The Baltic states (also Baltics, Baltic nations or Baltic countries) usually are referred to the territories east of Baltic Sea which gained independence from the Russian Empire in the wake of World War I: primarily the contiguous trio of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; Finland also fell within the scope of the term from the 1920s to 1939. The term should not be confused with that of Baltic peoples. The latter term describes the indigenous populations of Latvia and Lithuania, while the indigenous populations of Estonia and Finland are Finnic peoples. Since the Middle Ages the region developed another national identity the Baltic Germans that was established after the Livonian Crusade.
The term in the indigenous languages of the Baltic states is:
- Latvian: Baltijas valstis,
- Lithuanian: Baltijos valstybės,
- Estonian: Balti riigid, Baltimaad,
- Finnish: Baltian maat.
Read more about Baltic States: Etymology and Toponymic History, Cultures and Languages, Economies, Histories, Politics, Statistics
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“We cannot feel strongly toward the totally unlike because it is unimaginable, unrealizable; nor yet toward the wholly like because it is stale—identity must always be dull company. The power of other natures over us lies in a stimulating difference which causes excitement and opens communication, in ideas similar to our own but not identical, in states of mind attainable but not actual.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)