Ex-Soviet republics rediscover nearly lost languages
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RIGA, Latvia -- In the 1970s, with Brezhnev in Moscow and Europe still shrouded in the long Soviet shadow, Ieva Zuicena was in the tiny Soviet republic of Latvia compiling a comprehensive Latvian dictionary.
Looking back, the philologist recalls reflecting, sadly, that she was "writing a monument to a soon-to-be-forgotten language."
In the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca, and some dozen minority languages scattered across the vast territory of the Soviet Union, from the Baltic Sea to the Central Asian steppe, were relegated to the brink of extinction.
"Eventually, we all expected Latvian would disappear," Zuicena recalled.
Things changed after the fall of the Soviet empire in 1991. In newly independent nations such as Latvia, the linguistic minority had become the majority. Former captive nations began righting the wrongs of decades of Russification.
In Latvia, Latvian-only signs went up, while the Cyrillic, bilingual Soviet-era signs were crudely scratched out.
Parliament passed laws requiring the use of Latvian at public events and set up a corps of language cops to ensure everyone from doctors to bus drivers know enough Latvian to do their jobs.
After invading in 1940, the Soviets tried stamping out national identity in Latvia and Baltic neighbors Estonia and Lithuania.
Thousands of Balts were executed or deported to Siberia, while thousands of Russian workers were moved in to replace them.
The main casualty was language.
"All three Baltic languages were on the path to annihilation," said Latvian linguist Ina Druviete. "Another two, maybe three generations, and we'd have seen permanent linguistic shift."
Resentment of Russians strong
Today, nearly 40 percent of Latvia's 2.4 million people and 30 percent of Estonia's 1.4 million are Russian speakers.
Many towns and villages remain predominantly Russian, and TV viewers across the former Soviet Union can still tune directly to Moscow channels.
In Daugavpils, a city in eastern Latvia, Russians make up 87 percent of the population, and one can go days without hearing a word of Latvian. Still, all signs are in Latvian as are announcements at the bus station.
"Two languages would never work," said Zuicena, now co-author of the state language law. "So many Russians don't speak Latvian. Without these laws, they never would."
To an extent, this hard-line policy has worked. Statistics show the number of ethnic Russians who know Latvian has increased steadily in the last decade, and Latvian has become the default language in restaurants, shops and offices.
But resentment is strong.
Russians were particularly infuriated by decisions by Latvia and Estonia to withhold citizenship from Russians who moved in after 1940 and their descendants unless they could pass language tests.
"I was born here; I can speak Latvian, so why should I take a test to get what should be mine by rights," said economics professor Vladislav Volkov.
Public education opportunities in Russian also have been curtailed, and new laws call for eliminating all state-funded education in Russian by 2004.
"The idea that we don't want to learn Latvian, that we're lazy, is a myth," said Leonids Raihmans, a Russian civil rights campaigner. "But the state's policy is forced assimilation, and we don't want to abandon our language and culture."
Some Russian speakers advocate elevating Russian to official status, at least in areas where Russians are a majority, as other former Soviet republics have done.
After a brief period of Belorussian dominance, Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko restored Russian as an official state language.
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have done the same, and Moldova is considering following suit, though two-thirds of its residents are of Romanian descent.
It's not a road the Baltic states are likely to follow.
"We have a different mentality here," explained Latvian linguist Inga Zvaigzne. "This little country is the only place in the world where people can speak Latvian. We aim to protect that."
Steven C. Johnson is an Associated Press reporter based in Latvia.