<div dir="ltr">Dyer: Latvia: language rights<header>
<ul class="gmail-author-meta"><li>Apr. 5, 2018 6:30 a.m.</li></ul> <ul class="gmail-social gmail-story gmail-top">
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<p>Lots of countries have two or more official languages: Canada
(two), Belgium (three), Switzerland (four), South Africa (11), India
(23), and so on. They all have trouble balancing the competing demands
of the various language groups. But Latvia has only one official
language, and it has a bigger problem than any of them.</p>
<p>“There’s no need for a second language. Whoever wants can use their
language at home or in school,” said Latvian President Andris Berzins in
2012, when there was a (failed) referendum about making Russian a
second official language in Latvia. But on Monday Berzin’s successor,
President Raimonds Vejonis, signed a new law decreeing that Russian will
no longer be used in secondary schools.</p>
<p>Even Russian-speaking high-school students will be taught only in
Latvian by 2021, Vejonis said: “It will make society more cohesive and
the state stronger.” Freely translated, that means it will make Latvian
society less Russian.</p><div id="gmail-fsk_splitbox_3619_onscreen" class="gmail-fsk_splitbox_3619_onscreen"><div id="gmail-fsk_splitbox_3619" class="gmail-fsk_splitbox_3619" style="height:0px;text-align:center"></div></div>
<p>The Russian-language media exploded in outrage at the news, and in
Moscow Tuesday the Russian Duma (parliament) passed a resolution urging
Vladimir Putin’s government to impose sanctions in Latvia. The Russian
foreign ministry said that the new measure was “part of the
discriminatory policy of the forceful assimilation of Russian-speaking
people that has been conducted for the past 25 years.”</p>
<p>That is true. The long-term goal of Latvia’s language policies is
obviously the assimilation of the Russian-speaking minority – but it is a
huge task. Russian-speakers were 42 per cent of the population when
Latvia got its independence back from the Soviet Union in 1991, and if
you include those who speak Latvian at work but Russian at home they
still account for at least a third.</p>
<p>So the Russians certainly have a right to complain – but look at it
from a Latvian point of view. The Latvians got their independence from
the Russian empire in 1918, but were re-conquered by its successor, the
Soviet Union, in 1940. (The Nazi-Soviet Pact, the starting gun for the
Second World War, divided Poland between the two totalitarian regimes,
but the Soviet Union got all of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.)</p>
<p>The Soviet secret police then murdered or deported most of the
Latvian political, intellectual and cultural elite: between 35,000 and
60,000 people. So the Latvians welcomed the German attack on Russia in
1941, which freed Latvia from the Soviet occupation, and many of them
fought alongside the German army until the Russians conquered Latvia yet
again in 1944.</p>
<p>By then Stalin had concluded that the Latvians were incorrigibly
‘disloyal’, and decided to solve the problem permanently by overwhelming
them with immigrants from Russia. The proportion of Latvian
native-speakers in the population dropped from 80 per cent in 1935 to
barely half (52 per cent) by 1989 – and most of the immigrants never
bothered to learn Latvian, because the entire Soviet Union worked in
Russian.</p>
<p>The Latvians were on the road to linguistic and cultural extinction
until they got their independence back, so you can see why they want to
‘Latvianise’ this huge, uninvited immigrant presence in their midst as
fast as possible. But now look at it from the position of the
Russian-speakers again.</p>
<p>Most of the current generation are not immigrants at all. They were
born in Latvia, before or after independence, and they grew up in the
familiar streets of Riga or Daugavpils, part of a large Russian-speaking
community among whom they feel comfortably at home. They have no other
home.</p>
<p>Yet they know they will never be accepted as fully Latvian even if
they learn to speak the language fluently. And since they mostly get
their news and views from Russian media, which portray Latvia’s allies
in the European Union and NATO as relentlessly anti-Russian,
Latvian-speakers don’t even trust the Russian minority to be loyal in a
crisis.</p>
<p>On the other hand, why should Russian-speakers in Latvia go along
with measures that are clearly designed to shrink the role of Russian in
the country’s life? There is no right or wrong here.</p>
<p>The Latvian-speakers will have to accept that the Russian minority is
a permanent presence in their country, and the Russian-speakers will
have to accept that preserving the endangered Latvian language and
culture comes first. They are both having trouble getting to that point,
but there is really no alternative.</p>
<p><em>Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries</em></p></div>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="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" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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