By Maggie Dougherty
Medill Reports

RĒZEKNE, Latvia — Edward, a beekeeper, has lived an hour from the Russian border in Latvia for 52 years. Although married to a Latvian woman, he barely speaks the national language.

He didn’t feel the need to, he said.

Ethnic Russians make up nearly a quarter of Latvia’s population. Many were born and raised in Latvia with Latvian citizenship, yet speak little to no Latvian. Some hold Latvian passports but have non-citizenship status.

To many Latvians interviewed, from tour guides to national security experts and elected officials, these Russian speakers represent a threat not only to their national identity but also to their security.

Edward and other sources interviewed on the street in Rēzekne did not provide a surname due to the sensitivity of language surrounding the Russian speaking population and concerns for their privacy.

Latvia, a small Baltic country on Russia’s eastern border, is widely considered a frontline state against Russia’s territorial expansion. According to the head of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, public concerns of war in Latvia have intensified with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“In this place, the understanding is, if Ukraine doesn’t win, there’s a likelihood that the war is pretty much coming here,” said Dr. Janis Sarts, CEO of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence.

Now, the Latvian government is proactively pushing the Russian-speaking population to learn Latvian by requiring all schools be taught in Latvian, banning Russian media and requiring Latvian language competence on the citizenship test.

The recent initiatives to prioritize Latvian language and culture have been met with accusations of discrimination from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin has used similar claims of so-called Russophobia in the past as justifications for the annexation of Crimea and later invasion of Ukraine.

However, many such messages from the Kremlin have been revealed to be nothing more than propagandistic disinformation, according to experts and the reporting of news organizations from Re:Baltica to NPR.

“No one is oppressing Russian speakers in Latvia,” New Unity parliamentarian Irma Kalniņa said. “What we are asking is to be loyal to the country. To be loyal, to be able to communicate in Latvian.”

The country’s sizable Russian speaking population is a vestige of large waves of Russian migration into Latvia through planned immigration and russification policies under the Russian empire, according to the Migration Policy Institute and the UNHCR. The later Soviet industrialization of Latvia after World War II brought more ethnic Russians to Latvia to work in factories.

Many of Latvia’s Russian speakers came to Latvia or were born there when the country was still a Soviet republic, before gaining its independence in 1991. They have stayed since then, but the borders have changed around them.

So why do Russian speakers stay in Latvia if they don’t want to speak Latvian? It boils down to a mixture of convenience and resentment, according to Dr. Māris Andžāns, director of the Riga, Latvia-based think tank Center for Geopolitical Studies. Some of those people say it is unfair they are now suddenly expected to learn Latvian, according to Andžāns.

“They consider that it is sort of demeaning, or even cruel,” Andžāns said.

Galina, a grandmother of Russian descent living in Rēzekne, was not born with Latvian citizenship.

Unlike Edward, Galina learned Latvian well and applied for citizenship in the 1990s. She said she was highly educated and earned a good pension from working in Latvian institutions.

Although she was not afraid of failing the test herself, Galina said she knew many older Russian speakers who felt taking the test would be a humiliation. The idea that a Russian person would go to Latvia and ask for citizenship was embarrassing to them, she said.

In part, this was because many Russians considered Latvian an inferior language and culture, according to Andžāns.

Not only was there the negative pull of resentment, but up until now there has been little incentive for Russian speakers to learn Latvian.

“You don’t really need Latvian language to thrive in Latvia,” Andžāns said.

According to Andžāns, most people can get by with English or Russian, especially those working in transportation industries dominated by Russian speakers, such as rail and air traffic control.

The polite cultural norms of Latvians also contribute to the dynamic.

Frequently when discussing language with Medill Reports, Latvians would cite the following hypothetical: if a group of two or three Latvians interact with just one Russian, traditionally all will default to speaking Russian instead of Latvian to accommodate the Russian speaker.

Added to this, learning a new language is difficult, especially for older people.

The Latvian government strengthened language requirements because of its history of domination by Moscow, according to Edgars Baldunciks, an adviser to the New Unity parliamentary group.

“(The) Latvian population has a deep, deep trauma of Russification during the Soviet occupation,” Baldunciks said.

The move toward Latvian, and especially the ban on Russian media, can be viewed as an attempt to combat Kremlin state propaganda and commercialized “troll factories” that work to stoke resentment among Latvia’s Russian speaking population.

While these measures are taken in the name of security, they also serve to further alienate those in the Russian-speaking population who choose to criticize them.

Some of Russia’s propaganda seemed to resonate for beekeeper Edward.

Although Edward said the only news he actively consumed was the weather on the Latvian National News in Russian, he also said he supported the Russian government in its war against Ukraine.

He did not like the war, he said, but thought Ukraine was at fault. In explaining why, he parroted a common Putin talking point about Ukraine’s treatment of the Donbas region.

“For eight years,” Edward said in Russian, employing the same phrasing that Putin has used when falsely claiming that Ukraine is committing genocide in Donbas.

Russian speakers who support Putin’s actions in Ukraine are represented electorally by the Latvian parliamentary party For Stability!, which won 11 of Latvia’s 100 seats in the 2022 parliamentary election.

While elderly and socially marginalized Russians were more likely to be sympathetic to Kremlin propaganda, NATO strategist Sarts said there were also many Russian-speakers who were very wary of what Russia was doing, and plenty who held strongly European values.

This was consistent with interviews conducted by Medill Reports in Rēzekne, a small city near the Russian border with a large portion of Russian speakers.

Fruit sellers Ludmila and Lila said they liked to watch YouTube and get both sides of the story from a variety of news sources.

Ludmila spoke Russian, Latvian and English at home with her children, who also watched English cartoons on TV. Everyone is better off if they learn more languages, she said.

Roman and Christina said they spoke Russian at home but did not consume Russian news because 99% of it is propaganda.

And Galina, the grandmother with a good pension, actively sought out independent journalists on YouTube so she could learn more directly about what was happening on the ground in Ukraine.

Latvia’s Russian speaking population “is not a homogenous entity, by (any) means,” Sarts said.

Maggie Dougherty is an investigative graduate student at Medill. You can follow her on Twitter at @MaggieInJSchool.