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CHAPTER VIII
THE BALTIC PROBLEM
The Baltic Provinces deserve special attention ; a short
survey of the main issues which confront Esthonia, Livonia,
Courland, and the islands of Dago and Oesel may be welcome.
Thanks to their geographical position, their agricultural as
well as industrial development, and their well-educated
population,* they form a priceless jewel among the
component parts of Russia.
The information contained in English periodicals and
books about the Baltic question in its historical and political
bearing is rather scanty and often misleading. Some
periodicals even do not know how to style the nobility and
bourgeoisie of the provinces and describe them as Baltic
Germans. The Peace of Brest-Litovsk and the occupation
of these provinces may have induced the Germans to speak
of Baltic Germans as now belonging to Germany, but since
such a peace is regarded by the Allies as null and void, the
fate of the Baltic Provinces will only be determined when
the whole political map of Europe is remodelled in the
interests of all the belligerents, and not, as at present, at
the dictates of Germany !
It is true that the nobility and bourgeoisie of the Russian
Baltic Provinces are, for the greater part, descendants of
those Teutons who colonised these provinces in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries—namely, not less than seven or eight
hundred years ago. But at all times and everywhere the
criterion for the international designation of a population
is their political nationality, not their original racial descent.
* The Baltic Provinces have the smallest number of illiterate persons
in comparison with all the other provinces of Russia.
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