Russian operatives may be feeding preposterous fictions to gullible Americans on Facebook, but at least our countrymen don’t believe in “statuesque superhuman blonde Baltic snipers in tight white outfits.” In his invaluable daily digest, Windows on Eurasia, the Russia scholar Paul Goble reminds readers of the beliye kolgotki—literally, white tights or white stockings—the highly attractive Baltic sharpshooters that many Russians believe can kill a man from a mile away. Their existence has been rumored, according to some sources, since at least the First Chechen War of the 1990s.
“Wild Geese in White Tights,” says a Russian-language article of 2000, alluding to their supposed mercenary relationship to Chechen forces. While some were said to be Chechen or Ukrainian, the trope of seductively dressed Latvian and Estonian markswomen is longstanding and persistent. Although the Estonian government repeatedly asked for evidence supporting the assertions, none was forthcoming. Instead, according to then-Kremlin spokesman Sergey Yastrzhembsky, quoted in the Economist in 2000, “They exist. Military intelligence says so, and they don’t make mistakes.”
Goble comments: “That this notion continues to circulate says a lot about what happens in the low-information environment the Russian government has imposed on its population, an environment in which rumors come to be accepted as fact and do not cease to spread because there is not the bright light of media attention that might dispel them. The idea that there are ‘Baltic Amazons,’ however, has consequences. It contributes to Russian hostility to Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, elevating them into the shock troops of the West against Russia on every and all occasions.”
A few Americans may believe Hillary Clinton is dying of AIDS and that the U.S. government was behind 9/11. But Baltic sniper-babes? Come on.
