation with Swedish lorry drivers ferrying goods to Poland, had developed into a large-scale smuggling of forbidden literature in bulk. Thanks to the wellfunctioning networks, the supplies of the Warsaw bookshop Księgarnia Św. Wojciecha, the “central node in the dissemination of émigré literature,” were regularly replenished. From there, the books found their way to the underground publishers, who were responsible for preparing their reprinting and mass dissemination.175 The growing interest in human-rights issues in post-Helsinki Europe had repercussions on both sides of the Iron Curtain and contributed to shaping a common language of opposition. The spontaneous public protests against the Warsaw government’s practice of suppressing street demonstrations by force had eventually developed into a transborder network of concerted oppositional activism. As a result of the active and strategic involvement of representatives of the political emigration in the West, the free circulation of uncensored information was significantly facilitated. The technical support from abroad enabled the Polish opposition movement to circulate documents and appeals on a mass scale throughout the country. Via communication with émigré groups, the information also reached the West. Polish émigré activists proved to be well-interconnected with Western media. At the same time, they closely cooperated with the anti-communist broadcast stations, which retransmitted the currently updated information from Poland back into the country. As a result of this very lively transborder cooperation which used the ferry traffic and other “loopholes” in the Iron Curtain, neutral Sweden ended up playing a crucial role as a bridge between the Polish opposition and the West. Although the number of émigrés involved in these activities was rather small, they were nevertheless able to form an important hub for the flow of information and material support. Their parallel strategies of making the Polish opposition’s voice heard in contemporary Swedish political discourse and opinion-making debates were equally important. The attention that their lobbying activities gained among parts of Swedish society was doubtlessly a

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result of the changed political climate. In 1976, the Swedish people elected the first non–social democratic government in forty years, a fact which reflected the general decline of radically leftist thinking in the West. The engagement not only of political actors but also of media representatives and voluntary couriers clearly marked a remarkable success for the oppositional forces. In view of these multilevel processes, it became obvious that the foundations of the intergovernmental Polish-Swedish détente, from which human-rights issues had been deliberately excluded, were slowly, but steadily, eroding. “Second-Generation” Estonian Dissidents and Their Connection to the West Swedish public interest in human-rights violations behind the Iron Curtain grew only gradually despite the fact that Amnesty International had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 and the first follow-up meeting of the CSCE in Belgrade from fall 1977 to spring 1978 had been dubbed the “Helsinki Human Rights Conference” by the international press.176 A turn in public interest occurred in the early 1980s when the mass-scale mobilization of oppositional forces behind the Iron Curtain forced the government in Stockholm and Swedish society to take a decisive stance. Nevertheless, the crucial shift from consensus on the principle of “change through rapprochement” to an openly critical stance toward the state socialist governments took place in the late 1970s. There were, however, still huge differences in Swedish public perception and knowledge of the situation in the satellite states and the Soviet Baltic republics. While debates on a possible democratization within the satellite belt were gradually unfolding in Sweden, the inconvenient and controversial Baltic question was omitted. Political writers such as the Estonian Andres Küng had indeed succeeded in reintroducing the issue of the Baltic peoples’ right to self-determination into a broader discourse on the principles of international law and human rights in the Soviet bloc. Any official manifestations of sympathy for the Baltic cause were, however, extremely rare. One of the few exceptions was the FPU, whose ombudsman Ülo Ignats was of Estonian descent. In one of the brochures of a campaign for human rights behind the Iron Curtain driven by Ignats and other activists with roots in the communistruled parts of Europe, the FPU declared that “[t]he Baltic countries are, to the same degree as the rest of Eastern Europe, victims of the Soviet Union’s imperialism. The Baltic peoples should be able to decide themselves upon their future; among other things about whether they want to remain within the Soviet Union, or become independent.”177 There had not been many Swedish statements of this kind since the public street marches against the extradition



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of the Baltic soldiers three decades earlier. However, the FPU’s strong support of the Baltic activists’ stance remained an isolated case. Political activism among the Estonian diaspora entered a new phase in the mid-1970s, mobilized by the first signs of nationalist dissent and active opposition to the Kremlin’s course of Russification in the Soviet Baltic republics. While Estonian émigré campaigns had aimed for decades at counteracting Moscow’s imperial aspirations by influencing governments and public opinion in the West, the focus now clearly shifted toward the East.178 In June 1975, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty expanded its broadcast service to the Soviet Baltic republics taking advantage of the fact that the Soviet Union had temporarily stopped its jamming activities during the CSCE process. The Estonian section’s main editor was the Estonian-born journalist Aleksander Terras from Sweden who took up his job at the RFE headquarters in Munich where he already had worked for the Voice of America in the 1950s.179 Even oppositional circles in the Estonian SSR increasingly shifted their focus to communicating and cooperating with the Estonian diaspora in the West following the establishment by the mid-1970s of a channel of unrestricted communication. On the occasion of the second Estonian World Festival, ESTO 76, held in Baltimore, émigré organizations in Stockholm received an appeal from Estonia. The open letter was signed by an anonymous group that referred to itself as the Association of Thinking Estonians (Mõtlevate Eestlaste Ühendus) with members in Tallinn and Tartu.180 Echoing the views of many second-generation activists among the Estonian diaspora, the authors encouraged the Estonians in the West to visit the home country more frequently. The homeland and diaspora societies were, the letter stated, not only intimately interlinked by a shared past, but also by a common future. Estonians on both sides of the Iron Curtain had “instinctively been working toward the same aims, only under different conditions and according to different methods.”181 However, any concerted action of diaspora and homeland activists required an improvement of the information exchange between the Estonian SSR and the West. With the trial against the leadership of the EDL and the ERR in the fall of 1975, the first phase of Estonian dissent had come to a sudden end. After the signing of the Final Act, Helsinki Watch Groups were established both in Ukraine and in Lithuania where the Catholic Church formed the stronghold of the opposition. A similar plan was proposed by Enn Tarto and Erik Udam who, together with other former political prisoners, such as Mart Niklus and Endel Ratas, constituted the backbone of Soviet Estonian dissent in the late 1970s. Tarto and Udam aimed at mobilizing intellectuals and the republic’s religious and ethnic minorities but cooperation among the groups eventually

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failed due to the widespread fear of political persecution.182 When the KGB launched a new wave of repression in early 1977, the former political prisoners in Estonia thus managed to escape the fate of the more organized opposition movements in other parts of the USSR. While the arrest of the leading activists of Soviet Helsinki Watch Groups decapitated the underground structures in many Soviet republics in the second half of the 1970s,183 Estonia was able to experience the beginning of a new wave of dissident activity. The dissidents regularly drafted open letters and appeals—“one of the most common genres of samizdat”184 in the USSR—addressed to the Soviet leadership, Western governments, and international organizations. Referring to the Final Act and the resulting legality of their activity, the dissidents proceeded to sign with their full names, a fact which significantly increased the impact of these documents, especially in the West.185 From 1978 onwards, the first regular Estonian samizdat journal, designed according to the pattern of the Chronicle of Current Events, was disseminated in Soviet Estonia. The chronicle, entitled “Some Additions to the Free Flow of Thoughts and News in Estonia” (Lisandusi mõtete ja uudiste vabale levikule Eestis), informed its readers on dissident activity in and outside the Soviet Union and especially on the ongoing human-rights violations throughout the communist orbit.186 Thus, by the late 1970s, Soviet Estonian dissent had recovered finally leaving the anonymity of the underground. A comparison between the Polish opposition, an organized social movement with well-functioning networks in Poland and beyond, and the handful of dissidents in the Estonian SSR illustrates the huge discrepancy between the satellite belt and the USSR in post-Helsinki Europe. While the underground publishing houses in Poland could reprint Western books and home-grown samizdat on a mass scale, Estonian dissidents lacked both the necessary technical equipment and a broader network of like-minded allies inside Soviet Estonia itself. Western radio broadcasts were thus the main device for the mass dissemination of uncensored information. The Finnish Baptists constituted an important connection to the West, although they were not always willing to involve dissidents in their secret smuggling networks.187 Contact with correspondents of Western newspapers, radio broadcast stations, and television was also of central importance.188 It was, as it seems, not always necessary to travel to Moscow for this kind of activity. A report of the Estonian KGB mentions similar conspiratorial encounters with Western journalists in Tallinn.189 A third channel to the West had its roots in the personal networks of former political prisoners. Mart Niklus and Enn Tarto, who already were veterans of anti-Soviet activism, maintained close contact with former fellow prisoners from Lithuania. The Lithuanian SSR served as a transit route to Poland where activists with contacts both to the Estonian community in Sweden and the



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RFE headquarters in Munich transmitted the information to the addressees.190 By the late 1970s, Soviet Estonian dissent was thus, by Soviet standards, rather well connected to the West. Messages from Estonia to Sweden could now be delivered within a month or just a few weeks.191 Stockholm had, by then, turned into a major switchboard for the international dissemination of documents smuggled out of Estonia via various routes. The Estonians in Sweden were thus relatively well informed about the oppositional activities in the homeland. A closer look at the internal debates of the time, however, reveals that there was great uncertainty among the diaspora community about how to react to the new situation. The emergence of an organized Estonian opposition movement had, for a long time, been considered most unlikely. The publication of the Estonian dissidents’ Memorandum to the United Nations in 1974 thus triggered a lively discourse on how to realign diaspora politics both toward the West and the homeland.192 As the institutional structure of the political emigration had not been created with a possible convergence of émigré and homeland opposition in mind, the Estonians in Sweden faced the need to reconceptualize the very core of their political struggle.193 The ERN, in particular, displayed a surprisingly passive stance. Arvo Horm, who in earlier years had used unorthodox methods in order to establish direct contact with Soviet Estonian visitors in the West, now explicitly warned of inconsiderate actions that could endanger the safety of the dissidents.194 However, the passivity of the diaspora Estonians in Stockholm came to an end with the appearance of a new actor on the stage who brought about an unexpected twist in the diaspora-homeland relations. The retired businessman Ants Kippar belonged to the generation of war refugees and was known for his rather controversial political past. He had been active in the anti-parliamentarian, right-wing camp of Estonian émigré politics, but decided to leave the field after an alleged election fraud in 1947.195 Later, he joined the Estonian National Congress, REE, functioning as the vice-chairman of its Commission on Foreign Relations and Soviet Estonian Affairs. As many other representatives of his generation, he ostentatiously rejected the liberal stance on contact with Soviet Estonia, an approach which was widespread first and foremost among younger Estonians in the West. Kippar was one of the REE’s fiercest critics of any form of collaboration, which, according to him, included even private visits to Estonia.196 Hence, it came as a surprise to many when, in 1978, he founded his own organization, the Relief Center for Estonian Prisoners of Conscience (Eesti Vangistatud Vabadusvõitlejate Abistamiskeskus, EVVA). An even greater surprise, however, was the remarkable success of his efforts to establish direct communication and cooperation with leading actors of the dissident circles in the Estonian SSR.

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The Relief Center was inspired by the activities of Amnesty International, the “invent[or of] grassroots human rights advocacy,” which increased its engagement in Eastern European affairs following the harsh treatment of the Helsinki Watch Groups in Brezhnev’s Soviet Union.197 Accordingly, EVVA’s main objective was to shed light on the fate of individual Soviet Estonian dissidents by collecting reliable information about the condition of their imprisonment, and to provide material support to them and their families.198 In close cooperation with Amnesty International Groups in Sweden, Great Britain, and the United States, Kippar succeeded in compiling a list of all known political prisoners from the Estonian SSR. The list included information that was relevant for the active support of the dissidents, such as the place of imprisonment and the addresses of their closest relatives in the Estonian SSR.199 EVVA provided humanitarian aid to the affected families and established direct contact with the political prisoners via regular mail. The aim of writing to the prison camps in the Russian heartland of the USSR was both to support the prisoners morally and to protect them from encroachment by the camp leadership by signalizing that the fate of the dissidents was closely followed from abroad. The public lobbying activities of Kippar’s organization followed a similar strategy. By bringing the existence of the Soviet prison camps and the obvious violations of the clauses agreed upon in the Helsinki Final Act to the attention of the Western public, EVVA publicly promoted the cause of the persecuted dissidents and demanded the granting of basic civil rights and the immediate release of all political prisoners.200 The publicity in the Western media over concrete individual cases of political persecution thus served as an additional life insurance for the imprisoned dissidents. Ants Kippar’s organization quickly expanded into a transnational network of adoption groups and godfathers for the Estonian political prisoners in Europe, North America, and Australia.201 The structures were loose and Kippar relied largely on himself, avoiding any cooperation with other political émigré organizations. However, within EVVA’s first year of existence, he managed to gather a small group of supporters, mainly representatives of the younger generation. One of them was involved in the activities of the ÖESK, while the majority, including Kippar, were active members of the conservative Swedish Moderate Party, the former Rightist Party. The Moderate Party’s Youth League had, like its liberal counterpart, also displayed an increasing interest in Baltic issues,202 although this interest did not turn into open support until the late 1980s. In the spring of 1979, EVVA invited Jüri Lina, a young dissident with close contact with the key figures of the Soviet Estonian opposition whom the KGB had forced to emigrate, to join its board.203 The Relief Center thus involved a fairly heterogeneous group of actors, whose political agenda marked a major turn in the history of the Estonian diaspora. Kippar



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and his sympathizers were the first Estonians in the West to seek and find direct contact with the dissident movement marking a crucial step toward a convergence of diaspora and homeland forces into a common front against the occupying power.204 European détente and the CSCE process in particular brought significant changes in the relations between the blocs. These changes affected the preconditions not only for intergovernmental cooperation but also for contacts on the grassroots-level. The motto of “change through rapprochement,” which guided the rather defensive Western foreign policy strategies of the time, provided a breathing space for the governments in the Soviet bloc, allowing the financially battered states to temporarily recover from the social and economic consequences of “cold warfare.” However, the price they had to pay for this ceasefire was high. With the signing of the Helsinki Accords, the communist states officially declared their commitment to civil and human rights. Societal disobedience and political non-conformism, which included public criticism against state practices and policies, were thus de facto “legalized.” This led to the formation of a variety of monitoring groups and an “unprecedented blossoming of dissent and independent activity” throughout the Soviet bloc.205 The terms the negotiating parties had agreed upon in Helsinki made efficient containment of opposition on the domestic front increasingly difficult. The harsh governmental reactions to the striking Polish industrial workers and the dissidents who stood up against the creeping Russification in the Soviet Baltic states did not go unnoticed among an increasingly sensitized Western public who did not hesitate to point out that the principle of noninterference in internal affairs had undergone a fundamental reinterpretation. In contrast to the initial hopes of the Soviet leadership, the Helsinki Accords was not a comprehensive victory in the unsettled issue of Europe’s post-war borders. The Western negotiation partners accepted the inviolability of existing borders, but refused to exclude the possibility of peaceful changes in the future. The questions of the fate of the Baltic nations and divided Germany were thus deliberately left open.206 However, it was not the territorial issues touched upon in the declaration that dominated Western debates in post-Helsinki Europe. The unexpected public attention for the Final Act’s third basket triggered the development of elaborate monitoring structures in the West which functioned as “a sort of lifeline” that enabled dissidents and human-rights activists in the communist states to finally leave the underground and act openly.207 This unprecedented awareness of and protest against human-rights violations behind the Iron Curtain among Western societies can only partly be explained by the “Solzhenitsyn effect.” It was first of all a symptom of a

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far-reaching, “more general transformation of Cold War culture.”208 The New Left, which during the 1960s had made a pathbreaking career throughout the Western hemisphere, started to critically reassess perceived ideological “truths” and the apparent contradiction between Marxism and the language of individual rights. France, up to the 1970s, was still a Western bulwark of the political Left with a strong Communist Party and an influential pro-Soviet Marxist intellectual elite, and can be seen as exemplary for this ideological transformation as triggered by the sobering experiences of the 1973 oil shock and the mobilization of a political counterculture in communist Europe. The revolutionary fervor of the social revolutions of the 1960s started to fade and was increasingly replaced by a conviction that “one could be both a committed radical and critical of Marxism.”209 This “moral turn” in the political discourse in Western Europe paved the way for the development of humanrights advocacy into a “powerful transnational ideal and movement” which strengthened the moral authority of Central and Eastern European dissidents as icons of a passionate struggle for dignity and freedom.210 The system of interconnected Helsinki Watch Groups on both sides of the Iron Curtain served as a major source of inspiration for émigrés and diaspora activists in the West. Although many of them initially had displayed an extremely skeptical attitude toward the CSCE talks, they now embraced the Final Act’s rhetoric of civil and human rights and pushed the Western governments to take a more decisive stance vis-à-vis the Soviet bloc.211 The political argumentation shifted from the inviolability of pre-war borders and each nation’s right to self-determination to human-rights issues, a shift which as a result of the attention for the topic reinforced a renaissance of Western engagement and public interest in Central and Eastern Europe. In addition, the traditional self-conception of the emigration as forefronts of a national liberation struggle and the mouthpiece of muted and suppressed homeland populations was fundamentally challenged by the development of autonomous oppositional structures in the communist orbit. The emerging opposition movements did not assign to the “states in exile” any form of moral or ideological leadership in their own political agenda. It thus depended on the émigrés and diaspora activists to align themselves with the underground opposition. In the aftermath of the 1976 crisis, the political leadership of “Polish London” proved to be unable to adapt to the political visions of the opposition, a fact which largely isolated the “old guard” from the dynamic underground structures in the People’s Republic. Jerzy Giedroyc in Paris, by contrast, could draw on his close bonds with the post-1968 emigration to form the basis for the development of fruitful cooperation between émigré intellectuals and the protagonists of Polish opposition. Due to the incomparably smaller



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scale of dissident activity in Estonia and the Soviet republic’s relative isolation, the ability of the Estonian diaspora to directly collaborate with oppositional homeland activists was much more limited. Moreover, the emigration had, for a long time, underestimated the potential of the homeland society to actively oppose the regime and was thus taken by surprise by the messages that reached them from behind the Iron Curtain. Another reason that delayed the development of cooperation was the fear of jeopardizing the situation of the dissidents by direct interference. Thus, it was not until the late 1970s that Ants Kippar’s bold and, in many ways, radical methods finally opened up the door between diaspora and homeland activism. In spite of the obvious disparity between the scale of oppositional mobilization in Poland and Estonia and the widely differing opportunities of establishing uncontrolled communication with Western supporters, both cases display a common feature as far as the strategies of diaspora-homeland cooperation are concerned. Individual commitment and flexible structures mattered more than the ponderous “states in exile” with their highly institutionalized, quasigovernmental structures and their plethora of political parties, associations, and other forms of political representation. The most dynamic circles among the Estonian diaspora relied more than before on private contacts and decentralized networks that were difficult to infiltrate and which mirrored the underground structures of dissent behind the Iron Curtain. In Poland, societal opposition had developed into a widely ramified system of underground organizations that did not necessarily cooperate directly, although all of them were in some way interconnected on a national and international level.212 The émigré supporters adopted a similar strategy and established autonomous centers, such as the activist circles around Kultura in Paris, Aneks in London, or the KOR representatives in Stockholm, all of which maintained their own channels to the People’s Republic.213 This decentralization of communication was the key to overcoming the strictly monitored frontier between the blocs. In Soviet Estonia, by contrast, where state surveillance held a much tighter grip on society, the level of conspiracy had to be much higher. Accordingly, the networks between dissidents, couriers, and contact persons in the West were almost impossible to map, even for the individual agent, as every cog only knew “as much as necessary and as little as possible.”214 As it turned out, it was this strategy that succeeded in establishing a reliable channel of unrestricted communication between Tallinn and Stockholm building, as it did, on a network loose enough to outwit the dense net of surveillance of the KGB. By the second half of the 1970s, opposition against the communist regimes had generated transnational structures of “informal, non-bureaucratic, dynamic and open communities.”215 Oppositional activism in post-Helsinki Europe is thus a topic that cannot be examined without taking its transborder features into

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account. The intertwined system of samizdat and tamizdat is an example of the blurring of borders between diaspora and homeland opposition. Dissent and oppositional discourse expanded beyond geographical borders and triggered the gradual convergence of political strategies and agendas in both the East and West. As a result of the intensified efforts of the diaspora communities to translate the aims and underlying ideological foundation of oppositional activity in the communist orbit, a constantly rising number of Western actors supported the developing underground structures both morally and practically. The humanrights discourse offered a common language and frame of reference paving the way for communication between Western supporters and political elites on the one hand and the oppositional forces in the communist orbit on the other. Sweden and her diaspora communities played a key role in this transnationalization process. In the course of European détente, the Nordic neutrals functioned as active mediators between the blocs facilitating the development of a functioning infrastructure across the Baltic Sea. Oppositional activists on both sides of the Iron Curtain proved to be able to make use of this Northern connection that tied both the People’s Republic of Poland and Soviet Estonia directly to the West. For the Estonian dissidents, the “Finnish bridge” and its extensions to Stockholm formed the only direct channel to the Western world which, in view of Soviet Estonia’s relative isolation from the outside world, was a factor of utmost importance. However, it was only from the turn of the decade onwards that these preconditions could be used for the establishment of a dynamic oppositional dialogue across the Baltic Sea. The Poles, by contrast, had already succeeded by the late 1970s in establishing reliable and frequently used channels with the West. The connection of the Polish opposition movement with Sweden and the local Polish emigration played a key role. Indeed, this connection came to constitute the major smuggling route of technical supply for the Polish underground press creating an exceptionally vibrant form of oppositional diaspora-homeland cooperation. Ironically, these new forms of transborder cooperation were a corollary of détente from which the communist states initially had expected a stabilizing effect. The synergizing effects of oppositional activity on both sides of the Iron Curtain accelerated the erosion of the foundation for Sweden’s “bridge-building policy” regarding the communist neighbor states which eventually collapsed with the end of European détente in the early 1980s. NOTES 1.  Schulzinger, “Détente in the Nixon-Ford Years,” 376. 2.  Geir Lundestad, “The European Role at the Beginning and Particularly the End of the Cold War,” in The Last Decade of the Cold War. From Conflict Escalation to Conflict Transformation, ed. Olav Njølstad (London and New York: Frank Cass, 2004), 66.



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  3.  Andrey Edemskiy, “Dealing with Bonn: Leonid Brezhnev and the Soviet Response to West German Ostpolitik,” in Ostpolitik, 1969–1974. European and Global Responses, ed. Carole Fink and Bernd Schaefer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 37.   4.  Hanhimäki, “Détente in Europe,” 213.   5.  Villaume and Westad, “Introduction,” 7.   6.  Patrick G. Vaughan, “Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Helsinki Final Act,” in The Crisis of Détente in Europe. From Helsinki to Gorbachev, 1975–1985, ed. Leopoldo Nuti (London: Routledge, 2009), 12.   7.  Angela Romano, “The Main Task of the European Political Cooperation,” in Perforating the Iron Curtain. European Détente, Transatlantic Relations, and the Cold War, 1965–1985, ed. Poul Villaume and Odd Arne Westad (Copenhagen: The University of Copenhagen, Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010), 133.   8.  Juhana Aunesluoma, “Finlandisation in Reverse. The CSCE and the Rise and Fall of Economic Détente, 1968–1975,” in Helsinki 1975 and the Transformation of Europe, ed. Oliver Bange and Gottfried Niedhart (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008), 98–99.   9.  Wanda Jarząbek, “Preserving the Status Quo or Promoting Change. The Role of the CSCE in the Perception of Polish Authorities,” in Helsinki 1975 and the Transformation of Europe, ed. Oliver Bange and Gottfried Niedhart (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008), 155. 10.  Krzysztof Ruchniewicz, “Ostpolitik and Poland,” in Ostpolitik, 1969–1974. European and Global Responses, ed. Carole Fink and Bernd Schaefer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 43. 11.  Piotrowski, “Szwecja w polskiej polityce zagranicznej,” 198, 211. 12.  Fredrik Bynander, The Rise and Fall of the Submarine Threat. Threat Politics and Submarine Intrusions in Sweden 1980–2002, vol. 153 of Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2003), 37. 13.  Piotrowski, “Szwecja w polskiej polityce zagranicznej,” 212. 14.  Thomas Fischer, “Bridging the Gap between East and West. The N + N as Catalysts of the CSCE Process, 1972–1983,” in Perforating the Iron Curtain. European Détente, Transatlantic Relations, and the Cold War, 1965–1985, ed. Poul Villaume and Odd Arne Westad (Copenhagen: The University of Copenhagen, Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010), 168. 15.  Aryo Makko, “Sweden, Europe, and the Cold War: A Reappraisal,” Journal of Cold War Studies 14, no. 2 (2012): 74, 87. 16. Ottosson, Sverige mellan öst och väst, 39. 17.  Cryptogram of the Polish embassy in Moscow to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 22 September 1972, reprinted in Włodzimierz Borodziej, ed., Polskie Dokumenty Diplomatyczne 1972 (Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2005), 516. 18.  Piotrowski, “Szwecja w polskiej polityce zagranicznej,” 217. 19.  Note of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party, 23 November 1973, reprinted in Piotr M. Majewski, ed., Polskie Dokumenty Diplomatyczne 1973 (Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2006), 644–45. 20.  Matyska, “Transnational Spaces between Poland and Finland,” 262.

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21.  Note of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party, 25 February 1974, reprinted in Aleksander Kochański and Mikołaj Morzycki-Markowski, eds., Polskie Dokumenty Diplomatyczne 1974 (Warsaw: Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych, 2007), 180. 22.  Trzciński, “Polskie fale emigracyjne do Szwecji,” 64. 23.  Wanda Jarząbek, “Polish Reactions to the West German Ostpolitik and EastWest Détente, 1966–1978,” in Perforating the Iron Curtain. European Détente, Transatlantic Relations, and the Cold War, 1965–1985, ed. Poul Villaume and Odd Arne Westad (Copenhagen: The University of Copenhagen, Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010), 49. 24.  Jörg Hackmann, “Civil Society Against the State? Historical Experiences of Eastern Europe,” in Civil Society in the Baltic Sea Region, ed. Norbert Götz and Jörg Hackmann (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 52. 25.  Kemp-Welch, “Eastern Europe,” 230. 26.  Interview with Jakub Święcicki, Stockholm, Sweden, 12 December 2011. 27.  Report of the 1st Department of the Polish Ministry of the Interior entitled “Dotyczy niektórych elementów sytuacji operacyjnej w Szwecji,” 24 September 1971, in AIPN BU 0665/124.2. 28.  Interview with Józef Lebenbaum. 29.  Lencznarowicz, “Rola Towarzystwa ‘Polonia’ w polityce PRL wobec Polonii w krajach zachodnich,” 49. 30.  Unsigned report on the Polish community in Sweden, 1970, in AIPN BU 418/17.276. However, the fact that a majority of Poles in Sweden frequently visited the homeland did not automatically imply an approval of the political status quo, despite the disdain that “Polish London” displayed toward diaspora Poles with a consular passport. The rising number of Baltic Sea crossings merely mirrored the fact that the cultural interest in the homeland had grown stronger, not least among the younger generation. “Początek ‘nowego podziału,’” Dziennik Polski i Dziennik Żołnierza, 18 October 1972. 31.  Quoted in Keith Hamilton, “Cold War by Other Means: British Diplomacy and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1972–1975,” in The Making of Détente: Eastern and Western Europe in the Cold War, 1965–1975, ed. Wilfried Loth and Georges-Henri Soutou, vol. 20 of Cold War History Series, ed. Michael Cox and Odd Arne Westad (London: Routledge, 2008), 168. 32.  Open letter from the Estonian government in exile to the Estonian diaspora in the West, February 1973, reprinted in Orav and Nõu, eds., Tõotan ustavaks jääda . . ., 309. 33.  Machcewicz, Emigracja w polityce międzynarodowej, 228. 34.  Report of the Baltic Committee entitled “Europeiska Säkerhets- och Samarbetskonferensen—Gemensam aktion av baltiska organisationer,” spring 1973, in RR, f. 3, s. 177 (“A. Hormi arhiiv. Kirjavahetus, materjalid (korraldamata) 1970. aa.”), p. 1. 35.  Zubok, A Failed Empire, 240. 36.  Jussi M. Hanhimäki and Odd Arne Westad, eds., The Cold War. A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 473.



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37.  Svetlana Savranskaya, “Human Rights Movement in the USSR After the Signing of the Helsinki Final Act, and the Reaction of Soviet Authorities,” in The Crisis of Détente in Europe. From Helsinki to Gorbachev, 1975–1985, ed. Leopoldo Nuti (London: Routledge, 2009), 29. 38.  Robert V. Daniels, The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 347. The arrest and immediate expulsion of dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to West Germany in February 1974 was a showcase example of the shift in the KGB’s treatment of regime critics once the ongoing CSCE talks had drawn the attention of the international public opinion to human-rights issues behind the Iron Curtain. 39.  Jürjo, preface to Ojamaa and Hion, eds., Aruanne 1954–1955, 11. 40.  Graham Smith, “The Resurgence of Nationalism,” in The Baltic States. The National Self-Determination of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, ed. Graham Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), 126. 41.  Viktor Niitsoo, “Eesti rahvuslik vastupanuliikumine aastail 1968–1975 I,” Akadeemia 5, no. 9 (1993): 1827. 42. Küng, Saatusi ja saavutusi, 188–89. 43.  Nachrichten aus dem Baltikum no. 55, March 1972, p. 2, in ERA 5008.1.96. 44.  Viktor Niitsoo, “Eesti rahvuslik vastupanuliikumine aastail 1968–1975 II,” Akadeemia 5, no. 10 (1993), 2095. 45.  Ibid., 2100. 46. Küng, Estland, 131. 47.  Niitsoo, “Eesti rahvuslik vastupanuliikumine aastail 1968–1975 II,” 2096. 48.  Dina Zisserman-Brodsky, Constructing Ethnopolitics in the Soviet Union: Samizdat, Deprivation, and the Rise of Ethnic Nationalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 56. 49. Zubok, A Failed Empire, 191. 50.  The term “tamizdat” refers to samizdat writings that were smuggled to the West for publication and channeled back to the Soviet bloc in printed form. 51.  Niitsoo, “Eesti rahvuslik vastupanuliikumine aastail 1968–1975 II,” 2102, 2104. 52. Küng, Saatusi ja saavutusi, 189–90. 53.  Jaak Pihlau, “Eesti demokraatlik põrandaalune ja kontaktid Läänega 1970– 1985 III,” Tuna 7, no. 4 (2004): 89. 54.  Mati Kiirend, “‘Must kass’ 25 aastat hiljem,” Tuna 2, no. 3 (1999): 40. 55.  Memorandum of the ERR and the EDL to the General Assembly of the United Nations, 24 October 1972, reprinted in Pesti, ed., Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 47–48. 56.  The few Estonian publications that touch upon the topic all agree on the fact that reliable evidence on the smuggling route used for delivering the memorandum to Sweden are lacking. See Pesti, introduction to Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 32; Niitsoo, “Eesti rahvuslik vastupanuliikumine aastail 1968–1975 II,” 2105; Jaak Pihlau, “Eesti demokraatlik põrandaalune ja kontaktid Läänega 1970– 1985 II,” Tuna 7, no. 3 (2004): 90. Also the interview with one of the authors of both

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the memorandum and the accompanying letter, Tunne Kelam, in Viimsi, Estonia, 17 September 2011, did not reveal any new insights. 57.  Hackmann, “Nordosteuropa,” 210. 58.  The “white ships” between Helsinki and Tallinn, most of all the famous M/S Georg Ots, which connected the cities in the 1980s, are still a central topos of Estonia’s collective memory. “Valge laevaga vabasse maailma,” SL Õhtuleht, 27 December 2000. 59.  Ćwirko-Godycka, Organizacje polonijne w Szwecji, 14. 60.  Undated report on the Polish community in the Stockholm area (secret), most probably written by a member of the Polish diplomatic corps in Stockholm prior to Edward Gierek’s state visit to Sweden in June 1975, in AIPN BU 1067/13.245. 61.  Interview with Józef Lebenbaum. 62.  Report by the Independent Polish Agency in Lund entitled “Założenia oraz opis dotychczasowych i planowanych działań,” n.d. (1983 or later), in Archiwum Opozycji Ośrodka KARTA [Opposition Archive of the KARTA Center, AO], collections of the Independent Polish Agency, IPA, folder labeled “Mat. redakcyjne, varia,” p. 1 (the IPA collections, which were transferred from Sweden to Warsaw by courtesy of Józef Lebenbaum in 2007, were at the time of this research project still not officially accessible and thus lacked even basic cataloguing). 63.  For a comprehensive overview that attempts to grasp the topic of Finnish television and its impact on Estonian society by studying the reactions of the republican government, see Marek Miil, “The Communist Party’s Fight against ‘Bourgeois Television’ 1968–1988,” in Behind the Iron Curtain. Soviet Estonia in the Era of the Cold War, ed. Tõnu Tannberg, vol. 5 of Tartu Historical Studies, ed. Eero Medijainen and Olaf Mertelsmann (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015). 64.  Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, 273. 65.  Quoted in Newsletter from Behind the Iron Curtain 26, no. 474 (June 1972): p. 28. 66.  Zanda Mankusa, “Over the Iron Curtain: The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia Meets the West,” in Journal of Baltic Studies 37, no. 3 (2006): 313. 67. Küng, Saatusi ja saavutusi, 70, 120. 68.  Jaak Pihlau, “Eesti demokraatlik põrandaalune ja kontaktid Läänega 1970– 1985 I,” Tuna 7, no. 2 (2004): 76. 69.  Interview with Tunne Kelam. 70.  Quoted in a brochure entitled Documents and Notes on Soviet Policy toward Estonia and Other Baltic States 1975–1980. To Be Presented in Connection with the CSCE Follow-Up Conference in Madrid 1980, 1980, in RR, f. 3, s. 141 (“Documents and notes on Soviet policy toward Estonia and the Baltic States 1975–1980—to be presented in connection with the CSCE (Eur. Koostöö ja Julgeoleku Konverents) Follow-up Conference in Madrid 1980, Stockholm 1980”), p. 63. 71.  Maarjamaa—Eesti Katoliiklaste Ringkiri 28, no. 1 (June 1976), in RR, f. 3, s. 177, p. 12. 72.  Interview with Tunne Kelam. 73.  Pihlau, “Eesti demokraatlik põrandaalune ja kontaktid Läänega 1970–1985 I,” 77.



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74.  Pihlau, “Eesti demokraatlik põrandaalune ja kontaktid Läänega 1970–1985 II,” 90. 75.  Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, 316. Even Western diplomats regularly risked their job by assisting in smuggling letters and politically sensitive information to the West on behalf of dissident activists. Barbara Walker, “Moscow Human Rights Defenders Look West. Attitudes toward U.S. Journalists in the 1960s and 1970s,” in Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, ed. György Péteri (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), 243. 76.  Newsletter from Behind the Iron Curtain 29, no. 485 (March 1975): p. 13. 77.  “Kiri Kurt Waldheimile,” Eesti Päevaleht, 19 December 2012. This assumption is supported by Tunne Kelam, the co-author of the memorandum. Mait Raun, “Eesti Demokraatlik Liikumine ja Eesti Rahvusrinne. Dokumenteeritud tagasivaade I,” Akadeemia 14, no. 6 (2002): 1155. 78.  Raun, “Eesti Demokraatlik Liikumine ja Eesti Rahvusrinne. Dokumenteeritud tagasivaade I,” 1155. 79.  Brochure on the history of the Estonian National Council entitled Eesti Rahvusnõukogu neli aastakümmet, 1987, in ERA 5008.1.1.101; Niitsoo, “Eesti rahvuslik vastupanuliikumine aastail 1968–1975 II,” 2110. 80.  Pihlau, “Eesti demokraatlik põrandaalune ja kontaktid Läänega 1970–1985 II,” 91–92. Taagepera justified his validation by referring to linguistic features and the historical argumentation reflected in the memorandum, which was, as he put it, “strikingly at variance with those in the exile press.” Thus, he claimed, it was possible to unequivocally dismiss concerns that the document equally could be a “Western fabrication” of anti-Soviet circles. Baltic Events 5, no. 46 (October 1974). 81.  Newsletter from behind the Iron Curtain 29, no. 488 (December 1975), p. 33. 82.  Pesti, introduction to Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 32. 83.  Nachrichten aus dem Baltikum no. 68–69, October 1975, p. 17, in ERA 5008.1.96. 84.  Hiden and Salmon, The Baltic Nations and Europe, 136. 85.  Helen M. Morris and Vahur Made, “Émigrés, Dissidents and International Organisations,” in The Baltic Question during the Cold War, ed. John Hiden, Vahur Made, and David J. Smith, vol. 20 of Cold War History Series, ed. Michael Cox and Odd Arne Westad (London: Routledge, 2008), 147. 86.  Hanhimäki, “Détente in Europe,” 213. 87. Gaddis, The Cold War, 188. 88. Zubok, A Failed Empire, 237. 89.  It was first and foremost the European Community that, not least with reference to the authoritarian right-wing regimes in Greece, Spain, and Portugal, introduced human rights as an integral element of East-West cooperation. Daniel C. Thomas, The Helsinki Effect. International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 53–54. 90. Judt, Die Geschichte Europas, 641. 91. Because of the delicate nature of Finnish-Soviet relations and the self-censorship in Finland, the Finnish translation of Solzhenitsyn’s epos was edited by a publishing house in Sweden. Oksanen, preface to Kõige taga oli hirm, 15.

