Ukrainians and Latvians are repudiating the Russian language

IT WAS AS though the communities lived both on top of each other and entirely apart. Andrejs Vasiljevs, who runs a digital-translation company in Riga, recalls the divided schedule of his school in Soviet Latvia. Russian-speaking pupils studied in their mother tongue until one o’clock, then left; next Latvian students came and learned in theirs until the late afternoon. Lolita Cingane, a consultant and former politician, remembers two different schools, but one bus. It picked up the Latvian children first, then the Russians, who would taunt their counterparts by calling them gansy, or “Hans” (in effect, Nazis) before alighting at their separate school.

The Latvian- and Russian-language school systems were like “oil and water”, says Arvils Aseradens, the leader of Latvia’s governing party. Latvians learned Russian as part of their curriculum, but Russians hardly bothered with Latvian. After occupying Latvia in 1940, the Soviet regime brought over hundreds of thousands of Russians in a drive to militarise and industrialise the Soviet republic. It also sought to dilute Latvian culture. Russian became the lingua franca, needed for any serious work. When Latvia regained independence in 1991, the country was 48% non-Latvian.