ABSTRACT
The three Baltic republics—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—form a unique westernized corner of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The nativizatiori of the Communist party of Lithuania was particularly significant in that it coincided with the industrialization of the republic. Russian immigration has been perceived by the Baltic peoples as the principal threat to their national existence. An equilibrium between increasing modernization and westernization and periodic exhortation to ideological vigilance hand has been the hallmark of Baltic cultural development. A Western cultural orientation and continuing foreign contacts mitigated the effects of ideological campaigns and the Russification drive. The immobilisme of party leadership at the republican level paralleled the ger-ontocratic stagnation at the center. Large-scale economic projects involving massive construction and the use of immigrant labor continued, despite their increasingly deleterious effect on the society and ecology of the Baltic republics and in the face of growing opposition. The popular fronts pressed the republican Supreme Soviets to pass legislation affirming national sovereignty.