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  92.  Jarząbek, “Preserving the Status Quo or Promoting Change,” 150–51.   93.  Raun, “Eesti Demokraatlik Liikumine ja Eesti Rahvusrinne,” 1131.   94.  Verdict of the Supreme Court of the Estonian SSR, 31 October 1975, reprinted in Pesti, ed., Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 186.   95.  Pihlau, “Eesti demokraatlik põrandaalune ja kontaktid Läänega 1970–1985 II,” 90.   96.  Niitsoo, “Eesti rahvuslik vastupanuliikumine aastail 1968–1975 II,” 2106.   97.  Pesti, introduction to Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 33.  98. Viktor Niitsoo, Vastupanu, 1955–1985 (Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 1997), 98.   99.  Interview with Tunne Kelam. 100.  Interview with Jaak Maandi. 101.  Niitsoo, “Eesti rahvuslik vastupanuliikumine aastail 1968–1975 II,” 2107. 102.  Interviews with Lagle Parek, Tallinn, Estonia, 19 September 2011, and Eve Pärnaste, Tallinn, Estonia, 20 September 2011. 103.  Interview with Eve Pärnaste. 104.  Brochure of the ERF entitled Documents and Notes on Soviet Policy toward Estonia and Other Baltic States 1975–1980. To Be Presented in Connection with the CSCE Follow-Up Conference in Madrid 1980, 1980, in RR, f. 3, s. 141, p. 42. The brochure does, of course, not mention the authors of the reports, which makes it impossible to determine whether one of them was the report written by Eve Pärnaste. According to Jaak Pihlau, his own report on the trial found its way to Stockholm via Finland. Pihlau, “Eesti demokraatlik põrandaalune ja kontaktid Läänega 1970–1985 III,” 93. 105.  Undated essay entitled “Tõnu Parmingu analüüs,” in RR, f. 3, s. 177, p. 1. Already from the early 1960s onwards, Baltic lobbyists in the West had been eager to avoid the highly charged catchphrases of “cold warfare” and to align themselves with current political discourse. A greater focus on Russian “imperialism” and “colonialism” was supposed to reframe the Baltic struggle for national liberation and to draw on the ongoing debates about tendencies of national emancipation and decolonialization in the Third World, which were heatedly debated among Western intellectuals throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Epp Annus, “The Problem of Soviet Colonialism in the Baltics,” Journal of Baltic Studies 43, no. 1 (2012): 23. 106. Zubok, A Failed Empire, 238. 107.  Hanhimäki, “Détente in Europe,” 213. 108.  Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 27. 109.  Lundestad, “The European Role at the Beginning and Particularly the End of the Cold War,” 69. 110.  Werner D. Lippert, “Economic Diplomacy and East-West Trade during the Era of Détente. Strategy or Obstacle for the West?” in The Crisis of Détente in Europe. From Helsinki to Gorbachev, 1975–1985, ed. Leopoldo Nuti (London: Routledge, 2009), 194. 111.  Stephen White, Gorbachev and After. 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 201. 112.  Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 163–64.



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113.  Jarząbek, “Preserving the Status Quo or Promoting Change,” 150. 114.  Bartosz Kaliski, “Solidarity, 1980–1: The Second Vistula Miracle?” in Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: Challenges to Communist Rule, ed. Kevin McDermott and Matthew Stibbe (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2006), 122. 115. Kemp-Welch, Poland under Communism, 212–13. 116.  Sten Johansson and Maria Borowska, Polens sak är vår. Om övergången till demokrati under kommunismen, vol. 6 of Tidens Debatt (Stockholm: Tidens Förlag, 1981), 51. 117.  FPU-Fakta no. 5, 1978 (regularly occurring publication of Folkpartiets ungdomsförbund, the Youth League of the Swedish Liberal People’s Party), in AO III/2450.4, p. 8. 118.  Arista Maria Cirtautas, The Polish Solidarity Movement: Revolution, Democracy and Natural Rights (London: Routledge, 1997), 165–66. 119. English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 108; Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 105. 120. Kemp-Welch, Poland under Communism, 205. 121.  Borowska and Święcicki, introduction to Kamp för demokrati, 19. 122.  Kemp-Welch, “Eastern Europe,” 234. 123.  Kemp-Welch, Poland under Communism, 226. 124.  The publishing houses were constituted by rather small teams of activists who made use of constantly changing locations for the clandestine mass production of books. According to Mirosław Chojecki, the head of NOWA, the required paper, a limited resource that was purchased via acquaintances, and portable stencil duplicators were usually brought to “some detached house in the outskirts of Warsaw,” where a group of printers worked in shift for several days. The imprinted paper was then brought to some private apartment where bookbinders performed the finishing steps. The complete edition was finally divided into several portions and stored in cellars and storerooms, from where couriers brought them to their addressees. Interview with Mirosław Chojecki, Warszawa, Poland, 7 December 2011. 125. Suri, Power and Protest, 108. 126.  Machcewicz, “Walka z Radiem Wolna Europa,” 101. 127. Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 427, 434. 128.  The level of political activity among the Polish Jews in Sweden had been steadily declining from the early 1970s onwards. This decrease of political commitment cannot be fully explained by merely referring to the usual mechanisms of assimilation or the fact that the lack of any organized opposition in Gierek’s Poland up to 1976 considerably weakened the spirit of oppositional activity in the West. In the case of the Jews who emigrated during Gomułka’s “anti-Zionist” agitation, a gradual transformation of identity could be observed, in the course of which many émigrés developed a pronouncedly Jewish consciousness. Harald Runblom, “The Challenges of Diversity,” in The Baltic Sea Region. Cultures, Politics, Societies, ed. Witold Maciejewski (Uppsala: The Baltic University Press, 2002), 377. Stola ascribes this “depolonization” process to the fact that the regime itself deprived the refugees of their Polish citizenship and based its rhetoric attacks on the exclusion of Jews from the community of Poles. Stola, Emigracja pomarcowa, 24. However, this phenomenon describes only a general

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trend among Polish émigrés of Jewish origin. Still, a considerable part of the activists involved in supporting the opposition movement in Poland had Jewish roots. 129.  Interview with Jakub Święcicki. 130.  Pszenicki, Tu mówi Londyn, 86. 131.  Robert Brier, “Broadening the Cultural History of the Cold War. The Emergence of the Polish Workers’ Defense Committee and the Rise of Human Rights,” Journal of Cold War Studies 15, no. 4 (2013): 107. 132.  Interview with Jakub Święcicki. 133.  Katarzyna Puchalska, “Szwecja Polsce—Droga przez Bałtyk,” KARTA no. 47 (2006): 115. 134.  Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 432. 135.  Garczyński-Gąssowski, “Organizacje polskie w Szwecji,” 37, 40. 136.  Later-Chodyłowa, “Polonia w krajach skandynawskich,” 627. 137.  Garczyński-Gąssowski, “Organizacje polskie w Szwecji,” 39. 138.  Two publications of the ÖESK entitled Dokument från oroligheterna i Polen sommaren 1976, September and December 1976, in AO III/2450.4. 139.  FPU-Aktivitet no. 2, 1978, in AO III/2450.4, p. 1. 140.  “Om övergången till demokrati under kommunismen—tio år efter Pragvåren,” Tiden no. 2, 1978. 141. Undated and unsigned letter from a member of the Contact Group of the Polish Democratic Movement in Sweden to a contact person in Poland, n.d. (most probably written in mid-1978), in AO III/2450.5. 142.  Unpublished and unpaginated essay by Maria Borowska entitled “Poparcie Szwedów dla polskiej walki o demokrację 1976–1989,” 2003, in AO III/2450.20. 143.  Appeal for the support of the “Flying Universities” in Poland, n.d., in AO III/2450.22.6. 144.  Puchalska, “Szwecja Polsce,” 113, 117. 145.  Interview with Jakub Święcicki. 146.  Information note of the Contact Group of the Polish Democratic Movement in Sweden, n.d. (most probably early summer 1978), in AO III/2450.5. The Contact Group’s founding charter was signed by Maria Borowska, Józef Dajczgewand, Kazimierz Gruszka, Andrzej Koraszewski, Aleksander Orłowski, Henryk Rubinstein, Jakub Święcicki, and Natan Tenenbaum in the presence of the philosopher Leszek Kołakowski. Kołakowski, who had left Poland in the late 1960s, played a key role in the evolution of the Polish opposition as an icon of a whole generation of critical Marxists, to whom both Kuroń and Michnik belonged. Cirtautas, The Polish Solidarity Movement, 169. 147.  Puchalska, “Szwecja Polsce,” 115. 148.  Borowska, “Poparcie Szwedów dla polskiej walki o demokrację 1976–1989,” in AO III/2450.20. 149.  Interview with Ryszard Szulkin. 150.  Puchalska, “Szwecja Polsce,” 116. 151.  Borowska, “Poparcie Szwedów dla polskiej walki o demokrację 1976–1989,” in AO III/2450.20. 152. “Opposition,” Svenska Dagbladet, 10 March 1980.



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153.  Sten Johansson, preface to Borowska and Święcicki, eds., Kamp för demokrati, 9. 154.  FPU-Fakta no. 5, 1978, in AO III/2450.4, p. 9. 155.  IPA report entitled “Założenia oraz opis dotychczasowych i planowanych działań,” n.d. (1983 or later), in AO, IPA, folder labeled “Mat. redakcyjne, varia,” p. 2. 156.  Bent Boel, “French Support for Eastern European Dissidence, 1968–1989,” in Perforating the Iron Curtain. European Détente, Transatlantic Relations, and the Cold War, 1965–1985, ed. Poul Villaume and Odd Arne Westad (Copenhagen: The University of Copenhagen, Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010), 227. 157.  Interview with Mirosław Chojecki. 158.  Interview with Jakub Święcicki. 159.  Account on the incoming funds and expenses for the technical support of the Polish opposition for the period between October 1978 and April 1979, compiled by Jakub Święcicki (confidential), n.d., in AO III/2450.9. 160.  Boel, “French Support for Eastern European Dissidence,” 234. 161.  Letter from Jakub Święcicki to an unidentified contact, 23 April 1979, in AO III/2450.18. According to one of the accounts on the expenses, around one quarter of all available financial means had to be spent on the payment of the couriers and the refund of their travel costs. See the account on the incoming funds and expenses, October 1978 to April 1979, n.d., in AO III/2450.9. 162.  Smuggled letter from a female contact in Warsaw to Jakub Święcicki, 10 March 1977, in AO III/2450.9. 163.  Interview with Mirosław Chojecki. For more detailed insights into the coordinating mechanisms of the smuggling activities, see the collected correspondence between Święcicki and his contacts both among the emigration in Western Europe and the network of underground activists in Poland, in AO III/2450.9. 164.  Puchalska, “Szwecja Polsce,” 120. The possible involvement of Swedish diplomats is an interesting aspect of the cross-Baltic networks of the late 1970s, although a verification of this kind of interaction remains a challenge for historical research due to the lacking access to the classified files of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stored in the National Archives of Sweden. However, there is plenty of evidence that Western diplomats actively counteracted their official mission by contributing to the establishment of clandestine channels across the Iron Curtain. The active support of oppositional activities by Swedish diplomats in the second half of the 1940s and the French embassy’s role as an intermediary between Jerzy Giedroyc in Paris and oppositional intellectuals in Warsaw during the Thaw are only some of the documented examples. In the Soviet case, it has been claimed that the Swedish consul in Leningrad, Gabriel Oxenstierna, actively supported the Finnish Baptists’ smuggling of Bibles into Soviet Estonia. Saard, “‘Rõõmustame selle üle . . .’” 851. At this point, however, any estimation about the extent of Swedish diplomatic involvement in the oppositional networks between Poland and Sweden would be pure speculation. 165.  Jakub Święcicki to an unidentified correspondent, 23 April 1979, in AO III/2450.18.

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166.  Translation of the verdict against Björn Gunnar Laquist into German (the language used for the communication with the Swedish authorities) entitled “Abschrift—Strafentscheidung,” 29 January 1980, in AO III/2450.6.1. 167.  Copy of a journal article entitled “När svensk greps för smuggling hamnade han mitt i helvetet. Så knäcks Björn, 29, i ett polskt skräckfängelse,” Lektyr, December 1979 or January 1980, in AO III/2450.6.2, p. 29; Translation of the verdict against Björn Gunnar Laquist entitled “Abschrift—Strafentscheidung,” 29 January 1980, in AO III/2450.6.1. 168.  Jakub Święcicki to an unidentified correspondent, 23 April 1979, AO III/2450.18. 169.  Note on the requested material for contact persons in Cracow and Warsaw, n.d., in AO II/2450.9. 170. Ibid. 171.  Account on the incoming funds and expenses, October 1978 to April 1979, n.d., in AO III/2450.9. 172.  “När svensk greps för smuggling hamnade han mitt i helvetet,” Lektyr, in AO III/2450.6.2, p. 46. 173.  Interview with Mirosław Chojecki. 174.  Smuggled letter from a female contact in Warsaw to Jakub Święcicki, 10 March 1977, in AO III/2450.9. 175.  Interview with Józef Lebenbaum. 176. Romano, From Détente in Europe to European Détente, 221. 177.  FPU-Fakta no. 7, 1978, in AO III/2450.4, p. 22. 178.  Manuscript of Arvo Horm’s speech entitled “ERN tegevusest ja aktuaalsetest probleemidest,” held at the ERN’s annual assembly, 8 December 1979, in ERA 5008.1.17.27. 179.  Mattson, “Raadio Vaba Euroopa,” 215–16. 180.  One of the authors was Tunne Kelam, who had managed to escape the wave of KGB repression that followed the publication of the Estonian dissidents’ Memorandum to the United Nations in the fall of 1974. 181.  Maarjamaa—Eesti Katoliiklaste Ringkiri 28, no. 1 (June 1976), in RR, f. 3, s. 177, pp. 2, 11–12. 182.  Viktor Niitsoo, “Avalik vastupanuliikumine Eestis aastail 1977–1984 I,” Akadeemia 4, no. 9 (1992): 1928–29. 183.  Zubok, A Failed Empire, 255. 184.  Ann Komaromi, “The Material Existence of Soviet Samizdat,” Slavic Review 63, no. 3 (2004): 610. 185.  Interview with Enn Tarto. 186.  Pesti, introduction to Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 35. 187.  Interview with Heiki Ahonen, Tallinn, Estonia, 21 September 2011. 188.  For a detailed case study of the role of Moscow-based Western media correspondents as agents in the East-West conflict, see Julia Metger, Studio Moskau. Westdeutsche Korrespondenten im Kalten Krieg (Paderborn: Schönigh, 2016). 189.  Statement of the Estonian KGB in the case of Mart Niklus, 1 April 1980, reprinted in Pesti, ed., Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 257. Mart



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Niklus was accused of having met with a correspondent of the Financial Times and a contact person of an émigré journal in order to hand over anti-Soviet material. 190.  Brochure entitled Documents and Notes on Soviet Policy toward Estonia and Other Baltic States 1975–1980. To Be Presented in Connection with the CSCE FollowUp Conference in Madrid 1980, 1980, in RR, f. 3, s. 141, p. 8; Interview with Enn Tarto. 191.  Jaak Pihlau, “Eesti demokraatlik põrandaalune ja kontaktid Läänega 1970– 1985 IV,” Tuna 8, no. 1 (2005): 101. 192.  Manuscript of Arvo Horm’s speech entitled “ERN tegevusest ja aktuaalsetest probleemidest,” held at the ERN’s annual assembly, 2 November 1975, in ERA 5008.1.16.49. 193.  Interview with Jaak Maandi. 194.  Press release of the ERN entitled “Osavõturohke Eesti Rahvusnõukogu aastakoosolek,” 10 December 1977, in ERA 1608.2.935.86. 195.  Interview with Jaak Maandi. 196.  Information note of the attaché of the Soviet embassy in Stockholm to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Estonian SSR, 17 February 1977, reprinted in Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 323. 197. Moyn, The Last Utopia, 129. 198.  Statute of the Relief Center for Estonian Prisoners of Conscience, n.d., in Rahvusarhiivi Filiaal [Branch of the National Archives of Estonia, ERAF], 9608.1.1.3. 199.  See the correspondence between EVVA and Amnesty International, in ERAF 9608.1.25. 200.  Report on EVVA’s activities during 1978, 31 March 1979, in ERAF 9608.1.7.7. 201.  Scheme of EVVA’s organization structure, n.d., in ERAF 9608.1.1.5. 202.  Press release of the ERN entitled “Eesti Rahvusnõukogu Informatsioonikonverents,” 2 January 1975, in RR, f. 3, s. 78, p. 11. 203.  Protocol of an assembly of EVVA, 19 May 1979, in ERAF 9608.1.3.4. 204.  Viktor Niitsoo, “Avalik vastupanuliikumine Eestis aastail 1977–1984 II,” Akadeemia 4, no. 10 (1992): 2181. 205.  Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 92. 206. Romano, From Détente in Europe to European Détente, 39. 207.  Sarah B. Snyder, “The Rise of the Helsinki Network: ‘A Sort of Lifeline’ for Eastern Europe,” in Perforating the Iron Curtain. European Détente, Transatlantic Relations, and the Cold War, 1965–1985, ed. Poul Villaume and Odd Arne Westad (Copenhagen: The University of Copenhagen, Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010). 208.  Brier, “Broadening the Cultural History of the Cold War,” 106. 209. Judt, Marxism and the French Left, 197. 210. Moyn, The Last Utopia, 7. 211.  Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 122. 212. “Polsk opposition—trots hot mot jobb och familjer,” Aftonbladet, 1 April 1978. 213.  Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 408. 214.  Interview with Enn Tarto. 215.  Kemp-Welch, “Eastern Europe,” 232.

Chapter Six

From Individual to Mass-Based Opposition

“FIRST GDAŃSK, THEN TALLINN”: OPPOSITION AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 put an end to the Kremlin’s policy of restraint and, as Robert English put it, eventually became “the final nail in détente’s coffin.”1 Moscow’s military offensive in Central Asia marked the beginning for yet another proxy war between the superpowers and was grist to the mill of the fiercest critics of détente in the West who interpreted the “change through rapprochement” spirit of Helsinki as a sign of weakness. By the early 1980s, anti-Communism had made a strong comeback into the realm of international politics. Ronald Reagan’s election as president of the United States brought a neoconservative political leadership to power that did not refrain from openly supporting regime criticism, opposition, and dissent behind the Iron Curtain.2 Thus, with the gradual decline of the spirit of détente the international political climate significantly changed. This became clear to the delegates of the communist states at the second follow-up meeting of the CSCE in Madrid in 1980, as human-rights issues became a major topic of dispute.3 On the Threshold of a New Era: Opposition Goes Public From the perspective of the communist governments, another reason for concern was the rapidly spreading “ideological degeneration” that became visible throughout the Soviet sphere of influence.4 During the 1970s, the estrangement between the masses and the Party nomenklatura had significantly grown. It was in crisis-torn Poland that this development reached yet another climax. In July 1980, the Polish government’s decision to raise the meat 211

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prices triggered, as four years earlier, a wave of spontaneous protests. But in contrast to 1976, when societal discontent erupted in street demonstrations and violent clashes with police forces, the protests now found expression in a number of peaceful strikes affecting state-owned factories all over the country. The explosive political potential of the strikes became obvious with the engagement of prominent KOR activists who set out to fill the “ideological vacuum” of the workers’ protests in the industrial centers and the shipyards along the Baltic coast.5 The fact that the working masses and intellectuals immediately joined forces was an illustration of the remarkable degree of societal self-organization in Poland, as the coalition between industrial workers and the intelligentsia could count on the support of a powerful ally in particular. By 1980, the Catholic Church had recovered from the decades of suppression and forced (and, at times, voluntary) cooperation with the regime, regaining its traditional strength and authority as a central and independent pillar of public life in Poland. John Paul II’s first pilgrimage to the homeland after his election to the papacy in June 1979 marked a decisive breakthrough. Millions of enthusiastic spectators on the streets and in the squares greeted a spiritual leader who presented the Catholic Church as a moral counterforce to Marxism and a shelter for those who opposed it.6 Thus, equipped with Catholic symbols such as icons of the Virgin Mary and portraits of the Pope as well as with flags and ribbons in the national colors, the striking workers invoked the historical alliance of the Church and the Polish nation against foreign rule creating a new powerful iconography of opposition to the communist regime. In August 1980, the coastal city of Gdańsk turned into the center of the nationwide strike movement. The firing of Anna Walentynowicz, an employee at the Lenin Shipyard, mobilized widespread opposition among the workers. Led by the dismissed electrician Lech Wałęsa, they established a strike committee which was the nucleus of what would become known as the Solidarity movement. The committee’s “twenty-one demands,” which developed into the programmatic agenda of strikers all across the country, contained many of the fundamental rights that the Warsaw government had officially committed to by signing the Helsinki Accords.7 Leading KOR representatives soon joined the Lenin Shipyard workers in order to support them in their negotiations with the authorities. Initially, there was a conviction among government officials that the workers had been manipulated by their intellectual advisors,8 a fact which encouraged the government to opt for direct proceedings with the strikers. However, the workers’ position remained unaltered. In an attempt to avert the dangers of a civil war or Soviet intervention, Gierek decided to give in. The famous Gdańsk Agreement, signed at the end of August, legalized independent trade unions and eventually cost Gierek his position. This revolutionary breakthrough led, a few weeks later, to the birth



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of Solidarność, the first self-governing trade union in the Soviet sphere of influence. And while this event may not necessarily have been the prelude to the end of Communism in Europe a decade later as it often is retrospectively presented, the Gdańsk Agreement marked nevertheless, as Tony Judt put it, the spectacular peak of a decade of workers’ protests and was an illustration of the significant shift in the power balance between society and the state that had occurred in communist Poland.9 In the summer of 1980, the eyes of the world were on the Baltic Sea’s southern coastline where history was in the making. Attentive observers of the development behind the Iron Curtain, however, also noticed the events that unfolded in a so far rather peaceful corner of the region. Shortly after the signing of the agreement between the striking workers and the Polish government in Gdańsk, the Soviet Estonian capital of Tallinn was shaken by violent street riots involving up to two thousand high school students. The authorities were quick to refer to the students as “hooligans,” but the political dimension of the demonstrations, which displayed strong anti-Soviet and anti-Russian sentiments, was obvious.10 An open letter to the Soviet Estonian press, signed by forty prominent intellectuals, expressed severe concerns about the brutal and pitiless persecution of the demonstrating youths by Soviet security goons. This unprecedented signal of solidarity with public acts of opposition by the politically rather cautious intellectual elites of Soviet Estonia did not go unnoticed in the West.11 By the turn of the decade, the Soviet regime had tightened its reins. With the Summer Olympic Games hosted by the USSR approaching and with sailing competitions scheduled in the Bay of Tallinn, the levels of censorship were raised and the KGB increased its monitoring activities. Moreover, the Soviet government reintroduced the jamming of Western radio broadcasts fearing a spill-over from the Polish crisis into the neighboring Baltic republics. It is hard to verify whether the high school students’ riots in Tallinn were provoked by rumors about the striking workers in Poland or as a result of events in Sweden as speculated by The Economist.12 It was widely known in Estonia that Stockholm had been the venue of the third Estonian World Festival, ESTO 80, with up to 25,000 participants from Europe and overseas only a few months before the Tallinn riots broke out.13 As a preventive measure, the authorities had imposed a two-month ban on leaving the country for inhabitants of Soviet Estonia and launched an aggressive propaganda campaign against the “reactionaries” and “fascists” that were organizing the event.14 Without doubt, it made a long-lasting impression on the homeland Estonians to receive the reports from the nearby Swedish capital which, for a week, was dressed in the national colors of the pre-war Republic of Estonia.15 ESTO 80 also received attention in the Western media,16 and the leaders of all Swedish

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political parties sent official greetings to the gathered diaspora representatives from Europe, the Americas, and Australia.17 However, regardless of whether the Tallinn riots were inspired by the ongoing events around the Baltic rim or not, they certainly contributed to the re-entry of the Estonian question into Western discourse, not least in Sweden. In addition, the fact that the sailing competitions of the Summer Olympic Games were to be held in “occupied territory” led to a rising awareness of Estonia’s post-war fate in the West, especially after the boycott of the event by sixty-six states.18 “First Gdańsk, then Tallinn,” as the subheading of the above-mentioned article in The Economist stated, did not suggest that the forms and extent of the public protests in Poland and Soviet Estonia were to any degree comparable. But it indicated the emergence of a new Western sensitivity toward the signs of the time as reflected in the chain of events along the Baltic coasts. In 1980, the societies behind the Iron Curtain had proven they were able to organize oppositional manifestations that went beyond the narrow limits of conspiratorial dissident circles. Societal discontent and oppositional action made their entrance into the public sphere, both in relatively liberal Poland and the peripheral republics of the Soviet Union itself, and were closely followed by a well-informed Western public. The Nordic Connection: Estonian Diaspora-Homeland Networks before Perestroika ESTO 80 put both the Baltic question and the fate of the Estonian nation back on the political agenda in neutral Sweden. From the summer of 1980 onwards, Baltic issues were discussed in the Swedish media to a much larger degree than before, putting an end to the “conspiracy of silence” as Andres Küng provocatively labeled the ambiguous Swedish stance toward the postwar fate of the Baltic neighbors.19 The official, governmental position, however, remained unchanged. Stockholm continued its bridging efforts of the détente years and remained reluctant to endanger its relations with Moscow.20 Reagan’s government in Washington, by contrast, displayed unconditional support for the Baltic cause and anti-Soviet opposition in general. Already from the mid-1970s onwards, Baltic activists in the United States had noticeably intensified their lobbying activities, but it was not until the onset of Reagan’s presidency that these campaigns were met with support from the government.21 The suppression of oppositional activities in the Soviet Union, however, grew proportionally with increasing Western attention and sympathy for anti-Soviet dissent. By 1980, the persecution of non-conformist thinking had reached its peak leading the Soviet dissident movement to “its lowest ebb since its emergence in the 1960s.”22 The human-rights activist and



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Nobel Peace laureate Andrei Sakharov was sent into internal exile in Gorky, while other prominent dissidents were forced to emigrate, considerably weakening Moscow’s significance as the core of dissent in the USSR. In view of the visible decline of the dissident movement in the Russian heartland, the comeback of nationalist dissent in Estonia received all the more attention.23 In contrast to its Russian counterpart, the Soviet Estonian dissident movement was heading toward its most active period. By the turn of the decade, a group of around thirty people were involved in a loose network of anti-Soviet activists. This movement involved both former political prisoners, such as Enn Tarto, Erik Udam, and Endel Ratas, and a new generation of dissidents, among them Viktor Niitsoo, Tiit Madisson, and Heiki Ahonen. Doubtlessly, the news about the striking workers’ successful negotiations with the Polish government in Gdańsk had a mobilizing effect on the Estonian dissidents. This new optimism shone through in a telegram to Lech Wałęsa in which prominent Estonian and Lithuanian dissidents complimented him on the democratic reforms that were “so much needed by the whole socialist camp.”24 The anti-Soviet activists pursued a double strategy. Besides regularly drafting open letters and appeals to both Soviet authorities and Western organizations, they simultaneously engaged in the production and dissemination of samizdat and looked for possible smuggling routes to the West.25 Seen from the perspective of the Estonian dissidents, the Estonian diaspora was the natural and preferred partner in the West. However, the majority of Estonians in nearby Stockholm still maintained a rather skeptical attitude and adopted an observant stance. The leading ERN activist Arvo Horm underlined that private family visits to the homeland had been, thus far, the platform of diaspora-homeland interaction that was least endangered by KGB infiltration. Due to the low level of risk and the desired long-term corroding effects of this seemingly apolitical exchange, private visits still constituted, according to Horm, the most effective strategy for influencing developments inside the Estonian SSR.26 Against this background, it becomes obvious why the ERN, an established Cold War institution, did not represent the number one partner of choice for the dissident underground which was following a much more radical agenda.27 It was thus mostly thanks to Ants Kippar’s commitment to the cause of the dissidents that Stockholm turned into a central hub of antiSoviet opposition in the West. Kippar’s organization EVVA took the decisive step from being a lobbying organization directed toward a Western public to actively supporting and encouraging dissent in Soviet Estonia. Via contact persons in Helsinki, Kippar succeeded in establishing direct communication with the protagonists of Estonian dissent.28 The dissidents’ willingness to trust in and cooperate with him marked the beginning of a fruitful symbiosis of oppositional activism across the Baltic Sea.

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Once again, the “Finnish bridge” played an important role for the establishment of a functioning communication system between Sweden and Estonia maintained by a network of Finnish supporters and allies. According to the investigations of the Soviet Estonian KGB, it was mainly the task of the recently emigrated dissident Jüri Lina to establish reliable channels that allowed Kippar to stay informed about the ongoing developments in the homeland. Lina had a contact in Tallinn with whom he communicated via Finnish tourists and crew members of the M/S Georg Ots, the ferry that from 1980 onwards connected Tallinn to Helsinki.29 As the Tallinn contact later testified during a KGB interrogation, Kippar additionally used the services of two Finnish couriers who regularly visited Estonia.30 In the early 1980s, tourism across the Gulf of Finland was a mass phenomenon making it easier for couriers to blend in with the masses of visitors that passed the border controls in the port of Tallinn.31 As Eve Pärnaste remembers, shorter messages were typed onto interlining cloth which was then sewn into the couriers’ clothes and thus relatively easy to smuggle across the Soviet border.32 A much riskier but quicker way of communicating was by phone which, since the formation of KOR, had constituted the main channel of communication between Polish opposition leaders and their allies in Western Europe as well. From January 1981 onwards, direct phone calls which, until then, had been possible only from Finland could be made from Sweden to Estonia enabling information about the ongoing events in Estonia to reach Kippar and his confidants faster than other actors in the West.33 Yet, phones were by far not as common in Estonia as they were in Poland at the time. Moreover, state surveillance in the USSR was much stricter making communication via phone very easy to intercept.34 Thus, phone calls were conducted from changing locations and mainly used to confirm that smuggled messages had been received. The very backbone of communication between Stockholm and Tallinn was made up, however, by couriers. Overall, couriers were the key to all communication between dissidents in the USSR and their Western supporters. Their delivery of firsthand reports on the conditions in which the dissidents operated and what kind of support was needed for imprisoned dissidents and their families was crucial for all kinds of Western support activities.35 However, even the courier system was not safe from KGB interference. As it later turned out, one of Kippar’s Finnish confidants had been blackmailed by the KGB because of his homosexual relations in Tallinn and thus became an involuntary informant.36 The KGB was thus well informed about the ongoing communication between Kippar and the dissidents. In order to control these channels as much as possible, the KGB relied on a combination of monitoring and infiltration. The channels between Estonia and the West were not institutionalized, and



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smuggling opportunities often arose accidentally. Thus, the dissidents had to be highly pragmatic in their choice of couriers to carry out the forwarding of documents. This is why they chose to accept the help offered by an Estonian sailor, in spite of the obvious risks. The sailor volunteered to smuggle samizdat material, such as the Estonian underground chronicle Lisandusi and further firsthand reports on political persecution and trials, directly to Sweden on his frequent cross-Baltic trips on Soviet vessels.37 Although the dissidents harbored doubts regarding the reliability of this channel, the route proved to work. On the phone, Kippar would read out segments of the documents he had received in order to verify their authenticity and as a way to confirm that the documents smuggled by the sailor had reached their addressee.38 After the wave of arrests that struck the dissident movement in 1983, it was, however, revealed that the channel had been created on behalf of the KGB as a way of systematically collecting copies of every document that Kippar received.39 By infiltrating the cross-Baltic smuggling activities, the Soviet intelligence units were able to control the subversive contacts, to gain valuable insights into the inner circles of opposition, and to gather incriminating evidence against the dissident activists, a fact which explains why the conspiratorial missions were nevertheless accomplished.40 However, most documents that reached Stockholm from Soviet Estonia arrived via already established channels. Finnish Baptists sporadically carried out the task of smuggling microfilms out of the country mainly by car via the Finnish-Soviet land border.41 A more frequently used channel were the Western correspondents in the Soviet capital who had, for years, been bridging the abyss between the Soviet opposition and the West becoming an integral part of Soviet dissident culture.42 Although most journalists were mainly interested in obtaining fresh firsthand information from the Soviet Baltic republics, some of them agreed on smuggling samizdat material across the border.43 The names of journalists that feature in Soviet Estonian KGB reports of the time were, apart from one American correspondent of the Associated Press, predominantly Swedish. Among them were the representative for the Swedish television in Moscow, his colleague from Swedish radio, and a correspondent of the liberal daily Dagens Nyheter.44 The dissidents Lagle Parek, Heiki Ahonen, and Arvo Pesti frequently traveled to Moscow in order to arrange meetings with them. They shared their information about the situation in Estonia on the spot and handed over the latest editions of the underground chronicle Lisandusi intended for Kippar who was to provide for their dissemination in the West.45 The first edition of Lisandusi reached Stockholm in 1981.46 Thanks to Ants Kippar’s close relations with Aleksander Terras, the head of Radio Liberty’s Estonian section in Munich, the contents could swiftly be broadcast back to

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Estonia in order to reach a broader audience.47 In view of the limited possibilities of reproducing printed or typed material in the USSR, Kippar and his allies thus filled a key function not only for the dissemination of uncensored information from Soviet Estonia in the West but also within Estonia itself. In contrast to Poland, where well-organized underground printing offices could reproduce whole books in editions that could amount up to forty thousand items,48 Soviet samizdat was still virtually “handmade.” The existing electrographic equipment was entirely under the control of the authorities and therefore impossible to use for subversive purposes.49 Apparently, an opportunity to illegally import a mimeograph from the West via Moscow once opened up in 1982, but the Estonian dissidents refrained from that option due to the lack of a suitable hiding place.50 Even typewriters were officially listed. Writing samples collected from each registered typewriter by the KGB made it possible to trace the device used for reproducing samizdat documents.51 However, there were alternatives. One way of gaining access to unregistered typewriters was to buy them on the black market in Moscow and to replace the Cyrillic typebars with Latin ones. In other cases, portable typewriters were purchased in the West and then smuggled across the Finnish-Soviet border from where they finally reached Estonia.52 One of these illegally imported typewriters was used by Eve Pärnaste from the younger dissident generation. Among her main tasks was to type multiple carbon copies, usually on a dozen sheets of very thin paper at a time.53 This time-consuming, small-scale reproduction of samizdat, which Robert Daniels compared to the “transmission of learning by monastic copyists in the Middle Ages,”54 was widespread among oppositional circles in the Soviet Union. The most readable copy was often photographed, which was another frequently used but equally labor-intensive strategy for reproducing written records.55 Thus, it was almost impossible to circulate uncensored information beyond a narrow circle of friends and acquaintances. Therefore, direct and unrestricted communication with Kippar was of crucial importance for the dissident activists, as his efficient personal network of contacts guaranteed that information quickly reached Radio Liberty and the Voice of America. Although heavily jammed,56 Western broadcasting stations remained the only effective vehicle for the wider dissemination of uncensored information in Estonia up until the perestroika years.57 Although Kippar acted mainly on his own, the outcome of his political commitment was remarkable. EVVA established committees in the United States, Canada, and Australia, and involved more than one hundred support groups in three continents. Moreover, an English-language bulletin regularly informed the international public about human-rights violations in Estonia.58 Hence, due to EVVA’s energetic lobbying activities and Kippar’s role as a



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major informant of the Western press, the level of public attention for Estonian affairs grew noticeably both in Sweden and abroad.59 The dissidents highly appreciated this commitment which, as the imprisoned dissident Tiit Madisson stated in a letter that was smuggled out of the prison camp, was “proof for the home country that the Estonians abroad sympathize with and help the democratic movement that has emerged in Estonia.”60 Yet, Kippar’s activities were also met with sharp criticism from both political camps of the Estonian community in Stockholm. Direct interaction with Kippar, his critics stated, constituted a considerable risk for the underground activists in Estonia.61 Those who accused Kippar of acting incautiously felt vindicated in 1983 when the KGB’s broad offensive against societal opposition in Estonia started with a mass arrest of dissidents.62 Following the highly publicized death of Jüri Kukk, a professor of chemistry who had been arrested for oppositional activities and died after a hunger strike in a Soviet labor camp in Vologda in March 1981, the determination of the Soviet authorities to smash the structures of nationalist dissent grew.63 In the spring of 1983, Andropov’s KGB finally decided to crack down on the dissident movement in Estonia, a fact which led to a new wave of repression and the arrest of a large number of activists including Lagle Parek, Heiki Ahonen, Arvo Pesti, and Enn Tarto. The main charges against the dissidents referred to their “criminal contacts with a criminal organization called the Estonian Relief Center for Political Prisoners in Sweden” as stated in the verdict of their trial.64 The Supreme Court of the Estonian SSR took it as a given that the dissidents had maintained close communication with Ants Kippar in Stockholm for several years. These charges were based both on intercepted phone calls and open letters and information material published by EVVA that had been detected in the homes of the accused.65 Eventually, the dissidents were sentenced to several years of imprisonment in Russian labor camps. Consequently, the activities of those who had escaped arrest and trial were redirected toward the support of the prisoners, de facto marking the end of the active phase of the Soviet Estonian dissident movement.66 With the arrest of Parek, Ahonen, and Pesti, the work on the underground chronicle Lisandusi stagnated, and the eighteenth edition remained unfinished.67 This put an end to the plans to intensify cooperation between diaspora and homeland activists for the distribution of samizdat. Before their arrest, the dissidents had instructed Kippar to organize the reprint of all editions that had reached Sweden, reserving a certain number of pocket-size copies to be smuggled back into the Soviet Union for redistribution in Estonia itself.68 As the leadership of the dissident movement was imprisoned and technical and financial problems delayed the reprint of Lisandusi in Stockholm, the plan eventually failed. From 1984 onwards, several edited volumes of Estonian

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samizdat writings were published in the West, but their contents were, by then, already outdated and their format too large to be smuggled back across the Soviet border.69 The suppression of the Estonian dissident movement was thus intimately linked to the increasing level of transnational cooperation on subversive activities targeted at the Soviet regime. It was these consequences of Kippar’s risky methods that many prominent émigré leaders had feared. But the critique against Kippar and his mission went beyond issues regarding the personal safety and well-being of the dissidents. According to Arvo Horm, who was among the key opinion makers of Stockholm’s Estonian community, Kippar’s lobbying efforts in favor of political prisoners and radically anti-Soviet dissidents had distorted the overall picture of the oppositional landscape in Soviet Estonia. “The national resistance of the Estonian nation in the homeland is much broader, deeper, more open, and considerably more diversified than Kippar currently is presenting it to the Estonians abroad,”70 Horm stated. As a result of EVVA’s close cooperation with the most radical wing of opposition, the Relief Center had monopolized the field of oppositional contacts with the home country. The obvious risks of communicating with the diaspora via Kippar had, as Horm claimed, induced the patriotic and anti-Soviet circles among the Soviet Estonian intelligentsia to refrain from any contact with the political emigration.71 In his objections, Horm omitted to mention the parallel development of another field of diaspora-homeland contacts which was at least as significant as the subversive dissident networks. From the late 1970s onwards, the Stockholm-based Baltic Institute had developed into a major platform for semi-official contacts between representatives of cultural and academic life in Sweden and the Soviet Baltic republics. The young Estonian diaspora intellectuals who promoted a scholarly and cultural dialogue vigorously defied the dominant stance among Estonians in the West, who in their majority categorically rejected any kind of official contact with the homeland on the grounds that there was a clear distinction between “Soviet contacts” and “contacts with Estonians in Soviet-occupied Estonia.”72 Thus, they targeted the broader base of the oppositional subculture that had developed since the onset of the Khrushchev Thaw and which had taken root among the creative and political elites of Soviet Estonia.73 Via regular academic events, the second-generation activists hoped to reach the parts of the Estonian intelligentsia that had preferred the “less risky course of institutional nationalism” over active opposition in their attempts to advance national interests within the framework of the Soviet system.74 The younger activists’ strategy was thus similar to that of the Western European governments during the high tide of détente. Even the diaspora scholars trusted in the motto of “change through rapprochement,”



