The Feb. 18 referendum has raised considerable emotion, and its outcome will continue to be fervently and diversely interpreted long after the event.

Latvia’s Central Election Commission is predicting a very large turnout of voters in line with the attendant public debate over whether Russian should become the second official state language. Many voters who have little bothered with recent parliamentary elections are likely to participate this time.

The result of the referendum is not in doubt. A majority vote will vote pret (against it), and there is no chance of the pro-Russian forces gaining the 771,350 votes needed to prevail. This figure may well be close to the number who vote against, with those voting par (for) an official status for Russian likely to receive half as many votes, or even less.

While the result is not in doubt, everything will rest on the post-referendum interpretations, and these will be strongly influenced by two factors.

First, the size of the vote against will be crucial. If the against figure is indeed around the 700,000 mark, with the for vote half of that, the pro-Russian party Harmony Centre (Saskaņas centrs) will be ecstatic. It will point out that something close to a third of the electorate wishes Russian to have this status, too large a percentage to ignore, and drive this issue relentlessly both in Latvia and in Europe, demanding a higher status for Russian where Russian-speakers are a significant proportion of the population.

Second, the distribution of the vote is important. If in certain large centres (particularly Daugavpils, with only a small proportion of Latvians, or in Rīga where the population is almost equally divided between Latvians and Russians or other Slavs) a majority of the locals vote for the official status of Russian, this will increase the push at the municipal levels to grant Russian particular privileges.

Awareness of these consequences has done a lot to mobilise Latvian politicians, albeit belatedly. While in the beginning many Latvian politicians seemed to view this event as a second-order issue, and had demonstrated little concern for language issues in the past, the outpouring of sentiment over the proposal—seen as a slap in the face by many in Latvia—has turned the politicians to urge voters to come to the referendum, even passing a resolution to that effect in the Saeima. Notable here also has been the much-despised Union of Greens and Farmers (Zaļo un Zemnieku savienība, or ZZS), seen as an oligarch party and partly responsible for Latvia’s economic crisis, which has tried to reassert its national credentials by urging that a million Latvians come and vote against the proposal. This would be an impressive figure, and give the Latvian side a far stronger position in post-referendum affairs.

An altogether woeful example of such belated realisation of the crucial nature of this referendum unfortunately has been Latvian President Andris Bērziņš, himself a former ZZS figure, who originally placed little stress on the referendum and said he would not even participate in it. While this no doubt was his attempt to pose the position of the president as above seeming political squabbles, there was so much criticism of him that eventually he changed his stance. In rather weasel language he asserted that citizen Bērziņš might have one view, but recent events have convinced President Bērziņš to nonetheless participate in the referendum and vote against the proposed amendments. This is perhaps just as well for him, otherwise there would be serious consideration of impeaching him for failing to uphold the Latvian language.

Meanwhile, as if in a parallel universe still, Bērziņš and other Latvian politicians continue to often use Russian in press conferences, on Russian television and other places, not seeing the long-terms consequences of such practices.

The campaign will continue

The success of the obnoxious Nationalbolshevik Vladimirs Lindermans (not even himself a Latvian citizen) in getting enough signatures to run this referendum presages a growing and orchestrated attack on Latvia, well supported by Moscow, where a mix of constitutional measures and dirty tricks will continue to be used to undermine the basis of the Latvian state.

Already a signature-gathering exercise has started to grant automatic Latvian citizenship to all permanent residents, bypassing the present system of naturalisation that requires a test of Latvian language, history and constitution to gain citizenship. At a social level, increasing numbers of incidents have been noted where individuals deliberately demand the use of Russian in public events or use Russian-only public signage where the use of Latvian is mandated.

Curiously, this all goes against the actual language situation in Latvia. Surveys from various agencies have shown that there is not a large unmeltable mass of Russian speakers who know no Latvian. In fact only about 8 percent of non-Latvians have no knowledge of Latvian, and all young non-Latvians command Latvian, thanks to heightened Latvian teaching in Russian-stream schools. Yet despite the spread of the knowledge of Latvian, the well-known propensity for Latvians to switch to Russian when in the presence of Russian-speakers persists, not among politicians alone.

