They don’t get up. They started drinking the night before.

Sounds good. I’ll be on the next plane!

Aleks,
Not really any problems with Russian. I am surprised how many people (cabbies, store clerks) at least pretend (and seem) to understand Latvian. Or I simply say in Latvian that I did not grow up learning Russian, so how about English, Swedish, or German in the respective languages? That usually confuses the other party to the non-conversation enough so that I don’t get any remarks about not speaking Russian :)

ambersun - 15 March 2008 01:49 PM

… certainly almost always, singing with gusto, “ kur latvju meitas zied.”....

You do realize that “latvju meitas” includes our delicious Russian-speaking women too, right?

Once Ambersun gets through with you Aleks, I guarantee you’ll be dancing!

I can see it all now, like a scene out of an old western--Aleks kicking up his heels to the live music of gunshot.  Yippee Yaaaaah Yaaaay!

Have fun kiddos!

Irena

Juris K, I may not be politically conservative but I am personally conservative enough to first test the Baltic waters with only one foot before I fully immerse myself.  I’m an absolute environmentalist and I hate pollution.  Thanks for the warning.

Aleksejs, you wrote: “You do realize that “latvju meitas” includes our delicious Russian-speaking women too, right?” Again, Aleksejs, you are correct, but I was just hoping you would say it.  Of course, I’d put it just a little differently: “Where Latvian daughters bloom” is the official English translation.  Unfortunately, it becomes less appealing to imagine drunken British men falling off the plane at Riga Airport and chasing after all our blooming daughters.

Irena, you wrote: “Once Ambersun gets through with you Aleks, I guarantee you’ll be dancing!
I can see it all now, like a scene out of an old western--Aleks kicking up his heels to the live music of gunshot.  Yippee Yaaaaah Yaaaay!”
I can assure you: I am not a member of the National Rifle Association and never have been, unlike many Republicans, as opposed to Democrats.  The idea of Bambi’s mother being shot still brings tears to my eyes.  My family does come from a long line of proud Latvijas “meza sargi” both in Vidzeme and Latgale, but I tend to romanticize their relationship with nature rather than dwell on any gun-toting.  I also just abhor any and all guns, just like most political liberals.  I certainly hope that you are not warning me to expect “gunshot” music upon meeting Aleksejs - since that seems just a contradiction on the face of it.  I’d certainly prefer a balalaika serenade.

I’m not warning you about anything, Ambersun...this is all just in good fun.  We my not have the same politcal views, but I never did get over “The yearling” which still makes me weep every time I see it, despite the pracital message.

Irena

Let us know in advance when you’re coming. I’ll be holding the sign that says, амберсан. And I’ll take you places that will make your environmental hairs stand up.

Re a potential politically correct alliance with Attila the Hun, etc.—Ambersun, I suppose you are right; I probably do have some positions that are way to the right of yours. I don’t see myself as being PC at all, and though I do share some leftist views (e.g., re health care and education), I’ve never voted for the left in Latvia. I’ve even voted for the Fatherlanders. Mostly I’ve voted LC. I suspect that most people playing with my initials and/or calling me Red or Pink are reacting to my opposition to what I consider the oversimplification of “national questions” and history.

As to pigeonholing others—look, you’ve been asked to expound upon your views time and again, yet you refuse to do so. What you do do is make comments like “[a]ll from a person who can’t even bring himself to say he is ‘Latvian’,” to Aleks—this shows me that (a) you either do not understand or deliberately ignore the dynamics of ethnicity and nationality in Latvia, Central/Eastern Europe, and Europe as a whole, and (b) your vision of integration is actually one of coercive assimilation.

I’ve made my political positions with regard to these questions quite clear—in broad terms, I support our citizenship policies, our language legislation, and education reform. I strongly support NATO and EU membership. All of these are complex and contain contradictions, and investigating the questionable and negative aspects is vital.

The interview with bernardinai.lt was translated and edited. I agreed to the edits in English, but I can’t judge the quality of the translation. The passage that you seem interested in reads like this in the original:

I live in Latgola (Latgallia – Latgale in Latvian, Latgala in Lithuanian), and this is in a sense a betweenness within a betweenness; long part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and later of Vitebsk guberniya, historically Catholic, this is a region where the indigenous inhabitants speak a dialect (or language, according to Latgallian patriots) that is in some respects closer to Lithuanian, though the region suffered most from Russification.

So again I can cite an instance of positive attitudes – Anna Rancāne, a fine poet and now the regional correspondent for Diena, Latvia’s most important newspaper, once wrote that she feels more at home in Vilnius than she does in Rīga. Latvia’s capital is a Hanseatic city, like Tallinn – it’s also a metropolis compared to the other Baltic capitals. In the Russian Empire, it was for a time the third city, after Moscow and St. Petersburg. It was and is cosmopolitan, though the ethno-cultural mixture was drastically altered by expulsions, deportations, war, the Holocaust, and colonization.

Like Vilnius, Latgola was part of the Pale of Settlement (Черта оседлости). The Vilna of the Pale is gone. Similarly, Daugavpils is not the city my mother grew up in – a city so central to local Jews that one old professor here is said to have asked, “Rīga—what’s Rīga but a suburb of Dvinsk?” Unlike Daugavpils, which is essentially post-Soviet and where Russian is still the lingua franca, Vilnius was largely “Lithuanized.”