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hoping that Western influence and contact with academic institutions and intellectuals abroad would foster a spirit of reform from within. In contrast to the circles around EVVA, they did not believe in supporting a radical minority but targeted the core of Soviet Estonian society and its bearers of nationalism. This was the hidden subversive agenda of the semi-official networks, which caused Soviet propaganda to accuse the involved diaspora activists of misusing cultural and scholarly exchange as a smoke screen for covering up their anti-Soviet political agenda.75 The Baltic Institute profited from the official sanctioning of societal East-West exchange that continued despite the rising political tensions between the blocs, and succeeded in using the prevailing spirit of Helsinki as a vehicle for fostering personal contacts across the Baltic Sea. Already in the fall of 1976, Sweden and the USSR had signed an agreement on the expansion of bilateral contacts in the fields of culture and science. Over the course of time, it eventually became possible to circumvent the bureaucratic procedures of the administration in Moscow and to establish direct cooperation between Swedish and Soviet Estonian institutions.76 The Baltic Institute consciously avoided public statements that could be interpreted as political manifestations in order to be able to use these new openings. The Baltic scholars thus stood at a safe distance from the political emigration and strengthened their bonds with the Swedish academic community instead, especially with the University of Stockholm.77 Under the cover of a Swedish state institution, the Baltic Institute could develop into an important intermediary actor and coordinate the institutional cooperation that evolved across the Baltic Sea. From the late 1970s onwards, the Baltic Institute regularly invited Soviet Estonian scholars and artists to Sweden in close cooperation with Swedish universities and museums. In 1980, the Swedish Parliament held a ballot on the question of establishing the Center for Baltic Studies as a separate research institute at the University of Stockholm. The research center turned into a major driving force behind the scholarly dialogue between Sweden and the Soviet Baltic republics, while the Baltic Institute increasingly focused on coordinating cultural contacts.78 The considerable number of Baltic scholars at the sixth conference of the Baltic Institute in 1981 was considered a major breakthrough. Conservative émigrés heavily criticized cooperation with the Soviet Estonian elite, especially in North America where an Estonian émigré newspaper denounced the invited guests as “the thirty ‘Chekists’” from the Baltic republics.79 However, prominent activists such as Andres Küng, who had initially been critical himself toward the Baltic Institute’s activities, defended this strategy arguing that the trips to Sweden provided a much needed “breathing space” for the Soviet Estonian intelligentsia.80

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The Baltic Institute was thus a pioneer in promoting the rapprochement of diaspora and homeland elites. A few years later, the overall attitude among the Estonian community in Sweden noticeably changed in favor of multilayered cooperation with the homeland.81 By the mid-1980s, a pattern of regular cultural encounters and institutional exchange had developed between Sweden and Estonia, a process which facilitated mutual study visits, guest lectures, and performances of theaters and choirs. A twinning arrangement between Uppsala and Tartu was under discussion as early as in 1982 when three Swedish delegates took part in the festivities of the 350th anniversary of the University of Tartu as the only foreign dignitaries apart from a number of Finnish colleagues. Even though this field of interaction officially formed a subsection of Swedish-Soviet relations, it was the Estonian diaspora that, in close cooperation with Latvians and Lithuanians in Sweden, functioned as the key driving force behind the efforts of Swedish institutions to foster mobility and exchange across the Baltic Sea.82 Due to their commitment, the Soviet Estonian intelligentsia could establish durable contacts in the West, especially with their co-nationals in Stockholm. The dissidents and the established intellectual elites of the Estonian SSR were two groups that represented the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of how nationalist thought and political non-conformism were articulated. Nevertheless, both groups were still “united by shared values and behaviours” and maintained efficient, yet different, channels to the Estonian community on the opposite coast.83 With the emergence of the mass-based independence movement in the late 1980s, these two isolated strands of oppositional thinking eventually joined forces leading to the convergence of the different networks into a much broader web of concerted cooperation between diaspora and homeland actors. Trade Union Cooperation during Solidarity’s Legal Period The beginning of the 1980s thus marked a major turning point for both Soviet Estonian society and the diaspora community. The Swedish-Soviet policy of rapprochement enabled actors on both sides of the Iron Curtain to establish new channels and levels of communication putting an end to the era when interaction between Soviet Estonia and the West had been reduced to individual and irregular encounters. However, neither the surprisingly effective dissident networks, nor the seemingly apolitical institutional exchanges, were close to reaching the remarkable intensity of interaction that had developed between the societies of Sweden and Poland in the course of the 1970s. The legalization of Poland’s first independent trade union in the summer of 1980 added an additional dimension to the grassroots-level networking processes across the Baltic Sea, which adopted a highly politicized, even oppositional



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profile, and substantially broadened the basis for non-governmental cooperation. Initially, the official reactions among Sweden’s political elites to the establishment of Solidarność were rather reserved. The liberal-conservative coalition government under Prime Minister Thorbjörn Fälldin was eager to avoid interfering in Poland’s internal affairs,84 and even the social democrats, at the time in opposition, refrained from openly supporting the Solidarity movement. Party leader Palme had, together with leading European social democrats including Willy Brandt and Bruno Kreisky, for several years been engaged in advancing a multilateral dialogue with the Polish government, which certainly limited his scope of action in this matter.85 The reserved attitude of the social democratic leadership in Sweden contrasted with the unambiguous support for Solidarity by the Swedish trade union movement which otherwise traditionally followed the political line of the Social Democratic Party. The leading trade union federations in, for instance, West Germany, Austria, and Denmark were more timid in their reactions.86 However, the fact that these countries were ruled by social democratic governments at the time may have obliged the trade unions as the closest allies of social democracy to take the officially prevailing Western European policy of rapprochement into account. In Sweden, by contrast, trade union leaders became quickly involved in a transnational support network. Their engagement for the cause of the Polish opposition movement mirrored the loyal commitment of prominent Swedish social democrats to KOR, the “precursor of the social movement that emerged around the Solidarity trade union.”87 As a result of the joint efforts of leading social democrats and Polish émigrés to popularize the aims of the regime critics, the characteristics and aims of the so-called “democratic opposition” were well known in Sweden by the time Solidarity was established. This doubtlessly contributed to the many manifestations of public support in Sweden and fostered the rapid and effective development of organizational structures that aimed at assisting the young trade union movement in the People’s Republic of Poland.88 The National Organization of Trade Unions (Landsorganisationen, LO), the “largest and best resourced Swedish trade union federation,”89 had previously been involved in the efforts of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) to establish cooperation with state-sponsored trade unions behind the Iron Curtain. LO’s course of “détente from below,”90 however, was radically altered by the advent of Solidarity, an event which triggered a substantial change of thinking among Swedish trade union leaders. In September 1980, Charles Kassman, who worked for the news bulletin of the Labor Movement’s International Center (Arbetarrörelsens internationella centrum) in Sweden, returned from a visit to Gdańsk with personal messages

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to LO from, among others, Lech Wałęsa and Jacek Kuroń. The leadership of Solidarity, he reported, welcomed contacts with trade unions in the West, especially with Sweden. Sweden’s envisaged role was emphasized in a letter from strike-leader Wałęsa to Otto Kersten, ICFTU’s general secretary, in November 1980. In the letter, Wałęsa instructed LO to “coordinate and channel” all incoming support from both the ICFTU and affiliated organizations. Sweden was, he continued, ideally suited to act as an intermediary both as a result of its neutrality and the opportunities of visa-free traveling which facilitated regular communication. Moreover, Polish émigrés in Sweden had, Wałęsa added, already established close bonds to the Solidarity leadership and begun to organize practical support from which Solidarność could profit in the future.91 With time, communication between LO and Solidarity developed into a series of regular visits and consultations in which the Graphic Workers’ Union (Grafiska Förbundet) played a leading role. This was “not a coincidence . . . since the Poles needed printing equipment and expertise.”92 LO employed Ture Mattson, the Graphic Workers’ Union’s technical ombudsman as a full-time coordinator for the organization of practical support for Solidarity. This included numerous transport operations of technical equipment funded both by the ICFTU, LO, and other Western trade unions, and the schooling of Solidarity’s own graphic workers in the handling of up-to-date printing presses in Sweden.93 While the support of the Polish émigrés for the underground publishing houses still had to be organized in the late 1970s via highly conspiratorial channels, technical equipment could now be legally shipped across the border as Solidarity was officially recognized by the Warsaw government.94 The technical aid was of crucial importance for the development of the independent trade union press. Thanks to Western support, Solidarity was equipped with highly efficient printing offices whose technical facilities were “often better than [that of] their official state controlled counterparts.”95 As far as Western aid programs of this kind were concerned, the Swedish connection certainly was among the most significant channels. LO financed two complete printing offices in Gdańsk and Wrocław and a number of smaller printing shops where, among other things, the material for Solidarity’s first national congress in September 1981 was produced.96 The Solidarity leadership in Poland was eager to stress that the trade union was not interested in cooperating with Western governments, let alone in conducting its own foreign policy.97 LO’s leadership in Stockholm repeatedly asserted that the Swedish-Polish cooperation involved two autonomous, non-governmental organizations, and that LO’s engagement did not have a political dimension. The Swedish trade unionists’ determination to depoliticize their support found expression in a clearly negative stance



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toward Solidarity’s advisors from KOR which was regarded as “a political organization whose involvement should be avoided.”98 This misconception of the conditions in a communist society where purely economic demands of striking employees of state-owned industries inevitably turned political99 led to a certain tension between LO and the Polish émigrés who, until then, had acted as KOR’s official representatives in Sweden. Many of them were still involved in the consultations and meetings between trade union representatives from both countries, but their role was significantly reduced to supporting activities such as interpreting.100 This development marked a turn in the political activities of the second-generation émigrés, whose significance “somewhat diminished as many others got involved in the aid” for Solidarity.101 With the creation of the first mass-based oppositional movement in Poland, the preconditions for a dialogue across the Baltic Sea had fundamentally changed and developed into an increasingly complex web of individual and institutional commitment. Yet, in spite of the obvious tendencies among the LO leadership to marginalize the émigré activists, the latters’ lobbying activities still exercised a profound influence on the stance of the Swedish media and public toward Solidarity. In the fall of 1981, a number of Polish activists established a committee named Polen Solidaritet modeled on the earlier, cross-party support committees for Vietnam and Chile in Sweden.102 The organization brought together mainly Swedish supporters whose vital commitment for the dissemination of updated news on the development in Poland was of crucial importance for the popularization of Solidarity and its political agenda.103 Moreover, Maria Borowska’s close cooperation with Olof Palme’s advisor, Sten Johansson, resulted in a highly visible publication in which the authors made a passionate plea for the unconditional support of the independent trade union movement. Their intention was to provide a comprehensive overview of the movement’s history, to popularize its political cause, and to dispel common stereotypes. Solidarity’s close bonds with the Church, in particular, had, at times, an alienating effect on many Western observers including LO members in Sweden. In this context, Johansson and Borowska’s fine distinction between Solidarity’s pronouncedly Catholic appearance and the secular contents of its ideological program was of special importance.104 Apart from lobbying for the support of Solidarity abroad, the émigrés also established close personal contacts with the Solidarity leadership during the trade union’s legal period from August 1980 to December 1981.105 Jakub Święcicki, a key agent in the dense network of Swedish-Polish contacts since the mid-1970s, was invited as a guest of honor to Solidarity’s first national congress proving that the Swedish connection was highly appreciated.106

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The High Tide of Swedish “Printing Support” to Poland The compromise between Solidarność and the communist government was an unstable arrangement from the beginning, and negotiations faltered throughout 1981. With the trade union listing as many as ten million members at its peak, it became obvious that Poland’s trinity of opposition made up of the alliance between the workers, the intelligentsia, and the Church had the potential of becoming a fundamental threat for the internal stability of Poland and the entire Soviet bloc. The increasing Soviet pressure on the Polish government strained intergovernmental relations within the communist orbit leading to tensions that soon affected the field of East-West diplomacy as well. In the fall of 1981, the Swedish-Polish relations cooled down significantly after the Swedish Foreign Minister Ola Ullsten’s open critique of the Polish government’s rigid political approach to Solidarity.107 Soviet authorities also started to raise their voice against Sweden’s stance on the Polish question. In an official note from the Soviet embassy, opposition leader Palme was openly confronted with ill-concealed attacks against the Social Democratic Party, whose engagement in LO’s aid program via the Labor Movement’s International Center was interpreted as evident support for “an oppositional political power.”108 By the end of 1981, Sweden showed clear signs of abandoning its “bridgebuilding policy” taking a pronouncedly pro-Western stance in the upcoming “Second Cold War,” as the return of significant geopolitical tensions in the superpower relations following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan often is labeled.109 The gradual deterioration of Sweden’s relations with her communist neighbors was accompanied by several incidents that took place in Baltic waters. From the fall of 1980 onwards, the Swedish Navy suspected Soviet submarines were secretly exploring Sweden’s territorial waters. The suspicion was confirmed one year later by the so-called “Whiskey-on-the-rocks” affair, when a Whiskey-class submarine grounded in a restricted military zone outside the military naval base of Karlskrona. The submarine affair, which the social democratic journal Tiden compared to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Norway in 1940, triggered anti-Soviet sentiments in Sweden affecting relations between Stockholm and Moscow.110 Following another similarly alarming incident that had occurred only a month earlier, everything seemed to point at a transformation of the Baltic Sea back into a “sea of war.” In early September, shortly before the beginning of Solidarity’s first national congress, the Warsaw Pact carried out the largest military exercise in its entire history.111 The military demonstration of power in the Baltic Sea Region started on the coasts of the Soviet Baltic republics, passed the Polish shores and the trouble spot of Gdańsk, and ended with amphibious landings on East German territory.112



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By late 1980, both Sweden and Denmark had intensified air and sea patrols along their Baltic coastlines, and in the summer of 1981, the Swedish Army had systemically prepared the southern ports for the eventuality of a mass flight of Polish citizens across the Baltic Sea.113 However, despite the likelihood of a forthcoming military intervention in Poland by Warsaw Pact forces similar to the intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968, the events took a different course. In October 1981, Gierek’s successor Stanisław Kania had been replaced by the hardliner and former Minister of Defense, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, an event that amounted to a clear signal that the government’s willingness to negotiate with Solidarity was decreasing. In the early morning of December 13th, Polish state television and radio broadcast a speech by Jaruzelski, in which he informed the nation that martial law had been imposed putting an end to the democratic experiment. Thousands of Solidarity members were imprisoned, and the trade union was banned.114 Toward the end of the summer of 1980, the communist neighbor states had sealed off their borders with rebellious Poland in order to prevent the wave of social unrest from spreading. Prior to these events, it had been easier for Solidarity members to visit the West than the Soviet Union or other satellite states.115 Thus, the development of December 1981 took dozens of Solidarity representatives traveling in Western Europe by surprise. Stefan Trzciński, who had been active in Solidarity’s Masovian branch and was on his way to a Solidarity conference in Switzerland when martial law was proclaimed, proposed the formation of a separate section of Solidarity abroad with Stockholm as its headquarters.116 This plan was not realized, but several local and national Solidarity committees were formed by Polish Solidarity members in Western European countries and overseas.117 The initial communication blockade between the trade union activists abroad and the homeland, where Solidarity leaders who had escaped imprisonment, continued their work in the underground, and was quickly overcome.118 In mid-1982, Solidarity activists abroad received instructions from the secretly operating trade union leaders in Poland to organize a Coordination Office in Brussels, which turned into a major link between the West and the oppositional underground.119 In reaction to Jaruzelski’s coup d’état, a Solidarity Information Office opened up in Stockholm. It was completely financed by LO and formed the Swedish hub of the wider network of Solidarity branches in the West. The staff consisted of a group of Solidarity activists who had been in Sweden when martial law was announced. They were the first representatives of the “newest emigration” (najnowsza emigracja) as the wave of political refugees of the early 1980s was labeled in order to distinguish the arriving asylum seekers from the post-1968 émigrés.120 Despite LO’s reservations, even the former supporters and representatives of KOR in Sweden including

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Borowska, Święcicki, and Szulkin, became involved in the Information Office’s activities mainly as advisors and intermediaries.121 Święcicki, whose private apartment in a Stockholm suburb had served as an improvised information center for the Swedish media immediately after the imposition of martial law,122 was elected head of the Information Office. At this point, however, the LO leadership intervened. KOR had indeed been dissolved in 1981 but the trade unionists’ mistrust of the intelligentsia’s influence on Solidarity persisted, straining the relations between LO and KOR’s former representatives in Sweden. In spite of the mediation efforts of the ICFTU, which opted for cooperation with the Polish émigré circles, LO insisted on Święcicki’s dismissal. In January 1982, LO representatives once again stated that the Swedish trade union federation was determined to limit its communication with Poland to trade union contacts and that all political activities were to be avoided.123 LO’s frontrunner, Stefan Trzciński, proved to be a highly contentious choice, and after negotiations with the Coordination Office in Brussels, all actors involved agreed on the young journalist and Solidarity member Marek Michalski from Warsaw as the head of Solidarity’s Information Office in Stockholm.124 As the official representation of Solidarity in Sweden and as a result of its close links to LO, the Information Office focused mainly on the cooperation with the Swedish Social Democratic Party whose attitude toward Solidarity had changed following the events at the time. In a meeting with representatives of Solidarity’s Stockholm office, Olof Palme declared the party’s solidarity, and his own, with the suppressed trade union movement which was also reinforced by a joint protest note of LO and the Swedish Social Democratic Party to the Polish government.125 The lobbying strategies among the emigration in southern Sweden, by contrast, developed along different lines. A circle of younger émigrés in Lund and Malmö shared the conviction that independence from any political alliance in Sweden was to be preferred, a belief which was also reflected in their stance toward the People’s Republic. They aimed at counterbalancing the one-sided focus of the Stockholm-based émigrés on Solidarity and were willing to support a much broader range of oppositional groups that went beyond the limitation of ideological affinities. Within a week after Jaruzelski’s coup d’état, a group of Polish émigrés including Józef Lebenbaum organized a highly publicized hunger strike in the Lund Cathedral, appealing to the government in Stockholm, the Swedish Church, and the Red Cross to openly take a stance against the Polish government. In the course of the hunger strike, the protesters established the Swedish Solidarity Support Committee, the first of its kind outside Stockholm. Among the founding members was also a Swede, Jan Axel Stoltz, whose primary task it was to facilitate the communication with Swedish authorities. By January



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1982, the Support Committee had already achieved an initial result. A delegation met with Karin Andersson, the Minister for Immigration, and obtained her assurance to liberalize the Swedish asylum policy for Polish citizens. A few days later, the decision was confirmed by the government marking “an unusual and, in comparison to other countries, very generous gesture.”126 Two of the leading members of the Support Committee, Józef Lebenbaum and Andrzej Koraszewski, had in the course of the previous five years established a dense network with different political factions of the Polish opposition movement. Prior to the establishment of Solidarność, the Lund-based activists had been maintaining regular communication with KOR as well as with independent publishing houses such as NOWA and the less wellknown Krąg which quickly increased its status.127 In early 1982, the main task of the Support Committee was to reconstruct this network under the new conditions of martial law, which had led to the imprisonment of many former contact persons. By the spring, however, Lebenbaum declared in an interview with a Swedish magazine that reliable channels of communication had been restored. Due to the proximity to the ports that connected Sweden to Poland and the well-established links with various oppositional groups in the homeland, the émigré activists turned the provincial university town into an important center of information and kept the media in Sweden and beyond regularly updated about the political developments in Poland.128 In contrast to Solidarity’s Information Office, the Lund initiative was firmly based on the conviction that cooperation with oppositional activists and groups had to be organized irrespectively of ideological sympathies or alliances.129 Due to their different profiles, the Swedish Solidarity Support Committee and Solidarity’s Information Office in Stockholm were thus able to complement each other and to establish fruitful cooperation for the benefit of the suppressed opposition in Jaruzelski’s Poland.130 In order to “pacify” workers’ strikes throughout the country, General Jaruzelski sent out special units of the so-called ZOMO (Zmotoryzowane Odwody Milicji Obywatelskiej) paramilitary troops, which fulfilled their mission with considerable brutality. During these raids, the troops were constrained so as to avoid damage in the state-owned factories but not in Solidarity’s own offices, where “all printing equipment, typewriters and office furniture were demolished.”131 This also affected the two modern printing offices that the Swedish LO had financed and equipped. During Solidarity’s legal existence, the Polish trade union activists had repeatedly tried to convince the LO leadership to focus on small portable stencil duplicators of the kind that had been used by the underground printing houses in the late 1970s and which, if necessary, could easily be stored in cellars or similar hiding spots. Yet, LO arranged for the purchase of printing equipment according to its own visions

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and the usual practice of the Swedish trade unions’ printing houses, which did not meet the needs of secretly operating underground networks.132 From December 1981 onwards, one of the major challenges that lay ahead of the oppositional underground structures in Poland was the reconstruction of the facilities needed for an independent press and the continuing reproduction of banned domestic and foreign literature. This, however, could not be accomplished without practical support from the West. Hence, the clandestine transport routes that the political emigration had managed to establish during the second half of the 1970s had to be reactivated. The resumption of the smuggling activities was facilitated by the fact that the traffic infrastructure between Poland and the West remained largely untouched by the crisis. Even the regular ferry traffic to Sweden resumed after a short interruption reestablishing the major channel of communication between the émigré activists in Sweden and the Polish opposition.133 Underground activists in Poland used similar strategies as the Estonian dissidents in Tallinn to communicate with their supporters in the West, smuggling messages written on interlining cloth, which could be hidden easily inside the couriers’ clothes.134 Thus, the Polish émigrés in Sweden received detailed “order lists” from oppositional groups and institutions making it considerably easier to tailor the clandestine transport of technical equipment to the real needs of the underground structures.135 Soon, the smuggling activities across the Baltic Sea by far exceeded the dimension of the KOR years. The two main centers of Polish opposition in Sweden, Stockholm and Lund, turned into the major hubs of a large-scale, transnational aid program that effectively undermined the Polish authorities’ attempts to isolate the underground movement from the outside world. From mid-1982 onwards, the smuggling of printing equipment and money was well under way.136 Marek Michalski, the head of Solidarity’s Information Office, and Ryszard Szulkin were the main organizers of the transport operations from Stockholm which supplied Solidarity’s underground printing houses in Masovia, the rural hinterland of the Polish capital. Szulkin’s contacts among Trotskyite circles once again turned out to be useful. It was relatively easy to find young Swedish couriers from among their ranks who were willing to support political opposition against the Marxist-Leninist regimes of the Soviet bloc.137 In Poland, by contrast, the network could count on the help of the Church where the smuggled material was often received and temporarily stored by Catholic priests.138 The Information Office disposed of a converted van, in which six to seven offset printers could be smuggled across the border. In order to take maximum advantage of each journey across the Baltic Sea, empty spaces were filled with spare parts, electronic devices, equipment for Solidarity’s underground radio as well as émigré literature and journals, which were delivered to Michalski by Norbert Żaba and Jakub Święcicki.139



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In November 1983, the van and its passengers Göran Jacobsson and Niklas Holm were stopped in the harbor of Szczecin. The Polish customs found five Xerox copiers, two or three mimeographs, ink, copying paper, and a variety of émigré publications inside the van. After six weeks in prison, the young Trotskyists were released and allowed to return to Sweden after the payment of ten thousand U.S. dollars to the Polish state which the Information Office had managed to collect. The surplus of the collected funds was used to buy further printing equipment for the Polish underground.140 As the van had been confiscated, Michalski and Szulkin proceeded to use a specially prepared Volvo and the voluntary courier services of a number of Swedish sociologists who were Szulkin’s colleagues from the University of Stockholm. The limited space inside the car made the smuggling of copying machines impossible and it was mainly used for spare parts, ink, and literature.141 Larger transport operations were sporadically organized via the Baltic waterways on private boats. The handover of the smuggled goods was conducted at sea in cooperation with the crews of Polish yachts which belonged to sailing clubs along the Polish coast and had a permit for cruising in national territorial waters. Thus, they were not subject to customs controls.142 The staff of Solidarity’s Information Office were extremely discrete about their involvement in the smuggling operations as the official Swedish representation of Solidarity was financed by LO, which, at least publicly, rejected any involvement in “political issues.” The costs of the transport operations had thus to be funded mainly via the Polish emigration’s own channels. A considerable part of the needed financial means was provided by Giedroyc in Paris and also by the government in exile and the North American Polonia.143 The purchase of the printing equipment, however, was financed by the Labor Movement’s International Center, a support institution for trade unions abroad founded by LO and the Social Democratic Party, and the Graphic Workers’ Union.144 The close cooperation between Marek Michalski and Ture Mattson, the technical ombudsman of the Graphic Workers’ Union, suggests that the latter was very well aware of the practices of using dual accounts in order to hide the nature of the shipments that left the Swedish ports.145 However, it is probable that even LO’s leadership was informed about the secret support program. In a letter to LO’s chairman Stig Malm, Zbigniew Bujak, one of the most prominent leaders of the underground trade union, expressed his gratitude for the financial help from LO funds which, as he stated, had been used for the purchase of printing equipment items for Radio Solidarity and “the work of the underground structures.”146 By January 1982, the Swedish Solidarity Support Committee in Lund launched its own smuggling program.147 Initially, the activities of the Committee had been focused on humanitarian aid for imprisoned Solidarity activists

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and their families. However, as humanitarian needs were already covered by the Red Cross, the Swedish Church, and various charity initiatives, the Committee decided to concentrate exclusively on assisting the oppositional activists who had been forced underground.148 Only a minority among the dozen Committee members were actively involved in the more conspiratorial operations. The key organizers of the smuggling network were Lebenbaum and the student Mirosław Ancypo who just had been granted refugee status in Sweden and organized the transport operations in close cooperation with Marian Kaleta, the representative of Solidarity’s Brussels Coordination Office in Malmö. These operations were carried out by a group of around fifteen independent couriers.149 In spite of the limited size of the group and the precautionary measures taken by all agents involved, the smuggling operations were, as Lebenbaum remembers, at times successfully infiltrated by Polish counterintelligence forces. In these cases, which are reminiscent of the infiltration of the Swedish-Estonian networks during the early 1980s and illustrate how well informed communist authorities were about the various forms of oppositional cooperation across the Baltic Sea, the couriers were quickly replaced.150 Apart from delivering financial and technical support to Solidarity’s wellorganized network of underground institutions, the activists in Lund also provided more radical anti-communist groups with the necessary equipment. Among these were, for instance, Solidarność Walcząca (“Fighting Solidarity”) in Wrocław, the Warsaw-based Grupa Wola, underground publishing houses such as Krąg and Świt, and the neo-rightist movement Niepodległość (“Independence”).151 The lively smuggling traffic put the sleepy university town of Lund on the map as one of the major Western shipping hubs for printing equipment, ink, paper, photographic equipment, and, as the “order lists” from Poland declare, even for suitable working clothes for the underground printers.152 When one of Marian Kaleta’s couriers, the Swedish lorry driver Lennart Järn, was arrested in the seaside town of Świnoujście in November 1984 while carrying out his fifteenth smuggling operation, the Polish customs managed to confiscate the impressive amount of seventy stencil duplicators, twenty offset printers and a number of computers and broadcast transmitters, as well as forbidden literature.153 Officially, the Swedish Solidarity Support Committee engaged mainly in lobbying activities which were coordinated closely with the Support Committee’s regional branches in Gothenburg and Helsingborg. The campaigns were mainly targeted at influencing the Swedish media and the tone of the national news coverage on the ongoing events in Poland. One of the main strategies was to provide Swedish journalists and foreign correspondents with uncensored evidence that allowed for a glimpse into life in martial-law Poland.154 Due to the well-established personal networks that connected the



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émigrés in Lund and Malmö to the centers of Polish opposition, underground activists could regularly provide the Support Committee with audiovisual documentation that was smuggled on Polish ferries heading for the ports of Trelleborg and Ystad. Early on, the Lund activists systematically collected the incoming photographs, audio and video tapes that reached them from behind the Curtain and established a comprehensive media archive providing for a wealth of material for public campaigns against the Jaruzelski regime. In late 1982, the Support Committee was able to edit a book entitled Poland December 13th 1981—The War Against the Nation which reprinted the work of anonymous photographers from Poland. Much of the material was organized in close cooperation with the independent publishing houses NOWA and Krąg in Poland.155 The proceeds of the items sold were designated for the opposition movement in Poland where the copies of the publication that had been smuggled back across the Baltic Sea were enthusiastically received.156 From spring 1983 onwards, the practical organization of the “printing support” for the Polish opposition and the reverse influx of audiovisual documentation was coordinated by a subsection of the Swedish Solidarity Support Committee known as the Independent Polish Agency (IPA). The Agency was established on the initiative of Józef Lebenbaum, who also served as its head. Lebenbaum maintained an excellent contact network on both sides of the Iron Curtain and coordinated the communication between the West and the illegally operating structures of Solidarity and other political underground organizations in Poland. A representative of the Provisional Coordination Committee of Solidarity in Poland was listed as a member of IPA’s unofficial advisory board, as were prominent key figures among the Polish emigration. Jan Nowak-Jeziorański, who for decades had led the RFE’s Polish Section in Munich and at the time resided in Washington, constituted an important link to the North American emigration, while “Polish London” was represented by the head of the publishing houses Polonia Book Fund and Puls, Jan Chodakowski. Mirosław Chojecki, the recently emigrated former head of NOWA, and Jerzy Giedroyc were the representatives of the Parisian faction.157 Under the leadership of Lebenbaum, who also maintained close relations with Solidarity’s Coordination Office in Brussels—headed by Jerzy Milewski—George Minden’s CIA-funded International Literary Center in New York, and Zbigniew Brzeziński, formerly National Security Advisor under President Carter, in Washington, the IPA swiftly gained significance as an international key player in the relations between the Polish opposition and its Western supporters. The Agency not only turned into the major supplier of Western media with audiovisual documentation from Poland,158 but also played a crucial role in coordinating Western support for the free trade union movement, especially in the framework of the Conference of Solidarity

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Support Organizations (CSSO).159 The role of Lund as a major link between the Polish opposition and the West was once more reconfirmed by the decision to appoint Lebenbaum as head of the CSSO’s European Coordination Committee.160 The IPA was thus an organization with an impressive range of tasks and functions. Although the organization of the “printing support” remained the central task of the Agency throughout its existence, Lebenbaum invested considerable energy in coordinating lobbying campaigns in the West with the Polish underground. In order to render the regular flow of uncensored documentation to Sweden more efficient and to expand the IPA’s already comprehensive archive of audiovisual material, Lebenbaum developed the idea to form a team of salaried employees in his homeland.161 Already in the fall of 1983, his contacts could confirm that small activist groups working for the IPA had been established in five Polish cities.162 The activists received several cameras and slide films with the assignment to produce visual documents for the Agency which was providing for the publication of the material in the West.163 On a second level, the IPA functioned as an independent representation of several illegally operating organizations and publishing houses in Poland.164 One of them was the neo-rightist organization Niepodległość which authorized the IPA to edit its underground journal outside Poland. IPA’s strategy of synchronizing the publication dates of the journal in the homeland and the West gives some indication of the efficiency of the networks between Lund and its Polish partners.165 By the early 1980s, opposition against the Warsaw regime had thus already turned into an essentially transnational phenomenon. The borders between émigré activism and domestic dissent were increasingly blurred. In view of the dimensions that the shipment of illegal goods from Swedish ports to Poland took from 1982 onwards, it is obvious that the thriving smuggling activities did not go unnoticed by the Swedish authorities. Yet, there is reason to assume that the émigré activists could count on the passive support or, at least, tacit consent by Swedish state officials. “The Swedes helped silently,” as Józef Lebenbaum remembered, “silently, so that there would be no stir, that there would be no scandals, just silently. When discretion was kept and they had trust, it was possible to arrange everything.”166 According to Göran Jacobsson, one of the Trotskyite couriers, the Swedish customs once uncovered the cavity inside the van as he and Niklas Holm arrived at the port of Ystad from one of their smuggling missions. However, the customs officials let them pass after having been informed about the purpose of the secret cubby.167 Ryszard Szulkin remembers that even his colleagues from the Faculty of Sociology at Stockholm University once were stopped in their converted Volvo. On their way back to Sweden, the couriers had taken the



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opportunity to smuggle some bottles of vodka in the by then empty cavity under the back seat next to some editions of Polish samizdat journals. During the interrogation that followed, they explained that the space under the back seat was part of their mission of smuggling technical equipment and literature to the Polish opposition. Although the customs official on duty confiscated the alcohol, he let the university employees drive on after having expressed his personal admiration for their commitment.168 What is interesting in this context is another story told by Lebenbaum who organized most of the smuggling traffic to Poland via Lund. In October 1981, a Polish sailboat reached the nearby port of Simrishamn. Officially, the boat was cruising from Gdańsk to Szczecin on Polish territorial waters only but the crew had decided to take the risk and to dock at a Swedish port in order to take illegal items back to Poland. An officer of the Swedish Security Police (Säkerhetspolisen, SÄPO) supervised the stowage of offset printers, ink, and hundreds of books in order to ensure that the nightly encounter did not involve the smuggling of illegal goods such as alcohol or cigarettes. As a declared anti-communist and Pentecostal, he openly approved of the active support of the Polish opposition.169 While this story amounts only to anecdotal evidence on the role played by Swedish state officials in the smuggling activities of the Polish émigrés, the above-mentioned incidents fit well into the overall picture of the prevailing pro-Polish sentiment within Swedish society. While the government officially still upheld the ambition to maintain a dialogue with the Jaruzelski regime, public reactions to the extensive lobbying efforts of the Polish emigration and the increasingly positive tone of Swedish news coverage on the Polish opposition indicated that the tide had changed. Influenced by the quite chilly diplomatic relations between East and West, a considerable part of Swedish society demonstratively aligned itself with the political agenda of the regime critics. During Solidarity’s legal period, non-governmental contacts and exchange with the West developed relatively freely. Jaruzelski’s decision to crush the independent trade union movement in December 1981, however, put an early end to the dynamic processes and established new barriers between the Polish opposition and its Western sympathizers. At this point, the Polish émigrés in Sweden re-entered the stage as important intermediaries with reliable networks on both sides of the Iron Curtain and experience in undermining the communist authorities’ border regime. Along similar lines to what happened during the late 1970s when KOR formed the spearhead of Polish opposition, Sweden again developed into the main smuggling channel for material support from the West to Poland.170 Although it is, in hindsight, difficult to assess the contribution of individual Western countries to the illegal publishing infrastructure in martial-law Poland, several former Solidarity activists

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have claimed that Sweden was the backbone of the clandestine support of Poland’s oppositional underground in the 1980s.171 Mirosław Chojecki, the former head of NOWA, estimates that most of all smuggled equipment that reached Poland originated from Sweden. Chojecki, who after his emigration in October 1981 resided in Paris, was in charge of coordinating all forms of “printing support” from Western Europe on behalf of Solidarity’s Coordination Office in Brussels, which grants him a certain authority in this matter.172 Jan Józef Lipski, one of KOR’s founding fathers, confirmed during a meeting with Sweden’s Foreign Minister Sten Andersson in 1989 that “[i]t was generally known that the most significant import to Poland after 1981 came from Sweden.”173 The expansion of semi-official contacts between Sweden and its opposite coasts, which started at the turn of the decade, can in many cases be directly linked to the intermediary efforts of diaspora activists. As the case of the emerging cooperation between Swedish and Soviet Estonian cultural and scholarly institutions illustrates, Estonians in Sweden played an important role in the practical implementation of commitment to intensified cultural and societal East-West exchange as stipulated in the Helsinki Final Act. The dialogue between representatives of Sweden’s political and cultural sphere and the pre-Solidarity opposition in Poland in the late 1970s developed along similar lines. The excellent connections of Polish émigrés among the leadership of Solidarity in Poland facilitated the lively engagement of LO in Polish affairs from September onwards. This strong connection was one of the reasons why Wałęsa chose the Swedish trade union federation as Solidarity’s closest Western partner and enabled LO to establish a functioning cooperative partnership with the Polish trade union activists. The overwhelmingly positive reactions of Swedish society and media to the legalization of Solidarność in Poland left little doubt that democratic reforms in communist Europe were seen as a long overdue necessity by the vast majority of Swedes. This widespread consensus was the motor behind the exceptional and largely unrestricted cooperation between Swedish and Polish trade unionists. LO’s active support for Solidarity during its legal period and its assistance in establishing the technical preconditions for an independent press in favor of pluralist opinion-making came very close to interfering in Polish domestic affairs. Seen against the background of Sweden’s neutrality, this was a highly controversial issue. Compared to these vital networking processes between Sweden and Poland, Swedish-Soviet relations were still stuck in a Cold War limbo. The 1976 agreement on cultural and scientific contacts marked the first step toward a rapprochement between Sweden and the USSR and reawakened Swedish interest in Baltic issues. Even the initial institution-



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alized contacts between Sweden and the Soviet Baltic republics contained an oppositional element that was hard to overlook. The beginning of scholarly and cultural exchange was, at its core, an initiative of the diaspora.174 Under the guise of Swedish state institutions, Baltic activists created a platform that enabled them to establish a constructive dialogue with the “alternative society” of the Soviet Baltic intellectual and cultural elites. These encounters had a clearly political dimension, namely the diaspora activists’ belief in the possibility to trigger a political shift toward increased national autonomy in the Baltic republics via their patriotic elites and leading opinion-makers. Under the impact of the unexpected but pathbreaking career of the transnational human-rights movement, the international political climate changed, causing new tensions in the field of East-West relations. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was the final straw that heralded the onset of a “Second Cold War.” As East-West relations deteriorated, even supposedly apolitical contact between the blocs became politicized. This trend was reinforced by the renaissance of anti-communist sentiments in the West which also spread to non-rightist circles. Even in neutral Sweden, there was a noticeable shift in tone.175 Critical views on the conditions in the Soviet bloc became the norm in newspapers of all political colors, except for in the orthodox communist press that unalteredly adhered to an antiquated Marxist rhetoric of class struggle and revolution. From the summer of 1980 onwards, many publicists and journalists took an even clearer stand and expressed open and unconditional support for the political opposition behind the Iron Curtain. One of the factors that shaped the increasingly critical attitude toward the communist regimes among Swedish society was the work of Polish and Estonian activists. The names of Jakub Święcicki, Józef Lebenbaum, and Ants Kippar regularly featured in the country’s main newspapers and even in the international press as reliable sources and informants on the political developments behind the Iron Curtain. Their testimonies inevitably influenced the tone of the media reports which increasingly adopted the opposition’s stance and interpretation of the ongoing processes in communist Europe. The gap between official neutrality and the unambiguous political sympathies of a large part of Swedish society widened significantly. The powerful resurgence of anti-Communism in the West was echoed by intensification of opposition against the regimes behind the Iron Curtain. Oppositional groups and organizations on Sweden’s opposite coasts developed increasingly radical anti-communist agendas, a fact which was directly linked to the growing manifestations of moral and political support in the West. As repressions increased in the communist states, it was the political leadership of the diaspora communities that developed into the major Western cornerstone for the oppositional underground movements behind the Iron Curtain.

