Baltic Platform
The small Baltic country of Latvia knows well by its own experience what toxic, aggressive NATO imperialism means. Sold to the West by our own ruling class, we were drawn into the alliance in 2004, as part of the alliance’s fifth and largest expansion. Thus, the Baltic states also became the first NATO member states to come right up to Russia’s borders, naturally influencing its foreign policy.
Unlike in some other countries, the issue of NATO membership was not put to a referendum in the Baltic republics. So, at first the resistance to the unpopular membership in the alliance was quite active—protests were held, which later led to the persecution of activists and various other repressions against them. Today the question of membership in the aggressive imperialist alliance is not raised even by the so-called “opposition” political parties—for 20 years the bourgeoisie has done a huge job to portray in the eyes of the population the presence of foreign soldiers on the territory of our state as the only possible guarantee of its existence.
But the bourgeoisie is always cunning and cynical, and the stories about an “external threat from the East” are only a screen for its real motives. After all, it is not without reason that along with the regular military exercises against the “opposing force”, the Latvian armed forces, together with foreign imperialist contingents, also practise the suppression of protests and riots, and urban battles. Thus, NATO’s presence in the Baltics does not guarantee any “security” against external threats; rather, it ensures the security of the ruling class—the fascist bourgeoisie—against its own population. They understand perfectly well how the people feel about them for still depriving 200 thousand of their own inhabitants—so-called non-citizens or “aliens”—of basic human rights, for vandalising and destroying monuments and memorials to the Red Army, the victor of Nazism, which are sacred to hundreds of thousands of Latvians; for depriving them of the right to use the Russian language, which is native to 40% of the population of this country.
Therefore, we declare firmly and clearly: the presence of NATO in Latvia, as well as Estonia and Lithuania, is another form of the class struggle of the Latvian bourgeoisie against its own people, and any foreign NATO soldier in Latvia is an occupant and a robber, for whose maintenance the money taken from our workers, children and the old people is spent.
Down with NATO!
Down with imperialism!
Long live international anti-fascist and anti-imperialist solidarity!
