Language Referendum Pits Latvians against Russians

This week, eastern Europe faces two well publicized referenda, both of them pushed by ethnic minorities in new states who wish to turn back the clock to when their peoples—now minorities in recently liberated territories—had the privileges of empire.

Kosovo
First, in the Republic of Kosovo, the Serbian minority in the sliver of land abutting Serbia itself are initiating a referendum for February 14th and 15th on the question of whether they as a community recognize the Kosovar government’s authority over them and their land.  They are expected to say, resoundingly, that they reject it.  Kosovo declared independence from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (later renamed Serbia and Montenegro) in 2008 under the protection of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).  Today it is recognized by only 87 of the world’s 193 recognized independent states, only 22 out of 27 European Union member states, and even only 24 of NATO’s 28 member states.  Its neighbors Serbia, Croatia, Greece, and Romania refuse to recognize it, as does Spain, which is always wary of anything that might encourage its own separatist movements.  Opposition to Kosovo’s secession by Russia and China guarantees that it will not be admitted to the United Nations in the foreseeable future.  Still, there is little enthusiasm outside Kosovo for the referendum or its implications, not even in the Republic of Serbia itself.  Serbia is trying to groom itself for eventual candidacy for E.U. membership, which requires a peaceful resolution of the Kosovo issue (though note that Cyprus was admitted despite its de facto partition).  Like the separatist Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovar Serbs have been thrown under the bus by Belgrade under western pressure.  (Don’t get me wrong; I’m not precisely saying they don’t belong under the bus.)  For Serbia, the referendum is an embarrassment.  But they can take heart from the fact that it will have no effect on anything, except to heighten interethnic animosity in the region.

Latvia
This article will focus more on the second, more consequential of this week’s referenda in the former Communist east.  In the Republic of Latvia, which along with its neighboring Baltic states Estonia and Lithuania broke free in 1990 from the collapsing Soviet Union, the Russian minority has managed to put to the public a poll on whether or not to make Russian an official language alongside Latvian.  This has brought out the nationalist in many a Latvian, and it has opened many of the region’s wounds from the totalitarian era.

The Soviet Union was supposedly an internationalist workers’ paradise which transcended the idea of nation, but everyone knew that it was in fact another name for the Russian Empire.  No one knew this better than Latvians.  Part of the agenda of the government in Moscow was the Russification of regions that had the greatest potential for unrest and separatism.  Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians never regarded the Soviets as liberators when the Nazis were pushed west at the close of the Second World War, and the United Nations and the West never recognized the Soviet annexation of the republics in 1945.  The resettlement of large numbers of ethnic Russians in the Baltic States was part of an explicit internal-colonial project.


As Soviet citizens, Latvians were taught Russian as a second language during the years of Soviet rule, and Russians who lived in Latvia were able to function as citizens without learning Latvian.  Moreover, when members of other ethnic groups, such as Ukrainians and Belarussians, moved there they could use Russia as a lingua franca with Russians, Latvians, and anyone else.

Map showing the Russian share of the population in different parts of the Baltic States

In 1989, Russians made up over a third of Latvia’s population.  Today the figure is around 27.9%, out of a population of just over two million.  (Some returned to Russia, or emigrated elsewhere.)  But they tend to be more urban and blue-collar than the average Latvian.  Russians make up 42% of the population of the capital, Riga.  (The dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov and the director Sergei Eisenstein were both Russians born in Riga, which was a strategic Soviet port.)  By contrast, Russians make up a quarter of Estonia’s population and only just over 5% of Lithuania’s.  Latvia has by far the largest Russian minority population in the Soviet Successor States (not counting unrecognized Transnistria).  Because of this, Latvia, after after the Baltic States regained their independence in 1991 (the West had never recognized their annexation by the Soviets), imposed stricter laws than other successor states about the use of Russian.  Families that arrived after 1940 had to reapply for citizenship (a provision directed mainly at Russians), and knowledge of Latvian was a hurdle erected to naturalization.  (These laws have been watered down since then, but there are still a lot of non-citizen Russian residents in Latvia, alongside the naturalized ones.)  Along with laws declaring Russian an official “foreign language,” these measures were designed to keep Russians out of public life, maybe even encourage some of them to go home.

Sergei Eisenstein, who was ethnically Russian but born in Riga, Latvia

On Thursday Latvia’s parliament issued a (non-binding) statement that Latvian was the country’s only official language, adding, “Latvia is the only place on the globe where the Latvian culture and language can exist and develop.  The Latvian language is the common language of all people inhabiting the country and is important to their participation in democratic processes and to the rallying of society.”


