While the Baltic States and the EU revel in the delusion of defeating Russia militarily, they are increasing tensions with their Eastern neighbour
Dr Mihail Evans is Research Fellow at the New Europe College, Bucharest. He is the author of ‘How the European Union failed to prevent the Ukraine conflict‘ and ‘Is Russia really a threat to Europe?‘.
La Rentrée, as it is called in Brussels, is upon us; the summer holiday period has finally come to an end and the work-a-day world resumes its normal routines. Except in Latvia this year things are not going back to normal, in the educational system at least. Russian medium education will no longer be available in a country where over a third of the population is Russian speaking, the largest ethnolinguistic minority of any EU member state. It is a situation that has incrementally been approaching over recent years but is none the less shocking for that. The move has condemned by the U.N. experts as ‘in contradiction with international human rights standards’ but you will struggle to find any mention in the European media.
When Latvia became independence in 1991, citizenship was granted only those who could speak the sole national language (the same happening in neighbouring Estonia). A third of the population were thus left stateless. Eventually, all those born since independence were given citizenship on request but this still left many older inhabitants in legal limbo. In principle, the USSR gave remakably extensive rights to speakers of languages other than Russian. However, Soviet laws giving minorities the ability to be educated through the medium of their native tongue have been slowly but surely eroded in the Baltics; as also in Ukraine, a significant cause of the current conflict although most frequently brushed under the carpet.
A new Latvian education law in 2018 removed the ability of minorities to pursue the full secondary educational cycle in their native language and, even in primary schools, more than half of lessons had to be given in Latvian. In 2022 the Latvian parliament went further and passed a statute that resulted in, what international experts have called, the ‘virtual elimination’ of Russian from the classroom. After three years of incremental shifts, Russian has been effectively banned as a medium of education from pre-school to university. Russian is not only no longer a medium of teaching but will not even be available as a second language, only EU languages being offered. Even kindgergartens and private schools in Latvia may no longer use minority languages.
Ministers have spoken of consultations with minority communities but also, disturbingly, of their own right not to heed the responses they recieve. The Latvian government appears to regard its international commitments to minority rights as fulfilled so long as they are not not restricting the private use of a language and are making provision for minority languages as an extra-curricular subject. The European Court of Human Rights already failed to condemn the 2018 changes in a ruling that commentators have criticised as diverging from international norms. This judgement is perhaps not so surprising given the court has consistently failed to develop a robust conception of linguistic rights, as is notably evident in its weak and flawed decisions relating to Ukraine.
In a quite Orwellian manner, the restrictions have been officially described as helping to ‘restore the linguistic and cultural diversity of the country’. The repressive treatment of minorities in the Baltics is often dressed up in a fashionable language of ‘decolonialisation’, as a supposedly necessary response to population movements in the Soviet period. However, it remains that even in 1945 Russians minority were 20% of the population. In any case, to suggest that the reversal of population shifts that occurred in the aftermath of World War Two is either necessary or desireable is to open a Pandora’s box in international relations. It is also unfair to paint as ‘imperialists’ a section of the population that predominates in regions of the country with the highest unemployment and lowest incomes. Latgale region, in which half of the population are Russophones, is the poorest region in the entire EU.
The removal of linguistic rights is not the only way in which the Russian minority in the country has been coming under attack recently. In a move the government has defended on grounds of ‘public order and internal security’, Russian citizens residing in Latvia must demonstrate basic Latvian language proficiency or face expulsion. Many of those with Russian citizenship took it in order to secure a pension, having suffered discrimination in obtaining one in Latvia.
Parliamentarians in Riga who have resisted the most recent developments have attracted the attention of the State Security Services. Alexei Roslikov, leader of a party that draws support mainly from Russian speaking Latvians, has been put under investigation for ‘inciting ethnic tensions’, another quite Orwellian development. Questions have been asked in the European Parliament by concerned MEPs but otherwise there is silence at the official European level about the increasingly disturbing situation in Latvia. There has been much angst on the part of Brussels about rule of law violations by Hungary and Poland in recent years but membership criteria that ostensibly demanded respect for and protection of minorities have been ignored without consequence in the case of Latvia and other Baltic states. The EU would speak up sharp if the Roma anywhere in eastern Europe were treated the same way Russian speakers in Latvia have been.
Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General told the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs earlier in the year that if European nations do not dramatically increase military spending, citizens will need to ‘get out your Russian language courses’. Rhetorically asking the question, ‘Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022, so what is the next target to be?’, his answer was: ‘Latvia’. He gave no explanation to parliamentarians why Russia might invade its tiny Baltic neighbour and it appeared rather mysterious in the absence of widespread reporting of developments in the country.
Instead of spending the historically unprecedented sum of 5% of GDP on defence, might it not be better to defuse potential tensions diplomatically? To insist that Russian speaking Latvian children be allowed to get their textbooks out? This would actually be to imlement the core principles of respect for minorities that the EU is supposedly built on. Rutte clearly knows Putin has issues with Latvian policy towards Russian speakers. Europe might save its money if it simply made sure he had none.
Be the first to comment