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The multilayered oppositional dialogue that developed during the early 1980s between Sweden and its opposite coasts marked the climax of the transnationalization processes of opposition and dissent in both Poland and Estonia. The web of oppositional contacts fostered the development of a widely ramified system of informants, couriers, and intermediaries involving a broad range of actors. Due to the loose structure of the smuggling networks, the communist authorities met with increasing difficulties in controlling the clandestine interaction across the Baltic Sea. With the involvement of a growing number of supporters from both Sweden and Finland, these networks stretched beyond the level of diaspora-homeland cooperation. The willingness of the Swedish correspondents in Moscow to assist in the smuggling of samizdat writings to the West marks the first documented case of Swedish involvement in the cause of the Soviet Estonian dissident movement which, to date, so far had enjoyed active support especially from the Finns. Swedish involvement in the smuggling of printing equipment to the circles around KOR in Poland started several years earlier. Their engagement of Swedish supporters grew proportionally with the dimensions of the smuggling transport operations across the Baltic Sea which reached a peak after December 1981. The success of the large-scale import of technical equipment and banned literature to Jaruzelski’s Poland, which the émigré activists in Sweden organized in coordination with the political centers of the Polish emigration in the West, depended, to a large degree, on the close cooperation with Swedish actors. The tacit consent and passive support of Swedish state officials and trade union activists was an equally indispensable precondition for efficient cooperation with the Polish opposition as was the willingness of Trotskyist activists, youth organization delegates, and lorry drivers to act as couriers. Following the significant expansion of the infrastructural networks of maritime transport during détente, the Baltic waterways had developed into vital channels of communication between oppositional activists behind the Iron Curtain and their Western allies. As the Baltic Sea gradually transformed into a major smuggling route between the blocs, it turned into one of the settings for the “Second Cold War” and growing ideological antagonisms. This process went hand in hand with the gradual retransformation of the small inland sea into a “sea of conflict,” as clearly illustrated by Zapad 81, the impressive naval exercise of the Warsaw Pact member-states in the fall of 1981.176 In view of the rising tensions between the superpowers, it was no coincidence that the USSR rediscovered the Baltic waters as a strategically important space, a fact which explains the recurrent incidents with Soviet submarines in Swedish territorial waters.177 The large-scale exercise of the NATO navy forces in Baltic waters in 1985 involving gigantic vessels that, as the Swedish press stated, used missiles “in the size of Volvos,”178 can thus be seen as an



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unambiguous signal from the West. NATO clearly felt a need to communicate that it did not consider the Baltic Sea to be a “Mare Sovieticum.”179 THE TRANSNATIONAL DIMENSION OF THE “ANTI-COMMUNIST REVOLUTIONS” Europe’s descent into another state of Cold War hardened the fronts between the blocs with consequences at all levels of East-West communication. The euphoria with which the West had reacted to the legalization of Solidarity and the nascent hope for a possibility to reform the communist system from within had quickly faded away. The general stagnation that characterized the mid-1980s fundamentally affected the oppositional networks across the Baltic Sea. In the fall of 1983, Ants Kippar stated that the wave of arrests had not only weakened the Soviet Estonian dissident movement but also cut most of the connections between Estonia and EVVA in Stockholm.180 The phone lines of the dissidents that had escaped imprisonment had been disconnected. The regime was obviously determined to halt any uncontrolled leaks of information to the West, a fact which complicated Kippar’s work.181 Also the Polish activists in Sweden, whose channels of communication with the oppositional underground were much broader and more difficult to block, experienced a certain depression. The public commitment of the Swedes to the Polish cause which had been manifested in regular mass demonstrations on Sweden’s streets and squares against martial law decreased significantly, as did the incoming monetary support from organizations and individual donors for the smuggling activities.182 Moreover, by 1984, Polish Customs Police had considerably tightened border controls both in the port of Świnoujście, where the ferries from Ystad arrived, and on the trains from Paris and Berlin to Warsaw which also were frequently used as a smuggling channel.183 At the same time, the once mighty Solidarity movement had shrunk to a few thousand underground activists, and it seemed as if Jaruzelski would maintain full control of the situation for a forseeable future. Although martial law was gradually lifted from 1983 onwards, it had, as Jacek Kuroń put it, achieved its aim—the “atomisation of society.”184 Sweden and the Impact of the “Second Cold War”: The Turn in Swedish Ostpolitik On the eve of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, the harsh measures taken against all forms of organized societal opposition had led to a stalemate between the state and the regime critics both in Poland and the Soviet Baltic

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republics. Yet, in spite of a pervasive feeling of stagnation, Polish and Baltic activists tirelessly continued their lobbying campaigns in Sweden. Semirevolutionary Poland and its numerous forms of engagement with Swedish organizations and lobbyists for the cause of Solidarity had left a lasting mark on Swedish discourse on communist Europe. In the mid-1980s, Swedish society and media were already highly sensitized by the dimension of humanrights violations and suppression behind the Iron Curtain cementing a societal consensus that undermined the foundations of the neutrality doctrine. The Swedish-Polish dialogue had become “monopolized” by oppositional forces whose values und political interpretations became a commonly acknowledged frame of reference. One of the most unambiguous signals of the radical change of paradigms that characterized the new post-détente era in Europe was the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Lech Wałęsa who was under house detention since his release in 1983. Similarly to the Swedish Nobel Committee’s decision to honor the literary oeuvre of Polish émigré Czesław Miłosz in December 1980,185 the choice of Solidarity’s charismatic leader as the Nobel Peace Prize laureate by the Norwegian Nobel Committee was a clear political statement. Another sign that the “Polish drama”186 had not been forgotten in Sweden was the foundation of the Polish-Swedish Cultural Center (Polsk-Svenskt Kulturcentrum), an initiative of a number of intellectuals who intended to “trigger contacts between independent Polish culture and Swedish cultural life.”187 Maria Borowska and Jakub Święcicki were, together with the Swedish novelist Agneta Pleijel, the writer and linguist Lars Kleberg, and the translator Anders Bodegård, the driving forces behind the Center’s journal Hotel Örnsköld. The journal was modeled on Giedroyc’s Kultura and was first published at the time of the political trials against Michnik, Kuroń, and other prominent oppositional activists in the summer of 1984. In order to “present examples of the free Polish culture” to a Swedish public,188 the journal reprinted literary texts and political essays of the Polish underground. Hotel Örnsköld attracted attention in the Swedish press which, almost unanimously, expressed a deep respect for the texts’ “moral power, which,” as Svenska Dagbladet stated, “Jaruzelski and his henchmen cannot overcome.”189 The enormous public support that the rise and fall of Solidarity had triggered in Sweden was in sharp contrast to the handling of the Baltic question which for a long time remained a repressed memory. Yet, the chillier tone of East-West diplomacy and the growing official support for Baltic diaspora organizations in the United States, in particular, changed the general attitude toward the Baltic nations’ struggle for liberation, not only in Sweden but also in Western Europe in general. A decisive watershed came with a resolution drafted by the European Parliament in January 1983. The document was in-



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spired by the so-called Baltic Appeal, which had been signed by Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian dissidents in August 1979 and subsequently smuggled out to the West.190 The European Parliament condemned the Soviet occupation of 1940 and proposed the creation of a special board for the “decolonization” of the Baltic territories under the auspices of the UN,191 literally echoing the demands raised by the Estonian dissidents in their Memorandum to the United Nations a decade earlier. A few months later, the topic was introduced into the agenda of the Swedish Parliament following an interpellation by Margareta af Ugglas, a member of the conservative Moderate Party. During the debate that followed, the social democratic Minister of Foreign Affairs Lennart Bodström took a surprisingly critical stand on the situation in the Soviet Baltic republics, adding a new dimension to the public discourse on Baltic affairs.192 MP Per-Olof Strindberg, who also represented the Moderate Party, went even further during a parliamentary foreign policy debate in March 1985. Sweden as the “conscience of the world,” Strindberg claimed, could not forget the three Baltic nations and should not ignore the articulate demands for national independence any more,193 despite Prime Minister Olof Palme’s rejection of this kind of openly proclaimed pro-Baltic sympathies as a “risk for Sweden’s security policy.”194 On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the 1975 CSCE summit and the signing of the Final Act, the Nordic capitals of Copenhagen, Helsinki, and Stockholm became the setting of a series of anti-Soviet demonstrations. The manifestations for the Baltic peoples’ right to independence were organized by Baltic organizations and later described as “the most creative and effective public relations campaign ever waged by diaspora Balts.”195 At the end of July 1985, an international jury of distinguished scholars and politicians, among them Per Ahlmark, a member of the Liberal People’s Party and former vice prime minister of Sweden, inaugurated the so-called Baltic Tribunal in Copenhagen. The assembled jury members listened to numerous testimonies on Soviet crimes against the Baltic nations by, among others, the former dissident Sergei Soldatov and the Estonian musician couple Leila Miller and Valdo Randpere, whose escape to Sweden one year earlier had made the headlines in the Swedish press.196 Subsequently, the Baltic Tribunal issued the so-called “Copenhagen Manifesto” which reconfirmed the annexation of the Baltic states as an unlawful act and heavily condemned the Kremlin’s Russification policy targeted, as stated in the document, at the elimination of the languages, culture, and identity of the Baltic peoples.197 The Copenhagen Tribunal was followed by the so-called Baltic Peace and Freedom Cruise aboard the M/S Baltic Star which started in the Danish capital and headed for Stockholm via Helsinki. On board were representatives of several Baltic youth organizations which turned the Baltic Star into a

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venue for a series of seminars and national manifestations. On its way across the Baltic Sea, the ship cruised along the border of Soviet territorial waters, passing close to the Estonian island of Saaremaa where, as Tunne Kelam remembers, people gathered on the beaches in order to get a glimpse of the ship whose cruise they had heard about on Western radio broadcasts.198 The series of pro-Baltic manifestations, which were accompanied by street demonstrations in all three capitals, triggered sharp diplomatic attacks against the Nordic countries from the Soviet Union. However, the governments of Denmark, Sweden, and Finland did nothing to prevent the Baltic protests and the “pirate ship,” as the Soviet news agency TASS reviled the Baltic Star, entered the port of Helsinki without hindrance during the official celebration of the CSCE anniversary.199 The closing rally took place in central Stockholm in front of a crowd of two thousand spectators including several Swedish party leaders.200 The new found public enthusiasm for the Baltic cause was mirrored in the news coverage of the event. “Those who oppose the idea of free Baltic states should consequently be opposed to the existence of Finland as well,” as a Swedish journalist who had visited the Estonian SSR during the Olympic Games of summer 1980 stated in an allusion to the shared history of Finland and the Baltic states as remnants of the Russian Empire after World War I. “It is far from being a naïve dream that the Soviet Union will collapse one day in the way that all other empires have done,” he concluded. The Baltic question, which for decades had been a topic that often was brushed under the carpet, was back on the agenda of public discourse in neutral Sweden.201 “Dissent from Above”: Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika and Its Repercussions The Nordic governments’ consent and passive support for the attention-grabbing anti-Soviet manifestations for Baltic independence heralded the return of the Baltic Sea Region into the consciousness of the Nordic societies. From the mid-1980s onwards, Swedish public debates frequently evoked the traditional bonds between the nations and the shared histories around the Baltic rim thus fostering a revived interest in the political developments on the opposite coasts.202 An additional trigger was the appointment of Mikhail Gorbachev as general secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, an event which set off a dynamic evolution of oppositional grassroots-level activity throughout the Soviet bloc. Although Gorbachev’s political course, commonly known under its Russian name perestroika (“restructuring”), was primarily aimed at the overdue reformation of the highly dysfunctional Soviet economy, it soon turned into a large-scale reorganization of Soviet society in general. The nuclear disaster of Chernobyl in April 1986 was the decisive impetus that led



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to another, equally radical reform. Glasnost (“openness”), which developed into the second pillar of Gorbachev’s de-Stalinization policy, made it possible to publicly discuss controversial issues. The official promotion of “heterodox thinking” within the Soviet Union’s official institutions fostered a new dimension of open oppositional behavior that exceeded, by far, the effects of decades of samizdat production and dissemination which came to an end with the emergence of a new political culture and the abolishment of earlier censorship practices.203 Many core issues of perestroika and glasnost bore a striking resemblance to the demands of the human-rights activists turning the reform agenda into a kind of “dissent from above.”204 However, the Kremlin’s new course of domestic policies not only fostered radical changes within the institutional structures of the USSR but it also reactivated groups that stemmed from the dissident movements, especially within the Baltic republics. In spite of the KGB’s undisputable success in suppressing societal dissent, there were still, as in neighboring Latvia and Lithuania, active grassroots-level organizations with a distinct nationalist agenda in the Estonian SSR. The origins of these “proto-political forces,”205 which mainly involved representatives of the scientific and cultural elites, lay in the ongoing discourse on the protection of the environment and the native cultural heritage in the Baltic republics. One of these groups was the Estonian National Heritage Society (Eesti Muinsuskaitse Selts) which openly protested against the authorities’ neglect of threatened national monuments and practices such as the transfer of archaeological discoveries directly to Soviet Russia.206 The ecological protest groups played a central role in the national reawakening in Estonia by successfully instrumentalizing the disastrous Soviet environmental policies as a “proxy issue for opposition to the regime.”207 The environmental consequences of the overexploitation of resources by the Soviet planned economy were already visible throughout the Baltic republics, for instance, around the phosphate mines in north-eastern Estonia. The planned expansion of the mining industry met with strong opposition, not least as a result of the envisaged mass influx of workers from other Soviet republics, a phenomenon which in the new political climate of perestroika and glasnost could be openly articulated.208 Both the ecological problems and the threat against the Baltic national cultures posed by Russification and uncontrolled mass immigration could now be linked to the dysfunctional aspects of a Soviet-type communist society as a whole inevitably adding a nationalistic dimension to the discourse.209 With the onset of Gorbachev’s time in office, the Soviet Union had, surprisingly enough, developed into the spearhead of reformist thinking in communist Europe, raising severe concerns about possible domestic unrest and destabilization among the nomenklatura of most satellite states. General

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Jaruzelski in Warsaw, whose country was plunging deeper and deeper into a severe economic crisis, seemed, however, to have perceived perestroika as a chance for reforms toward “a more flexible economic management with minimal political change.”210 As in the Soviet Union, where the active persecution of dissident activists had largely stopped by mid-1986,211 a farreaching political amnesty was proclaimed in Poland, leading to the release of almost all political prisoners by September 1986.212 This milestone toward a liberalization of Polish Communism triggered a decisive turn in the strategies of the Solidarity leadership. In the aftermath of the amnesty declaration, the remaining active Solidarity members left the underground and started to act openly. Wałęsa became the head of a temporary council of the Solidarity movement merging in 1987 with the trade union’s main underground representation into the National Executive Commission (Komisja Krajowa Wykonawcza).213 Thus, although all organized political opposition to the regime was still officially illegal in Jaruzelski’s Poland, Solidarity had “reemerged as a political fact.”214 The Renaissance of the Smuggling Networks at the Dawn of the Cold War Era The reawakening of oppositional activity in the communist orbit had an activating effect on the Polish émigrés in neutral Sweden. The smuggling networks between Sweden and Poland which, despite the years of stagnation that followed the imposition of martial law, had continued to function, reached a new peak from the mid-1980s onwards. Soon, the port of Ystad, from where Kaleta and Lebenbaum had been shipping their smuggled goods to Świnoujście since the early 1980s, developed into the central hub of the secret Western aid programs for the Polish opposition. As a result of Marian Kaleta’s well-functioning networks, which, as Marek Michalski stated, constituted the “most extensive smuggling channel in Europe,”215 Kaleta was appointed the main coordinator of Solidarity’s Brussels-based Coordination Office’s entire smuggling activity. The significance of the Swedish connection was also reflected in the CSSO’s decision to establish its central office in Lund.216 Józef Lebenbaum, the head of the IPA, thus advanced from being the European coordinator of the CSSO-sponsored activities to directing the worldwide aid program of the CSSO and its member organizations.217 The IPA’s account of costs for the year 1986 indicates that the Polish opposition was steadily supplied with offsets, stencil duplicators, and a variety of audiovisual technical equipment. Moreover, the émigrés channeled walkietalkies and short-wave radios to Poland which allowed the activists to intercept police radio and to act quickly in the case of imminent raids.218 The numerous



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microfiche readers that were smuggled across the Baltic Sea constituted a new item among the smuggled goods. Microfiches played an important role for the dissemination of banned writings in Poland as they offered a practical and cheap alternative to the shipment of printed items. As early as 1985, the IPA had started to systematically produce microfilms with the complete editions of émigré journals, such as Kultura, Aneks, and the Literary Institute’s historical periodical Zeszyty Historyczne, as well as of samizdat writings that had reached the West from Poland to be smuggled in printed form back into the country.219 The microfiches were, together with the necessary readers, secreted across the border and distributed mainly among scholars, publicists, writers, and other opinion-makers in Poland.220 However, the large-scale smuggling of books and other printed material across the Baltic Sea also continued laying the foundation for the establishment of a network of underground libraries in several Polish cities.221 The overall weight of the books—both regular and miniature editions—and journals that were smuggled by the Polish émigrés in Lund and Malmö between January and August 1986 amounted up to 10,000 kilograms, which gives an idea of the scale of the activities.222 During the same year, 1,000 kilograms of books were channeled to the Ukrainian SSR via Poland, 50 kilograms to both Lithuania and Hungary, and another 500 kilograms were designated for the Soviet garrisons in Poland.223 Thus, the Swedish connection reached beyond Poland which also acted as a transit country for the wider dissemination of banned writings in communist Europe. By the mid-1980s, the émigré activists in Sweden were facing serious financial problems due to the dramatic decrease of incoming donations forcing the organizers of the smuggling transports to seek new funding opportunities. The work of the Lund-based Swedish Solidarity Support Committee was largely financed via subsidies of the Swedish state, which were used to pay the wages for four of the activists involved. The smuggling activities were, however, unlikely to be financed by Swedish taxpayers’ money. Yet, the émigrés eventually managed to find a sponsor that covered most of their expenses. At least from January 1986 onwards, the smuggling from southern Sweden to Poland was partly funded by the National Endowment for Democracy. The NED, founded in 1983, was a U.S.-based non-governmental institution that financially supported democratic movements and organizations worldwide including Solidarity’s Coordination Office in Brussels.224 The financial means, however, derived directly from the U.S. government, and every grant bestowed by the Endowment was deliberated on with the advice of the State Department.225 Neutral Sweden was thus the setting of a largescale support program for the Polish opposition that was directly financed by the U.S. government and carried out by openly anti-communist émigré activists, many of whom already possessed Swedish citizenship.

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The involvement of the NED was, however, not limited to the subversive activities of the Polish emigration in Sweden. In spite of initial difficulties in reconstructing the channels of regular communication between Sweden and Estonia after the mass arrests among Soviet Estonian dissidents in the spring of 1983, Kippar’s organization EVVA kept up its work, especially that of delivering humanitarian aid to the political prisoners and their families. Yet, cooperation with oppositional circles in Estonia continued, although the available sources in the Relief Center’s archive do not reveal the identity of the individuals or organizations that Kippar was in regular contact with from 1983 onwards. Hence, while the Estonian dissident movement might have been decapitated it was not entirely crushed. Only the dissident leadership had been arrested and sentenced to imprisonment in the Russian hinterland while a considerable number of oppositional activists remained in Estonia. The organized smuggling of Western literature to Soviet Estonia from Sweden via the Relief Center thus continued even after the dissident trials.226 From the fall of 1985 onwards, EVVA expanded its activities by organizing the illegal transfer of tape recorders and video films across the Soviet border.227 At the same time, the question of smuggling printing equipment into the Soviet Union, which had been discussed in Stockholm already in the early 1980s after several requests from oppositional groups in Estonia, was put back onto the agenda. In May 1985, Ants Kippar started to look for potential funds for an extended aid program. As his application letters addressed to various U.S. foundations indicate, the smuggling activities envisaged were aimed at transferring not only Western literature, newspapers, and émigré publications across the border but also duplicators, cameras, and tape recorders.228 Kippar’s fundraising efforts eventually met with success. From January 1986 onwards, the National Endowment for Democracy financed the material support of the Soviet Estonian opposition via neutral Sweden. Up until the mid-1980s, it had been virtually impossible to smuggle technical equipment across the Soviet border. Thus, the technical supply for the Estonian opposition from abroad amounted to nothing more than a number of Western typewriters that had successfully been channeled into the Soviet Union by Finnish couriers.229 From 1986 onwards, however, the range of smuggled items significantly expanded, as EVVA gradually intensified its more subversive activities in view of the ongoing changes in the homeland. Due to the funding opportunities that had opened up via cooperation with the NED in Washington, Kippar and his confidants succeeded in establishing reliable courier routes. This made it finally possible to smuggle not only books and journals but also the first printing machines and duplicators into Estonia.230 Although Kippar’s sudden death in January 1987 caused an unexpected interruption temporarily paralyzing the aid program,231 the Relief



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Center’s activities continued to expand. Jaak Jüriado, a second-generation activist who, like Kippar, had been an active member of the REE, became the new chairman. During the first half of 1987, EVVA proceeded to channel to Estonia the technical prerequisites for systematic audiovisual documentation of events mirroring the strategies of Lebenbaum’s IPA in Lund. The video and photo cameras, mini-taperecorders, neck-microphones, tapes, and slide films were meant to enable the opposition “to collect and give truthful information to the Estonian people.” Moreover, the amount of five thousand rubles had been transferred to Tallinn from the Relief Center’s own budget in order to finance the purchase of a television set which was needed to play the videotapes.232 EVVA also arranged for the smuggling of further items that the opposition needed in order to unmask the propaganda efforts to deceive the population, such as radiation dosimeters and detailed U.S. army maps of Soviet Estonia.233 The financial support that EVVA received from the NED in Washington from 1986 onwards amounted up to a yearly grant of US$25,000.234 In view of the wide range of costly technical equipment that was smuggled from Sweden to Estonia and the additional “travel and per diem expenses” for the couriers involved,235 it is obvious that the Endowment’s support only covered a part of the financial needs and that other sources were available to the activists of EVVA. During the visit of NED representative Yale Richmond to Stockholm in the fall of 1986, Kippar mentioned the existence of further financial resources for the smuggling of technical equipment to Estonia.236 Also, the former dissident and political prisoner Heiki Ahonen who, after his forced emigration to Sweden in 1988, took over the chairmanship of EVVA for almost a year, indicated that the NED grant represented only a minor share of EVVA’s financial means. Ahonen referred to a yearly budget that ranged between a half million and a million Swedish crowns. Even the lower limit of the scale would exceed by far the sum of US$25,000 making donations from Estonians in North America and a number of wealthy Finnish sponsors most probably the main sources of financial support.237 From National Reawakening to Secession: The Role of the Estonian Diaspora In 1987, glasnost triggered a new dimension of nationalist opposition in the Baltic republics. The march of thousands of Latvians to the Freedom Monument in central Riga on 14 June, which was supposed to commemorate the large-scale deportations that had been carried out by the Soviet occupiers throughout the Baltic territories in 1941, marked the beginning of the Baltic “year of thaw.”238 A series of “calendar day demonstrations” followed in all

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three Baltic republics organized by oppositional circles in protest against the state-sponsored falsification of history. The Molotov-von Ribbentrop Pact and its secret protocol of August 1939 became a central topic of the Baltic opposition’s counterpropaganda campaigns. The existence of the document was, according to standard Soviet practices, officially denied by Gorbachev and the Kremlin. This categorical negation of widely known facts was used by the protesters to highlight the hypocrisy of the Soviet regime, thus contributing to strengthening the moral dimension of the anti-Soviet protests in the Baltic republics.239 In August 1987, a number of released political prisoners including Parek, Ahonen, Madisson, and Kiirend founded the Estonian Group on the Publication of the Molotov-von Ribbentrop Pact (Molotov-Ribbentropi Pakti Avalikustamise Eesti Grupp, MRP-AEG), the “first clearly defined social movement organization” of the nascent mass-based opposition.240 The creation of the group in Tallinn was echoed by the establishment of a local offshoot in nearby Stockholm led by a number of young Estonian activists that developed into the main representation of the MRP-AEG in the West.241 In commemoration of the signing of the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Nazi Germany and the USSR, the MRP-AEG leaders planned, similar to the heads of the opposition movements in neighboring Latvia and Lithuania, a huge demonstration in the Soviet Estonian capital. Due to EVVA’s regular and well-functioning communication with the Estonian opposition, Kippar’s successor, Jaak Jüriado, was informed about the ongoing preparations for the large-scale demonstrations in the former Baltic capitals one week in advance.242 On August 23rd, 1987, the anniversary of the signing of the Molotov-von Ribbentrop Pact, the Baltic activists succeeded in organizing parallel street manifestations in Vilnius, Riga, and Tallinn marking the onset of coordinated opposition to the Soviet system throughout the Baltic republics. Less known is probably the fact that a parallel street demonstration against the Soviet policy of concealment regarding the secret protocol took place in central Stockholm.243 The public protests of the Balts in neutral Sweden formed an extension of the chain of revolutionary events in the Soviet Baltic territories illustrating the efficiency of the communication and cooperation network between the Baltic opposition and the diaspora communities in Sweden. The demonstration in Tallinn’s Hirvepark is firmly positioned in the collective memory of Estonia, as no other event symbolized the transition from individual to mass-based dissent against Soviet rule in such a manner. According to the judgement of Vardo Rumessen, it was as a result of this large-scale manifestation that the masses became aware of the existence of a German-Soviet pact on the division of Europe and, thus, of the unlawfulness of the current geopolitical status quo.244 By popularizing an alternative



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historical account on Estonia’s incorporation into the Soviet Union, which so far had circulated mainly among the diaspora community, the Estonian opposition thus considerably contributed to the collapse of the official historical narrative that Stalinist propaganda had imposed upon the nation.245 With the onset of liberalization, which from 1988 onwards developed in the spirit of perestroika and radically altered the living conditions in the Soviet Baltic republics, the growing public discontent emerged as a mass-based movement of nationalist opposition. The jamming of Western radio broadcasts was eventually stopped, while the formerly strict border regime was significantly liberalized,246 enabling the Balts to travel abroad to a much larger degree than before. As in Poland two years earlier, the regime proclaimed at the same time amnesty for political prisoners. In the fall of 1988, Enn Tarto, one of the last Estonian dissidents to return from the Russian labor camps, was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd.247 The abolishment of political persecution also put an end to the common Soviet practice of forcing dissidents to emigrate. As EVVA’s chairman Jüriado stated in one of his reports, this step eventually stopped the practice of, as he labeled it, “deporting” dissidents to Sweden instead of to Siberia,248 such as in the case of Heiki Ahonen and Tiit Madisson who was the main organizer of the Hirvepark manifestation. The authorities’ attempts to sabotage the preparations for a public demonstration on the anniversary of the 1949 deportation wave in March 1988 marked the last example of direct interference by the regime.249 From then on, manifestations of nationalist opposition were de facto legalized. The new political climate blazed a way for the open manifestation of patriotic sentiments among the intelligentsia in the Soviet Baltic republics which initially had formed “Gorbachev’s natural constituency of support.”250 As the reform process proceeded, the intellectual elites developed their own outspokenly nationalist political agenda which, to an increasing degree, affected the local branches of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party in the Baltic republics. The conservative factions of the party leadership in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were gradually marginalized, a fact which eventually led to the replacement of the party secretaries in all three republics. Karl Vaino, the Moscow-loyal head of the Estonian Communist Party, was succeeded by Vaino Väljas. The latter played a crucial role in the increasing entrenchment with the Party of the Estonian Popular Front (Rahvarinne) which had been established in the spring of 1988 as the first of the Baltic Popular Fronts.251 By the end of the year, as Estonia found itself amidst its so-called “Singing Revolution,”252 the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR had not only reintroduced the flag of the sovereign pre-war republic but had also declared Estonian as the republic’s official language. In November, a sovereignty declaration was issued, which subordinated all-union laws to the laws of the Estonian SSR.

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The emancipation process in the Soviet Baltic republics turned the Balts into the “leaders of reform” not only in the Soviet Union itself but in the entire Soviet bloc as well.253 The oppositional dynamics that took hold of the Baltic societies had significant repercussions on the Estonian communities in the West which were considerably “revived and activated” by the ongoing events.254 While the moderates among the diaspora had initially welcomed perestroika as a compromise between nation and regime, the agenda was now set by a more uncompromising faction as mirrored in the political radicalization of the Estonian broadcasts of the RFE/RL.255 With its ambitious demands for national autonomy within the Soviet Union, the initially rather moderate Popular Front increasingly adopted the traditional “symbols and slogans” of the political emigration, thereby significantly contributing to the convergence of homeland and diaspora Estonians.256 A decade earlier, U.S. Congress member Ed Derwinski had stressed in one of his speeches at the House of Representatives that the Baltic communities in the West were so well organized that they would be able to offer their conationals at home all kinds of assistance in regaining national independence, if the political situation allowed for it.257 The effects of Gorbachev’s perestroika, the opening up of the Soviet borders, and the spirit of nationalist revival in the Baltic republics eventually paved the way for active involvement of the diaspora in the processes of radical change that shook the Soviet Union. The convergence of former dissident circles with the nationalist faction of the Estonian Communist Party into a common struggle for greater national autonomy contributed to the gradual overcoming of mental barriers that had hampered communication between Soviet Estonia and the political diaspora for decades. “[I]deological differences should not constitute a barrier to closer links,” as stated in a programmatic article written by Baltic émigrés. “[A] member of the Communist Party of Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania,” the authors continued, “should not be shunned by the exile community just because of CP membership.”258 The blurring of the borders between dissidents and communists, “heroes” and “collaborators,” helped activists on both sides of the Iron Curtain to find the common language of nationalist opposition. In view of the increasingly radical political demands in the Soviet Baltic republics, Western governments chose to adopt an observant stance. In 1987, the disarmament negotiations between the superpowers were resumed and the Baltic turmoil was perceived as an unwelcome side effect of perestroika that threatened their progress. Moreover, there was a consensus that any direct interference would only contribute to aggravating the situation and trigger a violent response in Moscow. Hence, President George Bush proposed a “gentleman’s agreement” to Gorbachev, promising that Washington would refrain from supporting the Baltic independence movements in exchange for a guar-



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antee that the Soviet leadership would avoid the use of force in its western borderlands.259 Not surprisingly, the neutral Nordic states maintained a very low profile over the Baltic issue. The Finnish government was eager to stress that it supported Moscow’s point of view in the ongoing conflict between center and periphery,260 while the Swedish government vacillated, still unable to decide whether the Baltic secession movements stood on solid legal ground or not.261 The restrained, observant attitude of the Western governments stood in sharp contrast to the dynamic exchange that gradually developed between the diaspora and the homeland. By then, the Soviet authorities had finally lost most of their control and influence over the developing transborder networks,262 a fact which allowed Estonian activists in the West to coordinate a large-scale aid program of technological, financial, and propagandistic support for the developing pro-independence forces in Soviet Estonia.263 Via EVVA’s smuggling channels, the Soviet Estonian independence movement was regularly supplied with the technologies that its political work required. The conservative wing of the Estonian diaspora had gradually overcome its objections to cooperating with the “communists” among the heterogeneous nationalist movement in Estonia and donated photocopying machines and printing presses.264 From 1988 onwards, the first computers reached Estonia, including maintenance parts and software.265 Due to the lack of spare parts and technological expertise in Soviet Estonia, the Relief Center developed strategies of smuggling the equipment, such as computers, cameras, and tape recorders, back to Finland for maintenance and repairs after which they were channeled back to the Estonian opposition.266 Eve Pärnaste remembers that the office of the Estonian National Independence Party (Eesti Rahvusliku Sõltumatuse Partei), one of the first independent political parties with a radically anti-Soviet agenda, was equipped with a portable computer and a printer financed by EVVA already in the fall of 1988.267 According to her, the computer was most probably smuggled directly from Sweden to Estonia by members of Hortus Musicus, an ensemble for early music from Tallinn, on the return trip from one of their guest performances. Although it is not the only time that Hortus Musicus has been mentioned in the context of smuggling activities between Soviet Estonia and the West,268 there is no written evidence that confirms this connection, at least not among the archival collections of EVVA. According to the reports that the Relief Center’s leadership regularly prepared for the sponsors from the National Endowment for Democracy, couriers were regularly recruited from the ever growing number of tourists and Western businessmen traveling to Estonia at least from spring 1989 onwards.269 For the smuggling of the “more valuable things,” however, which doubtlessly included costly items such as computers, EVVA still relied on its “old couriers,” about whose identity nothing is mentioned.270 By 1989,

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the border regime of the Soviet Union had been liberalized to such an extent that the illegal import of technical equipment was considerably facilitated. An account on the ongoing changes from that period mentioned that tape recorders, fax machines, and computers for the independence movement were brought into Estonia by young diaspora Estonians from North America who served as volunteers in a U.S. organization named Baltic Peace Corps.271 EVVA, however, still preferred to use its own smuggling channels, mainly in order to “avoi[d] the registration of the equipment by the KGB.”272 In the aftermath of the Baltic nations’ first foray toward national sovereignty in 1988, the scope of exchange between Soviet Estonia and the West fundamentally changed. While a half decade earlier communication between dissident circles and their supporters among the diaspora still required a wellfunctioning conspiratorial network and thorough precautionary measures, both diaspora and homeland activists could now relatively freely cross the Soviet border. Lagle Parek was among the first former dissidents to visit Sweden and North America in the spring of 1989. She attended a large number of political meetings and became personally acquainted with many leading representatives of the transatlantic diaspora community including also Kippar’s successor Jaak Jüriado.273 Jüriado himself visited Soviet Estonia for the first time in December 1989. During his stay, he had the opportunity to meet in person the activists that EVVA had supported for years and to see in use the smuggled technical equipment whose purchase and transport he had helped to organize himself.274 With the liberalization of the travel policy, the restrictions that had restrained the mobility of foreign visitors and tourists to Estonia were eventually abolished, a fact that allowed non-Soviet citizens to visit places other than Tallinn, Tartu, and Pärnu. This enabled visiting Estonians from the West to gain greater insight into the realities of life in Soviet Estonia. Soon, the exchange between diaspora and homeland took on more institutionalized forms. In the summer of 1989, the series of seminars and political discussions which Estonian communities in the West had been organizing under the name Forest University since the mid-1960s were held for the first time on Estonian soil in the village of Kääriku, located far within Estonia’s south-eastern hinterland. From 1989 onwards, the Forest University developed into one of the most important forums for intellectual and political exchange between diaspora and homeland groups. The following year, the Swedish branch of the Forest University could invite a large group of Soviet Estonian intellectuals and politicians thanks to the financial support of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.275 In general, however, it was mainly the North American diaspora that provided the funds to cover the costs of the



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regular visits and accommodation of leading representatives of the Estonian independence movement in nearby Sweden.276 As a result of the multilayered web of contacts that developed between Soviet Estonia and the West, by the end of the 1980s, “émigré influences on Soviet internal developments boomed,” also in the field of business.277 Early on in this process, Baltic economists in the West started to consider how to proceed with a systematic transfer of know-how via the already established channels between the homeland and the diaspora community which brought together “a large number of people with knowledge and experience of Western business and management.”278 Estonia was, at the time, the uncontested forerunner of the marketization experiments in the Soviet Union and exceptionally receptive to economic impulses from the West. On the eve of the restoration of Estonia’s sovereign statehood, the conditions for future business relations between Estonia and neighboring Sweden had already been set, including the establishment of a direct ferry connection between Tallinn and Stockholm in June 1989.279 From early 1990 onwards, Poles and Balts were granted the possibility of working in Swedish companies for one year within the framework of traineeships with the aim of triggering a transfer of entrepreneurial know-how back to the opposite coasts.280 In the first phase of economic cooperation with Soviet Estonia, the Swedish government and Swedish companies relied on the linguistic competence and intermediary services of the Estonian diaspora community.281 The commitment of Sweden’s own Estonians in this field was indeed significant. Due to the steadily rising number of Soviet Estonian visitors, the Estonian House in Stockholm gradually developed into an unofficial embassy, where Ilmar Olesk, the secretary of the ERN, assisted in solving bureaucratic problems and recruiting suitable Estonian workers for Swedish employers.282 Transborder cooperation reached a new dimension with the active involvement of the diaspora community in the reconstruction of a pluralistic political landscape, a process which had started long before Estonia declared its independence. A crucial platform for diaspora-homeland interaction was the Congress of Estonia which represented a much more radical stance than the Estonian Popular Front. The informal parliament was established in 1989 in opposition to the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR whose legitimacy it openly contested. In June 1989, the Estonian pianist Vardo Rumessen, a member of the Congress’s executive committee led by the historian Tunne Kelam, traveled to Sweden in an official capacity. Hidden between the pages of a music book, Rumessen smuggled a message to the government in exile in Stockholm across the Soviet border in which the Congress asked for formal recognition.283 This was a first step toward institutionalized cooperation with the leadership of the political emigration. Although the government in exile

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lacked political power and existed only on paper, the nationalist opposition movement in Estonia decided to actively involve its members in the drafting of their pro-independence agenda. The Congress of Estonia was widely supported by the Estonian communities in the West. Already in 1989, the Congress started, in close cooperation with the diaspora, to register eligible candidates for Estonian citizenship which was inherited by descent and thus included war refugees and their offspring. However, political cooperation between diaspora and homeland groups soon expanded beyond the centralized communication between the Congress of Estonia and its Estonian partner organizations in the West. Following the abolition of censorship, an essay by Heinrich Mark, the head of the Estonian government in exile, was published in the Soviet Estonian literary journal Looming in the fall of 1989 and triggered a new interest in the political structures of the diaspora among the homeland society. Mark’s account of the political history of the Estonian diaspora community paved the way for a multilayered pattern of political cooperation across the Baltic Sea. These regular consultations triggered close contact between emerging Estonian political parties and other grassroots-level associations with their counterparts, especially with the numerous political parties in exile whose leadership was based in Sweden.284 The climax of these cross-Baltic consultations, however, was the Stockholm Round Table which took place in January 1991 and involved representatives of the exile government, the Congress of Estonia, the Legal Commission of the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR, and the Estonian consul general in New York.285 The objective of the three days of proceedings between diaspora politicians and Soviet Estonia’s new political counterelites was to identify appropriate strategies for the reconstruction of a solid, legitimate, and lawful form of sovereign governance in Estonia, an outcome which was finally achieved in August of the same year.286 An Anticlimax of Anti-Communist Mobilization: The “Negotiated” Revolution in Poland Archie Brown has labeled the years from 1985 through 1989 a “conceptual revolution” marking an exceptionally vital chapter in the history of Central and Eastern Europe and setting the course for fundamental reforms and rising expectations.287 The Baltic opposition movements went through a process of radicalization along the lines of an increasingly nationalist rhetoric. As the liberal turn of Soviet domestic politics under Gorbachev loosened the Kremlin’s grip on the Soviet Union’s non-Russian peripheries, Baltic opposition against the unlawful grounds of Soviet rule which were rooted in the occupations of 1940/44 developed into mass movements. The broad



