Economic Nationalism, Minority Policies , and the 1930s in Lithuania and Latvia

This chapter examines economic nationalism in interwar Latvia and Lithuania as a strategy to empower the titular nationalities while marginalizing minorities. After World War I, both states sought to reconfigure economic agency by redistributing economic resources. In the 1930s, the Great Depression catalyzed these efforts, but economic control shifted toward the state rather than individual citizens. Through state-backed financial institutions, governments acquired minority-owned assets, thus centralizing economic power. While some saw this as a failure of true economic empowerment, nationalists viewed the decreasing economic influence of minorities as a sign of success. This economic transformation also shaped responses to the Soviet and Nazi occupations, as the former threatened to undo economic empowerment, while the latter superficially appeared to continue it.