Russia and the Baltic States: A Challenge and Still a Chance

Russia’s steady rapprochement, and, in the long term, its integration with the European Union is of the utmost national interest if the country’s goal is modernization. Russia’s understanding of Europe, however, should not be reduced to Western Europe, or even its key states, such as Germany, France and Italy. Moscow faces the difficult challenge of building new relations with the countries in the continent’s east, which it had formerly dominated.
Given the shared history, Poland and the Baltic States are particularly hard cases. In exasperation, far too many people in Russia are giving up on them, branding the Poles and the Balts as Russia’s “hereditary enemies.” But one need only look at the Russian-German relationship, which has taken off against all odds. Or look at Russia and Finland, which have fought two wars in the last century, not to speak of a civil war immediately following the revolution, which ended one hundred years of Russia’s domination over Finland.
Europe neither stops on the Narova nor begins on the Oder. The Baltic States and Poland represent both a challenge and a chance for working toward a new era of Russian-European relations, which would gradually become those between a part and a whole.

In late January, the Baltic Forum in Riga published Dmitri Trenin’s “Getting Russia Right” in Latvian. In addition to the book launch, attended by most of the policy and academic community, Trenin met with Latvia’s foreign minister Riekstins and gave a lecture at a local university. He was also a guest at a popular TV show and participated in a radio discussion. Several newspapers carried extensive interviews.

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Minister Riekstins and the Director of Carnegie Moscow Centre exchange views on international policy