Waidewut
02-15-2012, 05:13 PM
Latvia's referendum
What's my language?
MOST people living in Latvia speak Russian. And perhaps half of the country’s ethnic Russian population (around 27% of the population) does not speak Latvian fluently, or even at all. So would it not be fair to make Russian an official state language, in which monoglots could fill in official paperwork, deal with public officials, and engage in political life? From the outside, that proposal, to be decided by a referendum on February 18th, looks superficially reasonable.
Yet most Latvians strongly resent the idea. They speak Russian because of Soviet rule, which started in 1940 when their country was wiped off the map as a consequence of the Hitler-Stalin pact. Latvia returned only in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. Soviet rule brought not only forced migration of Russian speakers, but also compulsory linguistic Russification.
The referendum is bound to fail. But its significance lies in the polarisation of Latvian politics that it represents, and stokes. Ethnic-Russian voters (around half have Latvian citizenship, either by birth or naturalisation) were incensed by the election result last year, when the centrist parties of the prime minister Valdis Dombrovskis and the ex-president Valdis Zatlers shunned a coalition with the main pro-Russian party (and election winner) Harmony Centre. Instead the country’s leaders went into a coalition government with a radical right-wing party, the National Alliance which goes under the cumbersome moniker “All for Latvia!–For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK”.
This party started collecting signatures for a petition for a referendum to force all publicly financed schools to use Latvian as the sole language of instruction. Their argument was that this would entrench the national language and unify the country. Critics said it was a provocative attempt to chip away at the russophone Latvians’ slice of the public pie. The petition failed: it collected only 120,433 signatures, which is not enough to initiate a referendum on this subject. But it produced a perfect pretext for pro-Moscow activists, such as the former leader of the Latvian branch of the National Bolshevik Party Vladimir Linderman, the leader of the radical-left Osipov’s party Yevgeny Osipov, and the youth movement “United Latvia”, to launch one in response, pronouncing it a protest against the attempts to assimilate minority children in the country.
This petition collected 187,378 signatures, more than the necessary 10% needed to trigger a referendum. The poll has prompted a resurgence of Latvian national feeling. Old gripes and grudges are getting a thorough airing on both sides and politicians are grandstanding. The mayor of the capital Riga, Nils Ušakovs, who is also the leader of the “Harmony Centre” is supporting the referendum, despite having tried to moderate his party’s image and appeal to ethnic-Latvian voters in recent years. President Andris Bērziņs first said he would abstain, but then urged people to “go and protect Latvian language”. Mr Dombrovskis has declared that “the status of Latvia’s core values is not questionable”, urging people to vote “no”. Some lawmakers, mainly right-wingers, have asked the Constitutional court to cancel the referendum as unconstitutional.
Some fear that the tacit reconciliation of recent years, in which Latvian residents of all stripes just got on with their lives rather than arguing about history, may be jeopardised. Whether or not the referendum will be followed by protests and uprisings from the Russian community, as promised by the initiators, the bill for the referendum will be a heavy one. Latvia has so many other things to worry about.
Source: The Economist (http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2012/02/latvias-referendum)
What's my language?
MOST people living in Latvia speak Russian. And perhaps half of the country’s ethnic Russian population (around 27% of the population) does not speak Latvian fluently, or even at all. So would it not be fair to make Russian an official state language, in which monoglots could fill in official paperwork, deal with public officials, and engage in political life? From the outside, that proposal, to be decided by a referendum on February 18th, looks superficially reasonable.
Yet most Latvians strongly resent the idea. They speak Russian because of Soviet rule, which started in 1940 when their country was wiped off the map as a consequence of the Hitler-Stalin pact. Latvia returned only in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. Soviet rule brought not only forced migration of Russian speakers, but also compulsory linguistic Russification.
The referendum is bound to fail. But its significance lies in the polarisation of Latvian politics that it represents, and stokes. Ethnic-Russian voters (around half have Latvian citizenship, either by birth or naturalisation) were incensed by the election result last year, when the centrist parties of the prime minister Valdis Dombrovskis and the ex-president Valdis Zatlers shunned a coalition with the main pro-Russian party (and election winner) Harmony Centre. Instead the country’s leaders went into a coalition government with a radical right-wing party, the National Alliance which goes under the cumbersome moniker “All for Latvia!–For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK”.
This party started collecting signatures for a petition for a referendum to force all publicly financed schools to use Latvian as the sole language of instruction. Their argument was that this would entrench the national language and unify the country. Critics said it was a provocative attempt to chip away at the russophone Latvians’ slice of the public pie. The petition failed: it collected only 120,433 signatures, which is not enough to initiate a referendum on this subject. But it produced a perfect pretext for pro-Moscow activists, such as the former leader of the Latvian branch of the National Bolshevik Party Vladimir Linderman, the leader of the radical-left Osipov’s party Yevgeny Osipov, and the youth movement “United Latvia”, to launch one in response, pronouncing it a protest against the attempts to assimilate minority children in the country.
This petition collected 187,378 signatures, more than the necessary 10% needed to trigger a referendum. The poll has prompted a resurgence of Latvian national feeling. Old gripes and grudges are getting a thorough airing on both sides and politicians are grandstanding. The mayor of the capital Riga, Nils Ušakovs, who is also the leader of the “Harmony Centre” is supporting the referendum, despite having tried to moderate his party’s image and appeal to ethnic-Latvian voters in recent years. President Andris Bērziņs first said he would abstain, but then urged people to “go and protect Latvian language”. Mr Dombrovskis has declared that “the status of Latvia’s core values is not questionable”, urging people to vote “no”. Some lawmakers, mainly right-wingers, have asked the Constitutional court to cancel the referendum as unconstitutional.
Some fear that the tacit reconciliation of recent years, in which Latvian residents of all stripes just got on with their lives rather than arguing about history, may be jeopardised. Whether or not the referendum will be followed by protests and uprisings from the Russian community, as promised by the initiators, the bill for the referendum will be a heavy one. Latvia has so many other things to worry about.
Source: The Economist (http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2012/02/latvias-referendum)