Latvia and Lithuania's territory are roughly equal in size. Each one of them is about two thirds the size of Hungary. Latvia has a population of about 2.3 million, Lithuania 3.5 million while Hungary's is just above 10 million.
Latvia and Lithuania formed part of the Soviet Union from when the Hitler-Stalin Pact gave Moscow a free hand to annex them. Hungary was an independent country until it was invaded by Nazi Germany.
Subsequently freed by the Soviets, it was turned into a Soviet, satellite state under a communist government. The Hungarian uprising in 1956, crushed by Soviet tanks, was one of the most memorable episodes of the Cold War. It also produced the first crack in the international communist movement.
Latvia and Lithuania, together with Estonia (Our Europe, The Sunday Times, March 7), are known as the Baltic States. The three became independent countries in 1918. But failing to establish a vibrant democracy they all fell under authoritarian rule: Lithuania in 1926, Latvia and Estonia in 1934. This made it much easier for them to be treated highhandedly by neighbouring dictatorships in the period between the wars.
A secret pact between Hitler and Stalin in August 1939 led to the occupation of the three states by the Soviet Union. Once under Soviet rule the three countries held elections that were rigged to elect pro-Soviet governments. With pro-Soviet governments in place, the three countries went on to 'request' incorporation in the Soviet Union.
As part of the Soviet Union, the three Baltic states were controlled directly from Moscow. They also suffered extensively as a result of the Stalinist purges of the Forties and the Fifties. Hundreds of their citizens were mercilessly slaughtered or deported to Siberia. The memories of these hardships are still fresh in the minds of the Baltic people.
Latvia, like Estonia, has a sizable Russian minority, 35 per cent of the population, due to Russian immigration during the years when it formed part of the Soviet Union. Latvia shares borders with Russia and Byelorussia as well as with Estonia and Lithuania.
Lithuania shares borders with Latvia, Poland and Byelorussia as well as with the Russian enclave of Kalingrad, the former East Prussian city of Königsberg, taken away from Germany at the end of the war and incorporated in the Soviet Union. Today this enclave still forms part of the Russian Federation.
Lithuania declared independence in March 1990. This was ratified by the Soviet Union in 1991 and two years later the last Russian troops left the country. Latvia declared independence in August 1991 when an abortive coup was staged in Moscow. The last Russian troops withdrew from the country in 1994.
Given the hardships that the citizens of the Baltic states have suffered at the hands of the Russians for many years, the ethnic Russian minority in Latvia numbering some half a million did not enjoy full rights after Latvia gained independence. But international pressure led to changes in Latvian law that go a long way to correcting this.
Given Latvia's past history - and Estonia's as well, come to that - it will be a laborious and difficult task indeed, which will eventually fully integrate the Russian minority in their life.
In a referendum held on September 20, 2003, Latvians ratified their country's entry in the EU. In Lithuania, voters did the same thing in a referendum held on May 11, 2003.
Lithuania and Latvia will also shortly join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Fear of Russia remains an important issue in these countries' security thinking - not that there is an imminent danger of their loss of sovereignty, but that developments in the giant state next door may be detrimental in the long run to their newly won independence.
That is why they seek to strengthen their integration within all the major organisations of democratic states in Europe besides the EU. The Baltic states are currently engaged in the process of strengthening their democratic institutions and market economy. Their societies are also undergoing deep changes as a result.
In 2001 services contributed 70% of Latvia's GDP, followed by industry 19%; construction 6% and agriculture including forestry and fisheries with 5%. Services are to a large extent made up of transit transport to and from Russia and the states of the former USSR within the CIS. In this, petroleum is the most important cargo.
The port of Ventspils used to be the largest Baltic sea oil transit terminal though recently it has been experiencing competition from the new Russian-built port facilities in the Finnish Gulf near St Petersburg at Primorsk. Also the ports of Riga and Liepaja also play an important role in transit trade and in the export of Latvian goods (mainly timber).
Other main contributors to economic activity include the wholesale and retail trade (19%), food processing (5%), wood industry (3%) and textiles (2%). Much of the manufacturing industry, for which Latvia had a solid tradition, closed down in the process of economic restructuring after the fall of communism. However, chemical, electrical machinery and pharmaceutical factories are still strong as well as one steel plant.
In Lithuania's case, the Gross Domestic Product is made up of the following shares: agriculture 7%, industry 28%, construction 6% and services 59%. Since 1997, and against a challenging international economic backdrop, particularly the Russian crisis of 1998 on average, real GDP has grown by 3.6% annually and exports by 7.4% annually. More than half of Lithuania's trade is with the EU. Unemployment at 13.1% is relatively high.
