No need to spew some bullshit on here.
I didn't check your quoted Karelia - I don't have a need.
What can I tell...I was born in Soviet Lithuania that was part of USSR.
Today, I'm glad I was born there. I lived there for 30 years and after that, for 22 years in US. There's no "Catch22" in neither of political systems. Both had good things and bad things.
There was no russification in former soviet Lithuania. We had military base in my town. One of my best friends at the moment was a russian guy who fluently spoke lithuanian. I knew some others like him.
Look at today's Lithuania - so called free and democratic - supported by US and EC/NATO. First, there's no democracy - a dictatorship, because same people with their communist past are in power.
Needless to say that Lithuania not independent anymore - it depends to laws and regulations of ES - Forcibly...
More people fled in 22 of so-called democracy years of Lithuania than Stalin's regime expelled lithuanians to Siberia's camps. Political elite lives very well while regular people are forced to emigrate to survive.
sorry, the Baltics weren't exactly "Spared" russification, but for the most part, they were smart enough to kick out as many Soviets as they possibly could in 1990-91. Latvia has probably fared the worse because, unlike Estonia, they didn't simply fire everyone holding government or public positions, force everyone to reapply for their jobs, and likewise banish all non-generational soviet families.
All military and their families were kicked out, sure....but you still see this problem in Latvia of roughly 30% Russian population (roughly 3% prior to the invasion in 1941), whereas in Estonia, today, I believe it is something like 7% of the population is now russian.
It's not so much a "russian problem" as it is a soviet problem, and a very real desire for these older generations to actively enforce russification, to this day, on their non-native homes--demanding official recognition of the language, for one. COnsidering this coming from one's occupiers, the hubris of such demands is astonishing.
It's funny that you say "more people fled" after democracy than during Stalin's reign. OK, sure...let's not even consider the near inability to flee under soviet occupation, and instead look at out many ethnic Lithuanians were extracted from their homes and farms and sent to labor camps to die, in order to make room for trainloads of Russian peasants.
Under a democratic system, it's called emigration. If someone leaves the country to seek better economic opportunity, then only an outright nationalist would call that "fleeing."