36 | SUNRAYS FEBRUARY 2014
ONLINE:
SCTXCA.ORG
I
magine: Your culture and language
are banned. Your family is deported
to a labor camp above the Arctic Cir-
cle and forced to live there for decades
because you owned too much land, or
because of your profession, or because
you might not care for the current form
of government. Your churches are closed
and used for grain storage, or for picture
galleries, or for museums of atheism.
This is not the storyline for an upcom-
ing movie; this is the recent history of
the Baltic countries: Lithuania, Latvia
and Estonia.
Bordering the Baltic Sea―just east of
Sweden, west of Russia, and north of
Poland and Germany―the Baltic coun-
tries suffered under Russian (then So-
viet) oppression for almost 300 years,
with a brief respite between World Wars
I and II. It was not until 1991, when
Gorbachev was overthrown in the So-
viet Union by hardliners, that the Baltic
countries were able to declare their inde-
pendence and launch new governments
and policies.
My husband, Nick Martinez, and I were
eager to discover what made these people
so resilient under such difficult circum-
stances for so long, and how they were
doing in their march toward a new day.
Our travels started in Ukraine, then
took us overland through Lithuania,
Latvia, and Estonia, ending in Russia.
To do the Baltic countries justice, this
article will focus on them.
Vilnius, lithuania
Vilnius, Lithuania, has one of the largest
“old towns” in Europe, but we found it
could be easily walked―its church spires,
cafes, and 400-year-old university pro-
vide ample rewards for the effort. We
found a darker side to its history on a
visit to The Museum of Genocide Vic-
tims, situated in the former KGB build-
A view of Tallinn, Estonia, taken by Sun City Texas resident Sandy Nielsen on her tour of the Baltic countries.
PHOTOS BY SANDY NIELSEN
From Occupied by Russia
to Occupied with Freedom:
The Baltic Countries’ Road to Independence
By Sandy Nielsen