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alliances between former dissidents, local communists and the nationalist intelligentsia paved the way for the secession from the USSR and, eventually, for the restoration of national sovereignty. In the satellite belt, however, the dynamics of anti-communist opposition developed according to a different pattern. Initially, the processes that lay behind the reactivation and mobilization of anti-communist forces in Poland were quite similar. Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika and glasnost led to a “spillover” of reformist moods to the People’s Republic.288 Already in 1985, the Polish-Swedish journal Hotel Örnsköld stated that the distinction between official texts and samizdat writings had become blurred by an increasingly autonomous society with an independent, non-governmental press that contributed to weakening the stability of Jaruzelski’s regime.289 A series of mass strikes in August 1988, which quickly developed into open manifestations of support for the illegal trade union movement, finally paved the way for Solidarity’s political comeback, although General Jaruzelski unwaveringly claimed that it was a “non-existing organization.”290 At first, the authorities refused to negotiate with the opposition “under the threat of a strike gun.” Soon, however, the government backed down and invited the moderate wing of Solidarity to take part in the series of proceedings that became known as the Round Table meetings which took place between February and April 1989 with delegates from the Catholic Church acting as mediators between the regime and society.291 In contrast to its less-known Estonian equivalent in Stockholm, the Polish Round Table is widely acknowledged as a milestone in the history of the end of Communism in Europe. The negotiations triggered a number of constitutional changes which led to Solidarity regaining its legal status. Jaruzelski touted the compromise between the communist leadership and the opposition as a “great historical experiment” which eventually would have a stabilizing effect on the domestic scene.292 Even the Soviet leadership declared its satisfaction with the development in Poland. Following the compromise of the Round Table negotiations, the authority of the Communist Party was officially reaffirmed while the legal status granted to Solidarity signaled the government’s willingness to launch democratic reforms. According to the Kremlin, this would encourage the West to increase its economic support for the crisis-torn satellite state.293 However, the initial optimism of the communist leadership soon gave way to disillusionment. The outcome of the “first ‘partially free’ election [in communist Europe] since World War II” taking place in Poland in early June 1989 was unambiguous and forced the Jaruzelski regime to face the consequences of its liberal course. The candidates of Solidarity achieved a landslide victory, and it was only a hastily carried out reform of Poland’s electoral law that, with the consent of the Solidarity

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leadership, allowed the Communist Party to send the agreed number of representatives to the parliament.294 The Polish “revolution” of 1989 was, in fact, rather a negotiated compromise between the less radical faction of the Solidarity movement, which, as Piotr Pykiel put it, wanted “more ‘liberalisation’ than ‘democratisation’”295 and the elites of the old order. In contrast to the oppositional mass mobilization that characterized the national emancipation process in the Baltic republics, Polish society displayed signs of apathy and resignation, a fact which illustrated the long-term effects of a decade of economic recession and a permanent state of crisis. Thus, open support for Solidarity had significantly declined by the end of the 1980s.296 The Round Table talks triggered a certain public distrust of the Solidarity leadership mirroring the widespread “fear of a secret deal” between the nomenklatura and the opposition leaders, who, as was suspected, might “accept terms far below society’s aspirations.”297 Solidarity thus failed to revive the spirit of opposition that had turned Poland into a hotbed of anti-communist upheaval in the summer of 1980. Societal opposition against the communist regime remained split and fragmented to such an extent that the result of the 1989 elections can be seen as “a vote against communism rather than a vote for Solidarity.”298 The failed unification of anti-communist forces led to a gradual deceleration of the reform process hampering the implementation of the opposition movement’s radical political agenda. Structural changes were superficial and, as such, reflected the “policy of the ‘thick line’” propagated by Poland’s first non-communist prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki.299 Seen from a comparative perspective, the plummeting oppositional dynamics in Poland was astonishing, especially in view of the subsequent spectacular series of events that shook Central and Eastern Europe in the fall of 1989. In contrast to the communist leaders in the surrounding satellite states, General Jaruzelski managed to maintain his political influence by holding the office of president up to his dismissal in December 1990. With the first genuinely free parliamentary elections taking place in October 1991, Poland was clearly a late bloomer among the transforming states of the region. In times of political revolutions and systemic change, diaspora activists can become the vanguard of transition and political change. The fundamentally different turn of the anti-communist revolution in Poland, however, limited the impact the emigration had on the political transformation process. While cooperation between the Estonian independence movement and the diaspora community played a significant role for the evolution of an uncompromisingly nationalist, anti-Soviet course, émigrés are largely absent from the narrative about the end of Polish Communism. Of course, the smuggling networks between Poland and the West persisted uninterrupted. Émigré ac-



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tivists continued to supply the different camps of political opposition with the required technical equipment facilitating the reconstruction of a parallel public sphere in the late 1980s. The Round Table negotiations, in particular, triggered an “explosion of unofficial information” which was mirrored by the foundation of Gazeta Wyborcza shortly after the talks had ended.300 Under the editorship of the opposition leader Adam Michnik, the first independent newspaper in Poland’s post-war history developed into the leading mouthpiece of Solidarity and, as its unofficial underground predecessors, received its technical equipment via Sweden.301 However, beyond this very practical level of support, the influence of the political emigration in Sweden and the West in general on domestic processes in Poland seems to have been rather insignificant. During a meeting with émigré representatives in Stockholm in July 1988, Jacek Kuroń and Janusz Onyszkiewicz, one of Solidarity’s founders, stressed that Solidarity considered the Warsaw government as its natural negotiating partner. There would thus not be any attempts to involve the exile government in London which, seen from the perspective of the opposition leaders, had a merely symbolic function. The representatives of “Polish London,” on the other hand, were highly critical of Solidarity’s willingness to negotiate with the regime, a stance also shared by the circles around Jerzy Giedroyc’s Kultura. In the eyes of the critics, this step implied an indirect legitimation of communist rule and a de facto “incorporati[on of] the opposition into the intact apparatus of oppression.”302 Nevertheless, Solidarity leadership adhered to its course of finding a compromise with the regime reflecting a general tendency among opposition leaders in East Central Europe to reform their societies from within without looking excessively to Western models and advisors.303 This approach hampered constructive cooperation between political émigrés and the homeland opposition during the country’s decisive phase of transition toward democracy. Hence, a large number of prominent émigré figures remained highly critical of the Polish solution of 1989, a fact which further limited the émigré community’s intellectual influence on Polish politics.304 In spite of the cooperation that had developed between the Polish opposition and its supporters in the West, influences from abroad thus played a surprisingly marginal role during the decisive months in 1989. The deconstruction of the communist system in Poland took place on the domestic scene. The Swedish connection, which for years had been of vital importance for the Polish opposition and its leadership, gradually lost significance. In contrast to most political émigrés in the West, LO’s leadership openly supported the moderate course of Solidarity.305 In the course of the comeback of Solidarity as a political actor in 1988, the interest in the “Swedish model” was temporarily rekindled as “the most acceptable model to reform Poland.”306 The social

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democratic welfare state had long represented an alternative to both Western capitalism and Soviet-type socialism and served as an important inspiration for the Polish opposition. Without doubt, the close cooperation with Swedish politicians and trade unionists had fostered the development of an idealogical kinship. This political connection was reflected by the widespread respect and admiration for Olof Palme among Solidarity which had named one of its underground printing offices after the Swedish prime minister following his assassination in 1986.307 However, the bonds between the Polish opposition and Swedish social democracy gradually lost their significance as it became clear that the reorganization of the Polish state would develop along different ideological lines.308 There are several explanations for the sudden decline in significance of the transnational nature of opposition. Firstly, the Round Table negotiations could not be considered a complete success of the anti-communist forces as Kuroń, Michnik, and other prominent KOR representatives had been barred from the talks between the regime and the opposition movement. They belonged to the blacklisted faction and had been banned from attending the Round Table meetings by the Ministry of the Interior which viewed the KOR leadership as the “extremists” among the opposition.309 With the exclusion of the former KOR members from the talks, the political camp with the most personal contact to the political emigration in the West lost its ability to influence the course of events.310 At the same time, the intellectual circles of KOR had, seen from the perspective of the broad mass of Solidarity members, “never achieved truly democratic legitimation.”311 This additionally weakened their position and thus the possibility of the emigration to wield political influence on the events in the homeland via their contacts among the oppositional intelligentsia. Secondly, the Solidarity movement had undergone a profound transformation. As stated by Timothy Garton Ash who closely followed the evolution of the Polish opposition from 1980 onwards, by the late 1980s a “new Solidarity generation” had emerged.312 The founding fathers of the trade union movement, who had developed strong bonds with both the Polish émigré communities in the West and with the Swedish trade union movement, were now increasingly marginalized as the “old guard”313 explaining further why the transnational networks lost their political significance. Thirdly, everything is a matter of size. In the course of the mass escape of 1944, Estonia had lost a considerable part of its population and an even greater percentage of its political, intellectual, and cultural elites. In view of the lively continuation of Estonian culture and political thought in the West, cooperating with the diaspora community was an obvious decision for the oppositional leadership in Estonia. The Polish case, however, was different. In view of the population’s



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considerable size and the long traditions of independent political thinking in post-war Poland itself, the convergence of the domestic opposition with the anti-communist emigration never appeared to be a precondition for a successful political strategy. At the end of the day, it was the Polish emigration itself that consciously refrained from interfering in the ongoing transition process. In contrast to the Estonian case, where the opposition adopted the radically anti-communist stance of the Estonian diaspora, the Polish strategy of negotiating change instead of opting for a radical break with the legacy of Communism did not meet with approval by the strongholds of émigré political activity in the West. A certain sense of disappointment and irritation thus widened the gap between the new semi-democratically elected Polish leadership and the anti-communist faction of the emigration. A Post-1989 Epilogue: The Symbolic End of Émigré Political Activity in the West Swedish reactions to the looming historical compromise between the regime and the Polish opposition were surprisingly restrained. From the mid-1980s onwards, public attention toward the developments in Poland had been gradually declining within Swedish society and the media. This development stood in sharp contrast to the years of Jaruzelski’s martial law when regular street manifestations proved that political and moral support for the ideals and aims of the Solidarity movement was widespread among Swedish society. Even the stance of the government was pronouncedly reserved, not least out of consideration for Sweden’s relations with the Soviet Union. It was with the state visit of the social democratic Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson to Poland in the summer of 1989 that Polish-Swedish relations slowly started to reconfigure under the new conditions.314 The Swedish government adopted an even more cautious approach toward the ongoing changes in the Soviet Union’s Baltic peripheries. By the spring of 1990, Estonia and Latvia had declared their full economic and political independence within the Soviet Union, while Lithuania unilaterally announced its secession and the re-establishment of sovereign statehood. In view of the looming dissolution of the Soviet empire, Gorbachev tightened his reins and openly accused the Baltic nationalist elites of “fascist tendencies.”315 Confronted with the dramatic rise of internal Soviet tensions and the imminent threat of military interference in the Baltic republics, the governments of both Finland and Sweden maintained a very low profile.316 The Baltic policies in Northern Europe developed in a diametrically opposed direction as it became apparent following the declarations of support for Baltic independence in Iceland and Denmark. Reykyavik, in particular,

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adopted a pronouncedly pro-Baltic foreign policy line, while the Danish government expanded its informal support for the Baltic republics on various levels.317 Even in Finland, where sympathies for the Balts and especially the Estonians had been widespread throughout the post-war decades, albeit never publicly expressed, the situation began to change. Public discontent with the government’s refusal to declare any official support for the Balts grew, and even the press took an increasingly unambiguous stance in this issue.318 In neighboring Sweden, the growing support for the Baltic cause took on an even more unequivocal from. Inspired by the so-called “Monday Demonstrations” in East Germany, which paved the way in the fall of 1989 for a mass-based protest movement against the regime, a group of activists established a similar tradition in Stockholm. Andres Küng and Peeter Luuksep, both second-generation Estonians, organized the first in a series of weekly demonstrations in March 1990 together with the MPs Gunnar Hökmark and Håkan Holmberg, who represented the Liberal People’s Party and the Moderate Party respectively. The måndagsmöten (“Monday Meetings”) turned into the main forum for the “Swedish solidarity movement for the freedom of the Baltic countries,” becoming an important element of the Baltic liberation struggle by providing Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian nationalists with a public forum in the West.319 For the first time since the demonstrations against the extradition of the Baltic soldiers forty-five years earlier, Swedes openly protested in support of the Baltic nations against the hegemonic ambitions of Moscow. The pro-Baltic protests reached a climax in the wake of the bloody clash between Soviet military forces and demonstrating Lithuanians in Vilnius in January 1991. Seven thousand protesters gathered on Norrmalmstorg, a square in the heart of Stockholm. Under the impact of the escalating conflict, the protest movement spread to dozens of Swedish cities and towns all over the country where both diaspora Balts and Swedes took the initiative to organize parallel manifestations.320 The rise of public pressure forced Sweden’s political elites to take an unequivocal stand on the Baltic question. On Sweden’s national holiday in June 1991, the protesting crowds were joined by the leaders of all major Swedish political parties who, before the demonstration, had attended an official lunch in honor of Mikhail Gorbachev on a visit to Stockholm at the time.321 There was thus no longer any doubt concerning the sympathies of Swedish society and the political elites, in spite of the government’s officially reserved stance over the issue of the Baltic nations. With the resignation of Gorbachev a couple of months later and Boris Yeltsin’s rise to power in Moscow, the gates toward Baltic independence were finally open. The last “Monday Meeting” took place in mid-September 1991, only ten days after the official recognition of the national sovereignty



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of the Baltic states by the Kremlin. The manifestation on Norrmalmstorg marked the end of a half century of Estonian diaspora politics on Swedish soil, closing an important chapter in the country’s post-war history.322 At the same time, the geopolitical changes opened up a new chapter for the Poles and Balts in Sweden who experienced a transformation from communities with a distinct political profile into “ordinary” diaspora populations whose organizations now mainly focused on cultural activities. Although the diaspora communities continued to play an important role as intermediaries between the societies along the Baltic shores after the fall of Communism, this function was increasingly taken over by the diplomatic representations of the new order on Sweden’s opposite coasts. The final symbolic step that accompanied this depoliticization process of the Polish and Estonian communities in the West was the formal dissolution of the exile governments. In December 1990, president in exile Ryszard Kaczorowski solemnly handed over the insignia of presidential power, salvaged by the evacuating government in the early days of World War II, to President Lech Wałęsa.323 A similar ceremony took place in Tallinn almost two years later. After the Estonian declaration of independence, the first non-communist government retrospectively recognized the “state in exile” in Stockholm as Estonia’s legitimate government during the decades of Soviet occupation. In October 1992, Heinrich Mark, the last “Prime Minister in the duty of the President of Estonia,” traveled to Tallinn, where he was received by President Lennart Meri. With this symbolic visit, the existence of the Stockholm-based exile government formally came to an end.324 The ceremonies in Warsaw and Tallinn celebrated the onset of a new era in the history of the, by then, fully independent states. At the same time, they marked the “historical closure”325 of the diaspora communities’ political mission which, for a half century, had been a motor of oppositional politics in the West and the decisive driving force for the inexhaustible determination to challenge the frontier of the Iron Curtain and, thus, the post-war division of Europe. The Polish and Estonian experiences of opposition, upheaval, and reform were fundamentally different, as were the political and social dynamics that finally led to the abolition of the communist order. While Poland turned into the forerunner of emancipation in communist Europe with the creation and legalization of the Solidarity movement, in 1980, Estonian society was still largely paralyzed. Yet, under the impact of the reform spirit of the Gorbachev era, it was the Balts who temporarily took a leading role among the anticommunist forces in the Soviet bloc. A pronouncedly nationalist agenda was quickly developed and implemented following the mass mobilization of both anti-Soviet and anti-Russian sentiments among Estonian society. However,

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in spite of the differences between the evolution of mass-based opposition in Poland and Estonia, the strategies of cooperating with the political emigration for much of the 1970s and 1980s were, at least to a certain degree, comparable. The ferries that cruised the Baltic waters and connected the Nordic neutral states to the state socialist orbit were the common denominator. They stand as a symbol for transnational opposition around the Baltic rim during the high tide of European détente and throughout the “Second Cold War.” An intricate network of Western lobbyists, couriers, and underground activists secured communication between the adversaries of the communist order on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The constantly increasing stream of tourists, businessmen, lorry drivers, and delegates from cultural and scholarly institutions traveling between the Baltic shores provided the opportunity to establish elaborate smuggling channels. Couriers could blend in among the passengers relatively easy. Thus, they managed to secure a regular and stable channel of communication across the Baltic Sea and to supply the opposition in Poland and the Soviet Union with banned writings and technical equipment, although the technical support for the Estonian opposition developed relatively late and on a much smaller scale than in the Polish case. As a crucial lifeline to the West, neutral Sweden, which in the Estonian case formed an extension of the “Finnish bridge,” played a definite role in Polish and Estonian post-war history as a center of political and practical support for the domestic opposition. It is difficult to measure to what degree the cross-Baltic networks influenced or even accelerated the deconstruction of the communist order, especially as this aspect of East-West interaction is still underresearched. The large-scale supply of the Polish underground with technical equipment was, without doubt, crucial for the maintenance of oppositional structures under the harsh conditions of martial law. The “printing support,” which was mainly channeled via Sweden, kept the parallel public sphere alive up to the amnesty when oppositional actors reappeared on the public scene. At the end of the day, however, the well-established, multilayered network of contacts between Polish opposition leaders and Western supporters and political institutions held surprisingly little relevance for the political transition toward parliamentary democracy. The Polish path of transformation was staked out by pragmatic moderate forces with little or no interest in the emigration and its ideological visions as they had been developed in a decades-long dialogue with Poland’s intellectual opposition. Poland’s “self-limiting revolution” marked a surprising anticlimax in the country’s post-war history of fervent political disobedience and opposition. At the Round Table meetings in Warsaw, the dismantling of the communist economic system, a central feature



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of Soviet-type Communism that had been forced upon the country, was not even discussed.326 The Estonian opposition, by contrast, prioritized cooperation with compatriots in the West as soon as the liberalization of the border regime allowed for it despite the fact that the scope of oppositional contact had been much more limited in the years that preceded the perestroika era. The rise of anti-Soviet, nationalist sentiments heralded the spectacular comeback of the former political prisoners and dissidents who, since the 1970s, had invested considerable energy in establishing a dialogue with the Estonian community in Sweden. For much of the 1970s and 1980s, the dissidents’ “claims of moral superiority” had fallen on deaf ears in Soviet Estonian society, a fate which they shared with dissident activists in other parts of the Soviet bloc.327 In the late 1980s, however, they turned into the iconic leaders of the independence movement. Their interconnectedness with political supporters among the Estonian diaspora turned into an asset accelerating the convergence of diaspora and homeland forces into a united anti-Soviet front. The same is true for the leaders of the Soviet Estonian intelligentsia who drafted a radical program of republican reforms preparing the legal and moral ground for the independent Republic of Estonia. From the early 1980s onwards, leading intellectuals, scholars, and artists of the Estonian SSR, the main bearers of patriotism throughout the Soviet occupation, had been able to make use of the opportunities of officially sanctioned institutional exchange as a bridge for strengthening the cultural bonds between Estonians on both sides of the Iron Curtain. As soon as the time for political change had come, their contacts with colleagues, friends, and acquaintances among the Estonians in the West were well established. This connection allowed for a lively exchange of ideas and visions and clearly left its mark on the political agenda of the reform path in Soviet Estonia. The fruitful symbiosis between diaspora and homeland forces that blossomed from 1988 paved the way for market economy structures and a pluralistic political landscape several years before the restoration of sovereign statehood, a series of events which challenges the standard narrative of the Soviet Union’s demise as a “predominantly domestic process.”328 Despite these contrasting developments at the end of a half century of resistance and opposition against the communist order and the very different dynamics of cross-Baltic cooperation in the decisive phase of transition, the Swedish connection played an outstanding role for the evolution of opposition both in Poland and Estonia. The mosaic of transborder contacts, communication, and cooperation that characterized the evolution of oppositional thinking and activism in Cold War Europe put the Baltic Sea Region on the map as an area of especially intense interaction between the blocs. The

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impact of these connections on Swedish society is easier to assess than their role in the dramatic processes in the Soviet bloc in the second half of the 1980s. In Sweden, the growing public attention toward the political developments in communist Europe from 1980 onwards was reinforced by the vigorous lobbying activities of Poles and Balts in Sweden leading to unprecedented manifestations of political and moral support for the regime critics in communist Europe. The cautious stance of the Swedish government and its realpolitik contrasted with the numerous street demonstrations and the unequivocal support by the media and leading political and cultural figures throughout the 1980s. To a certain degree, these manifestations of political sympathy and support anticipated the return of the Baltic Sea Region into the broader consciousness of Swedish society which, from the 1990s onwards, materialized in the rapid development of a widely ramified pattern of contacts with the opposite coasts. NOTES  1. English, Russia and the Idea of the West, 118.  2. Gleason, Totalitarianism, 191.   3.  John W. Young, “Western Europe and the End of the Cold War, 1979–1989,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Volume III: Endings, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 293.   4.  Manuscript of Arvo Horm’s speech entitled “Rahvusvaheline kommunism tänapäeval,” held during the seminar entitled “Noortejuhtide õppepäevad,” 7–9 January 1966, in ERA 5010.1.23.47.  5. Ascherson, The Polish August, 130, 139.  6. Judt, Die Geschichte Europas, 673.   7.  Manuscript of Jan Krzysztof Bielecki’s speech held at an international conference on Solidarity in Gdańsk in August 2005, reprinted in Od Solidarności do wolności. Konferencja międzynarodowa Warszawa-Gdańsk 29–31 sierpnia 2005 (Gdańsk: Fundacja Centrum Solidarności, 2005), 23.  8. Kemp-Welch, Poland Under Communism, 262.  9. Judt, Die Geschichte Europas, 676. 10.  Summary of the fourteenth edition of the dissident chronicle Lisandusi mõtete ja uudiste vabale levikule Eestis in Swedish reprint, 1982, in ERAF 9608.1.13.12–13. 11.  Rebas, “Sverigeesternas politiska verksamhet,” 112. 12.  “Bubbling Baltic,” The Economist, 11 October 1980. The ERF in Stockholm, however, unequivocally shared the view that the riots were directly inspired by news about ongoing events in Soviet Estonia’s immediate neighborhood. Brochure of the ERF entitled Documents and Notes on Soviet Policy toward Estonia and Other Baltic States 1975–1980. To Be Presented in Connection with the CSCE Follow-Up Conference in Madrid 1980, 1980, in RR, f. 3, s. 141. 13.  Interview with Tunne Kelam.



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14. “Estland ruft sich in Erinnerung,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 5 July 1980. 15.  The Estonian pre-war flags that were hoisted up in the streets and squares of Stockholm featured the symbol of ESTO 80 in their upper corner, formally turning them into “conference flags.” Thus, the organizers successfully avoided diplomatic irritations. Andres Küng, Baltikumile elatud aastad: Ajakirjaniku mälestused (Tallinn: Olion, 2002), 140–42. 16.  Chronicle of the foreign-policy activities of the ERN from 1963 through 1982 entitled “Eesti Rahvusnõukogu välispoliitilise tegevuse kroonika II,” compiled by the Estonian National Council, Stockholm 1982, reprinted in ERN 1947–1997. 50 aastat poliitilist võitlust (Stockholm: Eesti Rahvusnõukogu, 1997), 124. 17. Küng, Fyrtio år i Sverige, 39. 18.  Notes of Aksel Mark’s opening speech held at the ERN’s annual assembly, 13 December 1980, in ERA 5008.1.17.53. 19.  Rebas, “Sverigeesternas politiska verksamhet,” 112; Manuscript of Andres Küng’s speech held during the Baltic Peace and Freedom Cruise, 27 July 1985, in RR, f. 3, s. 318 (“25.–26. juulil 1985 a. Kopenhaagenis toimunud Balti Tribunali ja Baltic Peace and Freedom Cruise (toimus 25.–31. juulil)—algus Kopenhaagenis, lõpp Stokholmis—Materjalid”), p. 1. 20.  Dahlberg, Östersjön, 102. 21.  Mari-Ann Kelam, “Freedom for Estonia!” in Sõna jõul. Diasporaa roll Eesti iseseisvuse taastamisel, ed. Kristi Anniste, Kaja Kumer-Haukanõmm, and Tiit Tammaru (Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2008), 161–62. 22.  Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, 331. 23.  Report on the ERN’s activities for the period 1980–81, October 1981, in ERA 5008.1.17.97–98. 24.  Telegram from Estonian and Lithuanian dissidents to Lech Wałęsa, 11 September 1980, reprinted in Pesti, ed., Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 94. 25.  Pesti, introduction to Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 33, 38. 26.  Manuscript of Arvo Horm’s speech entitled “Kodumaaga suhtlemise küsimus,” held during a discussion in Stockholm, October 1981, in ERA 5008.1.17.110. 27.  Enn Nõu highlighted that it became increasingly obvious that the ERN was largely unable to adapt to the changing preconditions that an active anti-Soviet opposition in Estonia implied: “I think that they lacked appropriate methods. They had their old methods and were stuck in an old system. And this was something new, which they were not really prepared for, I believe . . . You could say that the 1980s were not their ‘era of glory’ to the same degree anymore.” Interview with Enn Nõu. 28.  Interview with Heiki Ahonen. 29.  Internal report of the Estonian KGB, 11 January 1985, reprinted in Pesti, ed., Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 541. 30.  Internal report of the Estonian KGB on the case of Jan Kõrb, 21 December 1983, reprinted in Pesti, ed., Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 554. 31.  By 1980, Tallinn had become the third most visited Soviet city after Moscow and Leningrad. Taking into account the number of foreign tourists per capita, the

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Estonian SSR topped the list among the republics of the Soviet Union. Oliver Pagel, “Finnish Foreign Tourism in the Estonian SSR during the Cold War, 1955–1980,” in Behind the Iron Curtain. Soviet Estonia in the Era of the Cold War, ed. Tõnu Tannberg, vol. 5 of Tartu Historical Studies, ed. Eero Medijainen and Olaf Mertelsmann (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015), 307. 32.  Interview with Eve Pärnaste. 33.  “Esten des ‘Gesprächs mit dem Westen’ angeklagt,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 7 January 1981. 34.  Already during the 1981 trials against the dissidents Mart Niklus, Jüri Kukk, Veljo Kalep, Tiit Madisson, and Viktor Niitsoo, phone calls between Kippar and the accused, which had been overheard by switchboard operators, figured among the primary charges. Information note of the Estonian KGB, 28 January 1981, reprinted in Pesti, ed., Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 311. 35.  Robert van Voren, On Dissidents and Madness. From the Soviet Union of Leonid Brezhnev to the “Soviet Union” of Vladimir Putin, vol. 17 of On the Boundary of Two Worlds: Identity, Freedom, and Moral Imagination in the Baltics (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2009), 22–23. 36.  Interviews with Tunne Kelam and Heiki Ahonen. 37.  Lagle Parek stated that she was first contacted by an intermediary who proposed the cooperation with the sailor, in 1981, while her nephew Heiki Ahonen remembered that the channel as such started to function more or less in 1982. Interviews with Lagle Parek and Heiki Ahonen. 38.  Interview with Lagle Parek. 39.  Interview with Eve Pärnaste. 40.  A branch of the smuggling networks between Stockholm and Tallinn thus developed as a joint enterprise of oppositional forces and the Soviet intelligence apparatus. Apparently, the KGB considered the benefits of this infiltration program to outweigh the disadvantages. This justified not only the smuggling of uncensored documentation on Soviet human-rights violations to Stockholm, but also of a tape recorder, which Kippar had paid for, back into the hands of the Estonian dissidents via this channel. Interview with Heiki Ahonen. Similar incidents occurred on the smuggling routes between Sweden and Poland, as Józef Lebenbaum recalls. As archival evidence has revealed, the Polish Intelligence Service repeatedly succeeded in infiltrating the intricate networks involved in smuggling operations across the Baltic Sea. Interview with Józef Lebenbaum. 41.  The Estonian pianist Vardo Rumessen recalled that he once met a contact of the religious smuggling network in a Tallinn park in order to hand over a microfilm. The material most probably did not derive from the inner circles of Estonian dissent but from non-conformist groups among the Estonian intelligentsia, which sheds light on further uninvestigated and, obviously, undocumented channels between regime critics in Estonia and the West. Interview with Vardo Rumessen, Tallinn, Estonia, 22 September 2011. 42.  Walker, “Moscow Human Rights Defenders Look West,” 244. 43.  Interview with Heiki Ahonen. 44.  Information note of the Estonian KGB, 12 September 1983, reprinted in Pesti, ed., Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 390.



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45.  Protocol of the interrogation of Urmas Nagel by the KGB, conducted in Kaliningrad, 7 April 1983, reprinted in Pesti, ed., Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 388–91. 46.  Report on EVVA’s activities for the period 1978–81, 6 November 1981, in ERAF 9608.1.7.12. 47.  Interview with Heiki Ahonen. 48.  Interview with Mirosław Chojecki. 49.  Niitsoo, “Eesti rahvuslik vastupanuliikumine aastail 1968–1975 II,” 2104. 50.  Protocol of the interrogation of Urmas Nagel by the KGB, conducted in Kaliningrad, 8 April 1983, reprinted in Pesti, ed., Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 397. 51. Küng, Baltikumile elatud aastad, 299. 52.  In 1977, the Estonian priest Vello Salo purchased twenty cheap travel typewriters that were small enough to be smuggled into the Soviet Union in cars via the land border from Finland. Interview with Vello Salo, Tallinn, Estonia, 15 September 2011. 53.  Interview with Eve Pärnaste. 54.  Daniels, The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia, 345. 55.  Interview with Lagle Parek. As Parek recalls, the photographing of Western books that had been smuggled into the country was a widespread method making it possible to compensate for the small number of available copies. 56.  From the summer of 1980 onwards, when Soviet jamming set in again, it was almost impossible to receive Western broadcasts on the mainland, despite the fact that the transmissions were repeated several times a day. On the islands, however, the situation was different. As the main Soviet base for the monitoring of foreign radio broadcasts was based on Saaremaa, strong jamming in western Estonia would have impaired the Soviet Union’s own operations. Pihlau, “Eesti demokraatlik põrandaalune ja kontaktid Läänega 1970–1985 IV,” 101. 57.  This pattern can be applied to the USSR as a whole. From the 1970s onwards, tamizdat, the publication of dissident writings abroad, became a much more frequently used way of disseminating anti-Soviet records than the samizdat, especially because their content could be broadcast back to the USSR on a scale that was hard to reach by making copies on paper. Joseph Benatov, “Demystifying the Logic of Tamizdat: Philip Roth’s Anti-Spectacular Literary Politics,” Poetics Today 30, no. 1 (2009): 111. 58.  Mare Kukk, “Political Opposition in Soviet Estonia 1940–1987,” Journal of Baltic Studies 24, no. 4 (1993): 374. 59.  Pesti, introduction to Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 35. 60.  Document entitled “Tiit Madissoni kiri Siberist,” n.d. (most probably fall 1981), ERAF 9608.1.13.35. Questioned about the role of Kippar, Parek stated: “The swift dissemination of news was very important, and he rightly understood that. In general, he understood many things well.” Interview with Lagle Parek. 61.  Interview with Enn Nõu. 62.  Arvo Horm to Avo and Viivi Piirisild, 3 October 1984, in ERA 5010.1.70.23. 63.  Hiden and Salmon, The Baltic Nations and Europe, 137.

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64.  Verdict of the Supreme Court of the Estonian SSR, 16 December 1983, reprinted in Pesti, ed., Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 464. 65.  Verdict of the Supreme Court of the Estonian SSR, 19 April 1984; Estonian KGB to the prosecutor of the Estonian SSR, 4 March 1983; Protocol of the interrogation of Heiki Ahonen by the Estonian KGB, 1 June 1983; all reprinted in Pesti, ed., Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 529–30, 378, and 439–40. 66.  Pesti, introduction to Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 40. 67.  Niitsoo, “Avalik vastupanuliikumine Eestis aastail 1977–1984 II,” 2192. 68.  Internal circular letter of EVVA, 12 March 1984, in ERAF 9608.1.21.3. 69.  Niitsoo, “Avalik vastupanuliikumine Eestis aastail 1977–1984 II,” 2182. 70.  Arvo Horm to Juhan Simonson, 3 October 1984, in ERA 5010.1.70.20. 71.  Arvo Horm to Avo and Viivi Piirisild, 3 October 1984, in ERA 5010.1.70.22–23. 72.  The representatives of the Baltic Committee to Birger Hagård, 13 February 1979, in ERA 5010.1.92.251. 73.  Johnson and Snow, “Subcultures and the Emergence of the Estonian Nationalist Opposition 1945–1990,” 479. 74.  Thomas Remeikis, “Dissent in the Baltic Republics. A Balance Sheet.” Lituanus 30, no. 2 (1984), http://www.lituanus.org/1984_2/84_2_01.htm, 2. Accessed on 1 September 2017. 75.  The representatives of the Baltic Committee to Birger Hagård, 13 February 1979, in ERA 5010.1.92.250. 76.  Loit, “Kulturförbindelser mellan Sverige och Estland,” 83, 85. 77. Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 263. 78.  Interview with Aleksander Loit. 79.  The willingness of younger diaspora activists in Sweden to establish official contacts via Swedish institutions was in sharp contrast with the reluctant position of the emigration in North America. As Aleksander Loit, himself one of the driving forces behind the Baltic Institute, pointed out, Sweden’s generally much broader contacts with the communist European countries certainly had a decisive impact on the local Estonian community’s more liberal stance in this issue. Interview with Aleksander Loit. 80. Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 270. 81.  Report of the lecturer Toivo Kuldsepp from the University of Tartu about his stay in Sweden to VEKSA, 6 June 1984, reprinted in Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 342. 82.  Raimo Raag and Harald Runblom, “Estland och Sverige. Några perspektiv,” in Estländare i Sverige. Historia, språk, kultur, ed. Raimo Raag and Harald Runblom, vol. 12 of Uppsala Multiethnic Papers (Uppsala: Centre for Multiethnic Research, Uppsala University, 1988), 14. 83.  Johnson and Snow, “Subcultures and the Emergence of the Estonian Nationalist Opposition 1945–1990,” 487. 84.  Ulf Eliasson, “Diplomatin utmanas? Svenska demokrati- och säkerhetsintressen under den polska krisen 1980–1981,” Arbetarhistoria 120, no. 4 (2006): 35. 85.  Klaus Misgeld, “Sweden. Focus on Fundamental Trade Union Rights,” in Solidarity with Solidarity. Western European Trade Unions and the Polish Crisis,



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1980–1982, ed. Idesbald Goddeeris, The Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, ed. Mark Kramer (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), 33.   86.  Idesbald Goddeeris, “Introduction: Solidarity, Ideology, Instrumentality, and Other Issues,” in Solidarity with Solidarity. Western European Trade Unions and the Polish Crisis, 1980–1982, ed. Idesbald Goddeeris, The Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, ed. Mark Kramer (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), 8.   87.  Brier, “Broadening the Cultural History of the Cold War,” 105.   88.  The multi-leveled support networks that developed between Sweden and Poland in the early 1980s are one of the few aspects examined in the book to have received greater scholarly attention. The support activities for Solidarity organized in Lund have been investigated in detail by Maria Gnosspelius (née Heino) and Barbara Törnquist-Plewa. See Maria Heino and Barbara Törnquist-Plewa, “Svenska stödkommittén för Solidaritet. The Swedish Solidarity Support Committee and Independent Polish Agency in Lund,” in Skandinavien och Polen. Möten, relationer och ömsesidig påverkan, ed. Barbara Törnquist-Plewa, vol. 23 of Slavica Lundensia (Lund: Lunds universitet, 2007). A team of Swedish and Polish historians recently published an extensive volume on the range of Swedish diplomatic and trade union support for the Solidarity movement, which presents the results of a larger research project, see Klaus Misgeld, Karl Molin, and Paweł Jaworski, eds., Solidaritet & diplomati. Svenskt fackligt och diplomatiskt stöd till Polens demokratisering under 1980-talet, vol. 61 of Södertörn Academic Studies (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2015).   89.  Misgeld, “Sweden,” 20.   90.  Boel, “French Support for Eastern European Dissidence,” 215.   91.  Klaus Misgeld, “Solidaritet med Solidaritet. Den svenska arbetarrörelsen och demokratirörelsen i Polen kring 1980,” Arbetarhistoria 120, no. 4 (2006): 24–26.   92.  Goddeeris, “Introduction,” 11.   93.  Misgeld, “Solidaritet med Solidaritet,” 27.   94.  Interview with Mirosław Chojecki. Chojecki, the head of NOWA in Warsaw, regularly met with Mattson during the latter’s trips to Poland.   95.  Andrzej Chwalba and Frank Georgi, “France. Exceptional Solidarity?” in Solidarity with Solidarity. Western European Trade Unions and the Polish Crisis, 1980–1982, ed. Idesbald Goddeeris, The Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, ed. Mark Kramer (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), 208.   96.  Misgeld, “Solidaritet med Solidaritet,” 27.   97.  Andrzej Paczkowski, “Playground of Superpowers, Poland 1980–89: A View from Inside,” in The Last Decade of the Cold War. From Conflict Escalation to Conflict Transformation, ed. Olav Njølstad (London and New York: Frank Cass, 2004), 380.  98. Klaus Misgeld, A Complicated Solidarity. The Swedish Labour Movement and Solidarność, IISH Research Paper (Amsterdam: International Institute of Social History, 2010), 23.  99. Kemp-Welch, Poland under Communism, 250. 100.  Interview with Ryszard Szulkin. 101.  Boel, “French Support for Eastern European Dissidence,” 234. 102. Misgeld, A Complicated Solidarity, 5.