Against this de facto improvement of the Latvian language situation, the politics will continue to be threatening. This campaign has seen a radicalisation of Russian political endeavours in Latvia. It will be interesting to see the outcome of this for Harmony Centre. This party has shown remarkable hypocrisy in its actions. Its leader Nils Ušakovs, mayor of Rīga, was instrumental in encouraging others to sign for the referendum when he himself signed—even though his party’s policy is for Latvian as the only official state language. He justified this by arguing this was not a referendum about language (!) but about self-respect. Parliamentary leader Jānis Urbanovičs and others have indicated they will vote for the proposal, thus directly going against their oath on taking up a parliamentary seat, where deputies swear to uphold the Latvian language. Some Harmony Centre members however are opposed to giving Russian official status; in order not to make such divisions public, the party decided to walk out of the two votes that the Saeima had on the referendum issue.

Whether this chain of events may lead to a split in Harmony Centre is an interesting question. Waiting in the wings are far more radical elements that will exploit any weakness in Harmony Centre to continue to champion that small but loud rump of the population that cannot abide an independent state of Latvia not under their control.

Every vote on Feb. 18 against the proposal is vital.

Latvia will go to a referendum sometime in the new year to vote on whether Russian should become the second official state language in Latvia.

The outcome is entirely predictable: some 700,000 votes are needed—half the total Latvian electorate—to vote in favour to approve this significant constitutional change, and that will not happen. Such a number or more may indeed vote against the proposal.

The entire effort may seem to be a waste of money and time. But its purpose may nevertheless have been achieved—to drive a wedge between Latvians and Russians in Latvia, perhaps even to sour Latvia-Russia relations, to show the relentless way in which various Russian forces insist on dominating independent Latvia.

Paragraph 4 of the constitution stipulates Latvian as the sole official state language, and this is what proponents are attempting to change.

Citizens have the right to initiate policy or constitutional changes in Latvia. First, 10,000 notarised signatures are required to support such a proposal, whereupon the Central Election Commission organises a second round of signature gathering, where around 150,000 signatures are required. In this case more than 12,000 notarised signatures were originally gathered, and a further 180,000 were gathered in November in the second round to force the issue to the Saeima and, ultimately, to a referendum.

The issue of language has been prominent since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Reinstating Latvian as the sole official state language—the status it enjoyed in the inter-war period—was a centrepiece of Latvia’s moves to regain independence. The Russian language had not only been the main language of the Soviet Union, it had also been the language of the large numbers of Russians and others who were settled in the Baltic states during the Soviet period and who have stayed on since. These settlers largely remained monolingual Russian speakers, being catered for with their own schools, media and services. Balts were virtually forced to become bilingual in their own language as well as Russian, while the Russian speakers had little incentive to learn the Baltic national languages. In the 1989 census, the last in the Soviet Union, only around 22 percent of non-Latvians in Latvia claimed a command of Latvian.

It should be noted immediately that this “Russian-speaking” population is very diverse in its language behaviour, as the last 20 years have attested. In this time Latvian has been taught more systematically in schools, public notices and correspondence are all in Latvian, and a knowledge of Latvian is essential in most occupations. This has led to a marked improvement in Latvian competence among non-Latvians: in the 2000 census the figure for non-Latvians commanding Latvian had risen to 58 percent. Many Russian speakers are fluent in Latvian now, but for some this is not a situation they approve of.

Promoting Russian

The Russian-oriented Harmony Centre (Saskaņas centrs) political party has long tried to upgrade the status of Russian, arguing particularly for its greater use in local government and administration. Yet its party platform supports Latvian as the sole official state language, and its deputies in the Saeima, in taking their oath upon election, must swear to uphold the constitution and specifically to uphold the status of Latvian.

In this instance it was initiators from outside Harmony Centre who began the campaign. The main figure was the controversial Vladimirs Lindermans, who has been an unusually professional dissident now for the past three decades. He was a thorn in the side of the old Soviet Union, criticising the slow pace of Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms. For a while he even joined the Latvian People’s Front campaigning for an independent Latvia, but then veered sharply in his politics to his present nationalbolshevik sympathies, mixing communist politics with acute Russian chauvinism. He has been at serious odds with both Latvian and Russian governments for his extremism, and was sentenced to prison in Latvia for advocating the violent overthrow of the state and for possessing explosives. He also was incarcerated for shorter periods, as well as was denied citizenship, by the Russian government.

