LETTONIE - RUSSIE, Traités et documents de base

Excerpt from Statement by the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, Before the Select Committee on Communist Aggression, House of Representatives, on November 30, 1953.

Excerpt from Statement by the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, Before the Select Committee on Communist Aggression, House of Representatives, on November 30, 1953.

I am very happy to have this opportunity to talk to you and the members of your committee about the Baltic Replies of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

The Baltic peoples, in the face of every imposition retain their will to be free and maintain their steadfast opposition to Soviet despotism. Terrorism has been prolonged, now, for 13 years. Many of their courageous and noble representatives have been executed, deported, or driven into exile. But their martyrdom keeps patriotism alive.

The United States, for its part, maintains the diplomatic recognition which it extended in 1922 to the three Baltic nations. We continue to deal with their diplomatic and consular representatives who served the last independent governments of these states.

Some may say that it is unrealistic and impractical not to recognise the enforced incorporation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania into the Soviet Union. We believe, however, that a despotism of the Soviet type cannot indefinitely perpetuate its rule over hundreds of millions of people who love God, who love country, and who have a sense of personal dignity.

The Soviet system which seeks to expunge the distinctive characteristics of nation, creed, and individuality must itself change or be doomed ultimately to collapse. The time of collapse depends largely on whether the peoples who remain free produce spiritual, intellectual, and material richness, and whether we have a faith which can penetrate any Iron Curtain; and we must be sure that the captive peoples know that they are not forgotten, that we are not reconciled to their fate, and, above all, that we are not prepared to seek illusory safety for ourselves by a bargain with their masters which would confirm their captivity.

Source:
Hearings before the Select Committee to Investigate the Incorporation of the Baltic States into the USSR, House of Representatives, Part J, Washington, 1953, pp. 2-4. cit� dans American Latvian Association in The United States, Lettonie, en com-m�moration du 50�me anniversaire de la D�claration d'Ind�pendance de la R�publique de Lettonie , Washington D.C., 1968, p.71.