Baltic nations offer ex-Soviet states a Western model

A way to give back

The fact that they share a common Soviet past makes helping those countries reform after Soviet rule a given. "Eastern partnership countries are very important for us Balts," Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks says. "We understand their problems better than anybody else in the EU. We enjoy their trust much more than anybody else, so it is natural that we are, and should be, more active in this direction."

Kristina Vaiciunaite of Vilnius, Lithuania, was a teenager when her country broke free of the Soviet Union in 1991. She remembers how, after independence, Scandinavians came to Lithuanian schools and offered students scholarships to study abroad.

Now, as head of the Eastern Europe Studies Centre in Vilnius, a nonprofit group advocating Belorussian issues in Brussels, she does the same thing, helping students of Belarus make the journey to Vilnius to study and attend youth camps.

"When Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania wanted to enter the EU and NATO, they felt that the Scandinavians were the best spokespersons for them, as their closest neighbors," concurs Richard Baerug of the Baltic to Black Sea Alliance in Riga, Latvia, a nonprofit group aimed at promoting Georgia's and Ukraine's accession into NATO.

"Now it's time for the Baltic countries to pick up that relay and try to assist as much as possible new development further east."

An encouraging path

Ms. Vaiciunaite's and Mr. Baerug's projects are among a steadily growing number of initiatives that the three Baltic states have set up in recent years to promote democracy and good governance in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus – mostly in Georgia, Moldova, Belarus, and Ukraine. Focus areas include the training of government officials, defenses against cyberattacks, and promotion of e-governance.

Results have been mixed in places like Belarus, but signs are encouraging in Georgia. Long torn by civil war and poverty – and its existence at risk following the war with Russia – Georgia has become the best-run ex-Soviet state.

When voters elected a new government in October, the transition went smoothly. "They passed the test," says Vaiciunaite. "There were no nasty fights on the streets, and that's new for Georgia."

A natural new role

After the Soviet Union dissolved, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania doggedly refused to join Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia in their new federation of former communist states called the Commonwealth of Independent States. Eager to shed their "Eastern European," or "ex-Soviet states" labels, they made entering the EU and NATO their priority.

It was a monumental task.

"Even the most courageous of dreamers could not have thought this was achievable," remembers Mr. Pabriks, who was Latvia's foreign minister from 2004 to 2007. But they did, partially through a diehard, and painful, form of capitalism, and now it is their model they are trying to export.

In particular, Estonia transformed itself virtually overnight from Soviet state to one of the most modern democracies in the world. And the Internet was a major tool.

Last year the Estonian government created the Estonian Center of Eastern Partnership, mostly to pass on its expertise in "e-governance" to countries like Georgia and help them increase their ties with the EU.

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