It’s not like they have had weak socialist movements.
in Estonia the Bolsheviks got 40 percent of the vote during the 1917 elections. The Latvians had their famous riflemen. In the 1920s there were active underground communist organisations in all three of the baltic states.
Now all of that is forgotten. They’ve managed to rewrite history so efficiently and without opposition. The new generation openly praises fascist despots like Ulmanis, Smetona and Päts. The fascist despots of all three respective states were not exactly the most popular rulers. After all, why do you think their house of cards collapsed so easily in 1940?
Also, it was not like the communist were the only ones in opposition to them either – many social democrats, liberals and members of the national bourgeois were in opposition to the rule of Päts in Estonia, Ulmanis in Latvia and Smetona in Lithuania (most likely due to the semi-colonial nature of their governance).
But now these unpopular dictatorships are revered in these nations. Monuments to these men built without opposition.
How?
they have historical drama with the bolsheviks from their almost genocidal heavy handed responses to outside pressures from the west; so now any flavor of marxism is as hated there as it is in most everywhere else.
it’s sort of like a european version of “my grandfather did nothing wrong but was shot anyways on the slave-like plantation that he owned” from cuban expats in my country.