Patrick Salmon

Of all the Soviet Union's subject nationalities, the three Baltic republics, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, were the most determined and best organised in seizing the opportunities created by glasnost and perestroika to win freedom from Moscow's grip. At the time of first publication, in 1991, the final section of the book was speculative. Now for this revised edition, the authors have provided a new final chapter which brings the story up to date -- and the three republics to political independence again.

At the beginning of the twentieth century Scandinavia lay on the margin of European power politics, but with the polarisation of international relations in the era of the two world wars, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden became the point where the spheres of influence of three great powers - Great Britain, Germany and Russia - intersected. In this book, Patrick Salmon uses his extensive research in British, German and Scandinavian archives to examine the position of the Nordic countries in the great-power rivalries and conflicts of the period 1890–1940. However, it does not treat the Nordic countries merely as passive victims. It seeks to show that, despite the disparity in strength between the great powers and the small states of northern Europe, the latter had means of adapting to great-power pressures and even influencing the policies of their formidable neighbours.

At the beginning of the twentieth century Scandinavia lay on the margin of European power politics, but with the polarisation of international relations in the era of the two world wars, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden became the point where the spheres of influence of three great powers - Great Britain, Germany and Russia - intersected. In this book, Patrick Salmon uses his extensive research in British, German and Scandinavian archives to examine the position of the Nordic countries in the great-power rivalries and conflicts of the period 1890–1940. However, it does not treat the Nordic countries merely as passive victims. It seeks to show that, despite the disparity in strength between the great powers and the small states of northern Europe, the latter had means of adapting to great-power pressures and even influencing the policies of their formidable neighbours.

Of all the Soviet Union's subject nationalities, the three Baltic republics, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, were the most determined and best organised in seizing the opportunities created by glasnost and perestroika to win freedom from Moscow's grip. At the time of first publication, in 1991, the final section of the book was speculative. Now for this revised edition, the authors have provided a new final chapter which brings the story up to date -- and the three republics to political independence again.