Ostensibly, he began this campaign to counter the unsuccessful move last year by nationalists in Latvia, led by All for Latvia! (Visu Latvijai!) political party, to have the state finance only schools that have Latvian as their language of instruction, thus threatening the still extensive Russian-language school system. The venture failed, but this was seen as an antagonistic anti-Russian move that angered many.

Yet it would be wrong to see this as only a tit for tat.

The activities of Lindermans has posed dilemmas for Harmony Centre. Officially, the party supports Latvian as the only official language. However, several party members have expressed support for Lindermans’ move, including the blustering parliamentary leader Jānis Urbanovičs, but most importantly Rīga’s Russian mayor, Nils Ušakovs, who dramatically added his signature in the second week of the campaign, igniting a flurry of interest and spectacularly increasing the rate at which signatures were then gathered.

Ušakovs has since tried to be all things to all parties, hypocritically making speeches arguing for the need to strengthen Latvian particularly in the work of local government, and protesting that adding his signature was not an attack on Latvian but merely an act of respect for Russian speakers.

Significantly, a number of other Harmony Centre deputies such as Igors Pimenovs opposed Lindermans’ campaign, arguing that the earlier provocation by Latvian nationalists should not be responded to by this Russian provocation in turn. But a small number of Saeima deputies have added their signatures, calling into question the oath of loyalty they give upon taking their places in the Saeima, though in the blasé world of Latvian politics keeping promises can rarely be enforced, and there are no sanctions stipulated for breaking the oath.

Interestingly, Latvian politicians have appeared to wake from a slumber over this issue. Language issues have usually not been high on the agenda of most Latvian politicians. Few Saeima deputies supported the move to have Latvian language schools only. But they have belatedly woken to the damage this referendum will do. President Andris Bērziņš, having been equivocal on language issues before, has now strongly defended Latvian and questioned Ušakovs’ competence. The Union of Greens and Farmers (Zaļo un Zemnieku savienība), a party that lost many seats in the recent elections and needs to restore its credibility with an electorate too mindful of its links with powerful oligarchs, is playing the national card and started a campaign to get a million votes against the Russian proposal.

The referendum will solidly vote against Russian as a second official language, but the damage has been done, highlighting supposed ethnic differences and ignoring of the Russian minority. Latvia has in fact experienced no ethnic tensions at the personal or community level, and people are far more concerned with the everyday issues such as the economy (painfully slowly recovering), and the recent collapse of yet another bank—Latvijas Krājbanka—under suspicious circumstances. Yet for some politicians, playing on ethnic allegiances is more important.

While the agonising process of forming a government in Latvia finally has been resolved, if not altogether happily, a more sinister challenge and one capable of doing great harm to the Latvian body politic has emerged.

A proposal to have Russian accepted as the second official state language in Latvia is now in its second stage—gathering of signatures to present the constitutional amendment to the Saeima. Out of the blue—and completely in opposition to his own party’s declared stance on the issue—popular Harmony Centre (Saskaņas centrs) leader and Rīga Mayor Nils Ušakovs has publicly declared he added his own signature to the list.

The issue of the official state language in Latvia has been fought over since the late Soviet period. For the 14 non-Russian republics of the U.S.S.R., having the local national language declared the offical language of their territory (thus limiting the reach of Russian) was one of the most insisted on policies that eventaully helped to break up the Soviet Union. Russian had become the default language throughout the U.S.S.R. It was promoted as the “language of international communication” at that time, but was seen by most non-Russians as an imposition. Non-Russians had to learn Russian to get ahead at all in the U.S.S.R., but Russian speakers, who migrated in vast numbers to the non-Russian republics, did not need to speak the local language. Any move to change this status of Russian was fiercely resisted by Moscow at the time—and still is.

