Are Minorities in Europe 'Othered' in the Space Between Policy and Academic Research? – a Case Study on Russians in Latvia
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Are Minorities in Europe ‘Othered’ in the Space between Policy and Academic Research? – A Case Study on Russians in Latvia and Estonia Master’s Thesis Adam Brookes Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Max Bader M.A. Russian and Eurasian Studies Faculty of Humanities Submission Date: June 29th, 2020 Word Count: 21396 ii Abstract The political history and lived experience of Russians in the Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia plausibly constitutes an historic example of civic Othering. The hybrid, multi-layered identities and subjective perceptions of nationality amongst these communities have been covered by academic research. At the same time, Latvia and Estonia have engaged in the political dialogue of ‘Europeanization’ as Member States of the European Union, as part of a top-down process to understand and, at times, promote a common ‘European identity’, which has also been frequent analyzed and discussed in academic literature. While both these aspects of research have been extensive, there has been less contemporary investigation at their crossroads: European identity amongst Russians in Estonia and Latvia. This paper performs a ‘research synthesis’ type of meta-analysis on academic and policy papers to shed light on this potential gap between academic literature and policy research. Its conclusions have implications for researchers and practitioners of both kinds, as well as grounds to consider the gap as a form of ‘methodological Othering’ itself. iii Table of Contents Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 5 Thematic Overview ............................................................................................................. 8 1.1 Borders and Others ........................................................................................................ 8 1.2 Old Border, Old Othering? ............................................................................................ 8 1.3 The EU and European Identity .................................................................................... 10 1.4 Latvia, Estonia, and Narva today ................................................................................. 11 Literature Review ............................................................................................................. 14 2.1 A History of Russians in the Baltic.............................................................................. 16 2.2 A History of the Other ................................................................................................. 17 2.3 Europe – Where and What is it? .................................................................................. 20 2.4 Russia as the European Other ...................................................................................... 23 2.5 Analysis of Themes, Approaches, Ideas in the Literature; and its Implications .......... 25 Theoretical Framework .................................................................................................... 28 3.1 Meta-Analytic ‘Research Synthesis’ Approach ........................................................... 28 3.2 Research Purpose ......................................................................................................... 29 3.3 Primary Data-Set Selection .......................................................................................... 30 Data Findings ..................................................................................................................... 33 4.1 Eurobarometer 92 (2019) ............................................................................................. 33 4.2 GESIS – ISSP 2013 (2015) .......................................................................................... 35 4.3 ENRI-EAST (2011) ..................................................................................................... 39 Data Analysis ..................................................................................................................... 44 5.1 Eurobarometer 92 (2019) ............................................................................................. 44 5.2 GESIS – ISSP 2013 (2015) .......................................................................................... 45 5.3 ENRI-EAST (2011) ..................................................................................................... 47 5.4 Summary Cross-Examination of Findings ................................................................... 48 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 51 Limitations .............................................................................................................................. 53 Implications ............................................................................................................................ 54 References ............................................................................................................................... 55 iv Умом Россию не понять, Russia may not be beheld by the mind, Аршином общим не измерить: Nor measure her breadth can one achieve: У ней особенная стать — For she's a land of an exceptional kind – В Россию можно только верить. In Russia, it can only suffice to believe. Fyodor Tyutchev (1866) “The peoples of Europe have no idea how dear they are to us! I believe we, future Russians … will comprehend that to become a genuine Russian means to seek finally to reconcile all European controversies, to show the solution of European anguish in our all-humanitarian and all-unifying Russian soul, and to embrace in it with brotherly love all our brethren…” Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1880) “Both by spirit and by historical and cultural traditions, Russia is a natural member of the European family.” Vladimir Putin (November 23, 2006) “A great many people really care very little for their own compatriots, but they hate anything foreign.” Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1919) “There is no future for the people of Europe other than in union.” Jean Monnet (1957) “United in Diversity” – Official Motto of the European Union 5 Introduction Russia and her people(s) have a long history and association with the lands east of the Baltic Sea – what to them is known as Прибалтика (Pribáltika) – and today consists of the Russian Federation’s exclave of Kaliningrad, and the sovereign states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. In particular, the Russian minorities of Latvia and Estonia have played an important role in the post-Soviet histories of those two countries, constituting roughly a quarter of the population of each country, and engaging in an occasionally tense political dialogue with the ethnic Latvian and Estonian majorities, relating to civic and language rights. This dialectic of minority representation as a settled diaspora has invoked academic intrigue into issues of identity and loyalty at the local and national level. At the same time, Latvia and Estonia, as part of the European Union since 2004, have been engaged in a supra-national discussion of developing a common ‘European’ identity, which has implications for political rhetoric at the national level. Both within Russia and outside its borders, there has been an historic – and at times – fiercely contested debate over how ‘European’ Russia is as a civilization; by logical extension, this calls into question how ‘European’ Russian people are as an ethnic group. Proponents of the idea that Russia is not truly ‘European’ are engaging in a process of Othering – this is true both in cases of outsiders casting Russia as Other to Europe, and of Russians casting Europe as an external Other. While substantial enquiry has been conducted into attachment to Europe and the EU in Latvia and Estonia across the whole population(s), and into identity amongst local ethnic Russian communities in these two countries, regarding national civic identity, and diaspora ethnic identity as Russians, much less enquiry has been conducted specifically into perceptions of ‘European’ identity and attachment to the European Union amongst these Russian minority communities in Latvia and Estonia. This paper proposes that this is a significant research gap, and that the consequence of such is an impaired ability on the part of policymakers to properly engage with the citizenry they represent. Thus, this paper shall first conduct a review of historic and present literature written on Othering, on identity in Europe and the European Union, and on identity amongst Russians resident in Estonia and Latvia, before performing a meta-analysis of papers to establish the true extent/existence of this proposed gap in research literature. This meta-analysis presents itself as an article of new research, which seeks to establish a foundation of further new research into this intersection of Russian and European studies. As a broad community within a larger diaspora, the Russians of the Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have garnered a fair amount of outside intrigue and scholarly attention 6 since those countries gained their independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Much research has been carried out into the identities forged amongst Russian communities in the post- independence Baltic states, where many initially felt that they were systematically discriminated against within a new country that some were not fully happy being a part of, under a system which