Kails naussen gnigethe ("Hello our friend!" in Middle Ages Sudovian)

                                              The flag of heathen Prussia

Balts' Cultural Riches Lies in their Multiculturality

Kультурное богатство балтийских народов -их многокультурность

La ricchezza culturale dei popoli baltici è la loro multiculturalità
La richesse culturelle
des peuples baltiques réside dans leur multiculturalité 

Der Multikulturalismus der baltischen Voelker darstellt ihr kulturelles Reichtum

Another “minor” peoples’ migration took place from Russia to Central Europe in the 6^th Century a.C.. The Balts, which, according to most theories, were not distinguishable, in a first period, from the Slavs, separated themselves from the Slavs, and settled in the area encompassed between Belarus’ and Muscovy. In that period, they started to migrate westward, up to a moment in which they covered the area which goes from the Polish city of Torun’, to the southern part of Latvia and to Lithuania.

Whilst some of the Baltic tribes started to unite into a strongly militarized federation, apt to fight against Polish Feudality, German (“Holy Cross”) Knights and Kievskaja Rus’, the Western part of the Balts succumbed very early to the alliance between the Polish Dukes of Mazovia and the Knights of the Holy Cross, becoming slaves of the latter.

Civilisation of the Baltic Lands was very deeply influenced by their connections with Vikings, Russians, Germans, Poles and Swedes. Following to the secularisation of the Order of the Holy Cross and its transformation into the Kingdom of Prussia, as well as to the Unia Lubelska between Poland and Lithuania, and to the Swedish invasion of Estonia and Latvia, a cosmopolitan, German, Polish, and/or Russian speaking elite, was formed in the Baltic countries. Herder, Mickiewicz and Ungern-Sternberg belonged in this élite. In the same time, a part of the Lithuanian aristocracy pledged alliance to the Muscovite Princes.

In the last centuries, with the diffusion of Protestantism and the theory of nationalities, Balts started recovering their ancient culture, and became even less tolerant of the different, Scandinavian, German, Polish and Russian dominations. Present-days conflicts in the Baltic Republics are the last heritage of those far away events. Such difficulties, and the purported torts suffered, by the Balts, from stronger neighbor peoples should not conceal that the riches of Baltic cultures is constituted, besides their heathen  roots , also from the Germanic cultural contributions, as well as by the Polish Catholicism and the Russian influence, the latter becoming  important starting from Peter the Great, which decided  to establish his capital precisely in a Finnish territory for being more “European”.