By The Balto-Slavic association is only serving the political interests of Poland and Russia
To put it simple, the Balto-Slavic association is only serving the political interests of Poland and Russia, because it gives them a free runway to overshadow and hide the very dark history, such as the ethnic cleansing of Baltic people. The Soviets (ethnically Slavic) performed crimes against humanity by expelling and deporting ethnic Balts en masse to forced labour camps in Siberia (far-east Russia) and extermination camps in 1941 and between 1945–1952.
The same applies to the Polish occupation of Lithuania during 1919-1939 and centuries long polonisation in the Commonwealth, which has not yet been properly acknowledged as something wrong by Poland, or any other country for that matter. It is important to say that neither Lithuania nor Latvia saw any cultural or scientific developments during these periods of occupation.
This is not that different to what has happened to now extinct people, known in history as Western Balts, which by the 17th century have been linguistically and ethnically erased by the Teutonic Order, with no memory remaining.
Coming back to the UCL School of Slavonic Studies. I really doubt if the Slavic people would be happy to see their culture was studied under the name “School of Baltic Studies”.
This can be easily resolved by either creating a separate Baltic School or not to make this Balto-Slavic association at all. Trying to forcibly link and overshadow an oppressed minority of a few million people with an ignorant oppressor is very distasteful and I, and many other people feel very offended.
The question really goes deeper than that. Why the British, or generally speaking the whole higher education system in Europe is quite frequently serving the political interests of Polish and Russian governments?
A recent statement in relation to a security matter by one of the highest-ranking British politicians, Ms Elizabeth Truss, who in an interview made a comment saying that the Baltic states were “across the Black Sea” just reaffirms my concerns about the Baltic identity.
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