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While forming part of the Soviet Union, the three Republics were usually referred to as "Pribaltika" in Russian. This term, although rooted in Russian history, was perceived as disdainful, as approximately meaning "Baltic territories". Balts themselves preferred the more sovereign-sounding term "Baltiya".

The fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR) that made up the USSR in the post-War period, including the three Baltic Republics, formally kept a form of sovereignty, retaining the option to leave the Union. In practice the USSR was however a highly centralized state ruled from MoscowMoscow ( Russian: Moskva capital of Russia, located on the river Moskva, and encompassing 878. The city's population is rapidly increasing, with 11. 2 million inhabitants counted in 2004. The city is in the federal district called Central Russia (which is. The Soviet Union conducted a policy of russification by encouraging ethnic Russians to settle in the Baltic Republics. Thus, today, about one-third of the population of Estonia is non-Estonian, mostly Russian or Ukrainian. In Latvia the figure is almost one-half, especially in the capital of Riga. The local languages had the status of official languages next to Russian, and they were still partly used in school, in the streets and the local administrative apparatus. However, a large part of people spoke Russian only, and almost everybody had to learn and use Russian in much of their daily life. Soviet cultural policy, which encouraged multiculturalism, allowed Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians to preserve a high degree of Europe-oriented national identity. In Soviet times this made them appear as the "West" of the Soviet Union in the cultural and political sense, thus as close to emigration a Russian could get without leaving the USSR. Having gained independence, the strong national identity, and the fact of already having been sovereign before the War, facilitated the Baltic States' transition into independence and a liberal constitutional order.

See also: Baltic SeaThe Baltic Sea is in northeastern Europe, bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of east and central Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat and the North Sea by way of the Oresund, the Great Belt and the Small Belt. It is, Northeastern EuropeNortheastern Europe is a compromise terminology to refer to the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Due to their recent history as former Soviet Republics they often are considered to be part of former communist Eastern Europe. But there are som