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Abstract
Following a review of current scholarship on identity and integration patterns of Russian speakers in the Baltic states, this article proposes an analytical framework to help understand current trends. Rogers Brubaker's widely employed triadic nexus is expanded to demonstrate why a form of Russian-speaking identity has been emerging, but has failed to become fully consolidated, and why significant integration has occurred structurally but not identificationally. By enumerating the subfields of political, economic, and cultural ‘stances’ and ‘representations’ the model helps to understand the complicated integration processes of minority groups that possess complex relationships with ‘external homelands’, ‘nationalizing states’ and ‘international organizations’. Ultimately, it is argued that socio-economic factors largely reduce the capacity for a consolidated identity; political factors have a moderate tendency to reduce this capacity, whereas cultural factors generally increase the potential for a consolidated group identity.
Notes
1. In this article, Russian speakers (without a hyphen) is used to describe individuals whose first language is Russian. Russian-speakers (with a hyphen) is used to refer to a group, understood as an imagined community. For grammatical clarity the hyphen is maintained when using the term in adjectival form, e.g. ‘Russian-speaking identity’.
2. For an overview of Soviet nationalities policies, see Kaiser (Citation1997).
3. Within the federal system of the Soviet Union titular ethnicity (titul'naya natsional'nost’) referred to the ethnic groups which gave their name to union republics, autonomous republics, autonomous oblasts and autonomous okrugs; their so-called ‘root nation’ (Korennaya natsiya). In the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, ‘Latvians’ were the titular nation; in the Chechen–Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, ‘Chechens’ and ‘Ingushians’, etc.
4. Nimmerfeldt et al. define structural integration as ‘the acquisition of rights and equal access to the major institutions of society’. Cultural integration is defined as ‘the process of cognitive, behavioural and attitudinal change that occurs when individuals from different cultures come into contact’. Social integration they define as ‘the degree to which members of different groups are segregated and the degree to which they interact’. Finally, they define identity integration as focusing on ‘ethnic and national self-identifications’ (Nimmerfeldt et al., Citation2011, pp. 78–79).
5. For detailed accounts, see Brüggemann & Kasekamp (Citation2008) and Smith (Citation2008).
6. The wage gap in Estonia was 16% and it was 9% in Lithuania
7. For a debate on this issue, see Hughes (Citation2005b) and Muižnieks (Citation2005).
8. Exit can be defined as secession from the dominant regime by a group, or outward migration for individuals, or symbolic exit whereby individuals and groups reside in a given territory but take relatively little interest in political, economic, or social life. Loyalty is generally manifested in assimilation or integration into the host society. Voice represents ethnic mobilization through non-violent engagement with institutions and politics, or through recourse to more militant channels. See Evans (Citation1998, p. 59).
9. This is despite the fact that there have been a number of visible exceptions, including the education reform protests in 2003/4 and attempts to give Russian the status of a second state language. Although significant, these events have passed relatively quickly and have not mobilized Russian speakers to more permanent forms of protest or contention.
10. These calculations are based on numbers of Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians in each country from 2011 census data: Source: Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia and Statistics Estonia.