Thus, when the Baltic states regained their independence in 1991, they had already declared their local national language as the official language, and soon moved to actualise this, asking all those who had not attended schools in the national language and who had contact with the public in their work to undergo language tests to ascertain their ability to communicate in the local language. In Estonia and Latvia as well, citizenship was gained automatically only by those who had been citizens or were descendants of citizens of pre-war Estonia and Latvia; those who had migrated during the Soviet period could gain citizenship through a naturalisation test which demanded basic speaking, reading and writing skills in the national language.

This policy has continued to be opposed by Moscow, which has applied continual pressure to try to bring about automatic citizenship to all in Estonia and Latvia as well as having Russian declared an official language. One reason for this is a strategic one: If Russian becomes an official language of any country in the European Union, it automatically becomes an official language of the EU, something dear to Moscow’s heart. Meanwhile, the number of non-Estonians and non-Latvians who can function in the official language has steadily grown since 1991, with a majority of now being fluent, leaving a relatively small monolingual Russian-speaking rump.

The Latvian government has always opposed any move to make Russian a second official language, and deputies to the Saeima in their oath of allegiance inter alia declare their support for Latvian as the only official state language. This year, however, a pair of National Bolsheviks (a movement that magically combines support for Soviet authoritarianism and supposed internationalism with a rabid pro-Russian nationalism) have started a campaign to have Russian become the second official language, using constitutional means. Latvia’s constitution allows citizens to propose to the Saeima changes to any law. Initially citizens need to gather 10,000 notarised signatures for any such proposal. If this number is gathered, the Central Election Commission conducts a second round of signature-gathering. One-tenth of the electorate has to sign for a proposed amendment to go to the Saeima. Then the Saeima can either accept or reject the proposal, but if it rejects it the matter goes to a referendum. Some 153,000 signatures are required for the language amendment to go to the Saeima. Signature-gathering started on Nov. 1 and continues for a month. If the required number of signatures is gathered, the Saeima is certain to reject the proposal (all five parties in the Saeima are officially against such a proposal), thus triggering a referendum.

When Ušakovs last week added his signature to the proposal, the event that gained wide publicity and raised serious questions about his and the party’s political credentials. Harmony Centre, despite its pro-Russian stance on many matters, has as its policy support for Latvian as the sole official state language. The other prominent Harmony Centre leader, Jānis Urbanovičs, has also played with the issue by praising the leaders of the proposal. In a parallel move, Harmony Centre has now submitted a proposal to the Saeima that local governments should accept and reply to correspondence from residents in Russian, a practice not officially allowed but quietly accepted in some local governments.

The action by Ušakovs is likely to stimulate those undecided about the issue to add their signature, making more likely a referendum, which is regarded by many commentators as an unnecesarily divisive event. For those promoting Russian, this is in part as a revenge for the earlier proposal by Latvian nationalists (a proposal which did not gain the required signature numbers) to publicly finance only Latvian medium schools, thus threatening the shrinking though still extensive Russian-stream school system.

The move by Ušakovs, who until this moment had been literally bending over backwards to appeal to the Latvian electorate, throws new light on the long-drawn coalition-building process when Harmony Centre, the largest party in the Saeima with 31 deputies, hoped to be included in the new government but was left on the sidelines. Any inclusion of Harmony Centre in the coalition would have led to rapid and untenable conflict on issues such as the language issue.

Meanwhile, the coalition government of Unity (Vienotība), the Zatlers Reform Party (Zatlera Reformu partija, or ZRP) and the National Alliance (Nacionālā apvienība “Visu Latvijai!” – “Tēvzemei un Brīvībai/LNNK”) has been approved by the Saeima. The coalition controls 56 out of the 100 deputies, a majority more slender than it seems as the ZRP was shaken when six of its deputies left the faction, citing former President Valdis Zatlers’ authoritarianism as the reason, while still supporting the eventual coalition. Valdis Dombrovskis (Unity) has been returned for the third successive period as prime minister, and now needs to steer Latvia through the painful rebuilding of the economy, which is showing significant signs of growth. Fighting off the Russian official language threat will be an unecessary detour on this path of hopeful recovery, though recovery will not be made easier by the renewed European financial crisis.