As a direct result of the Soviet occupations of the Baltic states during the Second World War, more than half a million Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians are estimated to have gone into exile in the West between 1944 and 1952. Many passed through the displaced persons’ (DP) camps of post-war Germany before resettling, both in Europe and overseas, while others travelled to Sweden. In their host countries, exiles sought to preserve their national heritages while organising efforts to regain independence, both individually and collectively.

Making up volumes 45 and 46, respectively, of the long-running series “On the Boundary of Two Worlds: Identity, Freedom, and Moral Imagination in the Baltics” (which began in 2004), Andrejs Plakans’ “The Reluctant Exiles” and Pauli Heikkilä’s “Estonia as a Captive Nation” deliver studies that examine overlapping aspects of the experiences of exiles, though with differing foci and approaches. Plakans endeavours to present a social history of the half-century following the 1944/45 flight from Latvia, incorporating “all manner of turning points, unrealized aspirations, internal conflicts, generational disagreements, and dissonance between leaders and followers” (p. xv) in the form of a collective biography. Meanwhile, Heikkilä explores the diplomatic and political activities of Estonian exiles, filtered through the lens of the Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN) as a vehicle for stimulating international anti-communist cooperation between 1954 and 1972. The ACEN, a network of exile committees from nine eastern and central European nations, was funded by the Free Europe Committee, which had been founded by the US State Department and CIA in 1949 as an anti-communist initiative intended to help Americans “increase their intelligence capabilities in foreign countries” (p. 93) and destabilise Eastern Bloc states.

“The Reluctant Exiles” begins with a concise introduction that provides an overview of the volume and surveys key sources. While the introduction is essentially devoid of historical background, glimpses of Latvian history prior to 1944 are related throughout subsequent chapters, periodically to serve the narrative. The first chapter, “Statelessness, Flight, and Trauma”, surveys the planning and reality of evacuations during the year between June 1944 and May 1945. Chapter two, “Refugees and Displaced Persons”, juxtaposes the experiences of Latvian refugees in the DP camps of the western occupation zones of Germany with those who had escaped to Sweden after 1945. The third chapter, “Old Continent, New Homelands”, provides an account of the smaller percentage of Latvians who remained in Europe after passing through DP camps, while the fourth, “New Homelands on New Continents”, follows the larger number who emigrated to Australia, Canada, South America, and the US. Chapter five, “Resettlement Years: The 1950s”, examines the efforts of Latvians who emigrated from Europe to maintain their “Latvianness” and advance political aspirations while adapting to life in new countries. This included contending with generational change and the dilution of the Latvian national identity, a theme that is further explored through the late 1960s and 1970s in the sixth chapter, “Varieties of Absorption”. The seventh chapter, “Diversity, Disagreement, and the Old Homeland Nexus”, focuses on the political undertakings of second generation Latvians from the 1960s to the 1980s. The final two chapters – “The Iron Curtain Disintegrates” and “The Making of a Diaspora” – provide an overview of the fall of the USSR, the re-emergence of an independent Latvia, and the multidirectional reframing of relationships between Latvian exiles and Latvians who had lived under Soviet rule.

“Estonia as a Captive Nation” is made up of five chapters, in addition to an introduction and a conclusion. Chapter one, “Estonian Diplomatic Corps in Exile”, frames the key aspects of the Estonian diplomatic and political diaspora. The second chapter, “Estonian Cold War Warriors” focuses on American Cold War organisations and how Estonian emigrants became involved in them, concentrating on the challenges experienced by the political centres in New York and Stockholm, and how they were reflected in the ACEN and the Committee for a Free Estonia. An overview of Estonian ACEN delegations around the globe is provided in the third chapter, “Global Organization”. The chapter discusses how Baltic cooperation emerged in the eight delegations in which Estonians participated – the most important being in Stockholm where 30,000 Estonians had settled – just as it did in the US. In chapter four, “Work in the Assembly”, the activities of Estonians are framed against the backdrop of the development of the ACEN and efforts to create contacts with the Council of Europe. The chapter also examines the idea of European unification, which many emigrants considered synonymous with national liberation. The fifth chapter, “Long Good-Byes to the ACEN”, charts the road to the dissolution of the organisation in 1972, examining alternatives to the ACEN following its decreased functioning due to budget cuts, with Baltic cooperation emerging as the most prominent activity.

