It was a happier, more prosperous time. In 2007, Russian ministers announced a series of plans to promote the national language – to match the country's increasing economic and political confidence.

The plans included the expansion of an international cultural foundation, intended to be comparable with the Alliance Francaise or Germany's Goethe Institute. The drive came from the Kremlin's determination to boost the credibility of Russian as a global means of communication. 

After all, as the then Education Minister Andrei Fursenko noted, "Russian was the first language spoken in space" – referencing the first cosmonauts and their early victories in the Cold War-era space race against U.S. astronauts.

But even in 2007, the determination to boost the Russian language came from a rearguard action. For almost two decades since the end of that Cold War, Russian had been in retreat across Eastern Europe, with English increasingly favored. 

Eastern Europe is not the first place in the world to undergo encroaching Anglicization; organizations like the Academie Française represent bulwarks against such cultural occupation. But among the former Soviet states west of Moscow, only Belarus still recognizes Russian as a state language. 

Then came the conflict in Ukraine, and attitudes have hardened. In many countries, public opinion has turned against all things Russian, including the language; in some, governments have stiffened legislation against all things Russian – including the language. 

Latvians and Russians (and sometimes both)

Latvia's October 2022 parliamentary election did not dominate global headlines. The country of fewer than 2 million souls, nestled against the Baltic, has rarely captured the world's attention since seceding from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

But that election was dominated by Russia. Latvia is a former Soviet state, bordered on the east by Russia and the south by Belarus; the fighting in Ukraine was never going to ease existing hostility toward the country's ethnic Russians – around a quarter of the population.

With polls showing ethnic Latvians enthusiastically supporting Ukraine, Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš's New Unity party – the senior partner in the four-party coalition government – remains hawkish on Russia. Meanwhile the radical-right National Alliance, a minority coalition partner and always a vocal opponent of Moscow, promised to accelerate existing de-Russification policies.

Latvian independence brought a big question: How fast and how far should the new country distance itself from Russianness? The Tautas Fronte party victorious in the 1990 elections advocated all permanent residents be granted citizenship, but lost the 1993 election. Instead, only those who had been citizens of Latvia in 1940, when it was incorporated into the Soviet Union, and their descendants were granted citizenship.

This created a two-tier system in which ethnic Russians were non-citizens, and voteless – and within two decades, half of them had undergone Latvian naturalization. With children born post-independence to non-nationals also automatically receiving citizenship, the proportion of non-citizens has shrunk – but is still thought to be in the hundreds of thousands.

With a third of Latvians speaking Russian and a quarter identifying as ethnic Russians (citizens or not), the conflict in Ukraine exposed a sharply divided country. A poll by Latvian research firm SKDS found only 25 percent of Latvians who spoke Russian at home sympathize with the Ukrainian side, as opposed to 83 percent of Latvian speakers. 

The government began to institute or accelerate de-Russifying reforms. Widely-watched TV broadcasts from Russia have been banned; an 80-meter-tall Soviet-era monument in Riga was toppled; a proposal was made to rename a street commemorating Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, and the Latvian Orthodox Church was separated from the Russian version.

But the main battleground was language. 

Language laws

New laws proposed in September 2022 mandated removing Russian from airports, train stations, public-sector websites and many commercial establishments – and set a September 2025 deadline for all Russian-language public schools to switch to teaching in Latvian, ending what some have called a segregated education system.

Moreover, the government now demands a language test from the 20,000 people who live in the country but have Russian rather than Latvian passports. Taking Russian documents made them eligible for retirement at 55, a pension from Russia, and visa-free travel to Russia and Belarus – but now they are seen as having their loyalty tested, said Dimitrijs Trofimovs, state secretary at the Interior Ministry.

Russian citizens under 75 who do not pass the test by the end of 2023 will be given reasonable time to leave, Trofimovs said. If they do not leave, they could face a "forced expulsion." 

"They voluntarily decided to take the citizenship not of Latvia but of another state," he said. "That is a signal. As a result, the politicians decided to give one year to pass the Latvian language exam."

Valentina Sevastjanova, a 70-year-old former English teacher and Riga guide, was among many taking a three-month crash course. 

"I took the Russian passport in 2011 to easily visit my sick parents in Belarus – they are gone now," she said, adding that if deported, "I would have nowhere to go – I have lived here for 40 years." 

As her teaching career suggests, Sevastjanova has nothing against education – "I love learning languages, and I expected to be learning French in retirement" – but doesn't like the nature of this mandate.

"I think that learning Latvian is right, but this pressure is wrong," she said. "People live in a Russian environment. They speak with (only) Russians. Why not? It's a large diaspora", she said. "There are Russian-speaking workplaces. There are Russian newspapers, television, radio. You can converse in Russian in shops and markets – Latvians easily switch to Russian."

The education mandate has been criticized by the United Nations. "The government of Latvia has an obligation under international law and regional instruments to protect and uphold the language rights of the country's minority communities, without discrimination," the UN said.

"Latvian authorities must clarify the harsh restrictions on minority language education amounting to its virtual elimination, and the consultation process with the minority communities concerned," it added. 

The Latvian government responded that the new bill did not break international law and that countries were free to choose "the most appropriate measures to ensure appropriate and effective protection" of minorities' rights. 

The official line is that the de-Russification is to "to ensure, maintain, and develop the Latvian language as the official state language and the common language in the society," but some lawmakers put it in stronger terms. 

"Why should we continue to maintain two parallel, entirely separate information spaces in Latvia?" said National Alliance deputy head Rihards Kols. "Russia weaponizes the Russian language via its media to divide, cause confusion, obfuscate, and manipulate. We cannot allow that in Latvia." 

Other politicians have warned the move might be counterproductive. Boris Tsilevitch is a former MP with the Harmony party which represents the Russian minority, but which has criticized the attack on Ukraine; Tsilivetch himself called President Vladimir Putin "the biggest Russophobe" for provoking suspicion of Russian speakers in Baltic nations. 

"People like to consume media in their mother tongue," said Tsilevitch, insisting that the solution to any alleged disinformation from Moscow is to produce Russian-language content in Latvia. "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?"

Toughening stances

It's an issue that remains a bone of contention for all those in Latvia who speak Russian – and the people who do not. And it is not restricted to Latvia. 

In April 2019, Ukraine's parliament made the Ukrainian language mandatory for public sector workers, much to the irritation of the president-elect – who had played a schoolteacher-turned-president in a Russian-language comedy series on Ukrainian TV before launching his political career.

Indeed, the then little-known Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who usually spoke Russian in public, decried the move as "political rhetoric" and warned "We must initiate and adopt laws and decisions that consolidate society, and not vice versa."

His tone, and indeed his language, changed after Moscow's attack on his country. And other former Soviet states have toughened their attitude to a language still spoken by millions across eastern Europe.  

In December 2022, the parliament in Tallinn passed a bill to make Estonian the language of instruction in all the country's schools and kindergartens, with the transition starting from late 2024. In January 2023, the Lithuanian prime minister said she would prefer schoolchildren to learn Polish rather than Russian. 

The lofty ambitions of those Kremlin ministers launching the 2007 plan to promote the Russian language are being pulled down by realpolitik.

Originally published by CGTN Europe, 6 Jun 2023