The mechanics of the 1940 annexation of the Baltics: 'a film about two I's' (Dribnytsya, 16.12.2021)

A fragment of a video debate by Vitaliy Dribnytsya (16.12.2021) on the mechanics of the 1940 Soviet annexation of the Baltics. Dribnytsya lays out the sequence of steps: Soviet troops had been stationed in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania under the “mutual assistance pacts” imposed after the pact since the autumn of 1939; in the summer of 1940 Moscow seized power, held “so-called elections,” and the legitimate governments went into emigration. The election decree in Estonia was signed on 5 July 1940 on the direct instruction of Stalin’s emissary Andrei Zhdanov. (The transcript is distorted by automatic speech recognition; names and dates have been checked against fact-checking.)