Wartime decisions lead to peacetime problems: leadership of the Lutheran churches in Baltic states, 1944-1949

ENThis paper is dedicated to a  brief but crucially important period for Lutheran Churches in the  Baltic states during the  20th century that set into motion religious processes for almost half a  century. During World War II, the  Baltic states  – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were occupied by the  Soviet army, later taken over by Nazi Germany and then again reoccupied by the  Soviets in 1944/45. During this period and shortly after the  war, Lutheran Churches in the  Baltic states experienced a  whirlwind of totalitarian power, different state policies towards religion, significant loss of the  clergy and church members, and faced the  demolition of churches as institutions and places of worship. In these times of changes, the  members of Lutheran leadership of Estonia and Latvia in 1944 were forced to leave their states and churches, never to return, as the  Iron Curtain descended between the  Soviet Union and the  Western world after the  war ended. A  similar situation occurred with Lithuanian Lutherans. The  author seeks to explore the  changes in Baltic Lutheran Churches and their leadership from 1944–1949 by analysing the  situation in each church separately and seeking similarities in the  process of leaving the  church in the  hands of other church members,   – those, who stayed behind in the  occupied territories.Through persons and their attitude towards the  new role as the  church leader(s), the  author investigates the  sovietisation process of the  Lutheran Church (and overall  – the  religion) that was aggressively carried out by the  Soviet state in the  Baltics in the  last months of war and the  first post-war years until the  mass deportations in March of 1949, which frame the  chronological period of the  paper. Sources from the  archives in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are used to describe and illustrate this process, the  existing research on the  changes of leadership of the  churches has largely omitted all three Baltic states due to the  language barrier or academic research tendencies.

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