I read Boris Kagarlitsky’s thoughts on “A Common Baltic Future” [read article here] with great interest. I found, however, that his appraisal shares a fundamental flaw with much of the analyses disseminated about the “problem” of Latvian Russians: that Latvian nationalists fear application of EU objectivity and norms because it will stop their abuse of Latvian Russians. That is the basis of Mr. Kagarlitsky’s alleged “paradox.”

Indisputably, Latvian nationalists look to EU membership to re-affirm the Baltics’ western European heritage—even under czarist Russia, the Baltics exercised a considerable degree of autonomy and remained western in outlook. A fundamental point which Mr. Kagarlitsky misses, however, is that Latvian nationalists also look to the EU for objectivity regarding the situation of Latvian Russians. They seek an effective counterbalance to Russia’s wide-ranging and ceaseless assault on the Baltics, from the Duma’s jingoistic pronouncements on human rights violations—the Baltics’ treatment of Russians is apparently more evil than the Russian army’s practice of exploding Chechen bodies to prevent identification—to the Duma’s resolutions that the Baltics joined the Soviet Union voluntarily and legally—and that to suggest otherwise is an anti-anti-fascist—i.e., Nazi—lie.

The true paradox is that Russia, as self-appointed proxy for Latvian Russians, does not seek EU objectivity. It rejects outright any objectivity that fails to fit its anti-Baltic agenda. The OSCE position on the validity of Latvia’s language laws is clear and indisputable; that position is now under frontal assault: Russia and its more oppressive CIS partners, in a joint declaration, recently took the OSCE to task for pointing out their human rights violations—the aforementioned exploding bodies, widening suppression of a free press, et al.—while turning a blind eye to atrocities committed daily in Estonia and Latvia.

Indeed, Mr. Kagarlitsky takes up Russia’s “blind eye” argument in his direct assertion that the Baltics are not being held to EU standards: “attempts by the Latvian government to drastically reduce the availability of Russian-language instruction in public schools flagrantly contradicts European norms,” and, “if the interests of minorities were a concern for Western politicians, Latvia and Estonia would not have been admitted to the EU until they had brought their laws in this area into line with European norms.” This EU-Baltic axis “consipiracy theory” plays well in domestic Russian politics and international posturing, but it is no more than Russian misdirection and misinformation taking on the guise of veracity by way of endless repetition.

If one scrutinizes minority language schooling within the EU, there is no simple declaration demanding such; rather, one finds a formalized process for preserving the languages of centuries-extant indigenous minorities evaluated and executed on a case by case basis. (In Latvia, this could apply to schooling in Liv or Latgalian.) Regardless, there is nothing in Latvia’s language policies which precludes Russian cultural instruction in Russian. As a parallel, I was born and grew up in New York, but attended Latvian school on the weekend, studying grammar, literature, history, and geography in my parents’ native language. Conversely, my parents learned English in order to fully participate in the life-blood of their new home.

And therein lies the true crux of the issue. The situation is not one of Latvians systematically attempting to wipe out the Russian language and culture—even every one of my relative says “Davai!” for “Okay!” It’s not the preservation of Russian that is at issue, it is Latvian Russian refusal to learn Latvian. There is a segment of Latvian Russians who:

  • continue to hold the Latvians and Latvian language in utter disdain;
  • continue to believe that Soviet preferential treatment of Russians versus Latvians is a natural state of entitlement;
  • and that denial of that entitlement is oppression.

When Russian journalists held their worldwide convention in Latvia in August, 2000, to discuss the state of Russians abroad, they expected to hold Latvia—the global epicenter of Russian minority abuse—accountable to the world. Instead, even Duma politicians in attendance freely admitted that what they found was far different from what Russian pronouncements and Latvian Russian “rights-advocates” had led them to expect.

Put bluntly, the refusal to learn Latvian by segments of its Russian minority is not a defiant act of Russian cultural preservation. It is a blatant effort to perpetuate perceived Russian supremacy through denial of the Latvian state. And therein, perhaps, we find the true motivation of the Russian Duma in its endless denouncements of the Baltic “situation”: its collective weltschmerz over how things are—independent autonomous Baltic states—and how it wishes they were—continued Soviet/Russian domination and state-paid vacations for Duma members to Jūrmala, the Latvian Riviera.