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103.  Interview with Marek Michalski, Warsaw, Poland, 8 December 2011. 104.  Johansson and Borowska, Polens sak är vår, 56–57. 105.  Interview with Mirosław Chojecki. 106.  Fax from the Regional Executive Committee of Solidarity in the province of Wielkopolska to Jakub Święcicki, n.d., in AO III/2450.19. 107.  Eliasson, “Diplomatin utmanas?” 37. 108. Misgeld, A Complicated Solidarity, 29. 109.  The term was originally coined by the Irish political scientist Fred Halliday, who used the catchphrase as the title of one of his books, The Making of the Second Cold War (London: Verso, 1983). 110. Bynander, The Rise and Fall of the Submarine Threat, 88, 103, 183. 111.  Jacques Lévesque, “The East European Revolutions of 1989,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Volume III: Endings, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 313. 112.  Dahlberg, Östersjön, 173. 113.  Press report of the RFE/RL Research Institute’s Polish Unit, 12 June 1981, in HU OSA, 300-05-01, f. 812.6, 1981, b. 1776, p. 1. 114.  Misgeld, “Sweden,” 36. 115.  Od Solidarności do wolności, 83. 116.  Press report of the RFE/RL Research Institute’s Polish Unit, 17 December 1981, in HU OSA, 300-05-01, f. 764 S-x, 1981, b. 1510. 117.  Goddeeris, “Introduction,” 16. 118.  Already in January 1982, Stefan Trzciński in Stockholm stated that “permanent lines of communication between Sweden and Poland” had been restored. Press report of the RFE/RL Research Institute’s Polish Unit, 20 January 1982, in HU OSA, 300-50-01, f. 764 S-x, 1982 [1 of 3], b. 1510. 119. Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 440. However, Jerzy Milewski, who was the head of the Coordination Office in Brussels up to its dissolution in 1991, clearly stated that Solidarność would never become an émigré organization. The work of Solidarity activists abroad was to be coordinated in close cooperation with the underground movement in Poland itself. “Degrengolada,” Głos Wybrzeża, 13 September 1983. 120.  According to estimations, up to ten thousand Poles were granted political asylum in Sweden between December 1981 and mid-1986. “Szwecja—1.590 osób przybyło z Polski,” Dziennik Polski i Dziennik Żołnierza, 21 June 1986. These “third generation” refugees, however, usually did not engage in political issues and can be seen as a purely economic emigration. Trzciński, “Polskie fale emigracyjne do Szwecji,” 68. 121.  Interview with Marek Michalski. 122.  “Krisen i Polen. Dödsskott—Solidaritet tvivlar på uppgifterna,” Expressen, 16 December 1981. 123.  Misgeld, “Solidaritet med Solidaritet,” 27–28. 124.  Interview with Ryszard Szulkin. 125.  Biuletyn Informacyjny no. 2, edited by Solidarity’s Information Office in Stockholm, 22 January 1982, in HU OSA, 300-05-01, f. 764 S-x, 1982 [2 of 3], b. 1510; Misgeld, “Sweden,” 38.



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126.  Heino and Törnquist-Plewa, “Svenska stödkommittén för Solidaritet,” 28–29, 31, 40. 127.  Undated information note entitled “Swedish Solidarity Support Committee,” in AO IV/215 CSSO, box 1, folder 2. 128.  “Ett utvecklat kontaktnät förser världen med nyheter,” Impuls, 5 May 1982. 129.  Interview with Józef Lebenbaum. 130.  Józef Lebenbaum to a correspondent in Poland who used the pseudonym “Zbyszek,” n.d., in AO IV, Józef Lebenbaum’s collection, folder labeled “Lund zdjęcia + varia,” p. 2 (Lebenbaum’s private archive was, as the collection of the Independent Polish Agency, still uncatalogued at the time of my research). 131.  Kemp-Welch, Poland under Communism, 328. 132.  Interviews with Jakub Święcicki and Ryszard Szulkin. 133.  Interview with Ryszard Szulkin. 134.  Interview with Marek Michalski. 135.  Puchalska, “Szwecja Polsce,” 140. 136.  Interview with Marek Michalski. 137.  Interview with Ryszard Szulkin. For more information about the significance of Maoists, Trotskyists, and other factions of the 1968 movement for the support of oppositional activists behind the Iron Curtain, especially in the field of smuggling, see James Mark and Anna von der Goltz, “Encounters,” in Europe’s 1968. Voices of Revolt, ed. Robert Gildea, James Mark, and Anette Warring (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 155–57. 138.  Misgeld, A Complicated Solidarity, 21. 139.  Interview with Marek Michalski. 140.  Göran Jacobsson, “De hittade lönnfacket. För Solidarnosc i polskt fängelse,” Arbetarhistoria 120, no. 4 (2006): 22. 141.  Interview with Ryszard Szulkin; Puchalska, “Szwecja Polsce,” 141. 142.  Interview with Marek Michalski; Puchalska, “Szwecja Polsce,” 124. The Polish sports yachts as means of smuggling banned literature into the country are also mentioned in Alfred A. Reisch’s comprehensive study on the smuggling of books from West to East during the Cold War. See Reisch, Hot Books in the Cold War, 515. 143.  Interview with Mirosław Chojecki. 144. Misgeld, A Complicated Solidarity, 21. 145.  Interview with Marek Michalski; Misgeld, A Complicated Solidarity, 20. Chojecki, who had emigrated to Paris, remembers that Mattson personally advised him where to buy the printing equipment for the underground opposition during Chojecki’s visits in Sweden. Interview with Mirosław Chojecki. 146.  Zbigniew Bujak to Stig Malm, 2 April 1983, in AKK “S,” 433600–433900 (preliminary signature). 147.  Information note entitled “Swedish Solidarity Support Committee,” n.d., in AO IV/215 CSSO, b. 1, f. 2. 148.  Heino and Törnquist-Plewa, “Svenska stödkommittén för Solidaritet,” 33. 149.  Information note of the Swedish Solidarity Support Committee, written by Józef Lebenbaum, n.d., in AO, IPA, light blue folder labeled “IPA.” 150.  Interview with Józef Lebenbaum.

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151. Ibid. 152.  Regional Executive Committee of Lesser Poland in Cracow to Józef Lebenbaum, 12 September 1983, in AO IV, Józef Lebenbaum’s collection, folder labeled “Lebenbaum: wycinki prasowe, transporty do Polski, pisma wychodzące na Zachodzie, ‘Radio Solidarność,’ dok. wytworzone w Polsce, Teatr 8. Dnia,” p. 2. 153.  “Järn fortsätter—men i Sverige,” Göteborgs-Posten, 2 June 1987. 154.  Heino and Törnquist-Plewa, “Svenska stödkommittén för Solidaritet,” 41. 155. “Utsmugglade bilder i unik Polen-bok,” photocopy of an article from an unspecified Swedish newspaper, November or December 1982, in AO, collection entitled “Materiały wypożyczone przez A. Stecha” (uncatalogued collection of press articles), folder 1. 156.  Józef Lebenbaum to Kazimierz Romanowicz, 17 February 1983, in AO IV, Józef Lebenbaum’s collection, folder labeled “Lund zdjęcia + varia.” 157.  Sheet listing the names of the IPA’s permanent staff and the members of the advisory board, n.d., in AO, IPA, folder labeled “Mat. redakcyjne, varia.” 158.  Heino and Törnquist-Plewa, “Svenska stödkommittén för Solidaritet,” 36. 159.  Established in 1982 on the initiative of Andrzej Błaszczyński, the chairmen of the Connecticut branch of the Polish American Congress, the CSSO functioned as an umbrella organization that united several dozen Solidarity support groups from twelve countries under a common roof. The transatlantic network of support organizations, which coordinated lobbying activities and communication with the oppositional underground in Poland, cooperated with Solidarity’s Coordination Office in Brussels, but was not part of its organizational structure. 160.  The delegates of the CSSO meeting in London to Lech Wałęsa, 23 August 1987, in AO IV/215 CSSO, b. 1, f. 1, p. 1. 161. Józef Lebenbaum (codename: “Oskar”) to a contact person in Poland (“Zbyszek”), n.d. (spring or summer 1983), in AO IV, Józef Lebenbaum’s collection, folder labeled “Lund zdjęcia + varia,” p. 4. 162.  Regional Executive Committee of Lesser Poland in Cracow to Józef Lebenbaum, 12 September 1983, in AO IV, Józef Lebenbaum’s collection, folder labeled “Lebenbaum: wycinki prasowe, transporty do Polski, pisma wychodzące na Zachodzie, ‘Radio Solidarność,’ dok. wytworzone w Polsce, Teatr 8. Dnia,” p. 2. 163.  Report on the IPA’s current affairs, January 1984, in AO, IPA, folder labeled “Mat. redakcyjne, varia,” p. 3. 164.  Statute of the IPA, 14 March 1983, in AO IV/215 CSSO, b. 4, p. 1. 165.  Undated leaflet of the IPA’s editorial staff, in AO, IPA, folder labeled “IPA ≈ [80].” 166.  Interview with Józef Lebenbaum. 167.  Jacobsson, “De hittade lönnfacket,” 19. 168.  Interview with Ryszard Szulkin. 169.  Interview with Józef Lebenbaum. 170. Printing equipment reached Poland from many other Western European countries via the land route, especially from France, but also from other countries such as Italy, Austria, Norway, Denmark, and West Germany. Activists involved in the smuggling transport operations from Italy, for example, recall that copying



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machines, radio equipment and ink were smuggled in trucks with humanitarian aid which reached Poland from the West in the early 1980s. Sandra Cavallucci and Nino de Amicis, “Italy. Diversity within United Solidarity,” in Solidarity with Solidarity. Western European Trade Unions and the Polish Crisis, 1980–1982, ed. Idesbald Goddeeris, The Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series, ed. Mark Kramer (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), 85. The use of humanitarian transport with food and medicine for politically motivated smuggling activities implied a high risk as any incident during the controls at the Polish border could jeopardize the relatively free flow of material goods needed by the population of Poland during the hard times of martial law. For this reason, the Polish activists in Sweden consciously refrained from using these channels for their purposes. 171.  Interview with Marek Michalski; Jacobsson, “De hittade lönnfacket,” 18. 172.  Interview with Mirosław Chojecki. However, the role of France should not be underestimated. Mirosław Ancypo mentions Lund and Paris as the two most important smuggling centers in Europe. Heino and Törnquist-Plewa, “Svenska stödkommittén för Solidaritet,” 34. Even Bent Boel claims that Paris, the seat of Polish émigré activists like Giedroyc, Chojecki, and Seweryn Blumsztajn, the head of Solidarity’s Information Office in France, was the central hub of the smuggling infrastructure in the early 1980s. But as “much French assistance to Poland was channelled via Sweden,” as Boel states himself, this hypothesis does not contradict with the opinions that point to Sweden as the major hub. Boel, “French Support for Eastern European Dissidence,” 230, 232. 173.  Misgeld, A Complicated Solidarity, 36. 174.  Although the Estonians constituted the dominant Baltic community in Sweden, the role of Latvian activists, in particular, was crucial in this initial institutional cooperation between Sweden and the Soviet Baltic republics. 175.  In 1981, the Swedish political scientist Kjell Goldmann stated that there was a discernible pattern that illustrated the shifting degree of “Westernness” within Swedish society. According to Goldmann, the pattern clearly followed the general development of East-West relations. While governmental policies turned more “neutral” in times of international political crises, society tended to display stronger sympathies for a pronouncedly Western, anti-communist stance. Berge, Det kalla kriget i Tidens spegel, 201. 176.  Zapad means “West” in Russian, which thus was a telling name for the Soviet bloc’s enormous military power demonstration close to the territorial waters of Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and West Germany. 177. Bomsdorf, Sicherheit im Norden Europas, 32–33. 178.  Dahlberg, Östersjön, 170. 179.  Hennigsen, “Østersøregionens politiske og kulturelle betydning,” 154. 180.  The Estonian case mirrored the situation of dissent all over the USSR, which was divided into a quarrelling faction of emigrated dissidents and a tiny group that had escaped imprisonment and trial but remained largely isolated from the outside world. van Voren, On Dissidents and Madness, 193. 181.  Internal circular letter from Ants Kippar to EVVA’s boards and representatives, 11 October 1983, in ERAF 9608.1.16.88.

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182.  Heino and Törnquist-Plewa, “Svenska stödkommittén för Solidaritet,” 35. 183.  Andrzej Laskowski to an unidentified correspondent named Jasza, 6 March 1984, in AO, IPA, dark blue folder labeled “IPA,” p. 1. 184. Kemp-Welch, Poland under Communism, 345. 185. Cirtautas, The Polish Solidarity Movement, 187. 186. Kemp-Welch, Poland under Communism, 354. 187.  Hotel Örnsköld—polsk dikt och debatt no. 2, 1985, p. 108. 188.  Hotel Örnsköld—polsk dikt och debatt no. 1, 1984, p. 3. 189.  “Motstånd lönar sig alltid!” Svenska Dagbladet, 19 July 1984. See also the various reviews of Hotel Örnsköld by a wide range of Swedish newspapers, in AO III/2450.1. 190.  Niitsoo, “Avalik vastupanuliikumine Eestis aastail 1977–1984 II,” 2185. 191.  Report by Imants Gross entitled “Material för artikel i Estniska Dagbladet,” 15 April 1984, in ERAF 9608.1.26.84. 192.  Rebas, “Sverigeesternas politiska verksamhet,” 113. 193.  Undated report entitled “Mart Nikluse küsimus Rootsi Riigipäeval,” 1985, in ERAF 9608.1.13.96. 194. Küng, Baltikumile elatud aastad, 126. 195.  Morris and Made, “Émigrés, Dissidents and International Organisations,” 147. 196.  Manuscript of a speech held by Andres Küng on board the Baltic Star during the Baltic Peace and Freedom Cruise, 27 July 1985, in RR, f. 3, s. 318, p. 3. 197.  Report of the World Federation of Free Latvians entitled “Das Baltische Tribunal gegen die Sowjetunion in Kopenhagen am 25. und 26. Juli 1985,” 26 August 1985, RR, f. 3, s. 318, p. 4. 198.  Interview with Tunne Kelam. 199.  Fax from Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the head of the RFE/RL’s Estonian section, including a copy of a newspaper article entitled “Baltenprotest zur KSZE-Feier. Moskau warnt Skandinavier,” Die Presse, 18 July 1985, RR, f. 3, s. 319 (“The Baltic Peace and Freedom Cruise—1985 a. ja Balti Tribunal, Materjalid”). 200.  Jüri Estam, “Eestile lähedal, kuid ometi kaugel,” in Sõna jõul. Diasporaa roll Eesti iseseisvuse taastamisel, ed. Kristi Anniste, Kaja Kumer-Haukanõmm, and Tiit Tammaru (Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2008), 230. 201.  “Våra glömda grannar,” Expressen, 26 July 1985. 202.  Gerner and Karlsson, Nordens medelhav, 13. 203.  Archie Brown, “The Gorbachev Revolution and the End of the Cold War,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Volume III: Endings, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 260; Komaromi, “The Material Existence of Soviet Samizdat,” 16. 204.  Pesti, introduction to Dissidentlik liikumine Eestis aastatel 1972–1987, 24. 205.  Anatol Lieven, The Baltic Revolution. Estonian, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 220. 206.  Letter from the oppositional Estonian National Union Veljesto, 24 February 1985, which was smuggled out of Soviet Estonia to Sweden, in ERA 5008.1.69.6.



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207.  Johnson and Snow, “Subcultures and the Emergence of the Estonian Nationalist Opposition, 1945–1990,” 489. 208. Lieven, The Baltic Revolution, 220. 209.  Gerner and Karlsson, Nordens medelhav, 258. 210.  Wojciech Roszkowski, “Points of Departure,” in Poland’s Transformation: A Work in Progress, ed. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, John Radzilowski, and Dariusz Tolczyk (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006), 35–36. 211.  Rosemary Foot, “The Cold War and Human Rights,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Volume III: Endings, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 462. 212. Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 457. 213.  Timothy Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution: Solidarity. 3rd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 369. 214. Kemp-Welch, Poland under Communism, 337. 215.  Interview with Marek Michalski. 216.  “Storkonferens för polska Solidaritet,” Arbetet, 22 August 1986. Jan Axel Stoltz, the co-founder of the Swedish Solidarity Support Committee, served as the CSSO’s secretary in Lund. He was later succeeded by Mirosław Ancypo, who was involved in the smuggling operations of Józef Lebenbaum. 217.  Heino and Törnquist-Plewa, “Svenska stödkommittén för Solidaritet,” 50. 218.  Account of costs for the smuggling of technical equipment to Poland, most probably prepared for the National Endowment for Democracy, 1986, in AO, IPA, light blue folder labeled “IPA”; Heino and Törnquist-Plewa, “Svenska stödkommittén för Solidaritet,” 36. 219.  “Unika bilder från Polen i Lundaarkiv,” Sydsvenska Dagbladet Snällposten, 7 January 1985. 220.  Information sheet entitled “Mikrofisze,” n.d., in AO, IPA, light blue folder labeled “IPA.” 221.  Report by the IPA for the National Endowment for Democracy entitled “Narrative report January-September 1986,” n.d., in AO, IPA, light blue folder labeled “IPA.” 222.  Heino and Törnquist-Plewa, “Svenska stödkommittén för Solidaritet,” 33. 223.  List entitled “Distribution (Books) 1986,” n.d., in AO, IPA, light blue folder labeled “IPA.” 224.  Heino and Törnquist-Plewa, “Svenska stödkommittén för Solidaritet,” 35; photocopy of an article from an unidentified Polish newspaper from Łódź, entitled “Wrota Polski były przede mną zatrzasnięte,” 18 March 1990, in AO, collection entitled “Materiały wypożyczone przez A. Stecha” (uncatalogued collection of press articles), f. 1. 225.  “U.S. Helping Polish Underground with Money and Communications,” The New York Times, 10 July 1988. 226.  The smuggling of banned writings from Finland, by contrast, had continued without any interruption and was in no way influenced by the fate of the dissidents. As throughout the 1970s, anti-communist and spiritual literature was regularly

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smuggled across the border via Finnish tourists. The First Secretary at the Central Committee of the Estonian Communist Party, Vaino Väljas, sharply attacked the couriers as marionettes of Estonian émigrés and Western intelligence units stationed in Finland in a report written in February 1984. Indrek Jürjo, “Soome turistid Tallinnas Gorbatšovi kuiva seaduse aastail,” Tuna 5, no. 2 (2002): 81. 227.  Internal circular letter from Ants Kippar to EVVA’s different boards and representatives, 2 October 1985. ERAF 9608.1.21.86. 228.  Application letter from Ants Kippar sent to a number of foundations in the United States, 13 May 1985, in ERAF 9608.1.29.18. 229.  Interview with Tunne Kelam. 230.  Report by Ants Kippar for the Joint Baltic American National Committee, 30 June 1986, in ERAF 9608.1.29.56. 231.  Report by the board of EVVA on the Relief Center’s activities between September 1986 and 1988, n.d., in ERAF 9608.1.3.51–52. Ants Kippar had to a large degree acted on his own making it difficult for his successor Jaak Jüriado to reconstruct his conspiratorial contact network. However, as the above-mentioned report states, the channels to Soviet Estonia eventually developed much faster than expected. 232.  Report by Jaak Jüriado for the National Endowment for Democracy on EVVA’s activities for the first half year 1987, 28 June 1987, in ERAF 9608.1.7.31. 233.  Fragment of a letter (only the second page is preserved) from Ants Kippar to an unidentified correspondent, in ERAF 9608.1.3.54. Official Soviet maps usually contained intended inaccuracies, especially around secret military bases, which were supposed to confuse potential enemies in and outside the country. 234.  Ants Kippar to Algirdas Šilas, Joint Baltic American National Committee, and Yale Richmond, National Endowment for Democracy, 15 May 1986, in ERAF 9608.1.29.54. Up to the end of the decade, the grant had not increased. Tiit Madisson, vice chairman of EVVA, and Jaak Jüriado, vice chairman and Treasurer, to Nadia Diuk, National Endowment for Democracy, 30 March 1989, in ERAF 9608.1.29.95. 235.  Report by Jaak Jüriado for the National Endowment for Democracy on EVVA’s activities for the first half year 1987, 28 June 1987, in ERAF 9608.1.7.31. The Relief Center’s archival collection does not reveal anything about the couriers or routes that were used, at least prior to 1989. It is, however, plausible to assume that the smuggling was organized via Helsinki with the help of Finnish couriers. 236.  Yale Richmond, National Endowment for Democracy, to Jaak Jüriado, 20 July 1987, in ERAF 9608.1.29.79. 237.  According to the average exchange rate of 1988, even the lower estimation of 500,000 Swedish crowns would have amounted to as much as approximately US$81,000. In the interview, Ahonen mentioned the Estonian diaspora in North America and Finns as important donors, but, to the knowledge of the author, the documents of the Relief Center at the Estonian State Archives do not contain any written evidence in this matter. 238.  Jaak Jüriado to Barbara Haig, National Endowment for Democracy, 10 March 1989, in ERAF 9608.1.29.90. 239.  Konstantin K. Khudoley, “Soviet Foreign Policy during the Cold War. The Baltic Factor,” in The Baltic Question during the Cold War, ed. John Hiden, Vahur



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Made, and David J. Smith, vol. 20 of Cold War History Series, ed. Michael Cox and Odd Arne Westad (London: Routledge, 2008), 67. 240.  Johnson and Snow, “Subcultures and the Emergence of the Estonian Nationalist Opposition 1945–1990,” 490. 241.  Manuscript of a speech entitled “Kuidas vabad eestlased saavad kaasa aidata Eesti vabadusvõitlusele,” held by one of the representatives of the MRP-AEG in the West during the celebrations of the fortieth anniversary of the establishment of the ERN in Stockholm, 1987, in ERA 5008.1.21.75. 242.  Report by the board of EVVA on the Relief Center’s activities between September 1986 and 1988, n.d., in ERAF 9608.1.3.52. 243.  “Demonstratsioonid Tallinnas, Riias, Vilniuses ja Stokholmis MolotovRibbentropi salalepingu vastu,” Teataja, 5 September 1987, reprinted in ERN 1947– 1997. 50 aastat poliitilist võistlust (Stockholm: Eesti Rahvusnõukogu, 1997), 145. 244.  Interview with Vardo Rumessen. 245.  Kelam, “Freedom for Estonia!” 173. 246. Cummings, Cold War Radio, 27; Alex Pravda, “The Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1990–1991,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Volume III: Endings, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 362. 247.  Interview with Enn Tarto. 248.  Report by the board of EVVA on the Relief Center’s activities between September 1986 and 1988, n.d., ERAF 9608.1.3.53. 249.  Interview with Lagle Parek. 250.  Smith, “The Resurgence of Nationalism,” 130. 251.  Ibid. The Latvian Tautas fronte was established two months later, while Lithuania’s Sąjūdis, which in many respects developed into the most radical of the Baltic Popular Fronts, was founded first in the fall of 1988. 252.  The “Singing Revolution” is a much-cited catchphrase that depicts the period from 1987 through 1991, during which the Baltic nations gradually emancipated themselves from the supremacy of the federal government. It refers to the central role that national songs and public singing played during national mass manifestations. For a comprehensive analysis of the “Singing Revolutions” in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania and the role of cultural heritage as a unifying factor consolidating nonviolent protest movements, see Guntis Šmidchens, The Power of Song. Nonviolent National Culture in the Baltic Singing Revolution (Seattle: University of Washington Press; Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2014). 253.  John Jekabson, “Economic Independence Is Not Enough for Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia,” in Without Force or Lies. Voices from the Revolution of Central Europe in 1989–90, ed. William M. Brinton and Adam Rinzler (San Francisco: Mercury House, 1990), 360. 254. Report by the annual assembly of the ERN, 5 November 1988, in ERA 5008.1.21.114. 255.  Mattson, “Raadio Vaba Euroopa,” 217. 256.  Alexander J. Motyl, Sovietology, Rationality, Nationality. Coming to Grips with Nationalism in the USSR (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 142.

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257.  Manuscript of Arvo Horm’s speech entitled “ERN tegevusest ja aktuaalsetest probleemidest,” held at the ERN’s annual assembly, 8 December 1979, in ERA 5008.1.17.25. 258.  Article entitled “Our Interaction with Our Homelands,” written by G. Berzins and N. Morley-Fletcher and published in the Occasional Papers on Baltic Political Action no. 2–3, 1988, quoted in Motyl, Sovietology, Rationality, Nationality, 143. 259. Zubok, A Failed Empire, 320. 260.  Rausmaa, “Soome välispoliitika ja Eesti iseseisvuse taastamine,” 97. 261.  Dahlberg, Östersjön, 126. 262. Jürjo, Pagulus ja Nõukogude Eesti, 277. 263.  Motyl, Sovietology, Rationality, Nationality, 143. 264.  Nils R. Muiznieks, “The Influence of the Baltic Popular Movements on the Process of Soviet Disintegration,” Europe-Asia Studies 47, no. 1 (1995): 7. 265.  Preliminary report by Tiit Madisson and Jaak Jüriado for the National Endowment for Democracy on EVVA’s activities for the period between July and September 1989, 30 October 1989, in ERAF 9608.1.7.33. 266.  Ibid.; Report by Jaak Jüriado on EVVA’s financial activities for the period between April 1989 and March 1990, 5 May 1990, in ERAF 9608.1.7.35. 267.  Interview with Eve Pärnaste. 268.  Even the opposition leader Tunne Kelam recalls that the ensemble’s regular concert trips abroad in the 1980s provided opportunities for the smuggling of uncensored material, such as microfilms, to the West. In one case, he remembers, a member of Hortus Musicus was able to deliver the material directly to the Munich headquarters of Radio Free Europe. Interview with Tunne Kelam. 269.  Report by Jaak Jüriado on EVVA’s financial activities for the period between April 1989 and March 1990, 5 May 1990, in ERAF 9608.1.7.35. 270.  Preliminary report of Tiit Madisson and Jaak Jüriado for the National Endowment for Democracy on EVVA’s activities for the period between April and June 1989, 19 July 1989, in ERAF 9608.1.7.32. 271. Jekabson, “Economic Independence Is Not Enough for Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia,” 363. It is not clear whether the author is referring to the U.S. Peace Corps, which, however, officially started its support program in Estonia after the country had regained independence. 272.  Preliminary report by Tiit Madisson and Jaak Jüriado for the National Endowment for Democracy on EVVA’s activities for the period between October and December 1989, 28 January 1990, in ERAF 9608.1.7.34. 273.  Interview with Lagle Parek. 274.  Jaak Jüriado to Milda H. Vaidava, Joint Baltic American National Council, 28 January 1990, in ERAF 9608.1.29.104. 275.  Interview with Jaak Maandi. 276.  Manuscript of a speech entitled “Kuidas vabad eestlased saavad kaasa aidata Eesti vabadusvõitlusele,” held by one of the representatives of the MRP-AEG in the West during the celebrations of the fortieth anniversary of the establishment of the ERN in Stockholm, 1987, in ERA 5008.1.21.76.



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277. Motyl, Sovietology, Rationality, Nationality, 142. 278.  “Our Interaction with Our Homelands,” written by Berzins and MorleyFletcher, quoted in Motyl, Sovietology, Rationality, Nationality, 143. 279.  The M/S Baltic Star reached Tallinn for the first time in early June 1989. According to firsthand reports, the Estonian pre-war flag flew from the jack staff at sea. However, as Torkel Jansson states, it had to be replaced by the Soviet Estonian version featuring the hammer and sickle before the Russian harbor pilots began assisting in mooring the ferry. Jansson, “Estland—Schwedens erstes Mallorca in den 1930er Jahren,” 124. 280.  “Rootsi võiks tööle minna,” Edasi, 25 September 1990. 281.  Runblom, “The Challenges of Diversity,” 397. 282.  Bulletin of the ERN entitled “Eesti Rahvusnõukogu tegevusest 1989–1990,” in ERA 5008.1.22.4. 283.  Heinrich Mark, “Vabariigi President ja Vabariigi Valitsus eksiilis 1988– 1992,” in Tõotan ustavaks jääda . . . Eesti Vabariigi valitsus 1940–1992, ed. Mart Orav and Enn Nõu (Tartu: Eesti Kirjanduse Selts, 2004), 159. 284.  Ibid. As stated by Johannes Mihkelson, the longstanding head of the Estonian Social Democratic Party in Exile, the cooperation between the diaspora faction of the party and its emerging counterpart in Estonia was financially supported by the Swedish Social Democratic Party. Johannes Mihkelson to Björn Wall, 1 June 1989. ARAB, arkivnr. 2268, vol. 48, f. 3. 285.  “Kohtumine Stockholmis: Ülemnõukogu Kongressi ja eksiilivalitsuse nõupidamised,” Eesti Päevaleht, 1 February 1991. 286.  Interview with Vardo Rumessen; Mark, “Vabariigi President ja Vabariigi Valitsus eksiilis,” 167. 287.  Archie Brown, “Perestroika and the End of the Cold War,” Cold War History 7, no. 1 (2007): 12. 288.  Mark Kramer, “The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union I,” Journal of Cold War Studies 5, no. 4 (2003): 180. 289.  Hotel Örnsköld—Polsk dikt och debatt no. 2, 1985, p. 4. 290.  Paczkowski, “Playground of Superpowers, Poland 1980–89,” 393. 291.  Roszkowski, “Points of Departure,” 38. 292. Kemp-Welch, Poland under Communism, 390. 293.  Lévesque, “The East European Revolutions of 1989,” 317. 294.  Roszkowski, “Points of Departure,” 38. 295.  Quoted in Nigel Swain, “Negotiated Revolution in Poland and Hungary, 1989,” in Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe: Challenges to Communist Rule, ed. Kevin McDermott and Matthew Stibbe (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2006), 142. 296.  Roszkowski, “Points of Departure,” 36–37. 297. Kemp-Welch, Poland under Communism, 396. 298. Cirtautas, The Polish Solidarity Movement, 205. 299.  Roszkowski, “Points of Departure,” 44, 48. 300.  Kemp-Welch, Poland under Communism, 401.

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301.  Interview with Mirosław Chojecki. 302.  Paweł Gotowiecki, “The Polish Pro-Independence Diaspora in the West in the Face of the Political Breakthrough of 1989,” Remembrance and Solidarity no. 3 (2014): 231. 303.  Judt, “The Dilemmas of Dissidence,” 224–25. 304.  Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 466, 481. 305.  Izabela Kołacz, “Obraz Szwecji kreowany przez ‘Gazetę Wyborczą’ w latach 1989–1995,” in Polska—Szwecja 1919–1999, ed. Jan Szymański (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2002), 236. 306.  Misgeld, A Complicated Solidarity, 25. 307.  Gerner and Karlsson, “Sverige och Polen i historiskt perspektiv,” 24; Grzegorz Gauden (Swedish Solidarity Support Committee), Jan Axel Stoltz (CSSO), and Józef Lebenbaum (IPA) to Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson, 6 November 1986, in AO IV/215 CSSO, B. 4, p. 1. 308.  Misgeld, A Complicated Solidarity, 37. 309.  Kemp-Welch, Poland under Communism, 373. 310.  The émigré circles in Stockholm, for example, maintained close contact especially with the group around Kuroń, Michnik, and Onyszkiewicz, who were regularly invited to Sweden, where they were offered a forum for spreading their ideas. Interview with Marek Michalski. 311.  Krzysztof Jasiewicz, “Dead Ends and New Beginnings,” in Poland’s Transformation: A Work in Progress, ed. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, John Radzilowski, and Dariusz Tolczyk (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006), 99. 312.  Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution, 370. 313.  Kemp-Welch, Poland under Communism, 396. 314.  Kołacz, “Obraz Szwecji kreowany przez ‘Gazetę Wyborczą’ w latach 1989–1995,” 237. 315.  Daniels, The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia, 375. 316.  On a visit to the Estonian SSR in November 1989, Swedish Foreign Minister Sten Andersson publicly stated that he did not consider the Baltic states to be occupied, a declaration which raised considerably critique not least in Sweden itself. Kristian Gerner sees this statement in line with the traditional approach of social democratic post-war governments in Sweden to Baltic issues, which reached from Foreign Minister Östen Undén’s pronouncedly pro-Soviet course to the very end of the Cold War era. Gerner, “Sovjetbildens struktur i Sverige efter 1941,” 162. 317.  Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, “Da Østersøen blev Fredens Hav. Erindringar fra tiden omkring Sovjetunionens uppløsning,” in Mare Balticum. Østersøen—myte, historie, kunst i 1000 år, ed. Michael Andersen et al. (Copenhagen: Nationalmuseet, 2002), 147. 318.  Rausmaa, “Soome välispoliitika ja Eesti iseseisvuse taastamine,” 98. 319.  Björn Larsson Ask and Mats Johansson, “Måndag klockan tolv.” Bilder från frihetsarbetet för Baltikum (Stockholm: Timbro, 1991), 16; Pravda, “The Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1990–1991,” 366. 320.  Larsson Ask and Johansson, “Måndag klockan tolv,” 18, 36.



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321.  “Baltikumi vabanemise visa ja vaevarikas tee,” Teataja, 22 June 1991, reprinted in ERN 1947–1997. 50 aastat poliitilist võistlust (Stockholm: Eesti Rahvusnõukogu, 1997), 145. 322.  The “Monday Meetings” actually had an afterlife in Estonia after the declaration of independence. The gatherings took place in front of the headquarters of the former Soviet naval base in Tallinn and ended in the summer of 1994 with the final withdrawal of the remaining Russian troops on Estonian soil, a fact which sheds an interesting light on the long-term effects of the transnational oppositional networks. Küng, Baltikumile elatud aastad, 264. 323.  Friszke, Życie polityczne emigracji, 487. 324.  Mark, “Vabariigi President ja Vabariigi Valitsus eksiilis,” 185. 325.  Machcewicz, Emigracja w polityce międzynarodowej, 249. 326.  Zygmunt Bauman, “A Revolution in the Theory of Revolution?” International Political Science Review 15, no. 1 (1994): 16. 327.  Gil Eyal, “Anti-Politics and the Spirit of Capitalism: Dissidents, Monetarists, and the Czech Transition to Capitalism,” Theory and Society 29, no. 1 (2000): 65. 328.  Pravda, “The Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1990–1991,” 356. Anatol Lieven mentions that Soviet-loyal circles suspected the CIA and the Baltic communities in the West lay behind the independence movements. However, he states, there was “no evidence that [the émigrés] played a key role,” a statement that definitely should be reconsidered and clarified by further research. Lieven, The Baltic Revolution, 224.

