Ein Rinkevics wurde in der UdSSR geboren! Wie Wikipedia die Biografien der Bewohner der baltischen Staaten verändert

#[That’s only a tip of the iceberg](https://np.reddit.com/r/WatchWikipediaDie/wiki/scandals).

Ok, so if I follow the narrative of this article correctly, would it not be more accurate to make it clear that countries like Estonia were occupied by the Soviet Union at some point, and were not free to pursue their own ambitions? As an example, if you insist on Kaja Kallas being born in Estonia and not Estonian SSR, how do you explain her father being a high ranking member of the Soviet communist party?

That’s standard wikipedia practice. The birthplace listed is whatever country existed at the time regardless of current borders.

I honestly do get baltic people are reasonably mad by russian/soviet occupation. But realities on land were differrnt than some political fables they like to tell themselves

There were baltic people, commies who were in charge of the country and there were baltic informants. Crying how every single Balt was some revolutionary who proudly fought against Soviets/Russians throughout centuries is a bit disingenuous, shifting all the bad on settlers and mixed people. And unlike Poland which actually properly condemns both nazis and commies, a lot of Baltic people go to great lengths to do mental gymnastics as to way nazis were „lesser of 2 evils“

Not liking something doesn’t allow anyone to say it wasn’t true. Saying that something is like it is doesn’t mean supporting it. It’s too easy.

You’re the ones pushing propaganda and vandalizing the articles\trying to rewrite history.

Just stick to objective facts and be done with it. You want to be both occupied and under total control of USSR as part of it while simultaneously existing as an independent country when it better suits the narrative.

It is standard practice to name the birthplace as the country that was on the territory at the time

I mean if you look at a lot of WW1/WW2 biographies they will list all sorts of places because Central Europe changed a lot in the lead up to that period, I remember reading in biography of a Hungarian soldier whose birthplace was listed as the Republic of German Austria, in what is today Czechia, a state that only briefly existed

But I totally understand how they will be emotionally to people born under an occupying power, they were always Estonian/Latvian/Lithuanian, just at one point they also held citizenship of an occupier, in this case the USSR

Wikipedia does have a duty to be balanced and tell the truth, and the truth is that as much as some may dislike it, the status at the time of your birth, doesn’t define who you are or what you are

>creating the impression without additional explanations that these individuals are citizens of the Soviet Union rather than Latvia.

Wait what? How does it create that impression?? No one is a citizen of the Soviet Union anymore, the Soviet Union is gone.

Such people *were* citizens of the Soviet Union, once. At the time, the Republic of Latvia did not yet exist. (Or, charitably, had not yet been restored to sovereignty from the brief period of its original existence nearly a century before.)

Like.. my sister in law was born in the German Democratic Republic. No one thinks that is her citizenship now, today. No additional explanation is required. That is simply a fact of history.