Day 96: Latvia

[WMS]

Has an interesting tendency to give Russia the finger.

[WMS]

You could also say that Russia has an even more interesting tendency of taking any move by Latvia for a finger . Though, to be fair, on the minority rights (or lack thereoff) they have indeed gone far beyond anything that might be considered decent or, for that matter, wise.

Which they are you referring to here? While the Latvians are suspicious of the Russians living there...they might be correct in being suspicious of their loyalties...

[WMS]

To sum up, I can easily understand the worries of ethnic Letts about the non-Lettish residents. But at independence these were 45% of the population.  Denying most of them (all those whose families couldn't be traced to 1940 as local) all political rights resulted in large areas w/ overwhelming majorities of non-citizens.  These people were given no reason to be loyal to the restored state, even when they had shown willingness to be loyal citizens pre-independence. 

Lithuanians opted to give citizenship to everyone.  Estonians, at least, allowed the non-citizens to vote in municipal elections (otherwise, in many factory towns the eligible voter population would be well under 5% of the voting-age population). Latvians refused any compromise. Long-term this is a problem, since as these people gradually and slowly manage to filter through the system and acquire rights it turns out that they have been radicalized and marginalized as a group. In addition, it has allowed Russia to play the "minority" card much more effectively than it could have ever hoped otherwise. As I said, what Latvian government did here was legal, but indecent and stupid.

This all does sum it up, but I suspect that everything that happened simply boils down to the fact that the native Latvians really resented what Russia did to them from 1940 onwards and that impacted everything that followed at independence...not very nice at all, but not too surprising...

[WMS]

To sum up, I can easily understand the worries of ethnic Letts about the non-Lettish residents. But at independence these were 45% of the population.  Denying most of them (all those whose families couldn't be traced to 1940 as local) all political rights resulted in large areas w/ overwhelming majorities of non-citizens.  These people were given no reason to be loyal to the restored state, even when they had shown willingness to be loyal citizens pre-independence. 

Lithuanians opted to give citizenship to everyone.  Estonians, at least, allowed the non-citizens to vote in municipal elections (otherwise, in many factory towns the eligible voter population would be well under 5% of the voting-age population). Latvians refused any compromise. Long-term this is a problem, since as these people gradually and slowly manage to filter through the system and acquire rights it turns out that they have been radicalized and marginalized as a group. In addition, it has allowed Russia to play the "minority" card much more effectively than it could have ever hoped otherwise. As I said, what Latvian government did here was legal, but indecent and stupid.

This all does sum it up, but I suspect that everything that happened simply boils down to the fact that the native Latvians really resented what Russia did to them from 1940 onwards and that impacted everything that followed at independence...not very nice at all, but not too surprising...

No doubt of that, and I can spend hours denouncing all the Soviet atrocities in general and in Latvia in particular. I've always been a hardcore supporter of Latvian independence and, in general, I find Russia's position towards its neighbors distasteful and extremely dangerous. Nonentheless, the fact remains that Latvia's position towards its "non-citizen" population is indefensible except on the most narrow legalistic grounds.

Yep. It's all very Balkan.