Essentially, Plakans attempts to view the entirety of the Latvian exile experience through a telescope, while Heikkilä places a microscope over a smaller segment of their Estonian counterpart. Both approaches have their benefits and drawbacks. On the one hand, “The Reluctant Exiles” outlines the main contours of Latvian exile experiences following the Second World War, generously contextualised with quotations from published materials, though the particular experiences of individuals can become lost in the overarching narrative. This is partly due its impressive length – with nearly 700 pages making up the chapters –, which requires multiple sittings to read in its entirety. Although a specific methodology is not explicitly laid out, Plakans adopts a prosopographical approach, primarily utilising published sources to present common experiences of Latvian exiles, many of whose individual biographies may be difficult to trace. What emerges is a collection of archetypal experiences against which individual case studies might be compared. On the other hand, “Estonia as a Captive Nation“relies on primary sources and seeks to remind readers of a forgotten past” (p. xiii), examining the activities of Estonian diplomats and politicians in exile within the networks of larger organisations. This allows for a more intimate examination of the activities and interactions of individuals, though at the expense of some broader sociopolitical dynamics in exile. While the relationships between Estonian diplomats and politicians in exile alongside the complex networks of organisations and initiatives are illustrated, individuals are rarely contextualised beyond their political activities. Even the first chapter, which ostensibly introduces key historical figures and “depicts the life stories of Estonian diplomatic representatives in exile, after the country’s annexation into the USSR in 1940 and until the declaration of independence in 1991” (p. 1), rarely extends beyond a summary of their political careers.

The periods covered overlap and largely correspond in respect of where the focus of each of the volumes lie. “The Reluctant Exiles” extends from 1944/1945 into the first decades of the 21st century, the focus, however, rarely strays from the Cold War era, with the exception of the final chapter, which covers the period from the early 1990s onwards. The book does not have a conventional conclusion, but rather comes to an end with a discussion of the 2019 Diaspora Law, which “marked the start of a new phase in the lives of all Latvians, regardless of where they were living” (p. 657).1 “Estonia as a Captive Nation” focuses on the years between 1954 and 1972, from the establishment of the ACEN until the year its activities ended. While examining the activities of Estonian diplomats and politicians in exile in respect of the ACEN leads to insights about the intrigues, it brings the volume to an abrupt end. Indeed, most of the initiatives developing throughout the chapters of the book (including the anti-communist activities of the ACEN) remain unresolved in the concluding chapter, which is somewhat undermined by remarks that the “ACEN was not crucially important for Estonian émigré politicians” (p. 275) and that “since the mid-1960s [...] the role and significance of the ACEN had diminished among immigrants” (p. 276). Some aspects of the epilogue of the period researched are alluded to within the preceding chapters, though at times it can be difficult to keep track of them. The principal reason for this is that while chapters broadly follow a chronological progression, the narrative – conveyed through thematic sections within chapters – regularly jumps forward and back by several years when relating additional information.

Concerning the backmatter, the index of “Estonia as a Captive Nation” is divided into persons and locations by cities, meaning that prior familiarity with the subject matter is beneficial for navigating the book to obtain particular information. Meanwhile, in “The Reluctant Exiles”, a single index primarily lists people, organisations, and major phenomena, with further thematic subdivisions for some entries, facilitating the locating of particular themes and events. Both works contain extensive bibliographies. Just as the two authors approach the similar subject matter from different perspectives and methodologies, their selection of source corpuses also differ. Plakans’ bibliography provides a comprehensive selection of published primary and secondary sources, in excess of 600 entries in addition to periodicals, predominantly in Latvian and English. Heikkilä’s work incorporates archival sources from Estonia, Sweden, and the United States, with the collection of 162 boxes of the ACEN materials located at the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota comprising the core. According to Heikkilä, documents relating directly to Estonians amounted to only six folders, which provided “a starting point for national involvement in the organization” (p. xix). In addition, over 100 secondary sources (in English, Estonian, Finnish, Lithuanian, Polish, and Swedish) are listed in the bibliography.

