Jot5

By the mid of the s the concept of Border States had already been established in the political and diplomatic vocabulary of European chancelleries. It referred to the belt of countries from Finland to the north and down to Romania to the south, neighbouring the most ideologically charged border of Europe. It stood witness of a divided Europe, functioning at differing speeds and acting based on most urgent security needs and concerns. While the dialogue between Western and Central Europe was unlocked at least temporarily following the Locarno Pact (), the Border States persisted to be widely seen as a locus of clash between the old bourgeoisie world and the rising communist one. The countries situated on this belt were still in search of diplomatic and political tools to back up stability and regional balance. The Polish-Romanian and the Latvian-Estonian political and military alliances, set up in , were the foundations of international order in the area, and plans to merge them into a grand Border States league continued to be nurtured although with less enthusiasm than it had been done a few years earlier. The Declaration of Common Aims of the Independent Mid-European nations adopted in the convention assembled at Independence Hall of Philadelphia in remained a generous statement of goodwill but a chimera in practical terms. Particularly the Polish-Lithuanian confrontation with regard to the belonging of the historical capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania proved to be Achilles' heel of Border States solidarity. It paved the way to German and Soviet policy of Divide et Impera and backfired the creation of a Baltic union or a Border States league spanned between Helsinki and Bucharest. The lack of mutual knowledge, particularly when it comes to Romanian-Baltic or Romanian-Finnish relation, the divergent national aspirations, the ideological clashes, Polish bossy attitude in the region stood in the way of reaching an agreement between the small and mid-sized nations situated in the area. The answer to the question what to do with Soviet Russia also evoked conflicting answers. The Right typically believed that Russia should be closely monitored but surrounded by a cordon sanitaire. It should not be allowed to participate in decisions either at regional or European level. The Left customarily had a different opinion. It sought for rapprochement between East and West in order to safeguard not solely their independence but their economy and trade, too. The Baltic Left placed emphasis on the economic gains to be achieved from the restoration of trade between Europe and Russia. Torn between conflicting aspirations, it was never easy to find a lasting reconciliation between the Border States and the USSR. The Soviet policy would not encourage that, too, transmitting conflicting signals to its neighbours also given the twofold policy of the Soviet state and the Third International. Even when the Soviet Union proclaimed its support for the international order based on Paris peace treaties, the Komintern continued to be perceived as an instrument devised to weaken resistance of the Border States from inside. By , the Briand-Kellogg Pact was signed and the same year Romania opened a Legation in Riga, the biggest town in Baltic States, centrally located on the flow of information concerning the Soviet Union. But what was the intention behind Romania’s interest to establish a permanent legation on the eastern shores of the Baltic?