The Steel Curtain

Who is crying? What lamenting sounds

so sadly through the night?

They are orphan children crying, bowed

beneath their master's might.

Crying sadly, see them making little

fires against the cold.

By the river, see them bending, dipping

bread crusts hard and old. . . .

Sun so golden, will you tell me where

you wandered yesterday?

"I was warming shiv'ring orphans in

the mountains far away."

--Latvian Folk Song

This poetry of despair sprang from the depths of serfdom, in lands where the soil is hard, the sun is cold, and foreign masters have always been harder and colder than either. For centuries, Baltic peasants have labored for their feudal lords--Swedes, Russians, Poles, Germans. Today, the Baltic peasant serves an old master under a new form of serfdom. He serves Communist Russia.

Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were forced, at the point of Red Army guns, to join the Soviet Union in 1940. Ever since then, Russia's westward window on the Baltic Sea has been tightly shuttered.* Said one Lithuanian recently: "We don't speak of the Iron Curtain, as that is not a strong enough expression. Our country lies behind the Steel Curtain." From refugees' reports, letters, rumors and official Soviet decrees, a picture of life behind the Steel Curtain can be pieced together.

"Vorkuta Is the Name." Before the Steel Curtain descended, the Baltic people were known to the world as a highly literate, vigorous peasant people, used to fighting for the reluctant fruit of their poor land. They have a stolid dignity, yet are cheerfully devoted to simple, inexpensive pleasures. In the summer they used to go swimming along the endless, pine-studded beaches of the Gulf of Riga, often in the nude (the early part of the morning was reserved for men, the latter part for women, and police saw to it that none of the early bathers overstayed their allotted time). During Midsummer Night, they would swarm through their vast woods by the thousands, singing wild songs that echoed over the countryside's countless lakes. Now the silent Lithuanian woods harbor the bitter "brethren of the forest," i.e., anti-Russian guerrillas.

The Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians were proud of their small, separate cultures. They flocked to opera and the ballet, and liked to reminisce about the time Robert Casadesus gave a concert in Riga, or Boris Chaliapin sang at the National Opera. Now, there are only a handful of theaters left, most of them Russian, and the people are in no mood to attend them. Related a refugee: "On June 13, 1946, I was in Vilna/- and saw, with my own eyes, 3,000 men being transported from the central prison camp to the central station. They were to be shipped to Siberia. After seeing faces like theirs, you don't feel like going to an operetta in the evening." In Tallinn, every five years, the people used to gather for Laulupidu (singing festivals), with 15,000 singers and 3.000 orchestra members (see cut). Now, there are no more Laulupidu; Estonians explain that it is hard to find enough male voices.

As everywhere, the Russians rule through political terror. A refugee's testimony: "I know it sounds funny to you, but the fact is that to us who escaped to Poland, that country today seems, by comparison, the most wonderfully free, democratic country you could dream of. This is how the MGB (formerly the NKVD) works in our cities: every block is controlled by an MGB boss with his office on the premises. Every house has an MGB informer. The informers control each other. One of them goes to the other and says: 'It's too bad about all this terror in Russia.' The other one says: Is that so?' Some time afterwards the MGB boss summons Agent No. 2 and tells him he is guilty of bourgeois propaganda. 'Don't you remember, some time ago a man spoke against Russia to you? Why didn't you report him?' "

The fear of Siberia is everywhere. The stories that circulate, though possibly exaggerated, are significant. One example: "Varkuta is the name of the place you are sent to. It is a town, or rather a prison camp, the Russians opened in 1943 behind the Urals. There are coal mines covering 4,000 square miles, a total of 1,500,000 slave workers in the pits. The region is subArctic. The ground is so hard frozen that those who die cannot be buried, but are left lying on the tundra, where the wolves and other wild animals take care of them."

The "Limit" Elite. Riga's once famed, numerous pastry shops are empty these days, and the equally numerous florists are little more than a memory. The taverns in Vilna have been transformed into prisons by the MGB. Life is no safer than in Russia, though the standard of nourishment is higher. Related a refugee: "There is no starvation, not so much because the Russians try to prevent it, but because the people are united to such an extent that everyone in need gets help. The farmers are wonderful. Every appeal from the underground for vital foodstuffs is immediately met."

An average worker makes about 300 rubles a month (the price of 2 lbs. of smoked sausage). However, the new overlords, i.e., Russian officials, technicians, "Heroes of the Soviet Union," local Communist big shots, get special privileges. They are known as "limit people" (those who receive the top category of limitnaya kartochka, i.e., ration card). Their ration includes 16 lbs. of meat a month, they are assigned special restaurants, special baths (much of the plumbing is dilapidated), special shows and concerts. A current bitter crack in Riga: "All they are waiting for now is special brothels."

The Russians encourage migrations of their nationals to the Baltics, and the Russians like to come, because they find life there more agreeable than back home. "Russification" proceeds apace. In Tallinn, for example, birth announcements reveal half as many newborn Russians as Estonians. Many schools and churches are closed; Russian (as in Czarist days) has become the official language, and Communism the official religion.

The Soviet Barons. Nowhere is the new servitude as sharply apparent as on the farms. The huge private estates (which had been broken up into medium-sized individual holdings after World War I) are now reincarnated in huge sovkhozy (state farms). There, the Baltic peasants work as near-serfs for their new Soviet barons. The remaining private farms are assigned rigid production quotas which are usually far above what man, beast and soil can produce (nearly half of the Baltics' livestock was slaughtered or carried off during the war). Farmers who fail to meet the production quotas are either deported to Siberia or forced to go to work in factories; the result is that a great deal of soil actually goes untilled.

The Russians carry off everything--from horses, of which the Baltic people are so fond that they compose songs to them ("Little horse of mine, what means this neighing?"), to timber cut in Riga's Kaiserwald; Rigans wistfully remember how they went skiing there, amid the tall northern pines, in the opalescent light of short winter days.

Most of the people (except the guerrillas and those who manage to escape) gloomily accept their fate. They know that even though the Western allies have not formally recognized the presence of Russia in the Baltics, the Russians are there to stay. Wrote one Latvian: "My hatred is such as I have never known before, but the Soviets are the masters."

The Russian radio recently gave the official Soviet version of the story: "The Baltic Republics ... of their own free will . . . joined the great and united Soviet family, a family which will never let any of its members remain in misery."

* In 1941, the conquering German Armies pushed out the Russians, occupied the hapless Baltics for three years, were pushed out in 1944 by the reconquering Russian armies.

/- Vilna, ancient capital of Lithuania, was seized by the Poles shortly after World War I, remained a bone of contention between Lithuania and Poland during the entire interwar period. In 1939, the Russians captured it from Poland and gave it to the Lithuanian Republic. In 1944, the Russians recaptured it from the Germans and gave it to the Lithuanian S.S.R., this time "forever." It is now secret police headquarters for all three countries.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.