Conclusion

Over the past decade, the vibrant research activity in the field of Cold War historiography has broadened our understanding of the key role played by non-state and substate actors in the multilayered processes of communication, exchange, and patterns of mutual influence between the blocs. The contribution of this study to the field lies in its approach to a hitherto still underresearched aspect of East-West interaction. By shedding light on the shifting intensity and efficiency of oppositional cooperation across the Baltic Sea in a long-term perspective, this book reveals an intricate topography of contacts that persistently defied the rigid border regimes around the Baltic rim throughout the Cold War era. The reconstruction of the dense undergrowth of clandestine and subversive networks of resistance and opposition thus enriches the state of the art in the field by going beyond the topic of economic and cultural forms of interaction and exchange, around which current debates are centered. The primary focus on encounters and interaction instead of demarcation and conflict aimed at framing the post-war history of some of the states and nations around the Baltic rim into a single narrative. While it is obvious that, compared to Northern Europe, the political, social, and economic development in the communist-ruled states proceeded along strikingly different lines, there are still certain aspects that were inextricably intertwined. What Balts, Finns, Swedes, and Poles had in common throughout the Cold War era was the need to find adequate answers to the challenge of Soviet hegemonic ambitions. Although located far from the Baltic shores, Moscow was the place where the geopolitical strategies determining the fate of the Baltic Sea Region as a whole from the last phase of World War II onwards were designed. The task of this book was to identify phases of divergence and convergence, both between East and West and between state and society in the countries around 283

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the Baltic rim, and to define the impact of the transnational cooperation of regime critics on these processes. This approach can be viewed as a cautious first step toward writing a transnationally framed synthesis of the history of Cold War Europe between the poles of conflict and cooperation, a task that remains a challenge for future historical research. Covering a half century of transnational resistance and opposition to the Soviet Union’s expansionist and hegemonic great power politics which, to varying degrees, affected all states and societies around the Baltic rim, the study has scratched the surface of a whole range of phenomena. At this point, it should suffice to highlight those aspects that touch upon a cluster of broader research questions which are relevant to a wider scholarly audience and to discuss, at the same time, the way in which the research findings of the book contribute to more general insights about the Cold War as a subject of historical research. Opposition and Dissent as Transnational Phenomena Oppositional thinking and political non-conformism, which ranged from the reform-minded Marxism of the leftist intelligentsia to the radical antiCommunism of the dissidents, was a powerful and dynamic societal force. Opposition against the Soviet predominance in Central and Eastern Europe existed on both sides of the Iron Curtain and appeared in different forms. These various manifestations of regime critique and ideological resistance in the East and the West often successfully challenged the strict border regimes along the fault lines of divided Europe. Due to the synergizing effects of these encounters, oppositional politics on both sides of the Iron Curtain were to a large extent interdependent, which reinforced its significance and effects. The efficiency of transnational cooperation across the bloc border, however, considerably varied and depended largely on the international political climate and the fluctuating degree to which the communist states allowed for interaction with the West in different phases of the Cold War. However, all forms of opposition against the communist regimes were essentially based on a complex pattern of the exchange of ideas, channels of uncensored communication, and concerted interaction, be it in Poland, the most open society of the satellite belt, or in Estonia which was a rather isolated peripheral borderland of the USSR. The Iron Curtain was thus, as many other studies already have shown, astonishingly porous during most of the Cold War era allowing for a multilayered transfer of ideas in both directions. Hence, the oppositional dialogue between East and West could develop into what may still be thought of as an underestimated political force in post-war Europe borne by a huge variety of agents. The protagonists of these networking activities included not



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only émigrés and dissidents but also intelligence and state officials, customs officers and diplomats, journalists and tourists, representatives of youth organizations and Christian believers. Anti-Communism in Cold War Europe, both among Western societies and in the communist states themselves, where it usually is referred to as resistance, opposition, or dissent, is a much-researched topic in the nationally framed historiographies around the Baltic rim. The key to understanding these political currents and forces in their national context is, however, an approach that goes beyond the Iron Curtain. Opposition in East and West were not phenomena that mirrored each other but rather the outcome of constant interaction and mutual influence. This nexus has already been stressed by researchers interested in the transnational dynamics that lay behind the closely entangled phenomena of samizdat and tamizdat.1 The reproduction of samizdat texts in communist Europe depended on logistic and material support from the West. Western assistance ranged from the sporadic smuggling of small travel typewriters across the Soviet border to the sophisticated underground structures of the smuggling traffic that provided a well-functioning network of publishing houses in post-1976 Poland with printing equipment. The transnational dimension is even more obvious in the case of tamizdat, whose “double life” reflects the dual function of migrating samizdat texts.2 Smuggled out as manuscripts, they were disseminated both in the West and behind the Iron Curtain as smuggled goods in printed form. A similar or, as Friederike Kind-Kovács claims, even stronger effect was achieved by the broadcasting activities of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty,3 which orally transmitted the content of samizdat writings and thus considerably reinforced their impact on those societies where open access to printing equipment and paper was limited. While this connection has been addressed and thoroughly analyzed by historians, there is still a lack of empirical studies on how the smuggling routes that lay behind the systemic dissemination of samizdat writings actually worked out. This book thus amounts to one of the first scholarly works that focus on this aspect of the transnational dynamics of opposition in Cold War Europe. The comparative perspective on the various strategies of overcoming the Iron Curtain both as an informational cordon and a physical frontier allows us to draw more general conclusions about how acts of opposition were interlinked.4 The choice of case studies reveals what can be labeled as the two extremes on the scale of possible convergence and concerted action, that is the People’s Republic of Poland on the one hand and the Estonian SSR on the other. Hopefully, the focus on the wide spectrum of oppositional cooperation provides a general orientation for future research on diaspora-homeland networks during the Cold War. It might, however, have struck the reader that

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another comparative aspect has been practically disregarded. Initially, the research project was based on the assumption that the Polish and Estonian networks across the Baltic Sea were intertwined phenomena. Yet, it turned out that the cooperation between Poles and Estonians in Sweden in fact was minimal throughout the Cold War era, in spite of the obvious similarities in the strategies employed to reach out to the homeland. Most of the official communication between Poles and Estonians was channeled via the numerous supranational umbrella organizations that united the political leadership of the various Central and Eastern European diaspora communities in the West from the late 1940s onwards. These included associations such as the Socialist Union of Central-Eastern Europe, the International Center of Free Trade Unions in Exile, the Central and Eastern European Commission, and the International Federation of Free Journalists of Central and Eastern Europe. The cooperation between the Estonian and Polish communities was usually limited to joint memoranda and appeals, issued by the Estonian and Polish exile governments in Stockholm and London.5 Even during the latter half of the Cold War, there were only a few points of intersection that suggest the existence of closer links between the essentially quite similar political agendas of second-generation Polish and Estonian activists. Especially during the 1970s and 1980s, many political meetings of Polish émigrés took place in the premises of the Estonian community in Lund, the center of Estonian émigré activities in southern Sweden, and in Stockholm where the Estonian House hosted meetings of Norbert Żaba’s Society of Friends of Kultura and the Liberal Party’s Youth League. The latter organization and its offshoot, the Eastern European Solidarity Committee, fostered cooperation between individual activists such as Jakub Święcicki and the Estonian Ülo Ignats, who became directly involved in the Polish smuggling networks of the late 1970s. Overall, however, the scope of direct cooperation was limited which, according to Jakub Święcicki, can be explained by the fact that every group of diaspora activists was simply preoccupied with promoting its own national cause, especially during the turbulent 1970s and 1980s.6 The book has attempted to present merely a basic outline of the topic of oppositional networks during the Cold War. More detailed research is needed in order to fully comprehend the nature of diaspora-homeland cooperation, the mutual dependencies of anti-communist activism in East and West, and the significance of these phenomena in understanding the Cold War era and life in divided Europe. For the purpose of this book, many of the archival collections of the most important Polish and Estonian émigré organizations and activists in Sweden have been sifted through for the first time. However, the bulk of archives compiled by émigrés, which in some cases contain collec-



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tions that span over a half century of life in voluntary exile, is only gradually becoming accessible to historical research. There are, in other words, still plenty of sources waiting to be discovered by the community of Cold War historians. In this context, it is necessary to stress the importance of juxtaposing these findings with archival evidence from state archives and a broad variety of print media of all political colors, not only for the sake of verification and contextualization. Dealing with sources that mainly derive from the collections of émigré activists makes it at times difficult to avoid a heroic narrative, which is omnipresent in the historiography on dissent and opposition especially in the post-communist successor states. It is important to highlight that the excessively used dichotomy of democracy and dictatorship is not always fitting to describe the ideological antagonisms of the Cold War era as illustrated by many of today’s political currents in the post-socialist states with ideological roots in the opposition movements of the 1970s and 1980s. In this book, the politically more neutral term “opposition movement” has thus as a rule replaced the label “democratic movement,” which was frequently used in both émigré publications and the Western press of the time to describe the organized forms of non-conformist activity behind the Iron Curtain. Even leading first-generation émigré activists, many of whom ideologically belonged to the conservative faction of the Polish and Estonian emigration, had, at times, an understanding of democracy that was tainted by authoritarian pre-war traditions. This was one of the many obstacles that hampered the dialogue with political circles in their Western host societies, especially in Sweden. In order to avoid the trap of falling into the dichotomy of “good” and “evil” and thus back into the rhetoric of the Cold War era, also the passive support of opposition in the communist states requires future research. In this book, the often tolerant stance of Swedish authorities and officials has been frequently mentioned. The role of, for instance, Polish customs officers, by contrast, remains completely unclear from the evidence on which the book is based. A smuggling network of the dimension of the Polish “printing support” of the late 1970s and 1980s would never have been possible without at least a tacit consent by individual Polish officials. This question also needs to be examined in future research on the topic.7 Diaspora Activists as Political Actors in Cold War Europe The significance of émigré politics for the homeland societies has been the core topic of this book. As the case of the Polish and Estonian communities in Sweden has illustrated, there were different levels on which diaspora activists influenced the course of events on the opposite coasts between the

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outbreak of World War II and the collapse of the inner and outer Soviet empire. Firstly, it was the very existence of a politically defined emigration that had a boosting effect on the morale of the homeland societies.8 Information about the lobbying activities of the diaspora reached the communist states via smuggled books, radio broadcasts, and the firsthand reports of those who had visited the West. This was one of the reasons why many diaspora activists emphasized the importance of private homeland visits and the dialogue with visiting compatriots already from the Thaw onwards. On a second level, émigré politics and its ideological foundations strongly influenced intellectual discourses and alternative political visions among non-conformist circles in the Soviet bloc. The long-lasting impact of Giedroyc’s Kultura on the formulation of oppositional ideas and ideals in Poland, in particular, has gained much scholarly attention. The leverage of the anti-Soviet agenda of the Estonian emigration on Soviet Estonian society, by contrast, is far less researched. Nevertheless, this book offers some hypotheses on how the countering of Moscow’s claims to the Baltic territories in Estonia and among the diaspora gradually merged into a common language of opposition. On a third level, Poles and Estonians in the West provided very concrete material and practical support for the homelands, as the development of cross-Baltic smuggling networks has illustrated. Hence, the overall significance of the “exiles’ ontological status as a political opposition”9 against the communist regimes cannot be underestimated. The impact of Central and Eastern European diaspora activism on Western Cold War politics has received little scholarly attention, not least in the field of historiography. Referring to the low level of interest among political scientists for the topic, Yossi Shain argues that one reason “for this omission is the fact that political science tends to distinguish between national and international politics whereas exile political activity cuts across both domains.”10 In view of the general knowledge gap about the multilayered ways in which émigré politics played out on both the official and the non-governmental level, this book thus contributes a discussion of a neglected but important aspect to the current discourse on the significance of non-state actors in Cold War Europe. Political activity of both Polish and Estonian diaspora activists had repercussions not only for the societies behind the Iron Curtain but also for neutral Sweden. Their numerous lobbying campaigns led to a perceptible influence over the Swedish media coverage throughout the Cold War era and on public opinion, perhaps with the exception of the years of early European détente that coincided with the high tide of leftist sympathies in the West. Lobbying for moral and political support for the homeland opposition depended to a large degree on the cultural translation of the agenda of regime criticism into a language that potential supporters in the West could relate to.



Conclusion 289

Already during the war years, Polish and Baltic refugees proved to be able to mobilize both anti-German and anti-Soviet sentiments within Swedish society and, thus, to influence both the social democratic and the conservative camp. The latter turned out to be highly susceptible especially to the strong anti-Sovietism of the émigrés who successfully reinforced the deep-rooted anti-Russian bias in Sweden. At the peak of the early Cold War, this earned the political leaders of the Polish and Baltic diaspora communities the status of an important political partner of Sweden’s conservative forces. Even the second-generation activists proved their skills in relating their political cause to current discourse. Under the impact of the signing of the Helsinki Accords, both Poles and Estonians adapted their political strategies to the much-debated principles and ideals of human rights and, in the Estonian case, of national self-determination and decolonization which developed into the major pillars of a transnational political agenda. The bridging of the ideological gaps between the non-communist Left in Poland and the leading circles of Swedish social democracy without doubt amounts to one of the major successes of Polish émigrés in Sweden, not least as a result of the key role that this connection played for the exceptional Swedish support for Solidarność few years later. A similar achievement was the Baltic activists’ success in mobilizing the conservative and liberal camp in Sweden from the early 1980s onwards. They became a stronghold of moral and political support for Baltic independence in the West and significantly strengthened the struggle of the Baltic Popular Fronts during their protracted secession from the USSR. The lobbying activities of diaspora activists might not have had a direct influence on Sweden’s foreign policy, although they managed, at times, to influence its implementation. Such was the case when the protesting Poles in Lund succeeded in inducing the Swedish government to grant visas for all Polish citizens that were dwelling in the country at the time of the proclamation of martial law and refused to return to Poland under the prevailing circumstances. The overall impact on political discourses among Swedish society, however, is uncontested. This proves that even a neutral country was not immune to the struggle of ideologies that characterized the Cold War era and that even “minor actors” could trigger political change. By actively influencing public opinion, political refugees and diaspora activists contributed to straining Sweden’s official relations with the communist states. In a certain sense, it can be argued that they brought the Cold War to Sweden. Nordic Neutrality Revisited A profound analysis of the complex ways in which Swedish and Finnish neutrality played out is central for the understanding of the infrastructure of

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both official and unofficial channels of communication and exchange that developed in the Baltic Sea Region during the Cold War. It has to be kept in mind that, at the end of World War II, the Swedish government did not foresee the development of pronouncedly anti-communist émigré communities on Swedish soil. Indeed, many politicians and opinion-makers, as newspaper reports of the time reveal, declared that a significant part of the Swedish population had been happy to see the problem solved by mass emigration or repatriation after the war. However, the developing dynamics of the communication between émigrés, state officials, and political allies among Swedish society made it nevertheless possible to establish a stronghold of oppositional activity in a neutral state. The existence of considerable diaspora communities of Poles and Balts alone was reason enough to cause diplomatic tensions between Sweden and her communist neighbors. The dissonances were reinforced by vigorous émigré political activism and the relatively tolerant stance of Swedish authorities, especially the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Seen from this angle, the history of the diplomatic relations between Stockholm and the capitals of communist Europe was essentially a Cold War history of conflict and confrontation. Finland, however, represents another shade of Nordic neutrality. In contrast to the Swedish case, it was not an assertive stance toward the communist governments but rather what can be seen as an exceptionally compliant attitude that turned Finland into a major hub of the transnational opposition networks in the Baltic Sea Region by opening up a loophole to the West for Soviet Estonians. The Swedish neutrality doctrine was often contested both domestically and internationally. During the first half of World War II, Sweden was repeatedly criticized by the Western Allies for being overly compliant to Nazi Germany, while Berlin launched vicious propaganda campaigns against the Nordic state once Stockholm had reconfigured her neutrality policy in favor of the anticipated winners of the war. The pattern continued even after the end of the hostilities. While the bridge building course of Foreign Minister Undén provoked repeated attacks from the West in the upcoming Cold War and earned Sweden the reputation of a “fellow traveler,” the increasingly proWestern course of the 1950s severely sharpened the tone of the communist states’ diplomacy and media on Sweden which was depicted as a puppet of “Western imperialism.” The leftist turn of Swedish politics in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which culminated in Washington’s decision to recall its ambassador from Stockholm and to leave the position vacant for more than a year, triggered similarly aggressive attacks; this time, however, they came from radical anti-communists in the West. Even today, the question to what degree Sweden actually lived up to its proclaimed ideal of neutrality remains a controversial issue.



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Much of the controversy is, however, based on a fundamental misconception. The neutrality doctrine that determined Sweden’s foreign policy after the end of World War II is often perceived and interpreted as the logical consequence of a continuous, identity-shaping political “tradition.” Indeed, the roots of Swedish neutrality reach back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. However, similarly as after World War II, the choice to claim neutrality was dictated by a perceived threat from the East, namely the expansionist Russian Empire. Hence, it is rather a tradition of geopolitically determined realpolitik that best characterizes the past two centuries of Swedish foreign policy. The fragile balance of power politics in the Baltic Sea Region dictated the need for good relations with the communist neighbor states and for a neutrality doctrine that was supposed to keep the country out of future wars. Thus, it was geopolitical calculations and not ideological kinship or sympathies that formed the basis for Sweden’s neutral stance, a fact which was, after all, obvious for most contemporary observers as much in the East as in the West. This background helps to understand the significant gap between the formal and informal practices of neutrality politics in post-war Sweden. In view of the support for the political goals of the diaspora activists throughout the Cold War era which was partly rooted in earlier alliances of the war years, a more nuanced picture of Swedish neutrality emerges. The book thus approaches Swedish neutrality and its implementation from the point of view of its relations to the communist orbit and its official and unofficial stance toward actors with a pronouncedly anti-communist profile and not from the perspective of Sweden’s relations to the West as other Swedish historians have done.11 The present study has revealed a consistent tendency among state officials, non-governmental organizations, and individuals to openly or discretely support oppositional forces throughout the Cold War era, a fact which unequivocally thwarted the officially proclaimed neutrality doctrine. In view of the often unambiguous sympathies for oppositional politics, neutral Sweden was in many respects more Western than it was widely perceived. This impression is reinforced not least by the active involvement of numerous representatives of Swedish state authorities, including not only customs officials and diplomats, but also members of the Swedish National Security Service. Even the close cooperation between the intelligence services of Great Britain and the United States with émigré activists in Sweden, which started during World War II and continued, as far as we know today, at least till the end of the 1950s, supports the impression that neutral Sweden in fact was a veritable front line of the Cold War.12 Another aspect of Swedish and Finnish post-war neutrality that requires more detailed research in the future is the gap between society and government, as

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was especially striking in the case of Finland. Due to the specificity of Finnish post-war neutrality, which involved a mild form of self-censorship with regard to its relations with Moscow, the Finnish press is only suitable to a certain extent as an indicator for the divergence between official declarations of neutrality and the factual ideological sympathies among Finnish society. The specific pattern of Finnish-Estonian grassroots-level encounters, however, which, at times, took clearly oppositional forms, doubtlessly adds an interesting aspect that furthers the understanding of the contrast between the official and unofficial perception of the “Paasikivi-Kekkonen line.”13 A stronger focus on acts of “societal disobedience,” such as the smuggling of anti-communist or spiritual literature and samizdat writings, might efficiently counteract the standard narrative of Finnish compliance toward the Soviet Union, which often has been deprecatingly labeled as “Finlandization.” Further research activity on these and related questions will contribute to a better understanding of the multifaceted role that the neutral states played in divided Europe, a topic that has been undeservingly neglected in Cold War historiography. The Baltic Sea Region: A Peripheral Theater of the Cold War? Many of the decisive watershed moments in Europe’s chequered and conflictual twentieth-century history took place around the Baltic rim. Gdańsk, or Danzig as the city was called at the time, still stands as a symbol for the outbreak of World War II and, coincidentally, even for the rise of a first, massbased opposition movement in communist Europe four decades later. Some of the fundamental ideas of European détente were developed in the coastal capital cities of Stockholm and Helsinki. The disarmament plans of the Swedish Foreign Minister Östen Undén and the Finnish President Urho Kekkonen anticipated elements of the East-West rapprochement that resulted in West Germany’s pathbreaking Ostpolitik which was, as research on the topic has suggested, influenced by the Nordic states. Kekkonen’s success in fostering direct exchange between Finland and the Estonian SSR, on the other hand, was an early example of the new pattern of East-West communication that soon turned into a top priority on the agenda of the CSCE negotiations. Helsinki, the venue of the multilateral talks, became a synonym for a new spirit of Western solidarity for the victims of the numerous human-rights violations in the communist orbit and thus symbolizes a major turn in Europe’s Cold War history. Even the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which marked the end of the socialist experiment in Europe, began along the Baltic shores when Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians unleashed their “Singing Revolutions” in the late 1980s. The Baltic Sea Region was thus far from being a peripheral borderland of the Cold War. By contrast, the simmering conflict was highly perceptible



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around the Baltic rim. At times, the East-West conflict erupted in more or less dramatic demonstrations of military power, such as the downing of a Swedish Air Force plane off the Estonian coast in 1952, the Soviet submarine incidents of the 1980s, and the maneuvers carried out by the naval forces of both the Warsaw Pact and NATO. The history of the Baltic Sea and its coastlines mirrors the ruptures of a half century of conflict and coexistence, rapprochement and demarcation. The region was the setting of battles and of waves of mass deportation and escape during World War II and witnessed the general militarization and fortification of the Baltic coasts in the upcoming Cold War. During the Thaw, however, experiments with the less belligerent course of “peaceful coexistence” got underway across the shores of the “Sea of Peace” which, a decade later, became the setting of an exceptionally liberal flow of people, goods, and ideas. This book synthesizes a half century of opposition against the geopolitical status quo and the various forms of diaspora-homeland interaction that took place via the Baltic waterways in spite of the obstacles imposed by the strict border regime along Cold War Europe’s fault line. Therefore, despite the dense net of military surveillance, the chain of watchtowers, and the raked sand beaches along its southern and eastern shores, the Baltic Sea did not entirely lose its traditional function as a European contact zone. The specific geopolitical constellation around the Baltic rim fostered close relations especially between neutral Sweden and the People’s Republic of Poland leading to an infrastructure of visa-free traveling that outlived the proclamation of martial law and thus was unique in Europe. Moreover, the comparatively low level of East-West tensions in the North allowed for an opening up of the Soviet Union to the West, turning the Soviet Estonian capital of Tallinn into a major point of intersection between the Soviet orbit and the outside world. The neutral Nordic states were thus a decisive political factor in post-war Europe and played a crucial role as a third power in the East-West conflict, a fact which is crucial for the understanding of European Cold War history in general. This specificity was a precondition for the dynamics of interaction that developed underneath the level of state diplomacy and controlled, sanctioned exchange and paved the way for an exceptionally efficient cooperation between oppositional actors on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Against this background, the Baltic Sea Region constituted a veritable “laboratory of Europe,”14 even and, perhaps, especially during the Cold War era. One factor that considerably benefitted the networking processes between Sweden and her opposite coasts was, without doubt, geographical proximity. The close cooperation with the partisan movements in German-occupied Poland and the Baltic states which developed during World War II illustrated the significance of the Baltic waterways as a bridge between the underground

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structures of armed resistance and supporters in the West. Even during the high tide of the early Cold War, when practically all traffic between the shores had ceased, the spatial factor was not completely insignificant. It was thus no coincidence that some of the major centers of information gathering on the development in Poland and the Soviet Baltic republics were located in Sweden. From the late 1940s onwards, the Estonian National Fund in Stockholm hosted the largest Western database of information on developments in Soviet Estonia and distributed its Baltic newsletters and bulletins not only throughout Western Europe, but also in the Americas and Australia. Ants Kippar’s Relief Center in Stockholm temporarily took over the role as the organization with the best access to updated and uncensored information on the ongoing events in Estonia due to his regular contact with leading dissidents via nearby Finland. Especially from the mid-1970s onwards, Sweden played a similar key role in the Polish case. The neutral country was a strategic bridgehead for the unhampered dissemination of information on current events thanks to the close cooperation that had evolved between leading KOR members and a handful of émigrés strategically placed in Stockholm, London, and Paris. With the foundation of the IPA in the early 1980s, the small university town of Lund in southern Sweden turned into the central node of a global network of news dissemination on Polish issues, a fact which, once again, highlights the crucial significance of the Swedish connection. The smuggling of banned spiritual and political writings including samizdat, as well as printing equipment designated for the oppositional underground in communist Europe is a topic of its own, as is the economically motivated smuggling of a broad range of consumer goods, pornography, and alcohol across the bloc border, a phenomenon which could not be covered in the book. With the reconstruction of the tourist infrastructure between the Baltic shores from the Thaw onwards, both forms of smuggling activity established parallel levels of interaction and communication between East and West which, to a large degree, have still to be discovered by Cold War historians. Especially the “printing support” for the Polish opposition and, to a lesser degree, the Estonian dissidents and independence movement of the late 1980s, considerably differed from the earlier efforts of diaspora activists to surmount the Iron Curtain. Providing the technical and logistic preconditions for the development of an alternative, parallel public sphere behind the Iron Curtain, the diaspora activists and their Western supporters actively interfered in, as the language of diplomacy describes it, the internal affairs of the communist states. The large-scale smuggling of technical equipment, which developed via the Baltic ferries from the late 1970s onwards and continued until the fall of the communist regimes around the Baltic rim, thus marked a climax of concerted oppositional activity across the bloc border.



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Although, at least in the Polish case, continental routes were also used to supply the opposition with printing equipment, the frequently trafficked smuggling routes across the Baltic Sea were nevertheless unique. Already from 1976 onwards, when KOR formed the spearhead of organized societal opposition in communist Poland, most of the smuggled equipment designated for the underground publishing houses reached the country via ferries from Sweden. The crucial lifeline of the Swedish-Polish connection gained even more importance with the establishment of Solidarity which resulted in the exceptionally close cooperation with the Swedish trade union movement and triggered a lively interest in the Swedish model among oppositional circles in Poland. In the case of Soviet Estonia, the significance of the Baltic connection is even more obvious. The Finnish-Estonian connection formed one of the most important Soviet “loopholes” to the West and enabled oppositional circles in the Estonian SSR to establish direct contacts with their compatriots in neighboring Sweden. As the reconstruction of the complex network that held these smuggling activities alive has shown, Sweden was a strategically well-located seat of the main protagonists of these clandestine activities. Their work was embedded in a much broader web with nodes not only in London, Paris, and Helsinki, but also in Washington and New York. These manifold and intricate entanglements not only illustrate the larger context of the activities coordinated across the Baltic shores but also highlight the crucial significance of the cross-Baltic networking processes for the Cold War conflict in general and the coordination of oppositional activities between East and West in particular. On a more general level, the book thus sheds a new light on the “many important, and sometimes forgotten, ways in which Europe and Europeans helped make their own history” during the Cold War.15 Epilogue: Some Conceptual Remarks One of the major challenges that Cold War historians have faced—and are still facing—is the classification of the multilayered and complex phenomenon they are studying and the framing of a half century of a virtually globally staged conflict of competing systems, models of modernity, and political and economic visions. In the field of Cold War historiography, the political vocabulary of the era is still alive and frequently used, which is a problem not least in view of the fact that it offers a back door through which “Cold War thinking” can sneak back in. The topos of the “Iron Curtain” has still not lost its imaginative power, even among those who have no memories of their own of the times when borders in Europe still were secured with concrete, barbed wire, and spring-guns. Whether and when it is appropriate to use the term is a complex question, although it is tempting to do so in view of its inherent

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symbolic connotations. The notion “Cold War” itself is not uncontested and the question whether it indeed can be applied to the entire time span between the end of World War II and the demise of Communism in Europe remains unsolved. During the high tide of European détente, when many observers declared the Cold War to be over, the term largely disappeared from the headlines. This book itself is an example of how authors prefer to rely on commonly known catchphrases and buzz words that are connected to the political discourse and perceptions of the era they describe. The study has endeavored to shed new light on one concretely defined aspect of European post-war history and thus does not aspire to come up with a new approach to the terminology frequently used in the field of Cold War historiography. Nevertheless, some general concluding remarks on the perception of the systemic conflict and the significance and nature of borders in Cold War Europe are certainly called for. One central issue touches upon the question what the essence of the Cold War actually was and whether the notion “Cold War” fits to define what the book is all about. The term itself is a Western creation and was born out of the late insight that Stalin’s motives for pushing the Red Army further and further westwards during the final phase of World War II was based on more than just the desire to crush Hitler’s Third Reich. The onset of the Cold War, as it is commonly perceived, is thus not defined by the beginning of Soviet expansionism westwards but by the degree to which the Western Allies were aware of what their strategic wartime partnership with the USSR eventually meant for the future of Europe. As has been discussed in the beginning of the book, even the year of 1945 is not totally appropriate to describe the decisive transition from “hot” to “Cold War.” First and foremost, it has to be remembered that the symbolism of 1945 is basically a product of both Western and Soviet history writing. Seen from the perspective of the “liberated” or, respectively, “Soviet-occupied” lands of Central and Eastern Europe, 1944 was a far more decisive watershed. As the book largely views the Baltic Sea Region’s post-war history through the lens of Poles and Balts on both sides of the Iron Curtain, it has its own timeframe of reference. In the specific context of the Baltic Sea Region, the Cold War conflict was essentially about Soviet expansionism westwards and Nordic responses to it. Seen from this perspective, the year of 1939 appears as a more appropriate starting point for a study that is interested in the longue durée of the era when a military and ideological fault line divided the Baltic Sea Region. Due to the strong association of 1939 with the onset of Nazi Germany’s aggressive crusade to the East, it is often overlooked that the same year marked the beginning of the Soviet Union’s westward expansionism. A few weeks after the signing of the Molotov-von Ribbentrop Pact, Stalin’s Red Army invaded



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eastern Poland. Later that same autumn, after having launched a series of attempts to put pressure on the small nations west of the USSR’s borders, Moscow started a military attack against Finland and established military bases in the neutral Baltic states, an action which formed a prelude to their annexation in the summer of the following year. The demarcation process in the Baltic Sea Region, which henceforth was divided into occupied and nonoccupied territories, started with the onset of World War II and continued into the Cold War era. Therefore, the transformation of the Baltic Sea into a “sea of conflict” needs to be seen in a wider chronological perspective as does the history of the political struggle of the Polish and Baltic diaspora communities in the West. The political agenda of Polish and Baltic émigré activists in neutral Sweden was developed in the initial phase of World War II. Despite the decidedly anti-German stance that both Poles and Balts displayed throughout the war, the anti-Soviet peak of their activities was perceptible well before the Red Army started its “March on Berlin.” The experiences of displacement of the political refugees and of occupation of Poles and Balts in the homeland continued after 1945. The coordinated underground resistance of the war years gradually gave way to post-war opposition. However, the Cold War conflict itself, as a diplomatic war and a stalemate of two competing superpowers, emerged first toward the end of the 1940s, when the Nordic states reconfigured their policies along the lines of changing political alliances and the Baltic waterways were eventually sealed off entirely. In view of the overall objective of this book, it thus proved to be more appropriate to choose a broader chronological frame that covers the whole period from the onset of World War II to the fall of Communism in 1989/91. Hence, the political and ideological conflicts of what we commonly label the “Cold War” played out on very different levels. Switching between the different angles from which we approach the various manifestations and layers of the East-West conflict thus demands a conscious revision of our perception of what the Cold War was and of what it was about, a reflection which once again highlights the difficulties in determining a general chronological frame that can be applied to Cold War history at large.16 A second set of questions touches upon the notion of the “Iron Curtain.” As many transnationally framed studies on the Cold War era already have shown, the degree of permeability of the frontier between the communist and non-communist orbit considerably shifted throughout the post-war decades. Thus, the bloc border was by far not as static as, for instance, the very physical frontier of the Berlin Wall, which has become the main allegory of both Europe’s Cold War division and its reunification. Especially in the case of the Baltic Sea Region, where Nordic neutrality was a factor that

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had an important impact on the intensity and scope of East-West contacts, the term “Iron Curtain” is in fact rather misleading. Although the Baltic coastlines remained highly militarized throughout the Cold War era and the almost hermetic isolation of the coastal areas from the hinterland remained unchanged in the Soviet Baltic republics, it was in fact only during the first post-war decade that the connotations evoked by the notion “Iron Curtain” more or less mirrored the political reality of the time. With the reconstruction of a functioning infrastructure between the Baltic shores from the Thaw years onwards, the isolation of Poland and Soviet Estonia from the opposite coast was de facto broken. The Baltic ferries stand for a continuity of traffic, trade, and tourism that bridged the gap between the Baltic shores regardless of the crises and shifting dynamics of East-West relations up to the fall of the communist regimes. This aspect once more highlights the significance of the ports around the Baltic rim as loopholes.17 At the end of the day it is, however, again a matter of perspective. The “Iron Curtain” was as much a physical frontier as a mental construct. Its suggestive power reinforced the perception of conflict and demarcation and fostered the “othering” of the people and societies beyond the bloc border. These processes developed regardless of the actual degree of permeability of East-West borders and had long-term consequences that are highly perceptible in Europe up until the present. Seen from the perspective of the political emigration in the West, for whom the installation of communist governments throughout the Soviet sphere of influence had been reason enough to refuse repatriation, to emigrate, or to escape, the “Iron Curtain” very much remained a virtually insurmountable barrier up to the fall of the communist regimes. A significant part of the generation of war refugees from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, for instance, never set foot on native soil during the decades of the Soviet occupation, at least until the late 1980s when the general attitude toward the Sovietized homelands swiftly changed. Applying for a visa in a Soviet embassy was widely perceived as an act of treason, which undermined the very essence of being a political émigré. Moreover, the descendants of the Baltic war refugees were officially considered Soviet citizens by the USSR. This deprived those who wanted to visit the old country of the security of consular support from the states whose passports they held during the time of their visit to the Soviet Union, a fact which prevented many younger Balts in the West from taking the risk. As the study has shown, the post-war history of the Polish diaspora significantly differed from the Baltic case even in this respect as most of the apolitical Polonia community maintained strong ties to the homeland via family visits, cultural exchange, and business cooperation. However, as far as the politically active faction of the Polish community is concerned, the situation



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was again largely similar. Those who were engaged in anti-communist lobbying activities or in the organization of clandestine support networks for the domestic opposition would most probably not have been granted an entry visa by their home country’s authorities. The protagonists of opposition in communist Europe itself faced similar obstacles. The application for a passport and an exit permit was a complicated process and presupposed the thorough screening of the applicant. As soon as there was a minor political doubt about the applicant’s biography, approval was usually denied. Hence, neither the politically motivated liberalization of border regimes during the Cold War, nor the official sanctioning of cultural and scholarly exchange between the blocs affected the ban on foreign travel that the communist regimes arbitrarily imposed on selected citizens. The multilayered ways in which Cold War boundaries played out thus reveal the uneven nature and shifting efficiency of what is commonly labeled the “Iron Curtain.” It could be, at once, porous and rigid, a virtually insurmountable or easily circumvented obstacle. In view of the current discourse on applying transnational perspectives to European Cold War history, this insight can be seen as one of the major contributions this book has delivered. NOTES 1.  See, for example, Benatov, “Demystifying the Logic of Tamizdat”; Serguei Alex Oushakine, “The Terrifying Mimicry of Samizdat,” Public Culture 13, no. 2 (2001); Kind-Kovács and Labov, eds., Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond. 2.  Benatov, “Demystifying the Logic of Tamizdat,” 109. 3.  Friederike Kind-Kovács, “Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty as the ‘Echo Chamber’ of Samizdat,” in Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond. Transnational Media During and After Socialism, ed. Friederike Kind-Kovács and Jessie Labov, vol. 13 of Studies in Contemporary European History, ed. Konrad Jarausch and Henry Rousso (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013), 79. 4.  The lack of valuable studies with a comparative perspective has been addressed in Yossi Shain’s work on émigré political activity: “Historians, social scientists, and legal scholars . . . have dealt with numerous single-country case studies, often indirectly, and have offered little comparative discussion of the forms and characteristics of exile activity.” Shain, The Frontier of Loyalty, 6. 5.  One of the few references to cooperation between the protagonists of émigré political activity among Poles and Estonians in Sweden is to be found in a report of the Polish consul general in Stockholm, written in 1950. One of the points of intersection during the early Cold War was apparently the Swedish branch of the International Federation of Free Journalists of Central and Eastern Europe. In the framework of this association, émigré activists such as Helena Purre, whose main task was the collection and dissemination of uncensored information on Soviet Estonia within the framework

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of the ERN and the ERF, closely cooperated with prominent Polish émigrés such as Tadeusz Norwid-Nowacki and Norbert Żaba. The latter, nota bene, spoke Estonian fluently and thus was an important link between the Estonian and Polish communities. Report by Michał Jachnis on the second half year of 1949, 31 January 1950, in AMSZ, z. 20, w. 5, t. 68, s. 81–82.   6.  Interview with Jakub Święcicki. It might be important to add that not all émigré leaders agreed that the Central and Eastern European communities of political refugees and émigrés in the West shared a common fate. August Zaleski, for instance, who held the office of the Polish president in exile in the late 1940s and early 1950s, considered Poland’s post-war fate to be exceptional and refused all cooperation with other leading émigré politicians from behind the Iron Curtain. Habielski, Życie społeczne i kulturalne emigracji, 238.   7.  According to Ryszard Szulkin and Marek Michalski, at least three containers with printing equipment could be successfully smuggled into Poland via the port of Gdańsk by bribing the customs officers on duty. Paweł Jaworski, “För Polen i främmande land. Solidaritets Informationskontor i Stockholm 1981–1989,” in Solidaritet & diplomati. Svenskt fackligt och diplomatiskt stöd till Polens demokratisering under 1980-talet, ed. Klaus Misgeld, Karl Molin, and Paweł Jaworski. Vol. 61 of Södertörn Academic Studies (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2015), 317.   8.  The former Estonian dissident Heiki Ahonen recalls that the awareness of the political struggle among the Estonian communities in the West had a consolidating effect on societal opposition in the Estonian SSR. The politically and culturally very active diaspora community, especially in Sweden, Canada, and the United States, represented “a kind of ‘alternative’ Estonia” that was believed to be able to survive even if Estonia itself became completely Russified. Interview with Heiki Ahonen.  9. Shain, The Frontier of Loyalty, 168. 10.  Ibid., 6–7. 11.  A similar approach to deconstructing the common perception of Swedish post-war neutrality and the alleged societal consensus in this question guided the large-scale research project entitled “Sweden during the Cold War” (Sverige under kalla kriget). The project started in 1996 as a cooperative effort between researchers from the universities of Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Uppsala and investigated Swedish security policy and public opinion from 1945 to 1969. The present study comes to a similar conclusion as the research project, namely that Sweden’s role in Cold War Europe needs to be seen rather as that of an informal member of the Western bloc but also introduces a new perspective by going beyond the fields of security and domestic policy. 12.  In the Soviet and Polish press, the émigré activists in Sweden were regularly denounced as employees of Western intelligence units throughout the Cold War era. The rumors about Jakub Święcicki’s involvement with the CIA, for instance, which were consciously fueled by the Polish press, were among the reasons why he was rejected as the head of Solidarity’s Information Office in Stockholm by Swedish trade union leaders in early 1982. It is, however, still difficult to verify the speculations about the active involvement of Swedish and other Western services in the oppositional networks across the Baltic Sea, especially from the 1960s onwards.



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13.  For a rich and fascinating account of informal Finnish-Estonian relations in the years prior to the collapse of the USSR that illustrates the contrast between the official and unofficial Finnish stance vis-à-vis the Soviet Baltic republics, see Heikki Rausmaa, Kultuuri sildi all saab üsna palju ära teha: Soome ja Eesti poliitilised suhted 1988. aasta kevadest diplomaatiliste suhete sõlmimiseni 1991. aasta augustis (Tallinn: Argo, 2015). 14.  Hennigsen, “Østersøregionens politiske og kulturelle betydning,” 152. 15.  Michael Cox, “Another Transatlantic Split? American and European Narratives and the End of the Cold War,” Cold War History 7, no. 1 (2007): 121. 16.  Archie Brown is right when he stresses that there is no “‘scientific answer’ to the ‘right’ chronological framing of the Cold War.” After all, he states, the term “Cold War” is a metaphor. Brown, “Perestroika and the Cold War,” 3. 17.  Kochanowski, Jenseits der Planwirtschaft, 176.