One political party, Par Cilvēka Tiesībām Vienotā Latvijā (PCTVL), meaning “For Human Rights in United Latvia,” claims to represent not only ethnic Russians but also the Latgalian minority.  Latgalia is one of the four constitutionally recognized cultural regions of Latvia, though it does not correspond to a political entity.  Unlike other regional dialects, Latgalian has its own spelling system and its speakers think of it as a separate language.  Latgalia also borders Russia, and it has the highest proportion of ethnic Russians, while also being Latvia’s most impoverished region.  Its cultural center, Dagauvpils, Latvia’s second largest city, has a Russian majority.

Latvia’s four cultural regions.  Russians dominate in Latgalia, in the east.

Latgalians can hardly claim to be an oppressed minority today, though they would like some devolution, as well as provincial boundaries that correspond more closely to cultural boundaries.  The alliance between some Latgallians and some ethnic Russians in the PCTVL is an oddity.  But, for one thing, Latgalians and Russians share a status as religious minorities in Latvia.  Latgalians are mostly Roman Catholic, and Russians are mostly either Eastern Orthodox or unchurched, in this predominantly Lutheran country.  In any case, most Latgalians vote similarly to most other ethnic-Latvian communities.  For Russians, at least, the alliance with Latgalians in the PCTVL makes some strategic sense.  Much Latvian resentment of Russians boils down to accusing Russians of being un-Latvian and of not respecting Latvian culture.  So, as the voice of ethnic Russians, PCTVL can blunt some of that criticism through an association with one of Latvia’s ancient folk cultures.  PCTVL has no seats in Latvia’s parliament, but it holds one of Latvia’s nine seats in the European Parliament and is a representative (officially, of Latvia’s Russians and Latgalians) in the European Free Alliance, a continent-wide talking club for Europe’s aspirant nations and other minorities.

Much more critical here is the Harmony Center party, a socialist–social-democratic alliance supported by ethnic Russians and, it is said, by Moscow itself.  Harmony Center has nearly a third of Latvia’s parliamentary seats and two of its nine European Parliament seats.  It is the largest party in Latvia but, with only a plurality instead of a majority, most of the rest of the political spectrum formed a coalition specifically to exclude it from executive power.  In real terms, then, a third of Latvia’s representative political spectrum is committed to ethnic-Russian interests.


It is also not irrelevant that Russian firms control nearly all of the Baltic States’ energy supplies, including 100% of Latvia’s oil and natural gas.  In the long term, many Kremlin strategists would like to see Moscow reassert control over its former empire, now politely called the “near abroad.”  The Baltics have always been important to this kind of agenda.  Though it is the largest country in the world, Russia has always had a precarious toehold on warm-water ports.  Far-flung Vladivostok, Murmansk on the Arctic, isolated Kaliningrad, and St. Petersburg’s narrow finger to the sea can only take an aspirant world naval and mercantile leader so far.  Latvians can be forgiven if they see this week’s referendum as the first salvo in a long-term bid to retake the Baltics.  The twentieth century in the Baltics was a succession of hideous, bloody invasions, and Kremlin support for ethnic Russians in Transnistria and Crimea, for Transcarpathian Ruthenians in western Ukraine, and for Abkhaz and South Ossetians in Georgia are quite explicitly proxy battles for an irredentist project.  Russia wouldn’t dare invade a NATO country, but it will probably try to push things as far as they can without rolling out tanks.  (Read here an interesting article on Moscow’s economic, political, military, and electoral agenda in the Baltics.)

Russian tanks rolling into South Ossetia in 2008.

Some Latvians see a grim analogy.

With such a large share of the population, it was only a matter of time before Russians in Latvia began asserting language rights.   To pass, the referendum needs 750,000 votes, and no one expects that threshold to be reached.  Still, battle lines have now been drawn.  Within the memory of most Latvians, they were a subject people, and it is hard for them to think of themselves as having a culture and language that are secure instead of threatened.  Ethnic and linguistic tensions have always lurked in Latvian society, but as of this week, no one can be neutral on the question anymore, and Latvia, including its Russians, will have to decide what kind of pluralist society it wishes to have.

Latgalia’s flag

Will the Euro Crisis Reunite Belgium While It Divides Europe?

While the European currency crisis has cast a pall over the world’s financial system and toppled governments in Greece, Italy, Slovakia, and elsewhere, Belgium may be the one place where financial instability is a catalyst for greater political stability.  After a world-record 535 days without a government, a coalition government in Belgium is set to be formed, ending, for the time being, speculation that the only way out of the crisis would be a partition of the country on linguistic lines.

