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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Russian Mayor of Latvian Capital Bids to Bridge an Old Divide<u></u><u></u></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Nils Usakovs, Mayor of Riga, Aims to Move Beyond Ethnic Politics<u></u><u></u></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">New York Times DEC. 12, 2014
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">“We don’t talk about ethnic issues,” said Nils Usakovs, the first ethnic Russian to be elected mayor of Riga, Latvia. “I believe that, in the long run, the politics in
our city and our country needs to be based on ideological values, not ethnicity.” Credit Maciek Nabrdalik for The New York Times
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">RIGA, Latvia — Nils Usakovs smiled a bit uncertainly as the three tap-dancing elves in Santa caps pointed from
tree to tree in the cold, vaporous forest on the capital’s outskirts.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">“Pick this one,” shouted one elf. “No, this one,” yelled another. They tapped away on square platforms sunk
into a carpet of slushy, spongy leaves, while news crews huddled around a blazing wood fire.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Mr. Usakovs, 38, the first ethnic Russian to be elected mayor of Riga, made a show of studiously marching around
two nearly perfect pines. Finally, he declared that one of them would become the official tree on the square outside the main cathedral while the other would adorn the Riga riverfront.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">“We make it a show,” Mr. Usakovs said afterward. “It helps to give the city a sense of identity.”<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">A sense of identity is precisely at the core of Latvia’s — and Mr. Usakovs’ — predicament at the moment.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">In 2005, Mr. Usakovs, a former television personality and newspaper editor, took control of Harmony Center,
the largest party advocating the rights of Latvia’s ethnic Russian minority.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Russian ethnicity is a sensitive subject here in one of the former Soviet republics, which, with its small standing
army, feels perpetually vulnerable to its powerful neighbor — especially at a time when protecting Ukraine’s sizable Russian minority has been used by
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/russiaandtheformersovietunion/index.html?inline=nyt-geo" title="More news and information about Russia and the Post-Soviet Nations." target="_blank">
<span style="color:blue">Russia</span></a> as a pretext for meddling in that country’s conflict.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Latvia’s population is about 61 percent Latvian and 26 percent Russian, with a small scattering of Poles, Ukrainians,
Belarussians and others. Ethnic Russians, even those born in Latvia, like Mr. Usakovs, were not automatically made citizens when the country became independent of Russia in 1989. Today, about 300,000 ethnic Russians living in Latvia are still not citizens,
including Mr. Usakovs’ mother.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">On taking the reins, Mr. Usakovs announced that Harmony would no longer be an ethnically driven party but a
social democratic one, like others across Europe. Other parties, whose voters are overwhelmingly of Latvian ethnic origin, have viewed his declaration with stubborn skepticism.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">“We don’t talk about ethnic issues,” Mr. Usakovs insisted. “I believe that, in the long run, the politics in
our city and our country needs to be based on ideological values, not ethnicity.”<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">While the majority of Harmony’s voters are still ethnic Russians, he said, the number of its Latvian supporters
has been growing. In this year’s elections, when Mr. Usakovs won a second term as mayor, the party got 20 percent of its support from Latvians, he said.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">This is proof, he said, that Harmony’s message of taking Latvia beyond ethnic politics is resonating with voters
– even at a time when tensions between Latvia and Russia are rising.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Skepticism persists, though, about whether Harmony can actually made the leap.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">“I don’t know,” said Andris Ameriks, Riga’s vice mayor and a member of a small, city-based party called I’m
Proud to Serve Riga. “They say they are social democrats. Mostly, though, it’s still another ethnic party for the Russians.”<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Mr. Usakovs’ Russian-born parents were brought to Latvia as children shortly after World War II, part of a migration
of Russians into regions that had been absorbed into the Soviet Union.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">He was raised speaking Russian, and his elementary schooling was in Russian. Not until he was 16 did he learn
to speak Latvian, he said, partly so he could take classes at the University of Latvia, where he majored in analytical economics.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">In 1999, when he graduated from college, Mr. Usakovs went through the naturalization process, which involves
passing a test on Latvian history, demonstrating a proficiency in the Latvian language and taking an oath of allegiance to the country.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Fast on his feet and deeply interested in social policy issues, he took a job as a producer for the Baltic division
of the Russian television channel NTV, then moved to Latvian Public Television before becoming an editor at two Riga newspapers, the host of his own weekly television program and, finally, the editor at the First Baltic Channel for the evening news in Lithuania
and Estonia.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">But the deeper he got into political reporting, the more persistent the itch was to become a politician.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">When the leaders of the struggling Harmony Center, stuck in seemingly permanent minority status, asked the telegenic
young Russian – so unlike the aged and dour leaders the party had before – to assume control in 2005, he jumped at it.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">“If you believe some things are being done wrong, what do you do?” he asked. “You can stay in journalism and
try to address them through education, or you go into politics.”<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">He makes no secret of his desire for higher, national office, something that would be quite difficult if his
party remained rooted in its Russian-ethnic base. It is not an easy path for him. He can, and has, spoken in favor of maintaining Ukraine’s territorial integrity, a move that he believes cost him some votes among his hard-core base. But he also came out strongly
against Western sanctions on Russia over the conflict.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">“We are not alone,” Mr. Usakovs said. “We are among the Europeans who believe that sanctions will not work.
And we are rational. We believe it is beneficial for us to have good relations with Russia.”<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Whether he can find a way to satisfy his base, many of whom are fiercely pro-Russian, while attracting enough
Latvians to the party, is the key to his future.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Ethnic integration is still “too big a divide” in Latvia, said Douglas Wake, a former American diplomat who
was a visiting fellow at the Latvian Institute of International Affairs. There is still “not enough sense that everybody feels there is a Latvian state one can feel good about, offering allegiance without any ethnic characteristics whatsoever,” he said during
a presentation at the institute last month.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Still, there is very little open conflict in everyday life between Latvian speakers and Russian speakers, leading
some to wonder whether it is the political class that is keeping the divide from closing,<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">“People are not fighting,” said Karlis Bukovskis, the institute’s deputy director, in an interview. “About 35
percent of marriages are mixed. Sometimes, perhaps, some politicians use it opportunistically.”<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Indeed, just last month, Mr. Usakovs married his longtime chief of staff, Iveta Stravtina, an ethnic Latvian.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Both Mr. Bukovskis and Mr. Wake mentioned the “two information societies” that exist in Latvia, in which Russian
speakers get their news from Russia-based media outlets while Latvians get theirs from Latvian ones, each offering a different spin on the Ukraine crisis. The result is conflicting opinions about who is at fault there.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The reality, Mr. Usakovs said, is a bit more complex. Both populations, he said, are awash in Russian culture.
“And when I say culture, I don’t mean Dostoyevsky,” he said. “I mean pop culture.”<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">And there is far from unanimity, even among ethnic Russians, on the subject of Ukraine, he said. “Society is
split in general and Russian speakers are also split,” he said.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">A thin morning fog had given way to a golden haze by the time Mr. Usakovs had finished picking out the Christmas
trees and begun to make his way through the loamy woods of the Riga Forest — 160,000 acres of pine and marshland given to the city by Bishop Albert, who founded Riga in 1201. The scent of the nearby sea was in the crystalline air.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">“We are going through a complete transformation in a country that is multi-linguistic and multi-ethnic with
debates about very serious historical issues,” he said. “It is complicated.”<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
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</div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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