I’ve digressed, but one thing I am trying to underscore is that identity in this part of the world has long been multiple and complex; this is what I tried to say at my blog on the last Baltic Unity Day.

To be blunt, I think many Latvians are jealous of how “Baltic” Lithuania is, and I mean that in terms of language, culture, and ethnicity. Some Lithuanians react negatively to how “Russian” parts of Latvia, especially urban Latvia, still are. I’ve met Lithuanians who feel differently, though – people who compare Rīga to Vilnius and yearn for the cosmopolitanism.

Part of the third paragraph was removed for brevity; the original questions were long, so my responses were also too lengthy.

The Lithuanization of Vilnius was not a pretty thing. Mass ethnic cleansing, including the Holocaust, took place primarily under the Soviet and Nazi occupations—but prior to that, Lithuania’s authoritarian government engaged in a Lithuanization policies that would be utterly unacceptable today, especially in Klaipėda Region (see this article and these Wikipedia articles [1], [2], [3]). Poland, meanwhile, engaged in Polonization. In Latvia, Ulmanis engaged in Latvianization.

We live in a totally different world, Ambersun—we’re in the CoE and the EU. Here is the text of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. The declaration Latvia appended to the instrument of ratification can be found here.

[To be cont’d]

[Cont’d.]

An excerpt:

...the notion “national minorities” which has not been defined in the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, shall, in the meaning of the Framework Convention, apply to citizens of Latvia who differ from Latvians in terms of their culture, religion or language, who have traditionally lived in Latvia for generations and consider themselves to belong to the State and society of Latvia, who wish to preserve and develop their culture, religion or language. Persons who are not citizens of Latvia or another State but who permanently and legally reside in the Republic of Latvia, who do not belong to a national minority within the meaning of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities as defined in this declaration, but who identify themselves with a national minority that meets the definition contained in this declaration, shall enjoy the rights prescribed in the Framework Convention, unless specific exceptions are prescribed by law. (Underscore mine.)

We have minorities who’ve traditionally lived here for generations, including a large Russian minority. Read the second sentence carefully—it says that non-citizens who identify themselves with a national minority that meets the definition contained in this declaration, shall enjoy the rights prescribed in the Framework Convention. Reservations are made re Article 10, Paragraph 2 (re being able to communicate with the administration in minority languages), but there are other parts of the Framework Convention that are relevant, like 14:1—The Parties undertake to recognise that every person belonging to a national minority has the right to learn his or her minority language.

I will again suggest to you that you look at practice and theory in Europe, especially in Central/Eastern Europe. The US, which has no official language but is traditionally a melting pot, has nothing relevant to offer Latvia. The “accomplishments” of the “English only” movement, esp. the movement against bilingual education, would quite simply be illegal here. So would the sort of Latvianization measures undertaken in the 1930s, like flooding an area with functionaries and “Latvianizing” local administrations (how Daugavpils became more Latvian in the 1930s)—The Parties shall refrain from measures which alter the proportions of the population in areas inhabited by persons belonging to national minorities and are aimed at restricting the rights and freedoms flowing from the principles enshrined in the present framework Convention.

Here, for example, is a fine paper on the “Status Law Syndrome” and the Hungarians of Romania. There are crucial, fundamental differences between the situations, histories, minorities, demographics, etc., to be sure—but I think the concepts he treats, like his proposal for the term ”nationalising minority” are relevant. “On a theoretical level, I consider that one should focus on the processes of institutionalisation of the minority, on an ethnocultural basis. One should not commit the mistake of essentialising the national minorities. National minorities are constructed and imagined as much as nations are. In line with Brubaker’s conceptual transformation of the nation state into nationalising state, I propose the concept of nationalising minority instead of national minority.This concept captures the internal dynamics of the national minority and permits the analysis of long-term processes. These processes are slightly different from those of the nationalising state, but the mechanisms are similar. National minorities engaged in a nation building process are nationalising minorities. Nationalising national minorities are distinguishable from the non-nationalising ones.”

Members of the national minority still consider themselves as belonging to the former ethnocultural nation, emphasising the common culture and language. They used to perceive themselves as one nation, and still conceive of themselves in such a way. However, they also perceive themselves as a national minority. These two complementary but nevertheless competing images characterise national minorities. National minorities are institutionalised on the same ethnocultural basis as the
nation in the external homeland, but the framework and resources are different. The particular principle of nationality is identical, and therefore there is no reason to seek other explanations of why a national minority is engaged in a nationalising process.

The degrees and the details are extremely important. You just keep going back to your jājamzirdziņi—the occupation, and what might be formulated as “if in Latvia, be Latvian.” Aleks has far more interesting foci—on the difference between a Latvian Russian identity and a Russian Russian identity, for example. You betray your tendency toward oversimplification by not distinguishing between the Russian media and Latvia’s Russian-language media, for instance. I don’t know anybody who reads the Russian papers; I’m sure there are some people who do, but most read the local papers.  A lot of people listen to Radio 4, which is Latvian National Radio in Russian, and other Russian-language stations that originate here. As to watching Russian TV—hey, Latvians do that, too. It’s better TV.

Vysu lobu,
/P