Hungary
In one peculiar fashion Hungarian history slightly resembles Malta's by virtue of the fact that it too had to struggle for survival against the Ottoman Turks between the 15th and 17th centuries. Subsequently, it formed part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It acquired independence within this empire in 1867. The Austrian emperor was a dual monarch of Austria and Hungary but the empire had a single diplomatic service - and government.
Hungary allied herself with Germany during World War II and was thus allowed to recover most of the territories it had lost to neighbouring countries (Yugoslavia and Romania) following the end of World War I when, as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it had also aligned itself with the Kaiser's Germany.
But Hungary's territorial gains in World War II were short-lived. The country was invaded and freed from Nazi rule in 1944-45.
Thus disentangled from the Nazis, in 1946 Hungary decided to establish a republic but in 1947 the communists took over the government. Ten years of communism did not gring the Hungarians much welfare bains and in 1956 they rose in revolt and demanded the establishment of a government under Imre Nagy.
Demonstrations against communist rule soon changed into an open revolt against their rule. Hardly had Nagy taken up his appointment that some 2,500 Soviet tanks and armoured vehicles as well as more than 200,000 troops rolled into the country and crushed the revolt.
Thousands fled the country and hundreds were arrested and summarily executed. Nagy was executed in June 1958. The heroic Hungarian revolt against communism and its brutal suppression at the hands of the Soviets proved to the world that Hungary was not the exception in its rejection of the system and that communism had in fact been forced on the majority of the people of central and eastern Europe.
The Hungarian revolt thus shattered the unity of the international communist movement as communists everywhere took sides condemning or praising the Soviet move. Criticism was most salient among the western communist parties, who found it extremely hard to explain to their fellow citizens why their communist parties should be supported at the ballot box.
The Hungarians have frequently struggled for their independence. Between 1848 and 1849, during the European revolutions, Lajos Kossuth led them into revolting against Austrian rule. As a result Hungary's first independent Government was set up under Prime Minister Lajos Batthyany.
Vienna was at first ready to appease the Hungarians but subsequently changed its mind. The reaction set in as Austria began to rein back in all the rebellious parts of the empire, including those in the Balkans and northern Italy. Against the Magyars the Austrians did not have a walkover and the young Austrian Emperor, Franz Joseph I, appealed to the Russian Tsar to help him. Attacked on two fronts, the Hungarians eventually had to surrender.
Back to the 1956 Soviet invasion and the repression of all dissent, Moscow went on to establish an orthodox communist government loyal to it. So subdued was Hungary that, in 1968, Hungarian military contingents joined the Soviet Union and other communist bloc countries members of the Warsaw Pact in the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
But it was also in 1968 that Hungary became the first communist bloc country to begin experimenting with market economic reform. The Soviets seemed to have allowed this to cool the Hungarians' restive temperament. Political power was meanwhile not allowed to slip from the hands of orthodox communist handlers.
Economic experimentation in unorthodox market-oriented directions intensified in the Eighties. Then when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in Moscow the Hungarians were emboldened to allow their experiments to spill over into the political domain.
In 1989, the Hungarian parliament passed legislation allowing freedom of speech and expression. The break from communism had begun. The following year the Hungarian Communist Party was dissolved. In 1991, the last Soviet troops left the country and, in 1999, Hungary joined NATO.
Hungary's worst nightmare was over. What was needed next was the consolidation of its many links with the rest of the family of democratic nations.
Hungary's standard of living is very similar to that of its neighbour, the Czech Republic. Since it is a landlocked country bordered by Austria, the Ukraine, Slovakia, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia and Romania, the Danube is Hungary's most important river and transport route, offering easy access to central and south-east Europe.
The canal linking the Danube to the river Main opened in 1992 permits goods and passengers to be carried from the Black Sea to the North Sea. Other major rivers, all tributaries of the Danube, include the Tisza, the longest river in Hungary.
In October 2001, the last Danube bridge that was destroyed in World War II was reopened by both the Slovak and the Hungarian prime minister as well as European Commissioner Günter Verheugen. The reconstruction of the bridge was co-financed by the EU Phare programme with €10 million.
Hungary is a highly cultured country. According to information on the EU's official Website, the country has more than 5,000 public libraries, and more than 100 public museums. For a country of around 10 million people that is a lot. For a country of Hungary's cultural magnitude that may be just enough.