ABSTRACT
The destruction of the Berlin Wall gave visible expression to the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the end of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and the eventual reunification of Germany. Transitions in Eastern Europe, then, were associated with various levels of the democratisation of the central state and the attempt to involve it in the reintroduction of capitalist modes of production, distribution and consumption. National culture, no longer in the shadow of the Moscow-controlled state culture machine, found itself with a central dimension in the curricula of schools. Distinctions between groups of people in the Baltic States are made on the basis of either religion or language. The transitional independent states have attempted to portray themselves as linguistic or ethnic nations. The period of Russification of the Baltic states between 1945 and 1991 involved demographic, economic, political and educational processes.
