Russian in Latvia: an outlook for bilingualism in a post-Soviet transitional society

Abstract

What makes people, in shifting power positions of a post-independence period, plan on disusing an already known L2 or learn a new L2? What are the reasons for such shifts and what outcomes can, therefore, be predicted for the future of societal bilingualism surviving alongside ongoing efforts at monolingual unification in a newly independent nationstate? In my paper, I examine Russian in Latvia, and also societal bilingualism in the country in terms of L1/L2 users, language-minority education, competitiveness and language policy, couched in a discussion of various theoretical perspectives on language and nationalism. The Baltic republic, which re-established its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, has retained a legacy of not only a substantial proportion of the Russian-speaking population who are now learning Latvian as their L2, but also even a slightly greater number of Russian-speaking non-Russians (i.e. Latvians and other ethnic minorities) who had an obligation to acquire and use Russian as their L2 during the Soviet era.

Keywords:

• L1/L2
• language and nationalism
• post-Soviet Latvia
• Russian
• societal bilingualism

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Juliet Langman for reading and commenting on my various drafts; Shereen Bhalla, Astrid von Busekist, Francis Hult, Aneta Pavlenko, Lisbet Pals-Svendsen, Brigita Zepa, and the two anonymous reviewers for their very useful comments and suggestions; plus Robert Milk and Thomas Ricento for their encouragement. All the remaining errors of either fact or interpretation are my own responsibility.

Notes

1. The term non-formal/non-formal bilingualism in this paper is used as synonymous with de facto, non-official or everyday.

2. This, partly, is because English is a more important language nowadays.

3. I have to note here, though, that there are schools where curriculum is taught separately in two languages, i.e. students are physically in one building (which means they are not physically segregated), but are segregated in terms of their L1, be it Latvian or Russian.

4. Data available at the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia webpage on WWW at http://www.csb.lv (accessed 12.06). I tried to group two population segments as related to the two dominant languages (Latvian and Russian) to characterise general biliteracy. What is interesting about this is that non-Russians speaking Russian as a second language include the majority of Latvians which, in a sense, might be characterised as ‘Russian speakers’ (this is often overlooked in literature). Nevertheless, Russian is not their first language. It is equally interesting that there are more Latvians who claim Russian as their first language (48,242) than Russians who consider Latvian their first language (31,141). However, if we compare that to the total number of Latvians (1,370,703) and Russians (703,243), the percent of Russians (4.4) who claim Latvian to be their first language is slightly higher then the percent of Latvians (3.5) who consider Russian as their first language.

5. This was, by the way, a bilingual publication aimed at promoting bilingual education among Russian speakers of Latvia (available in Latvian also on WWW at http://atvertaskola.iac.edu.lv/gramatas/vecaku_rokasgramata/risinajumi.htm. Accessed 12.06).

6. Franklin and Widdis (2004) have noted that the Russian language has two separate words to define Russian nationality: rossiiskii (refers to Russia as a marker of geopolitical, ‘imperial’ identity) and ruskii (refers to Russian in ethnolinguistic sense). I have noticed similar definitions of Latvian nationality coined by local Russians: latviets (referring to Latvia) and latish (referring to ethnic Latvians). Hogan-Brun (2006) has given a recent account of the distinction in her article on the 2004 language-minority education reform in Latvia.

7. Public institutions are bilingual in Belgium and Canada and this is an important, but not a crucial, difference because the use of Russian is also expanding in terms of the media and multilingual commercial activities.