Appendix

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF THE INTERVIEWEES Ahonen, Heiki (*1956 in Pärnu, Estonian SSR). Ahonen, a trained geodesist, became involved in the Soviet Estonian dissident movement after having completed his mandatory two years of military service in the Ukrainian SSR in 1977. In 1983, he was detained and convicted to a five-year sentence for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” Having spent four years in a camp for political prisoners in the Perm oblast, he was prematurely released in 1987. Upon his return to Tallinn, he became one of the main organizers of the Hirvepark demonstration and a founding member of the Estonian Group on the Publication of the Molotov-von Ribbentrop Pact. Ahonen was arrested in 1988 and forcibly exiled to Sweden, where he served as the vice chairmen of the Relief Center for Estonian Prisoners of Conscience. Between 1989 and 1998, he worked as an editor and, later, head of the Estonian section of Radio Free Europe in Munich and Prague. Back in Tallinn, he became the first director of the Museum of Occupations, a position that he occupied from 2003 to 2012. Chojecki, Mirosław (*1949 in Warsaw, Poland). Chojecki, who was expelled from the Warsaw University of Technology for having participated in the student protests of March 1968, graduated with a degree in chemistry at the University of Warsaw in 1974. Due to his engagement in the support activities for the striking workers of Ursus and Radom in 1976, Chojecki was dismissed from his position at the Institute for Nuclear Research. He joined the Workers’ Defense Committee and became involved in underground 303

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publishing, an activity he continued as the co-founder and head of Poland’s largest underground publishing house NOWA. Chojecki, who actively supported the Solidarity movement, was in the United States when martial law was declared in December 1981. Instead of returning, he decided to continue his engagement for the now illegal trade union in Paris. He was a member of Solidarity’s Coordination Office in Brussels and functioned as the main coordinator of Western support for Polish underground publishing and radio broadcasters in close cooperation with the circles around Jerzy Giedroyc and his magazine Kultura. Since his return to Poland in 1990, Chojecki has been working as a film producer and publisher and serves as honorary chairman of the Free Word Association, an organization of former Polish oppositional activists that is dedicated to defending and promoting freedom of speech in Poland and abroad. Kelam, Tunne (*1936 in Taheva, Estonia). After his graduation as a historian at Tartu State University in 1959, Kelam worked at the State Central Archives in Tartu. From 1965 to 1975, he contributed as a scientific editor to the ongoing work on a multi-volume Estonian Soviet Encyclopedia. Having joined the nascent Soviet Estonian civil rights movement, he drafted a Memorandum to the United Nations which asked for international assistance to organize free elections in 1972. Kelam was arrested in the wake of the KGB crackdown on regime critics that followed the Memorandum’s publication in the West. He narrowly escaped trial and imprisonment, but was excluded from public life and lost his job. Subsequently, he worked as a librarian and as a night watchman on a state poultry farm. Between 1975 and 1985 he operated half underground, informing the West about human rights violations in the Soviet Union and organizing unofficial discussion clubs. In 1988, Kelam emerged as one of the front figures of the pro-independence movement. He was a cofounder of the Estonian National Independence Party, one of the leaders of the Estonian Citizens’ Committees Movement, and was elected chairman of the Congress of Estonia. Having been a member of the Constitutional Assembly in 1991 and 1992, he served as a Member of Parliament in Estonia from 1992 to 2004. Since 2004, he has been elected three times to the European Parliament. Lebenbaum, Józef (*1930 in Warsaw, Poland). In fall 1939, Lebenbaum and his mother fled German-occupied Warsaw to reunite with his father, who had found shelter in Lithuania. In the wake of the first Soviet mass deportation from the occupied Baltic states in June 1941, the family was sent to Siberia. Lebenbaum returned to Poland after the war and began a career as a journalist in Łódź. Having been under covert surveillance for several years for his



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alleged revisionist and liberal sympathies, he was eventually deprived of his party membership and dismissed from work during the anti-Semitic campaign of 1968. To escape arrest, he left for Vienna, where he started cooperating with Radio Free Europe, and finally settled in Lund after having been granted political asylum in Sweden. Already from 1976 onwards, Lebenbaum maintained close contact with the political opposition in Poland. After the imposition of martial law in 1981, he co-founded the Swedish Solidarity Support Committee in Lund and established the Independent Polish Agency, an organization informing a Swedish and international public about the oppositional underground in Poland. Together with Marian Kaleta in Malmö, Lebenbaum organized a large-scale smuggling network that provided the Polish opposition with literature and printing and technical equipment, turning southern Sweden into one of the central hubs of Western support until the June elections of 1989. Loit, Aleksander (*1925 as Aleksander Siitan in Pärnu, Estonia). Having been drafted into the German Air Force during the occupation of Estonia by Nazi Germany, Loit escaped the approaching Red Army to Sweden in 1944. He graduated from history at Uppsala University and worked as a lecturer at his alma mater between 1955 and 1981, completing his doctoral degree in 1975. Focusing on the history of Estonia and Livonia under Swedish rule in his research, he was one of the first scholars from the West to obtain permission to consult archival collections in the Estonian SSR in 1965. A month-long research stay in Tartu laid the ground for a professional network that endured the Cold War division. Loit counted among the earliest émigré advocates of homeland visits and official cooperation with Soviet Estonia, a stance that earned him some criticism among the Estonian diaspora. Having been appointed professor at the newly founded Center for Baltic Studies at Stockholm University in 1981, Loit used his position to foster academic cooperation with Baltic partner institutions through international conferences and research fellowships for Soviet scholars in Sweden. Already in 1989, Tartu University bestowed an honorary doctorate on Loit for his crucial contribution to bridging the gap between the intelligentsia of the occupied homeland and the émigré community, a distinction that was followed by an honorary doctorate awarded by the Åbo Akademi University for the development of academic contacts across the Baltic Sea in 1993. Maandi, Jaak (*1936 in Tallinn, Estonia). Maandi and his family, among them his father Helmut, a former Member of Parliament of Estonia and member of the underground Estonian National Committee, escaped to Sweden in the wake of the Red Army’s westward advances in fall 1944. Trained

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as a historian and geographer at Stockholm University, Maandi worked for various public organizations and state authorities, such as the Swedish Cooperative Union, the Ministry of Public Administration, and the National Board of Planning and Building, and coordinated development aid programs in Africa. In the mid-1960s, he engaged in émigré politics, serving as chairman of the Estonian Liberal Party in exile, a member of the steering committee of the Estonian National Council, and an elected member of the Estonian National Congress in Sweden. As many other second-generation activists, he championed closer contacts with the homeland and visited the Estonian SSR for the first time in 1968. Maandi co-founded the Swedish equivalent to the Forest University in Canada, a platform for debates on Estonian politics and culture which, from 1987 onwards, played a key role as a meeting place for émigré intellectuals and a new generation of political and cultural leaders from Estonia. From 1992 onwards, he served in Estonia, holding positions at the Government Office, the Ministry of the Environment, and the Ministry of the Interior. Michalski, Marek (* 1952 in Warsaw, Poland). Having graduated from Polish philology at the University of Warsaw in 1978, Michalski started working for Polish television. After the rise of Solidarity in summer 1980, he joined a subsection of the independent trade union established at the broadcasting station. The imposition of martial law in December 1981 took him by surprise during a visit to Sweden. In view of the political instability in Poland, Michalski chose to remain abroad. Having attended one of the local mass demonstrations against the illegalization of Solidarity, he became involved in the support activities organized by Polish émigrés in cooperation with the Swedish trade union movement. Michalski, who already as a student had established first contact with Polish political activists in Sweden during shorter work stays in the late 1970s, was appointed head of the newly founded Solidarity Information Office in Stockholm, a position that he held until the dissolution of the office on request of the Solidarity leadership in 1989. Apart from his official activities as the accredited representative of the independent Polish trade union movement in Scandinavia, Michalski also organized the channeling of funds and printing equipment to underground publishing houses and Radio Solidarity in Poland together with Ryszard Szulkin. Since the mid-1980s, he has been working as a journalist both in Stockholm and in his native Warsaw. Nõu, Enn (*1933 in Tallinn, Estonia). At the age of ten, Nõu fled the approaching Red Army together with his family, arriving in Sweden in fall 1944. He graduated from medical sciences at Uppsala University, where he



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also completed his doctoral degree. From 1961 to his retirement in 1998, he worked as a lung specialist at the Uppsala University Hospital. In the 1960s, Nõu got involved in the activities of the Estonian Liberal Party in exile and published a number of political articles in the émigré press. Moreover, he was elected to the Estonian National Congress in Sweden and an appointed board member of the Estonian National Council. Having published his first novel in 1968, Nõu started a parallel literary career, joining the Estonian Association of Writers Abroad and the Estonian PEN Club. As his works took a firm stance against the occupation of his homeland, the Soviet authorities imposed a temporary entry ban on him and his wife and fellow writer Helga in the early 1980s. In 1988, Nõu established first official contacts with the cultural and literary intelligentsia in his native Estonia, drawing on his informal networks that he had been developing since the liberalization of the Soviet border regime in the 1960s. Today, Nõu counts, together with his wife, among the most prominent representatives of the Estonian literary scene. Parek, Lagle (*1941 in Pärnu, Estonian SSR). At the age of seven, Parek counted among the roughly 20,000 Estonians who were dispatched to Siberia during the mass deportation of March 1949. Her father having been killed by the NKVD in 1941 and her mother being imprisoned, she spent four years in the Novosibirsk oblast with her sister and maternal grandmother. During the 1954 amnesty, she obtained the permission to resettle to Estonia. Having graduated from constructional engineering at the Tallinn University of Technology, Parek worked as an architect at the Rural Construction Project and the Institute of Cultural Heritage. In 1980, Parek joined the Soviet Estonian dissident movement, for which she was arrested and trialed in 1983. She was sentenced to six years in prison and three years of exile, but was prematurely released from her Mordovian camp in 1987. Upon her return, she became a founding member of the Estonian Group on the Publication of the Molotov-von Ribbentrop Pact and was among the organizers of the Hirvepark demonstration. Parek served as chairwoman of the Estonian National Independence Party, a party she co-founded, was elected to the Congress of Estonia, and appointed Minister of the Interior in 1992, a post from which she resigned one year later. In 1994, she retired from politics and focused on charity work, founding and heading the Estonian branch of the charity confederation Caritas. Pärnaste, Eve (*1951 in Tartu, Estonian SSR). Pärnaste graduated from social psychology at Tartu State University. From 1973 onwards, she worked at the Sociology Laboratory, a research institute at Tartu State University which, however, was ransacked by the KGB and closed in the run-up to the

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1975 dissident trial. Having personally attended the semipublic trial against the leaders of the Estonian Democratic Movement, she compiled a detailed report that was subsequently smuggled to the West, which marked the beginning of her own involvement in dissident activities. After her return from the funeral of the chemist and regime critic Jüri Kukk who died in a prison camp in Vologda in 1981, she faced harassment from the KGB, but escaped the crackdown on the Estonian dissident movement of 1983. During perestroika, Pärnaste became one of the front figures of the independence movement. She joined the Estonian Group on the Publication of the Molotov-von Ribbentrop Pact and co-founded the Estonian National Independence Party. In 1990, she was elected to the Congress of Estonia and held a leadership position in its permanent standing committee, the Committee of Estonia. Having been a member of the Constitutional Assembly and after serving as an alternate Member of Parliament from 1994 to 1995, she left the political scene and has since been engaged in numerous book projects and publishing activities. Rumessen, Vardo (*1942 in Pärnu, Estonia, † 2015 in Tallinn, Estonia). Rumessen was an Estonian pianist and musicologist, but also played an important role in the Estonian pro-independence movement. Born to a family of musicians, he was educated at the Tallinn State Conservatory and worked as a piano instructor, editor, and producer after his graduation. Rumessen is best known as an interpreter of Estonian classical music, primarily of the compositions of Eduard Tubin (1905–1982) who, after his escape to Sweden in 1944, continued his work as a composer in exile and regularly visited the Estonian SSR after the ban on his music had been lifted under Khrushchev. In 1988, Rumessen, who got personally acquainted with Tubin in Estonia in 1976, recorded Tubin’s complete piano works for a Swedish record label and performed at ESTO 88 in Melbourne, the first Estonian World Festival where representatives from Soviet Estonia could participate. One year later, he got actively involved into politics. He became a member of the board of the Estonian Citizens’ Committee Movement, joined the Estonian National Independence Party, and was elected to the Estonian Congress in 1990. Having served as a member of the Constitutional Assembly, Rumessen continued his political career after the restoration of Estonian independence as a Member of Parliament from 1992 and 1995 and, for a second term, from 1999 to 2003. Salo, Vello (*1925 as Endel Vaher in Võisiku Parish, Viljandi County, Estonia). Salo was one of approximately 3,300 Estonians to join the Finnish Army in the so-called Continuation War against the USSR in 1943. Back in Estonia, he was imprisoned by retreating German troops and forcibly brought to Germany in 1944, where he fought the approaching Red Army in Silesia.



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Having reached Rome in summer 1945, Salo studied Roman Catholic theology, was ordained to priesthood in 1957, and received a doctoral degree in 1976. He served as an editor of the Estonian section of Vatican Radio from 1948 to 1965, edited the Catholic Estonian-language journal Maarjamaa, and served as a parish priest, spending most of his time in Italy, Germany, and Canada where he was appointed professor of theology at the University of Toronto. Salo engaged in mailing spiritual literature to the Estonian SSR and was, from 1974 onwards, active as a lecturer at the Forest University in Canada, a yearly seminar for Estonian émigré intellectuals in North America. In 1992, the Estonian parliament appointed him as chairman of the Estonian State Commission on Examination of the Policies of Repression, an initiative which resulted in a “White Book” on the losses inflicted by the occupation regimes between 1940 and 1991. After his return to Estonia in 1993, Salo has been active as an author, translator, and editor of spiritual works, poems, and literature. Święcicki, Jakub (*1949 in Warsaw, Poland). Święcicki emigrated to Sweden in 1972. Having been enrolled at the University of Warsaw, he continued his studies in sinology, political science, and economics at Stockholm University. In the mid-1970s, he joined the Liberal Party’s Youth League and co-founded its Eastern European Solidarity Committee. He also engaged in Polish political organizations, serving temporarily as chairman of the Polish Refugee Council. In 1976, Święcicki established links to the Workers’ Defense Committee in his native Poland. He became the Committee’s main contact in Sweden, maintaining close cooperation with other hubs of Western support such as the Polish section of Radio Free Europe and the circles around the magazine Kultura in Paris. His involvement with the Polish political opposition continued after the emergence of Solidarity in 1980. Święcicki served as an official Solidarity representative in the West, but also played a key role as one of the main forces behind the smuggling of printing equipment to Poland after the declaration of martial law, a mission he had pursued already in the late 1970s. In 1989 and 1990, he served as a consultant to the first post-communist government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki. Alongside working as an analyst at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Święcicki engaged in Polish-Swedish cooperation projects and held teaching duties at Stockholm University. Szulkin, Ryszard (*1950 in Stockholm, Sweden). Szulkin spent his first years in Stockholm, where his father served as press attaché at the Polish embassy, before the family moved back in 1953. Having enrolled at the University of Warsaw in 1968, Szulkin left Poland one year later in the

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wake of the anti-Semitic campaign to study mathematics, computing, and sociology at Stockholm University. After the formation of the Workers’ Defense Committee in 1976, he joined a support network established by a group of Polish émigrés informing the Swedish public about the Polish opposition and organizing lobbying campaigns, targeting especially social democratic circles. After the formation of Solidarity in 1980, Szulkin worked mainly on acquiring funds for the then still legal independent trade union movement. During several private trips, he established personal contact with Solidarity’s leadership. His initial plan to work for Solidarity in Warsaw was, however, thwarted by the Polish authorities who denied him residence permit and deported him from the country in summer 1981. After the imposition of martial law, he coordinated numerous smuggling operations organized by the Solidarity Information Office in Stockholm, providing Solidarity’s underground press with the needed printing equipment. In 1989, Szulkin received his doctorate from Stockholm University, where he has since been working as a lecturer and, later, professor of sociology. Tarto, Enn (*1938 in Tartu, Estonia). While still a school boy, Tarto was arrested and trialed for the distribution of leaflets protesting the Soviet crackdown on the revolting Hungarians and demanding Estonian independence. From 1956 to 1960 and from 1962 to 1967, he served two sentences in Mordovian camps for political prisoners. Between his prison terms and after his release, Tarto worked as a kolkhoz worker and stoker. In 1969, he enrolled at Tartu State University, but was expelled from his studies in Estonian philology on the initiative of the KGB. Tarto figured among the leading Baltic dissidents in Brezhnev’s USSR, engaging in letter-writing campaigns together with Lithuanian and Latvian activists. He co-authored and signed the 1979 Baltic Appeal to the UN, the governments of the two Germanies, the USSR, and the signatory states of the Atlantic Charter. Following the crackdown on Soviet Estonian dissent in 1983, Tarto was sentenced to ten years of imprisonment and five years of deprivation of civil rights. Following national and international protests, he was released from a camp in Perm oblast as the last imprisoned Estonian dissident in October 1988. Upon his return home, Tarto was elected to the Congress of Estonia, engaged in the work of the Estonian National Heritage Society, and founded an organization for the victims of political repression in 1989. Following the restoration of Estonian independence, Tarto served three consecutive terms as a Member of Parliament between 1992 and 2003.

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Parek, Lagle. Interview by Lars Fredrik Stöcker (in Estonian). Tallinn, Estonia, 19 September 2011. Pärnaste, Eve. Interview by Lars Fredrik Stöcker (in Estonian). Tallinn, Estonia, 20 September 2011. Rumessen, Vardo. Interview by Lars Fredrik Stöcker (in Estonian). Tallinn, Estonia, 22 September 2011. Salo, Vello. Interview by Lars Fredrik Stöcker (in Estonian). Tallinn, Estonia, 15 September 2011. Święcicki, Jakub. Interview by Lars Fredrik Stöcker (in Polish). Stockholm, Sweden, 12 December 2011. Szulkin, Ryszard. Interview by Lars Fredrik Stöcker (in Swedish). Stockholm, Sweden, 12 December 2011. Tarto, Enn. Interview by Lars Fredrik Stöcker (in Estonian). Tallinn, Estonia, 22 September 2011.

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Index

academic cooperation: between Sweden and the Baltic states, 5, 36, 56n82, 57n86; between Sweden and Poland, 163, 185; between Sweden and the Soviet Baltic republics, 220–22, 236–37, 263, 268n79, 305 Ahonen, Heiki, 215, 217, 219, 247–49, 303 Ancypo, Mirosław, 232, 275n216 Anders, Władysław, 45–46, 77, 96, 102, 128 Andersson, Karin, 229 Andersson, Sten, 236, 280n316 Aneks (journal), 142, 157n111, 170, 183, 197, 245 Association for Cooperation with Polish Communities Abroad “Polonia” (Towarzystwo Łączności z Polonią Zagraniczną “Polonia”), 19n62, 89, 115n161 Axell, Harald, 26 Baltic Committee (Baltiska Kommittén), 36, 56n82, 69–70, 129, 148 Baltic Institute (Baltiska Institutet), 148, 220–22, 268n79 Baltic Peace and Freedom Cruise, 241–42 Baptists, Finnish, 172–73, 192, 207n164, 217, 266n41

Belokon, Igor, 95 Bergendahl, Torsten, 47, 62n160 Bierut, Bolesław, 86, 88, 97 black market trading, 9, 46, 93 Boheman, Eric, 22, 53n17 Borowska, Maria, 182, 184–86, 206n146, 225, 228, 240 Brandt, Willy, 134, 155n75, 161, 223 Brezhnev, Leonid, 124–25, 135–36, 161, 166–67, 175, 179 Brzeskwiński, Feliks, 27, 45 Carter, Jimmy, 179 Cederberg, Daniel, 41 Center of Polish Organizations for Independence (Ośrodek Polskich Organizacji Niepodległościowych), 145, 182 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). See U.S. intelligence service. Chojecki, Mirosław, 187, 233, 236, 269n94, 271n145, 303–4 Chronicle of Current Events (samizdat periodical), 168–69, 173, 181, 192 Committee for the Defense of Workers (Komitet Obrony Robotników, KOR); émigré support for the, 182–83, 197, 229, 294, 309–10; foundation of the, 180–81; self-perception of the, 341

342

Index

xxivn17; and the Solidarity trade union movement, 212, 258; and Swedish public opinion, 184–86, 224–25, 227–28; See also Contact Group of the Polish Democratic Movement in Sweden Committee for State Security (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopastnosti, KGB), counterintelligence operations, 83–84, 112n113; and the Estonian diaspora community, 90, 109n78, 147, 215– 17, 266n40; and dissent in the Soviet Union, 166–67, 169, 175, 192, 194, 201n38, 208n180, 218–19, 243, 304, 307–8, 310; monitoring along the Soviet border, 72, 171, 197, 213, 252; operations abroad, 88, 93, 95, 116n186, 127; surveillance of foreign visitors, 94, 117n198 Conference of Solidarity Support Organizations (CSSO), 233–34, 244, 272n159, 275n216 Congress of Estonia (Eesti Kongress), 253–54, 304, 308 Contact Group of the Polish Democratic Movement in Sweden (Polska Demokratiska Rörelsens Kontaktgrupp i Sverige), 185, 206n146 Council of Polish Political Parties (Rada Polskich Stronnictw Politycznych), 50, 82 cultural cooperation: between Sweden and the Baltic states, 5; between Sweden and Poland, 6, 17n34, 124, 163; between Sweden and the Soviet Baltic republics, 220–22, 236–37. See also academic cooperation Curman, Sigurd, 36, 56n82, 129 Dagens Nyheter (newspaper), 59n125, 68, 103n13, 217 Danell, Sven, 32 Democratic Movement of the Soviet Union (Nõukogude Liidu

Demokraatlik Liikumine, NLDL), 168 Eastern European Solidarity Committee (Östeuropeiska Solidaritetskommittén, ÖESK), 184, 187–88, 194, 286, 309 Erlander, Tage, 39, 51–52, 58n100, 86, 123–24, 131 Estonian Committee (Eesti Komitee), 30, 33, 49 Estonian Democratic Movement (Eesti Demokraatlik Liikumine, EDL), 168–69, 173, 175–76, 191 Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church in Exile (Eesti Evangeelne Luterlik Kirik Eksiilis), 94, 172–73 Estonian Group on the Publication of the Molotov-von Ribbentrop Pact (Molotov-Ribbentropi Pakti Avalikustamise Eesti Grupp, MRPAEG), 248, 303 Estonian National Committee (Eesti Vabariigi Rahvuskomitee), 30–31, 33, 43 Estonian National Congress in Sweden (Rootsi Eestlaste Esindus, REE), 95, 100, 127, 134, 193, 247 Estonian National Council (Eesti Rahvusnõukogu, ERN): and “cold warfare,” 69, 76, 78–79, 81, 85, 92; on communication with Soviet Estonians in the West, 92, 95–96, 100, 117n190, 127; and the dissident movement in the Estonian SSR, 193, 215; ERN Büroo, 78–79, 91, 93, 109n80; foundation of the, 50, 63n177; and the generational shift, 148, 265n27; on homeland visits, 91, 126, 148; legitimacy of the, 74–75; representative in Helsinki, 94, 166; Estonian National Front (Eesti Rahvusrinne, ERR), 168–69, 173, 175–76, 191 Estonian National Fund (Eesti Rahvusfond, ERF); foundation of



Index

the, 49–50, 63n177; informationgathering activities of the, 79, 110n86, 300n5; publishing activities of the, 76–77, 93, 109n80, 117n192, 167, 174, 176, 264n12, 294 Estonian Social Democratic Party in Exile (Eesti Sotsialistliku Partei Välismaa Koondis), 95, 279n284 extradition: of Baltic soldiers to the USSR, 42, 59n125, 104n19, 112n116, 190; of civilians to the USSR, xxiin4, 33, 60n126, 63n170, 104n19 Fälldin, Thorbjörn, 183, 223 Foreign Delegation of the Republic of Estonia (Eesti Vabariigi Välisdelegatsioon), 28–30 Forest University (Metsaülikool), 146, 252, 306, 309 Fredriksson, Gunnar, 185 Free Europe Committee, 68, 80, 91, 103n6, 110n103, 117n190, 117n193. See also Radio Free Europe “Flying University,” (Uniwersytet Latający) 184, 188 Giedroyc, Jerzy, 98–101, 138, 143–44, 164, 183, 187–88, 196, 207n164, 231, 233, 257, 304. See also Kultura Gierek, Edward, 141, 162–64, 166, 179, 212 Gomułka, Władysław, 86, 98, 139–41 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 242–43, 248, 250, 254–55, 259–60 government in exile, Estonian, xix, xxivn27, 75, 107n55, 128–29, 165, 253–54, 261, 286 government in exile, Polish: and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 166; diaspora disputes about the, 82; dissolution of the, 261; and the Estonian government in exile, 286; funding of the smuggling of war refugees by the, 23; information-gathering

343

strategies of the, 37, 44–45; and the Polish opposition movement, 182, 257; and Polish political organizations in Sweden, 49, 63n179; political marginalization of the, 37–39, 96, 98–99, 127–28, 143, 231; and the resistance movement in Poland, 26–27, 35, 56n80, 73–74; terminology, xix, xxivn27 Grafström, Sven, 25, 53n17, 64n197 Graphic Workers’ Union (Grafiska Förbundet), 224, 231 Hansson, Per Albin, 32, 39 Herslow, Carl, 26 Hjalmarson, Jarl, 68–69, 87, 103n9, 104n18, 104n22 Holm, Niklas, 231, 234 Home Army (Armia Krajowa), 26–27, 35, 37, 44, 54n28 Horm, Arvo, 20n75, 36, 57n86, 78, 85, 92, 128, 131, 148, 193, 215, 220 human rights; activism in the Soviet bloc, xxivn16, 136–37, 168, 179–81, 192, 195–96, 214, 243, 266n40, 304; debates in Sweden, 163, 190, 240; in East-West relations, 178–79, 189–90, 195–96, 198, 211, 237; and émigré politics, 176, 183, 190, 194, 196, 218, 289; and the Helsinki process, 162, 166, 175, 178–79, 190, 195, 201n38, 203n89, 289, 292. Ignats, Ülo, 188, 190, 286 Independent Polish Agency (IPA), 233– 34, 244–45, 247, 294, 305 Independent Publishing House (Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza, NOWA), 181, 187–89, 205n124, 229, 233, 244, 304 intelligence service; British, 28, 30, 34, 81–83, 106n45, 112n115, 291; of the Estonian resistance movement (World War II), 31; Finnish, xxiin4; Polish, 45, 48, 82, 87–89, 96–98, 112n115, 118n216,

344

Index

143, 157n102, 181, 232, 266n40; of the Polish government in exile, 25, 27, 45, 54n20; Soviet, 63n170. See also Committee for State Security; People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs; Swedish, 29–30, 34, 44, 48, 59n122, 73, 82–83, 106n45, 111n105, 112n116, 235, 291; U.S., 30, 34, 68, 81–83, 91, 106n44, 106n45, 112n115, 127, 130, 281n328, 291, 300n12 International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), 223–24, 228 Jacobsson, Göran, 231, 234 jamming, 95, 191, 213, 218, 249, 267n57 Järn, Lennart, 232 Jaruzelski, Wojciech, 163, 227, 229, 235, 239–40, 243–44, 255–56 Johansson, Sten, 184–85, 225 Johnson, Eyvind, 37, 69 Jung, Helge, 69 Jüriado, Jaak, 247–49, 252, 276n231 Juškevitš, Artjom, 168, 175 Kaelas, Aleksander, 76, 108n65, 110n86, 129 Kaleta, Marian, 232, 244, 305 Karling, Sten, 57n86 Kassman, Charles, 223 Kekkonen, Urho, 124–25, 134, 152n20, 158n131, 292 Kelam, Tunne, 169, 176, 201n56, 208n180, 253, 278n268, 304 Khrushchev, Nikita, 1, 70, 85–87, 104n22, 124, 136 Kiirend, Mati, 168, 175–76, 248 Kippar, Ants, 193–95, 197, 215–20, 237, 239, 246–47, 266n34, 266n40, 267n60, 276n231 Koern, August, 147–48 Kołakowski, Leszek, 140, 206n146 Koraszewski, Andrzej, 170, 188, 206n146, 229

Korboński, Stefan, 47 Kukk, Jüri, 219, 266n34, 308 Kultura (journal), 98–99, 138, 142–44, 150, 158n117, 187, 197, 240, 245, 257, 288, 304. See also Society of Friends of Kultura Küng, Andres, 147, 150–51, 166, 172, 177, 190, 214, 221, 260 Kuroń, Jacek, 180, 183–85, 206n146, 224, 239–40, 257–58, 280n310 The Labor Movement’s International Center (Arbetarrörelsens internationella centrum, AIC), 223, 226, 231 Laquist, Björn Gunnar, 188 Laretei, Heinrich, 17n38, 23–24, 28–32, 49, 95, 146 Lebenbaum, Józef, 188, 228–29, 232– 35, 237, 244, 275n216, 304–5 Liberal Party’s Youth League (Folkpartiets ungdomsförbund, FPU), 183–84, 187, 190–91, 286 Lina, Jüri, 194, 216 Lipski, Jan Józef, 185, 236 Lisiński, Michał, 80, 97, 143 Loit, Aleksander, 147, 268n79 Maandi, Jaak, 146, 305–6 Madisson, Tiit, 215, 219, 248–49, 266n34 Mark, Heinrich, 75, 254, 261 Martinsson, Harry, 37 Mätik, Kalju, 168, 175 Mattson, Ture, 224, 231, 269n94, 271n145 Maurer, Alfred, 75 Michalski, Marek, 228, 230–31, 306 Michnik, Adam, 136, 140, 156n91, 180, 185, 206n146, 240, 257–58, 280n310 Mihkelson, Johannes, 95, 279n284 Mikołajczyk, Stanisław, 38, 47, 106n48 Milewski, Jerzy, 233, 270n119 Moberg, Vilhelm, 69



Index

Moderate Party (Moderata samlingspartiet), 194, 241 Movement for the Defense of Human and Civil Rights (Ruch Obrony Praw Człowieka i Obywatela, ROPCiO), 181, 183 M/S Baltic Star (cruise ship), 241–42 M/S Georg Ots (ferry), 202n58, 216 M/S Mazowsze (cruise ship), 87, 97, 118n213 M/S Pobeda (cruise ship), 92 Myrdal, Alva, 37 National Endowment for Democracy (NED), 245–47, 251 National Organization of Trade Unions (Landsorganisationen, LO), 223–29, 231, 236, 257 Nerman, Birger, 36, 56n82, 57n89, 129 Nerman, Ture, 37, 57n89 neutrality, Finnish, xiii–xiv, 21, 101, 104n26, 124–25, 158n131, 290–92 neutrality, Swedish: ambiguity of, 52, 53n17, 64n197, 69, 237, 240, 273n175, 291–92, 300n11; and concessions to Nazi Germany, 22, 26–27, 29, 34, 70, 290; and concessions to the Soviet Union, 23–24, 32, 42, 60n126, 103n8, 104n22; as a deescalating factor in the Baltic Sea Region, xii–xiii, 51, 86, 122, 124, 162–63, 170, 198, 293, 297–98; domestic political debates on, 68–69, 103n8, 103n9, 123–24; and émigré politics, 11, 18n48, 23, 28, 73, 116n180, 236, 290; geopolitical determinants of, 51; historical background of, 291; during the interwar period, 5, 7; Soviet bloc propaganda against, 11, 70, 290. See also refugee policy, Swedish Niitsoo, Viktor, 215, 266n33 Niklus, Mart, 94–95, 156n86, 191–92, 208n189, 266n34 Nixon, Richard, 122, 161

345

Norrman, Sven, 26 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): armament policy of, 121; and “cold warfare,” 70; and the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Strategy Export Controls, 71; and the nonrecognition policy, 174; presence of (in the Baltic Sea Region), 1, 87, 238–39, 293; Swedish debates on, 68, 103n13 Norwid-Nowacki, Tadeusz, 37, 45, 49, 77, 300n5 Nowak-Jeziorański, Jan (also Zdzisław Jeziorański), 54n28, 80, 99, 143, 233 Ny Dag (newspaper), 38, 45 Ohlin, Bertil, 68–69, 103n9 Olesk, Ilmar, 253 Onyszkiewicz, Janusz, 257, 280n310 Ostrowski, Adam, 41, 45 Ots, Jaan, 28–29, 32 Oxenstierna, Gabriel, 207n164 Palm, Thede, 59n122, 82 Palme, Olof, 58n100, 123, 163, 183–84, 223, 226, 228, 241, 258 Pański, Jerzy, 40 Parek, Lagle, 176, 217, 219, 248, 252, 266n37, 267n60, 307 Pärnaste, Eve, 176, 204n104, 218, 307–8 Patek, Wiesław, 77, 108n67, 144, 166 People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del, NKVD), 24, 44, 75 Perlitz, Harald, 49, 56n82 Pesti, Arvo, 217, 219 Polish Armed Forces in the West (Polskie Siły Zbrojne na Zachodzie), 20n74, 23, 39, 45, 49, 63n175 Polish Ex-Combatants Association (Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantów, SPK), 49, 63n175, 63n179, 90

346

Index

Polish Refugee Council (Rada Uchodźstwa Polskiego), 48, 141, 144, 309 Polish Relief Committee (Polski Komitet Pomocy, PKP), 22–23, 41 Polish-Swedish Cultural Center (PolskSvenskt Kulturcentrum), 240 Polish Union of Sweden (Zjednoczenie Polskie w Szwecji), 49 Potworowski, Gustaw, 22, 25–26 Provisional Council of National Unity (Tymczasowa Rada Jedności Narodowej, TRJN), 96 Radio Free Europe (RFE), 80–81, 103n6, 110n103, 111n104, 130, 156n91, 156n94, 183, 193, 278n268, 285; Estonian section of, 191, 217–18, 250; office of the Scandinavian branch in Stockholm, 80, 97, 101, 118n216, 143, 163–64; Polish section of, 54n28, 80, 96–97, 99, 143 Rebane, Alfons, 82 Reagan, Ronald, 211, 214; refugee policy, Swedish, xiv–xv, 40, 42, 59n123, 60n126, 62n168; and the ban on political activity, 9, 18n48, 34–35, 41, 48–49, 63n177; legal framework of, 22, 52n1; and political asylum, 11, 24, 29, 97, 106n42, 139–40, 229, 270n120; and settlement regulations, 18n56; and visa regulations, 32, 44, 289 Rei, August, 24, 28–33, 36, 49–50, 56n70, 74–75, 81, 107n58, 127–29 Relief Center for Estonian Prisoners of Conscience (Eesti Vangistatud Vabadusvõitjelate Abistamiskeskus, EVVA), 193–94, 215–20, 239, 246– 48, 251–52, 294, 303 Rewska, Hanna, 98 Ridala, Esmo, 146, 166 Ronimois, Hans, 28–29 Rudnicki, Tadeusz, 25–26, 54n20 Rumessen, Vardo, 253, 266n41, 308

Sakharov, Andrei, 174, 215 Salo, Vello, 172, 174, 267n52, 308–9 samizdat, 198, 285; in the Estonian SSR, 169, 192, 215, 217–20, 267n55; in the People’s Republic of Poland, 181, 183, 186, 188–89, 205n124, 218, 229–30, 245, 255, 262; in the Soviet Union, 136, 168–69, 218, 243, 267n57. See also Chronicle of Current Events; smuggling Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). See British intelligence service. Smolar, Eugeniusz, 157n111, 183, 187–88 smuggling: of alcohol, 6, 235; of arms, 43; of Bibles and spiritual literature, 171–72, 207n164, 275n226; books and journals, 29, 98, 138, 143, 170– 71, 188–89, 230–35, 245–46, 262, 271n142, 275n226; of letters and messages, 30, 171, 173, 188, 203n75, 216, 219, 230; of money, 45–46, 230, 247; of propaganda material, xv, 45–46; of refugees, 23, 27, 29, 31, 44, 46–47, 51, 62n160, 62n168; of samizdat, 137, 169, 173, 217, 235, 238, 172–74, 191–93, 241; of technical equipment, 30, 43–44, 186– 89, 198, 230–36, 238, 244–47, 251– 52, 256–57, 262, 266n40, 267n52, 273n172, 276n235, 294–95, 300n7; of uncensored written and visual documentation, 26, 29, 36, 76, 79, 94, 173, 176, 203n75, 204n104, 217, 233, 266n40, 266n44, 278n268. See also Baptists, Finnish; Independent Polish Agency; National Endowment for Democracy; Trotskyists Society for the Development of Cultural Ties with Estonians Abroad (Väliseestlastega Kultuurisidemete Arendamise Ühing, VEKSA), 19n62, 90, 147, 152n21 Society of Friends of Kultura (Towarzystwo Przyjaciół “Kultury”), 144–45, 164, 170, 286



Index

Sokolnicki, Henryk, 26, 39, 49, 58n102, 61n150, 108n67 Soldatov, Sergei, 168, 173, 175, 241 Solidarity (Solidarność); Coordination Office of (in Brussels), 227–28, 232–33, 236, 244–45, 270n119, 272n159; delegalization of, 227, 235; foundation of, 212–13; Information Office of (in Stockholm), 227–31, 300n12, 306, 310; legalization of, 222, 261; printing offices, 224, 229; reemergence of, 244, 255–58; Swedish support for, 223–26, 228, 236, 238, 240, 257–59, 289, 300n12; underground structures of, 239, 270n119. See also Conference of Solidarity Support Organizations; the National Organization of Trade Unions; Swedish Solidarity Support Committee Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 136, 175, 195, 201n38, 203n91. See also samizdat Strindberg, Per-Olof, 241 Stenbock, Margareta, Countess, 30, 44 Stockholms-Tidningen (newspaper), 77, 108n72 Stoltz, Jan Axel, 228, 275n216 Students’ Solidarity Committees (Studenckie Komitety Solidarności), 183, 189 Sutton-Pratt, Reginald, 46 Swedish Social Democratic Party (Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetareparti), 39, 52, 123, 131, 142, 184–85, 223, 226, 228 Swedish Solidarity Support Committee, 228–29, 231–33, 245, 275n216, 305 Święcicki, Jakub, 182, 185–88, 206n146, 225, 228, 230, 237, 240, 286, 300n12, 309 Szulkin, Ryszard, 182, 228, 230–31, 234, 309–10 Taagepera, Rein, 146, 158n131, 174, 203n80

347

tamizdat, 198, 201n50, 285; Estonian, 176, 217–20; Polish, 183–84, 233, 240, 245; Soviet, 169, 173, 267n57. See also Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr; United Nations, Memorandum to the (1972) Tarto, Enn, 137, 156n86, 191–92, 215, 219, 249, 310 Terras, Aleksander, 191, 217 Thugutt, Mieczysław, 25–26, 54n20 Thyberg, Knut, 188 Tief, Otto, 33, 50, 56n70, 107n54 Tingsten, Herbert, 68–69 Tomson, Ants, 173 tourism: in the Baltic Sea Region, 6, 298; in the Estonian SSR, xiii, 88, 94, 101, 117n198, 125–26, 152n21, 177, 216, 252, 265n31; from the Estonian SSR to Finland, 92, 94; from the Estonian SSR to Sweden, 88, 92–93, 95, 101, 116n186, 126; from Poland to Sweden, xii, 87, 97, 118n213, 164; from Sweden to Poland, 163–64 trade and business relations, Swedish: with the Eastern bloc countries, 71; with Germany (World War II), 25–27; with Poland, 6, 39, 41, 44, 46–47, 51, 124, 163, 253; with the Soviet Union, 39, 253 Trotskyists, 271n137; Swedish, 187, 230–31, 234, 238 Trzciński, Stefan, 227–28, 270n118 Tubin, Eduard, 126, 308 Tuldava, Juhan, 126–27, 153n34 Udam, Erik, 191, 215 Ullsten, Ola, 226 Uluots, Jüri, 50, 56n70 Undén, Östen, 39, 58n100, 58n101, 70, 103n9, 123, 280n316, 290, 292 Union of Polish Patriots (Związek Patriotów Polskich), 38, 40 United Nations: Baltic Appeal to the (BATUN, émigré organization), 174; Baltic Appeal to the (open letter), 241, 310; Charter of the,

348

175; Declaration on Human Rights, 138; General Assembly of the, 76, 169; Memorandum to the (1972), 169, 173–75, 177, 193, 201n56, 203n80, 208n180, 241, 304; Refugee Convention, 52n1; Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), 9; Swedish delegation to the, 104n22 U.S. War Refugee Board, 32–33 Valdin, Arkadi, 82–83 Väljas, Vaino, 171, 249, 276n226

Index

Voice of America, 80–81, 102, 110n103, 191, 218 Wałęsa, Lech, 212, 215, 224, 236, 240, 244, 261 Warma, Aleksander, 28–30, 33, 75, 129 Wiadomości Polskie (newspaper), 41, 45, 77, 80, 108n74, 157n113 Wieselgren, Per, 57n86, 59n119 Żaba, Norbert, 45, 61n150, 77, 80, 144– 45, 164, 170, 187–88, 230, 300n5 Zaleski, August, 50, 96, 300n6

About the Author

Lars Fredrik Stöcker (*1979) received his doctoral degree from the Department of History and Civilization at the European University Institute in Florence. He is currently working as a researcher at the Institute for Eastern European History at the University of Vienna.

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