operations, and it protected the ownership of ships flying Baltic flags. By establishing the policy, the executive order allowed some 120,000 postwar displaced persons from the Baltic states to avoid repatriation to the Soviet Union and to advocate independence from abroad. The American position that the Baltic states had been forcibly annexed would remain its official stance for 51 years. Subsequent presidents and congressional resolutions reaffirmed the substance of the declaration. President Dwight Eisenhower asserted the right of the Baltic states to independence in an address to the U.S. Congress on January 6, 1957. After confirming the Helsinki Accords in July 1975, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution that it would not affect U.S. recognition of the sovereignty of Baltic states. On July 26, 1983, on the 61st anniversary of de jure recognition of the three Baltic countries by the U.S. in 1922, President Ronald Reagan re-declared the recognition of the independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The declaration was read in the United Nations as well. Throughout the 51 years that followed the 1940 occupation of the Baltic states, all U.S. official maps and publications that mentioned the Baltic states included a statement of U.S. non-recognition of Soviet occupation. The independence movements in the states in the 1980s and the 1990 succeeded, and the United Nations recognized all three in 1991. They went on to become members of the European Union and NATO. Their development since independence is generally regarded as the most successful among post-Soviet states. Commenting on the declaration's 70th anniversary, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described it as "a tribute to each of our countries' commitment to the ideals of freedom and democracy." On July 23, 2010, a commemorative plaque inscribed with its text in English and Lithuanian was formally dedicated in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. See also Kersten Committee References Sources Alexandra Ashbourne. Lithuania: The Rebirth of a Nation, 1991–1994. Lexington Books, 1999. . Edward Moore Bennett. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Search for Victory: American–Soviet Relations, 1939–1945. Rowman & Littlefield, 1990. . Robert Dallek. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945: With a New Afterword. Oxford University Press US, 1995. . Dennis J. Dunn. Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin: America's Ambassadors to Moscow. University Press of Kentucky, 1998. . John Hiden, Vahur Made, David J. Smith, editors. The Baltic Question During the Cold War. London: Routledge, 2008. . Toivo Miljan.