Occupation Cost

From MT:
"Soviet 'Occupation' Caused $210 Bln Damage to Latvian Economy - Report"

The damage inflicted on Latvia’s economy by what the country considers a Soviet occupation from 1940 to 1990 has been estimated at 185 billion euros ($209 billion) by a Latvian research committee, Latvian news website DELFI reported on Monday.  Committee spokesperson Ruta Pazdere said that the damage done to the country’s demography and its environment during the same period had been estimated in the tens of billions.  Pazdere announced the figures at the launch of a number of new books on the history of the Soviet occupation of the Baltics, the Latvian Leta news agency reported.

Speaking at the launch, Latvian MEP Inese Vaidere stressed the need to work on a joint understanding of history.   “Without research into the past, there is a risk that we will repeat the same mistakes,” she said to DELFI.  The lawmaker also noted “identically criminal” similarities between Nazi and Soviet regimes, according to DELFI.    The special committee, created eleven years ago, focuses on 40 areas of research, including the damage incurred under Soviet occupation. As well as focusing on Latvia’s economy, they consider human loss — by calculating the number of people who were deported to Russia or fled to the West — and the occupation’s influence on Latvian culture, religion and countryside.

 

^ The Soviet Union occupied Latvia (and Lithuanian and Estonia) from 1939-1941 and then again from 1944-1991.) Unlike the other Soviet occupations of: Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Yugoslavia, and Austria the USSR annexed the Baltic countries and they became and "integrated" part of the Soviet Union. The same thing happened to Moldova. While the other parts of Eastern Europe were heavily influenced by the USSR and Soviet troops were stationed in those countries for years - sometimes decades - Latvians was considered full Soviet citizens and had to suffer for nearly 50 years on the yoke of repressions, deportations and forced Russification. The Russian Federation asked the UN in December 1991 - when the USSR collapsed - to be the sole successor state of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and it was granted. That means that any issue with the former USSR now goes to Russia. I think Russia should have to compensate every country that the Soviet Union occupied and that requests that compensation. Germany and Japan have to pay compensation to the territories they occupied during World, War 2 and so it only seems legally right for Russia (as the internationally-recognized heir of the USSR) to do the same. Of course the costs will be extremely high since the Soviet occupations lasted nearly 5 decades, but that shouldn't change anything. ^

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/soviet-occupation-caused-210-bln-damage-to-latvian-economy---report/566501.html