Latvia and Latvians

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LATVIA AND LATVIANS

The Republic of Latvia is located on the eastern littoral of the Baltic Sea, and the vast majority of the world's Latvians (est. 1.5 million in 2000) live in the state that bears their name. They occupy this coastal territory together with the the other two Baltic peoples with states of their own, the Estonians and the Lithuanians, as well as a substantial number of other nationality groups, including Russians. The complex relationship between this region and the Russian state goes back to medieval times. The modern history of this relationship, however, can be dated to the late eighteenth century, when the Russian Empire, under Catherine the Great, concluded the process (begun by Peter the Great) of absorbing the entire region. From then until World War I, the Latvian population of the region was subject to the Russian tsar. The disintegration of the empire during the war led to the emergence of the three independent Baltic republics in 1918 (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania), which, however, were annexed by the USSR in 1940. They were formally Soviet Socialist Republics until the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Since then, Latvia and the other two Baltic republics have been independent countries, with strong expectations of future membership in both NATO and the European Community. The notion among political leaders in Russia that the Baltic territories, among others, were the Russian "near abroad," however, remained strong during the 1990s.

Before they were united into a single state in 1918, the Latvian-speaking populations of the Baltic region lived for many centuries in different though adjacent political entities, each of which had its own distinct cultural history. The Latvians in Livonia (Ger. Livland) shared living space with a substantial Estonian population in the northern part of the province. Those in the easternmost reaches of the Latvian-language territory were, until the eighteenth century, under the control of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and afterward part of Vitebsk province of the Russian Empire. The Latvians of Courland (Ger. Kurland), until 1795, were residents of the semi-independent duchy of Courland and Semigallia, the dukes owing their loyalty to the Polish king until the duchy became part of the Russian Empire. The final acquisition of all these territories by the Russian Empire was not accompanied by an internal consolidation of the region, however, and most of the eighteenth-century administrative boundaries remained largely unchanged. Also remaining unchaged throughout the nineteenth century was the cultural and linguistic layering of the region. In the Latvian-language territories, social and cultural dominance remained in the hands of the so-called Baltic Germans, a subpopulation that had arrived in the Baltic littoral as political and religious crusaders in the thirteenth century and since then had formed seemingly unchanging upper orders of society. The powerful Baltic German nobility (Ger. Ritterschaften) and urban patriciates (especially in the main regional city of Riga) continued to mediate relations between the provincial lower orders and the Russian government in St. Petersburg.

Most historians hold that a national consciousness that transcended the provincial borders was starting to develop among the Latvian-speakers of these provinces during the eighteenth century. The main national awakening of the Latvians, however, took place from the mid-1800s onward, and by the time of World War I had produced a strong sense of cultural commonality that manifested itself in a thriving Latvian-language literature, a large number of cultural and social organizations, and a highly literate population. Challenging provincial Baltic German control, some Latvian nationalists sought help in the Russian slavophile movement; this search for friends ended, however, with the systematic russification policies under Alexander III in the late 1880s, which restricted the use of the

Latvian language in the educational and judicial systems and thus affected everyday life. Henceforth, both the Baltic German political elite and the Russian government seemed to many Latvian nationalists to be forces inimical to Latvian aspirations for independence.

The main events in the region during the twentieth century changed the nature of the inherited antagonisms of the Latvian area, but did not solve them. The emergence of a Latvian state capped the growth of Latvian nationalism, but created in the new state the need to resolve the problems of economic development, national security, and minority nationalities. The Russian population in Latvia in the interwar years remained in the range of 7 to 10 percent. In the fall of 1939 virtually the entire Baltic German population of Latvia emigrated to the lands of the Third Reich. World War II, however, brought annexation by the Soviet Union in 1940, occupation by the Third Reich from 1941 to 1945, and from 1945 the continued sovietization of the Latvian state that had begun in 1940 and 1941. As a constituent republic of the USSR, the Latvian SSR from the mid-1940s onward experienced, over the next four decades, an influx of Russians and Russian-speakers that entirely changed its nationality structure. Simultaneously, the Latvian language was downgraded in most spheres of public life and education, and resistance to these trends was attacked by the Latvian Communist Party as bourgeois nationalism. The Latvian capital, Riga, became the headquarters of the Baltic Military District, vastly enlarging the presence of the Soviet military. For many Latvians all these developments seemed to endanger their language, national culture, and even national autonomy. Thus

the large-scale participation of Latvians (even Communist Party members) in the Latvian Popular Front in the Gorbachev period was not surprising, and the view that Latvia should reclaim its independence became a powerful political force from 1989 onward.

The collapse of the USSR and the return of Latvian independence left the country with a population of about 52 percent ethnic Latvians and 48 percent Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, and others. In 2001 the proportion of Latvians stood at 57.9 percent, the other nationalties having been reduced by emigration and low fertility rates. About 40 percent of the Slavic minority populations were Latvian citizens, leaving the social and political integration of other members of these populations as one of the principal problems as the country became integrated into Western economic, social, and security organizations.

See also: catherine i; estonia and estonians; nationalities policies, soviet; nationalities policies, tsarist