The anxiety of Latvians is stoked by strong memories of the Russian occupation, when tens of thousands of Latvians fled the country or were deported and an equal number of Russian colonists were sent there by Moscow. By the time of Latvian independence in 1991, the country's Russian population had swollen from 10 percent before World War II to nearly half, with Russian the dominant language in large cities like Riga.
During the occupation, Latvia dreamed of breaking open its Russian- guarded border and rejoining Europe. That dream was fulfilled; the country is now a member of the European Union and NATO.
"We have had Russians invading us for 50 years and we don't need another invasion - it is too painful," says Liene Strike, 21, a museum guide at Riga's windowless Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, where a life-size model of a barracks in the Gulag shows the cramped conditions under which Latvians deported by Russians froze and starved to death.
As part of its cultural self-assertion since independence, Latvia has introduced mandatory exams and an oath of loyalty for Russian-era settlers who want to become citizens. To gain a Latvian passport, they must prove that they know Latvia's history and can speak Latvian.
Many of the nearly 400,000 Russian colonists are wary of taking a test, which includes questions like, "What happened in Latvia on June 17, 1940?" Answer: "The beginning of Russian occupation."
Meanwhile, many Russian colonists dream of another Russian occupation of the country and actively work for this goal being on the payroll of the Russian embassy in Riga.
"My address isn't a city. My address isn't a town. My address isn't a street," says one of them, who arrived from so-called Leningrad after World War II. "My address is the Soviet Union."
The address of this disgusting person is, in fact, Bolderaja, a largely Russian-speaking neighborhood on the outskirts of Riga, where a former Russian naval barracks sits empty and signs in the supermarket are in both Russian and Latvian. Here, this person an many others inhabit a parallel universe that has little to do with Latvia. The colonist watches a Kremlin-funded propaganda television station, eats Russian food, and has no intention of learning the Latvian language - "Why the hell would I want to do that?", pinning hopes on a new Russian occupation of Latvia. This, the colonist says, is gaining force due to the arrival of illegal workers from Russia, who have streamed into the country in recent months by the hundreds, if not thousands, the AP reported.
The issue of Russian "minority rights" in Latvia has taken on "global importance" because Moscow argues that the European Union and other Western bodies are in no position to challenge it on human rights as long as Latvia's ethnic Russians who are not Russian citizens anyway are purportedly "treated as second-class citizens".
Dmitriy Orlov
KC
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