The prime minister inaugurated today, Elio Di Rupo of the Socialist Party, is from the French-speaking part of Belgium, Wallonia.  Some look askance at his suitability as a uniter, since his proficiency in Flemish is considered sub-par—in a country where bilingualism is more or less a requirement for federal office.  Flemish is the first language of 60% of Belgium’s population.  The rest speak French, except for a minuscule German-speaking minority.  However, Di Rupo’s ancestry allows him to rise above Belgium’s divisions somewhat: he was raised in a Belgian orphanage, but his parents were Italian immigrants to Wallonia (his father died when he was one).  He is also, incidentally, one of the only openly gay world leaders—perhaps the only one other than Iceland’s new lesbian prime minister.  (Someone can tell me if there’s another one.)  Di Rupo seems determined to lead Belgium back to stability and prevent partition.

Belgians seem to have finally realized that, as the home of the European Union headquarters in Brussels—and, despite its small size, a significant mid-sized E.U. economy—it is hard for them to help lead the continent back to stability while their own government barely functions.  What remains to be seen is whether they have rushed too quickly into this new coalition and whether it can survive while excluding, as it does now, the country’s largest political party, the Flemish separatists.  Already, tens of thousands are marching in Belgium to protest austerity measures that the government will finally be functional enough to implement.

Belgium, like many European countries (think Italy, Switzerland, and Spain), includes disparate cultural and linguistic groups sharing a country mainly because of an accident of history.  For a decade or more, Belgium has appeared to be careening toward partition.  Electoral politics divide the country along sharp linguistic lines.  Walloons and Flemings already often feel that they are separate countries.  The Francophones, in this, have the most to lose: without their ties to Flemish-speakers, it will seem hard to find cultural or linguistic justifications for being a separate country at all and not being just part of France.  They will also be landlocked and cut off from their former capital.  Flemings, on the other hand, often regard their linguistic cousins in the Netherlands as speaking a different language, even though Dutch and Flemish are mutually intelligible.  That is to say, Flemish national feeling is stronger.  Many Flemings regard their history as a slow emergence from beneath a Francophone thumb (despite the fact that it’s the Germans who keep invading them).  Most of the centrifugal force is generated in Flanders.

One of the quandaries of Belgian separatism has been what to do with Brussels. Although technically Flemish, it is in a sense its own region and is nearly fully bilingual in practice.  It is a microcosm of the country as a whole and is a place where the two major groups mingle—in the manner of many capitals of countries whose ethnic balance is constitutionally maintained only with great pains, such as Sarajevo or Beirut.  Oops, maybe those aren’t the best examples.  In fact, Brussels is a bit of a sore spot for Belgians since French-speakers have gradually, over the decades, become the majority there (much of that has to do with the placement of the E.U. headquarters there), and this increases the Flemish feeling that their language has lower prestige and that their country is being Frenchified.  If Flanders and Wallonia ever separate, it seems possible that Brussels might become an independent city-state, like Monaco or Luxembourg, thus making Europe’s “capital” a special zone like the District of Columbia or the Australian Capital Territory.

In any case, we can fully expect an electoral backlash against the incoming left-wing coalition and its monolingual Mediterranean dandy of a prime minster (for, mark my words, that is how they will portray him)—if only because it is almost impossible for a politician to stay popular while presiding over an economic crisis.  So we can expect the Flemish separatists to regain their lost ground in the next round of elections, and if they get near the center of power they will probably try to move towards a split faster than ever.  Flemings tend to be more politically right-wing than Wallonia, and many Flemings stereotype Walloons as lazy and a burden on the state.  In this, Belgium is like a microcosm of Europe itself, where Germanic-speaking Protestants in places like Germany and the U.K. tut-tut over the inefficiency and dysfunctionality and dependency of Mediterranean and Romance-speaking nations along the continent’s southern rim, like Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece.

The irony is that if Belgium splits up, whether into two or three entities, there will actually be little change in the daily lives of residents of the two new countries.  They will still be fearing the economic effects of a currency crisis in the economic union they cohabit, and they will still enjoy the benefits of that union as well, with no controls on trade or immigration between the two nations.  The main difference will be that their governments can finally move forward, as some but not all other E.U. member states are doing, to confront the continent’s economic problems.  Heck, they may even coordinate their policy within the E.U. better after a split, like a divorced couple who finally achieve the easy and supportive friendship that they couldn’t manage while married.  Wallonia will be a slightly more left-leaning country than Flanders, but, by European standards, not by much.  Their differences have always been mainly symbolic and emotional.

Incidentally, it will be nice to see Belgium’s boring tricolor flag ...

... tossed on the dustbin of history to be replaced by the jaunty, eye-catching flags of Wallonia ...

... and Flanders.

The less said about Brussels’ flag the better, however.  To be honest, it looks like a fleur-de-lis that someone has stepped on:

And now let us close with this image.  Below is a photo of Belgian students in Ghent stripping down to streak earlier this year in honor of their country’s having reached 250 continuous days without a government, seizing the record from Iraq.  Yet another feather in the cap of the country that has already given the world René Magritte, Tintin, and the Smurfs.