Both volumes are well-written, though the composition and editing in Plakans’ “The Reluctant Exiles” stands out as being exceptionally good. Despite its imposing length – which makes it easy to mistake for a dry textbook – it is a surprisingly lucid and engaging read. Meanwhile, Heikkilä’s “Estonia as a Captive Nation” is a far denser study, in which there are sometimes minor lapses in syntax and careless editing, particularly in the introduction. For example, an overview of the book’s five research chapters extends to a sixth after the second chapter is mislabeled as the third (p. xiii). Nevertheless, occasional oversights do not detract from what is an informative study that draws together the diplomatic and political activities of Estonian exiles, while examining a substantial Cold War initiative, albeit focusing on the involvement of a single nation. Both volumes are referenced copiously, though extraction of bibliographic sources is a cumbersome affair. References to other works are given in footnotes that refer to author and date (and page numbers), which are then to be located in their respective bibliographies; though information concerning archival sources and newspaper articles are conveniently located in the footnotes. Of course, the authors are not responsible for this awkward convention, and while it is understandable that a publisher may employ such a scheme in an effort to reduce the length of publications, it is nonetheless inconvenient to go back and forth between the chapters and the backmatter to accurately identify additional literature.

In summary, these books on comparable and interrelated topics offer two different types of history writing. “The Reluctant Exiles” endeavours to present a comprehensive history in the form of a collective biography. As Plakans points out, there “never developed a consensus about generizable evidence, periodization, and the relative importance of different kinds of factual materials” (p. xv) in the history of Latvian exiles, however, a broad chronology of the history of Baltic exiles has been carved out over the past three decades. Colouring within the lines, so to speak, makes Plakans’ colossal undertaking nonetheless challenging, nor the result less impressive. Meanwhile, “Estonia as a Captive Nation” is a history that explores a well-researched topic from the perspective of an organisation that has been overlooked in favour of more successful initiatives. In doing so it goes outside the lines and into the margins. In this type of exploratory historical research, blueprints for framing are often lacking and can be reflected in the outcome. Nevertheless, finding new vantage points from which to examine familiar topics is a commendable undertaking, and one vitally important to advancing the discipline of history along with understandings of the past.

Though examining the exile experiences of different nations, the two books are somewhat complementary to one another, particularly when considered in the broader context of the history of Baltic exiles and diaspora. For example, in “The Reluctant Exiles” the ACEN appears in a single sentence, in the context of Baltic cooperation, as an organisation “formed in New York in 1954 as a vocal component of the western side of the Cold War” (p. 428). As such, when read in tandem, the more compact “Estonia as a Captive Nation” offers considerable elaboration into this aspect of the Baltic exiles’ experiences. Inversely, Plakans’ broader exploration of the experiences of Latvian exiles mediates – to an extent – social factors that are absent in Heikkilä’s compact study of Estonian politics and diplomacy in exile. The corresponding time periods and alternate vantage points along with the different methodological approaches offer a contextualised overview and insights into one of the many complex chapters in the history of the Baltic nations, though further reading will be required to fully reap the benefits of both volumes.

Note:
1 The Diaspora Law is coordinated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and addresses emigrees and Latvian nationals living abroad to promote political, civic and cultural engagement of the diaspora in Latvian affairs. See Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia, Diaspora Policy, 01.07.2021, https://www.mfa.gov.lv/en/diaspora-policy (15.07.2024).