Russian Latvians told to choose a side
Riga’s election has signalled a turning point in the former Soviet nation’s history as monuments are toppled and the Russian language is phased out of schools.
For nearly 40 years the western skyline of Latvia’s capital was dominated by a 79-metre concrete pillar commemorating the Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany. Today it is a glaring hole in the landscape, toppled and smashed as the Baltic state takes a sledgehammer to the legacy of its Soviet occupation.
The parliamentary election on Saturday marked a turning point in Latvia’s modern history. The country’s Russian-speaking minority, who make up about a third of its 1.9 million inhabitants, have spent the three decades since the fall of the USSR in an itchy and fractious co-existence with the Latvian-speaking majority.
Since the start of the Russian attack on Ukraine, however, they have come under intense pressure to assimilate. The Russian language is being phased out of the education system and may yet be banned in public spaces.
More than 80 Russian broadcasters, including Kremlin channels that have carpet-bombed the diaspora with propaganda for more than a decade, have been banned.
Those who declare support for President Vladimir Putin or his regime’s war crimes risk being stripped of their passports. Most painfully of all, the monuments left behind by the Soviet occupiers are being systematically demolished.
The government’s message is blunt: these are our values, our language, our understanding of history. If you don’t like them, you can go somewhere else.
“This is a free, liberal-democratic country,” Artis Pabriks, 56, the defence minister, said. “There is no place for totalitarian views in the public sphere.”
The election outcome suggests this message has hit home. The most obvious winner is Krisjanis Karins, the prime minister, who not only became the first Latvian leader to survive a full four-year term and win re-election, but also nearly trebled his centre-right New Unity party’s share of the vote from 7 per cent to 19 per cent.
Yet the most striking result is the obliteration of what had been the largest party in Latvia’s parliament, the centre-left Harmony. Traditionally the closest thing to a political bridge between the Russian minority and the Latvian majority, it had won the previous three elections thanks to overwhelming support from Russian speakers.
This time, however, it has been annihilated and appears likely to slide out of parliament altogether, with less than 5 per cent of the vote.
The demolition of the Soviet memorial column has elicited passionate responses on both sides of Latvia’s ethnic and linguistic divide. Many in the Latvian majority have taken to calling it the Occupation Monument, or even the Rapist’s Memorial.
For most Latvian Russians, however, it confirms their belief that their very identity is being crushed. Boris Cilevic, 66, a founder of the Harmony party, said some of his forebears had been liberated from the Riga ghetto by Soviet troops. “The defeat of Nazism is personal. It saved the lives of my ancestors. When the monument was taken down, it was like being punched in the chest.”
– The Times
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