Russians in the Baltics:
Full-right members of society or not?

By

Brigita Kuodyte	Alina Zemerova

Lithuania and Latvia, these countries with similar names are situated near the Baltic Sea. In addition, they have a similar historical past, culture, and their people languages are of the same origin. However, there are several differences between these countries, one of them being the treatment of the national minorities in the society.

Brigita is born in Lithuania and proud of being Lithuanian because of the history of her country, and especially, because of it’s decisiveness in gaining independence. Besides her mother tongue, she can fluently speak English, Russian and Polish and freely communicate with her Russian and Polish friends. In her opinion, she faces almost no problems based on the nationality issues. Alina is Russian, born in Latvia. Three years ago she had passed the naturalisation exams and became a citizen of Latvia. None of her relatives are Latvian citizen. She had graduated from the Russian secondary school, but afterwards she had to study in Latvian and English. She has not only Russian but also Latvian friends, with whom she communicates mainly in their language.

These two stories partly illustrate the situation with the majorities and minorities in both countries. Therefore, the treatment of the ethnic minorities (mainly Russian one) in these two Baltic countries will be examined. In Lithuania ethnic minorities comprise about 20% of the population (7% of the population are Poles, 6%- Russians), in Latvia there are 43% of the minorities (Russians constitute 30% of the whole population). After this, the official policies regarding citizenship, language and education held by Lithuanian and Latvian governments in respect of minorities will be discussed.

Citizenship

Lithuania. Lithuanian government had granted the citizenship to all the permanent residents at the moment of passing the law on Citizenship. It's worth mentioning that in the passport of the Lithuanian Republic, there is not an entry for nationality.

Latvia. Latvian state authorities had not accepted such a ´zero-option´ citizenship. As a result, two thirds of all the minorities (in other words, 700,000 of Latvian inhabitants, mainly Russian speaking) became the non-citizens of Latvia. Later this figure decreased up to 646,000 in early 1998. Non-citizens born in Latvia have a right to receive citizenship via the naturalisation process, which requires applicants to pass language and history examinations as well as to be loyal to the state. In the Latvian passport nationality entry exists, which gives an additional reason for the discrimination of the minorities. Moreover, Latvian non-citizens have so-called alien's passport, which is not recognised, by many European countries.

The official Latvian point of view is, that immigrants and non-citizens become the members of an ethnic minority only when they have obtained the citizenship. Consequently, the case of Latvia is a bizarre one, since 27% of the permanently living population are neither citizens nor minorities. This contradicts fully with the idea, that in order to refer yourself to a particular minority group your have to meet only ´objective´ criteria such as common language and ´subjective´ criteria such as self-identification. Latvian non-citizens do share the common Russian language and mainly identify themselves with Russian, Ukrainian or Belorussian minority, but state considers them as immigrants, even whose people who were born in Latvia.

Language

Lithuanian and Latvian languages are the state languages by law. The minorities living in these countries have right to use their own languages in private and public life. State institutions and public companies have to use state languages in all their documents and activities. Private organisations and companies can use minority languages parallel to the state languages so far. Latvian authorities continue to discuss the option of restricting the use of any other language, apart from the state language, in private business.

In both countries the language testing committees were established with the aim to access the knowledge of state languages by the minorities and create incentives for studying the state languages. Comparing Latvian and Lithuanian language committees, it can be said what Latvian ones have more assessment categories and are considered to be stricter than Lithuanian.

Lithuania. An interesting example of the official use of the minority language parallel to the state one can be found in Lithuania. In Visaginas, city where Russian community dominates, it is allowed to use Russian language parallel to Lithuanian in the official documentation.

Latvia. In contrast, in Daugavpils (where the proportion of Russians is 60% of the total population, but Latvians comprise only 14%) the possibility of use of Russian language parallel to Latvian is not even discussed by the state authorities.

Education

Regarding the education possibilities in Russian language, Russians in both countries have an access to the primary and secondary education in their own language. Latvian and Lithuanian state universities and other higher educational establishments provide training in state languages only. However, such faculties as Russian language and literature still exist and students can study in Russian there.

Latvia. One of the tendencies in Latvia is that the parents tend to send their children to Latvian schools and consequently Russian schools are closing down. But schools are closed down not only due to this natural Latvinization process, but also due to the decision of municipal governments. The Russian-speaking minorities often object to these decisions.

Conclusions

Having discussed the main governmental policies in regard of the citizenship granting, use of language and education possibilities for the Russian minorities in Latvia and Lithuania: it can be concluded that there are substantial differences in the treatment of Russian minorities in these countries. However, some similarities, for instance education policy, exist. These differences can be explained, mainly, by the difference in the percentage of the Russian minorities in Latvia and Lithuania (30% and 6% respectively).

Latvia. Latvian government is reluctant to give Russian speaking minorities citizenship and all the rights, since they constitute up to 40% of the whole Latvian population, and granting them citizenship is perceived as a threat to the Latvian nation state and Latvian language. But non-citizens, who are not even treated as minorities, lack the motivation to study the language and respect the culture of Latvia either.

Lithuania. On the contrary, Russians in Lithuania do have the citizenship, and thus tend to study the language, history and culture of the country, which had granted them a citizenship. Undoubtfully, it is much easier for the Russian minority to assimilate into the Lithuanian society that for the Russian speaking in Latvian one.

If Latvia will proceed with the concept "Latvia for Latvians" it will most probably face a lot of objections from the side of the European community. Another argument is that the human rights should be followed irrespectively of how large is the minority’s percentage. Latvian government should find the decision, which would not violate the rights of its inhabitants and will not hurt the national identity of the state. Latvians should not be afraid of the Russians being unloyal. For example, Russian minority representatives who have already acquired the citizenship by passing the naturalisation exams: they do know language, history, and laws of the state. These people wanted and they became full-right members of the society since they see their future there.