Ethnic Strife (Russian) in NATO Member Latvia
Another article (WSJ) about problems within the old Russian empire.
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Latvia's Divide Poses Political Risks
Russian Speakers Agitate
For Rights as Moscow Seeks
To Influence Its Neighbors
By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 10, 2005; Page A9
RIGA -- Growing discord between this country's ethnic Latvians and its large Russian-speaking minority is taking on new urgency as Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to maintain Moscow's waning influence over former dominions.
With Moscow's help, Latvia's Russians -- viewed by many Latvians as unwanted imperial holdovers and often deprived of citizenship rights -- are demanding an equal say in governing Latvia, which is a member state of the European Union and the NATO alliance.
The Kremlin's willingness to defend Russian speakers' rights across former Soviet lands is putting it at odds with the West. In recent months, Mr. Putin's government interfered in Moldova and Georgia to aid Russian-speaking separatist enclaves. In Ukraine, Russian officials openly encouraged separatist sentiment in Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to prevent the December election of pro-Western presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko.
Latvia is especially vulnerable because its Russian-speaking community is so large: It accounts for some 40% of the overall population of 2.3 million, and an absolute majority in the main cities, including here in Riga, the capital.
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Unlike Georgia or Ukraine, Latvia is also a country that the U.S. has a legal obligation to defend, militarily if needed, because of its membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And, in the entire post-Soviet space, its Russian-speaking minority looms as a uniquely ripe target for interference by Moscow, partially because of more than 13 years of official discrimination that followed independence in 1991. "We can only look to Moscow for help. No one else cares about us," says Mikhail Tyasin, co-chairman of Latvia's Russian communities' federation.
Relations between Moscow and Riga have been deteriorating for years, and government officials in Riga openly voice apprehension about the intentions of their giant neighbor. Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga said in an interview, "Russia claims for itself the right to impose on its direct neighbors its vision of their future, its desires and its needs at the expense of those people who actually happen to be living in the neighborhood."
While reluctant to publicly criticize a member state, some European Union officials say Latvia's own policies may be to blame. These officials are increasingly worried that discrimination against Russian speakers here could turn into a flashpoint in relations between Moscow and the West, as well as undermine Europe's claim to be a standard-bearer of democratic values.
Similar concerns are voiced by Alvaro Gil-Robles, human-rights commissioner for the Council of Europe, a body that in cludes all EU members and candidates and that promotes democracy on the continent. "This is no longer just an issue of Latvia dealing with its minority, it's an issue of the entire European Union," says Mr. Gil-Robles. "A full integration and recognition of civil and political rights of all people permanently living in Latvia must happen. This is self-evidently in the interest of Latvia, and of Europe. ...But there are still sectors in Latvia who still think in the spirit of exclusion rather than integration and dialogue."
A sense of demographic threat is at the heart of Latvia's attitudes. Ethnic Latvians made up 73% of this country's population when Latvia was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. But their share sank to 52% in the late 1980s, following decades of organized migration from elsewhere in the U.S.S.R. Latvia's main pro-independence movement, the Popular Front, pledged at the time that an independent and democratic Latvia would give equal rights to all. Persuaded by such assurances, many of Latvia's Russians supported the movement, and the "yes" vote in Latvia's 1991 independence referendum carried by 74%, winning even in heavily Russian-speaking districts.
But this turned out to be the last occasion when many Russian speakers were allowed to cast ballots. While neighboring Lithuania chose to give citizenship to all permanent residents, an independent Latvia recognized only the citizens of the pre-1940 Latvian state and their descendants. Some 740,000 Russian-speaking residents were suddenly declared "aliens" and barred from voting, government-sector employment and, in some areas, even owning land. A slow trickle of naturalizations began only in 1995; almost 450,000 Latvian Russian-speaking non-citizens, about a fifth of the country's total population, are still without any citizenship today because Russia also treats them as foreigners.
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Russian-language street and store signs remain outlawed throughout the country, including in areas where Russian speakers have been a majority of the population for centuries. "We went back on our promises of restoring democratic rights to everyone. I consider it a betrayal," says Janis Jurkans, a Latvian parliament member who was the Popular Front's head of foreign affairs and then served in 1991-1993 as the country's first post-Soviet foreign minister. "I don't believe Latvia can prosper having so many cheated people."
Mr. Jurkans's is a rare voice. The ethnic-Latvian political class has stubbornly resisted international pressure for concessions to the Russian minority. The country's president makes no excuses. The Russians "came here during an illicit occupation of the country, much as was the case with the British in Egypt, and with the French in Algeria," says Ms. Vike-Freiberga, who herself had to flee Latvia as a child and lived much of her life in Canada.
Until recently, Latvia's Russian speakers acquiesced to near-total exclusion from senior government positions. Instead, they appreciated Latvia's higher living standard and streamed into the private economy, much of which is now Russian-speaking. Then, last year, the relative peace evaporated, mainly over a requirement that all exams be in Latvian, a language roughly as different from Russian as English, by 2007; Russian activists decry the requirement as a blatant assimilation attempt.
While Latvia technically retains a separate Russian-language school system, even privately funded schools aren't spared. And, 10th-graders must take most courses in Latvian. Parents' anger -- and a lingering suspicion that the real aim of the school reform is to transform ethnic Russians into an uneducated underclass -- helped catalyze unprecedented street protests in September.
At a rally in Riga in September, campaigner Aleksandr Kazakov electrified the crowds by describing Latvia's education reform as "spiritual terrorism." Hours later, Mr. Kazakov, a Riga-born 39-year-old, was invited to Latvia's security police. After a quick interrogation, he was declared a threat to national security, bundled into a car, handcuffed and driven across the Russian frontier. There, he was handed a one-way bus ticket to Moscow and a lifelong prohibition on returning.
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