Perception of Russia's soft power and influence in the Baltic States

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThis paper seeks to explore and analyse the different means and mechanisms of influence employed by Russia on the three Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). By influence, it means the attempt to try and get another country to behave in a manner that benefits the influencer's policy and/or interests. As such, this can entail exerting one of two forms of power, hard or soft (as defined by Nye, 2004) to bring about the compliance. The current paper restricts its focus to those mechanisms related to shaping opinion and perception, such as public diplomacy (in its various forms).To begin with the paper shall define the various concepts used -influence, power and public diplomacy. It shall then shift to the different Russian institutions that have been created to shape and manage influence, such as Russky Mir or Rossotrudnichestvo. Plus there are those other elements that exist in the region -Russian compatriots and Russian language media (both local and external to the Baltic States). Then the paper shall deal with relations between Russia and the Baltic States, with a focus upon recent history. Sources shall not be limited to academic literature and mass media resources, but will also include interviews for an 'insider' perspective on the issue. The responses shall be used to address the following question: How do people in the Baltic States perceive Russian soft power and influence?

Russian Foreign Policy and Public Diplomacy: Meeting 21st Century Challenges

“…Other alternative means of direct communication with foreign publics were sought; one of the means has been via an active social media presence [Simons 2015]. Social media has enabled Russian public diplomacy to directly reach foreign publics without any intermediaries and reinterpretation by other actors.…”

“…However, this subjective assumption does not relate to the pragmatic economic interests and a multilateral course of some of these countries and the result is a weakening of relations [Petrovich-Belkin, Eremin, Bokeriya 2019]. A mixture of historical memory and a lack of listening (plus various assumptions) also tend to inhibit any meaningful progress of Russian public diplomacy and soft power in the Baltic States [Simons 2015]. This is related to the presumed and actual soft power, which is an element of importance for Russian foreign policy stressed in a number of the FPCs to achieve a relative competitive advantage over more powerful international rivals.…”

Euromaidan and conflict in Eastern Ukraine in social networking sites: Territorial differences of pro-Russian subscriptions in Ukraine

“…Social media and social networking sites also became part of soft power and public democracy strategies by geopolitical powers (Simons, G. 2015). As a seemingly uncontrolled channel of information, SNS became essential tools in the formation of alternative geopolitical narratives of conflicts, geographical imaginations about particular places and regions and their relations to political centres, a geopolitical picture of the world and relations between countries.…”

Does Latvia Matter in Regional Geopolitics?

“…Specifically, Russia still wields economic influence (Simons 2015, Bruge 2015, Oja 2015) and, simply because of geographical proximity and the makeup of Latvia's economy, this connection will not go away any time soon regardless of EU involvement (Ozoliņš et al 2015, Bruge 2015. Furthermore, Russia wields extensive influence through media (Partschefeld 2015, Braw 2015, Kara-Murza 2015, Simons 2015) and politics (Bergmane 2017), two additional arenas that membership in the EU and NATO will not likely alter. Perhaps most concerning for Latvia and NATO, Russia is more than willing to militarily threaten Latvia (BBC Russian Service 2016, Charap and Shapiro 2016).…”