Die Wikipedia-Politik drängt die baltische Geschichte in die russische Sphäre

The birthplaces of of well-known people in the Baltic states are being systematically changed on the reference website Wikipedia, reports Latvian Radio.

If previously the specific country (Latvia, Estonia or Lithuania) was mentioned as the place of birth, now in many cases the Soviet Union appears as the country of birth. Latvian Radio revealed that the biographies of well-known people in Latvia, including President Edgars Rinkēvičs (entry pictured above), are also being changed in this way.

In the case of Estonia, a Wikipedia user has changed the birthplace records of nearly 600 people in English-language articles, indicating that they were born in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), within the Soviet Union. In one case, such edits were made for more than 21 hours in a row, and the user himself described them as „correcting“ Estonian history. This was reported by [Estonian public media ERR](https://news.err.ee/1609903256/estonian-volunteers-struggling-to-protect-wikipedia-from-russian-propaganda), citing research conducted by journalist Ronald Liive.

Lithuanian media outlet Lrytas reported on similar actions, which resulted in the birthplaces of a number of politicians being changed to ‚Lithuanian SSR‘, including President Gitanas Nausėdas and former President Dalia Grybauskaitė.

Latvian Radio disinformation researcher Anete Bērzkalne checked whether similar changes had been made to the biographies of famous people in Latvia, and found that it appears to be the case. The place of birth – from „Latvia“ to „Latvian SSR, Soviet Union“ – has been changed for a number of people, including Edgars Rinkēvičs, Evika Siliņa, Valdis Dombrovskis, Egils Levits, Helēna Demakova, as well as athletes such as Dairis Bertāns, Sandis Ozoliņš and Kaspars Bērziņš. 

# Narrative of russian history 

The changes are not only about individual biographical entries, they influence the representation of the history of the Baltic States in one of the most widely used sources of information in the world. Under international law, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia did not legally cease to exist even during the Soviet occupation, so the format „Latvian SSR, Soviet Union“ is closer to the preferred narrative of Kremlin-approved Russian history. Such seemingly small elements when combined with others over time, gradually form the „big story“ – to influence people’s perception and understanding of history. 

Time for these governments to sue wikipedia