Minority Language and Integration Issues in Latvia and the Baltic States

Andrejs Veisbergs, Professor at the Faculty of Modern Languages, Department of Contrastive Linguistics, Translation and Interpreting, University of Latvia

During the 20 th century the Baltic states experiences several occupations by regional superpowers resulting in huge ethnic shifts in population. The biggest impact was imparted by the soviet occupation lasting 50 years, bringing the titular nations to the brink of minority (e.g. Latvians from 77% in 1935 to 52% in 1989 and less than 40% in the capital Riga) and gradually imposing Russian as a language of communication.

The incoming immigrants –militaries, soviet apparatchiks, but also workers were culturally and linguistically unintegrated. With independence (1991) these processes were stopped and reversed. State-making in Baltic case strongly involved language policy elements. The language issue was closely linked with political loyalty and citizenship issue as the former has always been the core of the national identity. Thus Latvian regained its status as the state language in 1988 in one of the first steps towards independence. The first “Law on the State Language” was adopted in 1989 under the soviet system yet. When a certain change of linguistic hierarchy and psychology had occurred a new “Official language law” (1999) was adopted and is in effect still.

Knowledge of Russian and Latvian has equalized –about 80% of Latvians know Russian and 80 % of non-Latvians– Russians know Latvian. The first figure has been rather stable, the second has risen from 20% in 1990. There were three steps in the transformation process:

First, putting Latvian as a state language, changing and inverting asymmetrical bilingualism; Second, granting rights for the small minority languages (assimilated by Russian) and third, liberalizing the linguistic (and also the citizenship) system, gradually making it more moderate, while bolstering the status of the state language as the vehicle of integration, making it a partial language of education for non-Latvians.

Polls suggest that for young people main motives for learning Latvian are prestige and better job opportunities.

Entry of the Baltic States into the EU in 2004 has lead to a wave of emigration – mainly to Britain and Ireland (English being the best known language in the Baltic region), Estonians also go to the linguistically close Finland. Immigration is as yet insignificant, asylum seekers and refugees flows seem to bypass the Baltic States. Yet with the economic growth about 10% a year, the issue of workforce is becoming serious in shipbuilding, hotels, restaurants, construction. It is expected that the new guest workers and immigrants will come mainly from Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine as they might find it easier to adapt to an ex-USSR area, where knowledge of Russian is still high. Also population, though generally negative towards immigrants, consider these people as easier to integrate. However there are fears of again bolstering the Russian-speaking community.