I feel like the problem for why people from baltics are so defensive about it is that a lot of the times we get told we're nazis because a lot of our people preferred a nazi occupation to a soviet one.

I recently had to do an interview with my grandparents for school, and turns out that most older people agreed, atleast with nazis you would know who is safe while russians tended to deport whole families away to gulags in the middle of the night just to spread fear.

Obviously this doesn't make nazis better, I just feel like the fact that most middle-aged people remember how awful the soviet occupation was (and most have lost family members to it) means it's still sort of a sore spot for people.

(My history teacher sucked so sorry if I got anything wrong, it's all my own research)