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Latvia Is Going on Offense Against Russian Culture

The Baltic nation is taking cultural cohesion into its own hands—and risking backlash.

By Anchal Vohra, a columnist at Foreign Policy.

About 500 pupils and their parents protest against the language education reform in front of the parliament in Latvia on Feb 10, 2005.

March 21, 2023, 4:52 AM

Latvia, a small country on the Baltic Sea with just over 1.8 million people, has recently passed a spate of laws to reduce Russia’s influence in the former Soviet nation. Lawmakers hope the measures will deepen domestic cohesion against threats from Moscow. But some experts worry the laws could dangerously deepen fault lines between ethnic Latvians and the significant domestic minority of ethnic Russians.

Wariness of Russia has already led to the removal of Soviet-era monuments and proposed renaming of a street that celebrated Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. More significantly, Latvia has separated the Latvian Orthodox Church from the Russian Orthodox Church and banned some Russian TV broadcasts. It is even considering a return to the mandatory military service that had been abolished in 2006, several years after Latvia joined NATO and the European Union.

But the most significant changes, anchored in new laws, are the pending elimination of the Russian language from standard school curricula and the establishment of Latvian as the only language in which to impart education. The use of Russian in airports, train stations, and several commercial establishments has also been prohibited.

Last week, when the Russian envoy to the United Nations Security Council alleged rampant Russophobia in Ukraine and compared it to a “linguistic inquisition,” Latvian lawmaker Rihards Kols called it an old imperial tactic of the Kremlin, which has long presented itself as a protector of Russian speakers abroad as an excuse to invade sovereign nations.

Boris Tsilevitch, a former member of parliament with the social democratic Harmony party, said he felt “disgust” at Russia’s audacity when he heard the comments. His parents taught classic Russian literature and his party is committed to the interests of Russian minorities, but he is also infuriated at Russia’s attempts to spread discord in his nation.

He called Russian President Vladimir Putin “the biggest Russophobe,” whose Ukraine invasion, he said, had inevitably led to accusations of disloyalty against Russian speakers in Baltic nations. With Latvians now anticipating a Russian invasion, Russian-speaking residents are expected to prove their patriotic credentials. “Putin discredited everything Russian when he launched the Ukraine war and started killing people under the pretext of ‘protecting Russians.’” Latvia has much to fear from Putin’s expansionist project known as Russkiy mir, or Russian world, which envisions all former Soviet territories as part of a greater Russian nation destined to be reunited under a common church, leader, and language.

A trade route for thousands of years, Latvia has gone through various periods of invasion. While German and Swedish invaders came and left and never made a claim on Latvia again, Russia has continued to exert influence through Russian settlers and has used the prevalence of the Russian language and Russian media to spread misinformation. Latvia has many minority languages, but Putin’s grandiose view of himself and imperial ambitions makes Russian a threat to Latvian identity, Latvian politicians say.

Thirty-six percent of people in Latvia speak Russian, while a quarter of the population identifies as ethnic Russian, not all of whom are Latvian citizens. Many among them have been consuming Russian propaganda on Russian channels even after independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and are likely to believe the Kremlin’s claims.

According to a poll last year, only 25 percent of Russian speakers in Latvia sympathized with Ukraine in the war, while more than 80 percent of Latvian speakers backed Kyiv. Experts say it is hard to know for certain how many Russian speakers buy into the Kremlin’s rhetoric and how many support the West, since many are choosing to stay quiet on specific questions in various polls—an indication that they find the atmosphere far too nationalistic to voice their true opinion.

Over the next three years, all schools and kindergartens have to transition to teaching in Latvian and end what Latvian political analysts described as a segregated school system. Russian is now to be relegated from the language of the elite and the business class in Soviet times to a niche personal language. Schools are even discouraged from teaching Russian as a second foreign language. English is often the first foreign language to be taught in Latvia, but the availability of Russian-speaking teachers as well as the presence of ethnic Russians made Russian a popular alternative. But there is now a push underway to require Latvian schools to offer two or more languages spoken in the European Union instead.

Latvian leaders say this will increase employability of Latvians all across the union and improve integration of the Russian minority. “Language is an instrument of communication, or at least it should be. But it has a broader meaning in our case because many Russian speakers live in Russian disinformation space, which is hostile toward NATO, the EU, and Latvian security,” Maris Andzans, director of the Center for Geopolitical Studies in Riga, told Foreign Policy over the phone. “Putin has been good at disseminating Russian propaganda through Russian channels and misinform Russian speakers that life in Russia is better and that the West is decadent.”

Kols, deputy head of the conservative National Alliance party in Latvia, said such a narrative has direct security implications for Latvia and insists everyone living in Latvia must be able to speak Latvian, no matter which language they converse in at home. “Why should we continue to maintain two parallel, entirely separate information spaces in Latvia? Russia weaponizes the Russian language via its media to divide, cause confusion, obfuscate, and manipulate. We cannot allow that in Latvia,” he said. “We see the younger generation has no problem with the Latvian language, whatever their ethnicity.”

But the United Nations has described the law as discriminatory toward the biggest minority community in Latvia. Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics responded to the U.N. and said that “children and pupils will have the right to study minority language and cultural history (in the minority language) in interest-related education programs funded by the State and local governments.”

Others argue that prohibiting the use of Russian in public spaces and banning Russian-language media may be counterproductive. “People like to consume media in their mother tongue,” said Tsilevitch, adding that he advocated for the production of Russian-language content in Latvia as a solution to Moscow’s disinformation. “During Soviet times we found ways to access the BBC and Voice of America. Are you telling me today with VPN and whatnot Russian speakers in Latvia cannot access Russian content?”

Arnis Kaktins, the executive director of Latvian research firm SKDS, said banning Russian channels won’t have an immediate impact on the mindset of Putin sympathizers. “A worldview doesn’t change overnight,” he said.

Vitriol online gives a glimpse into the thinking among some Russian speakers. “Actually Latvia is Russian land!! Here is our home! Soon Latvian Nazis will take an exam in the great Russian language!” said one comment to a video on YouTube. It also alleged that a mass expulsion of Russians in Latvia had begun, extrapolating from changes that Latvia made last year to its immigration law, which require Russian and Belarusian citizens to prove they can speak proficient Latvian before receiving long-term visas or residence permits.

Latvia is not the only former Soviet nation to have treated Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, beginning with its annexation of Crimea, as a warning, and taken steps to obtain greater cultural independence. In December last year, the Estonian parliament passed a similar legislation that called for transition to Estonian in Russian-language schools by the 2024-2025 school year. Kazakhstan has decided to transition from Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet. The Latvian government now hopes its most recent changes will distance ethnic Russians from the Kremlin’s propaganda and create a bulwark against Putin’s interference. But Putin’s government is still working to accomplish the opposite.

Correction, March 27, 2023: A previous version of this article misstated Boris Tsilevitch’s government affiliation.